Over Tumbled Graves

by Jess Walter

  “If she ain’t dead, she’s gonna be.”

  “You have reason to think she’s dead?”

  Chloe smiled. “I have reason to think we’re all dead.” She lost interest in her own humor though and craned her neck to look into the kitchen. “I wonder if the coffee’s on.”

  “This will only take a minute.” Caroline pushed the pictures closer to the woman in the wheelchair so that they hung slightly over the edge of the table.

  Chloe looked down at the pictures. “You in some hurry?” she asked.

  “Little bit.”

  “Oh yeah? You gotta get home, take care of your kids?”

  “I don’t have any kids,” Caroline said. “I’m going to a funeral.”

  Chloe looked rather interested at this. “Whose?”

  Caroline nudged the picture of Burn so that it teetered on the edge of the table. “His. They found his body in the river. The family’s having a service this afternoon.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “Then you liked him.”

  “No, it’s too bad they found his body. Fish could’ve eaten the fucker, all I care.”

  “Did he do something to you?”

  She shrugged. “Nothin’ out of the ordinary.”

  “He wasn’t the one who…” And Caroline pointed to the wheelchair.

  Chloe looked down at the big spoked wheel and figured out what Caroline was asking. “No,” she said, but didn’t volunteer anything else.

  Caroline smiled. “You want to go?”

  “To the funeral?” Chloe smiled. “That’d be pretty funny, huh?”

  Caroline pressed the record button on the tape player and slid it into the middle of the table, right between them. “So?”

  Chloe looked from the tape recorder to the pictures and then back again.

  “Well,” she began. “Okay. For a guy his age, Burn did pretty good with the girls. Always had four or five. Rae there was only with him a couple weeks, but old Shelly, she ran with him a while.”

  Caroline imagined Lenny Ryan arriving five months ago, asking the same questions she was asking now, finding out the same things she was finding out now. “Was Burn your pimp too?”

  Chloe rolled her eyes. “It ain’t like little girls in thigh-high boots riding with some nigger in a Cadillac. Ain’t like that. Guy like Burn, he’s someone to party with, you know? Had a place over off Pacific. Nice. Me and Shelly were mostly doing car dates, or taking ’em into alleys or into the big boats on that lot on Sprague, before them security guards got all bent out of shape about it. About that time Burn said we could use his place. Four or five dates a night, you might get a couple hundred, give half to Burn and he’d hook you up with smack or whatever and make sure you get a burger and some fries before you spent all your money and crashed on his couch. You party with his friends and that makes him the Mac and if anyone doesn’t pay or tries to fuck you without paying, well, if you’re running with Burn, that ain’t gonna happen much.”

  Caroline was concentrating, trying to keep up. “So can you tell me exactly when Rae-Lynn and Shelly were with him?”

  Chloe waved off the question, as if measuring time would have been impossible, or at least irrelevant. “Shelly, everyone call her Pills.” Chloe looked around the group home self-consciously. “Had a real addictive-type personality. Needs someone to make her think she ain’t alone. She was always trying to hook up with some guy. Like she’s falling in love, just disappear off the street for a while. Then she come back, all sad, ‘He threw me out!’ It was like that with Burn, called him her boyfriend for a while. But a girl like Rae, I think she’s smarter, she knows a thing or two.”

  “Was Shelly working for Burn when she was killed?”

  “You asking me, did Burn do her?” Chloe raised her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, I guess I am asking that.”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Caroline stared at the girl. “Did people assume it was Burn?”

  “People? What people? Somebody do a poll?” Chloe stared at the foot pegs of her wheelchair. “He didn’t go around telling people it wasn’t him, that’s for sure. I mean, girl’s hawking stuff at pawnshops and sucking a little extra dick on the side and then tells Burn she doesn’t need his help anymore…shit.” She just let it hang there.

  “Burn knew she was hawking things?”

  “Oh yeah. He come off all sweet, but he keep track of your money for you.”

  Caroline looked back at her notes. “You said she was turning tricks on the side. Why would she do that?”

  “Save some money. Get out of town.”

  “Burn didn’t want her saving money to leave town?”

  Chloe nodded. “If you ain’t buying drugs from him no more, then you must be buying from someone else. You know?”

  “That’s what happened? You think Burn got mad at her for going on her own and assumed she was buying drugs elsewhere?”

  Chloe shrugged. “Told you, I don’t know what happened. But even if he didn’t do it, you see why it would be in his interest to let people assume he did?”

  “So that was the theory—” Caroline hated to say it, like she was mimicking an old Starsky and Hutch episode, but there was no choice—“on the street?”

  Chloe just laughed.

  “Let me ask it this way. If someone was to ask around about what happened to Shelly”—she reached in her bag and brought out a photo of Lenny Ryan—“let’s say this guy. You think he’d get the same…hypothetical answer that you just gave me?”

  Chloe took the photo of Lenny Ryan. “That’s the guy from the paper, huh? The guy doin’ all those women.” She stared at the picture. “Well, if he’s smart, he wouldn’t need to ask, but yeah, that’s what he’d hear. Girl cut. Still wearin’ her clothes. Whoever did it wasn’t interested in no freaky stuff. Not like this sicko.” She held up the photo. “A girl gets whacked on time like that? It’s either the guy paying for pussy or the guy she’s paying afterward. See? Ain’t a whole lot of other suspects to choose from. Ain’t the fuckin’ butler, you know?”

  Caroline stared at the girl. She couldn’t weigh ninety pounds without her wheelchair and here she was explaining the world to Caroline.

  “I mean, come on.” Chloe tapped her finger on the long dining table, as if she were diagramming a football play. “It don’t take a damn rocket scientist.”

  On her notebook Caroline had written “Burn killed Shelly.” She underlined it twice. She had the sensation of watching a road emerge from the fog. She nodded to the picture of Lenny. “You ever see him before?”

  Chloe looked down at the picture in her hand. “No. But I haven’t been on the street since…” She fumbled with the brake on her wheelchair. “I’ve been in here or in the hospital most of the last year.”

  “Did Shelly ever mention having a boyfriend?”

  “Shelly? Any guy with a wallet was Shelly’s boyfriend. Old guys, mostly. I know she moved here with some old guy.”

  “Did she ever talk about a boyfriend from California?”

  Chloe thought for a minute, then smiled. “Yeah. I remember something…some guy she was all hung up on. But hell, I couldn’t tell you anything. Every whore in here talks about the guy who treated her good. Gets pretty old. We’re all just waiting until we save enough money to go back to him. Or until he gets out of jail. Or leaves his wife.”

  Caroline thought of herself and Dupree and flinched. The counselor came back into the room and handed Caroline two slim files, one with the name “Rae-Lynn Pierce” across the top, the other with Shelly Nordling’s name. He kept another envelope close to his chest.

  Caroline dug into Shelly Nordling’s file. There wasn’t much in it, just an admittance sheet, a discharge sheet, and a couple of other reports. Caroline paused right away on the first page, at the address that Shelly listed when she was checked into this treatment center. The address was familiar. Just off the freeway in East Central. She thought about something Chloe had just said, that sh
e failed to follow up on. “You said Shelly moved here with an old guy. Do you remember his name?”

  “Shit,” she said and stared at the ceiling. “I can see the guy. Booted her out for using dope and stealing stuff. What was his name?”

  “Albert,” said the counselor quietly.

  “Yeah,” Chloe said. “I think that’s right. She used to call him Uncle Albert. Yeah. Right. I thought that was funny, you know, like the song?”

  Albert Stanhouse. Shelly lived with Lenny Ryan’s uncle, and that’s why Lenny killed him. Suddenly Dupree’s random murders—his spinning top—seemed a lot less random. Caroline could imagine Lenny putting it together: Uncle Albert drags Shelly to Spokane, then tosses her out on the street where Burn pimps her. When she wants to leave she goes to the pawnbroker to get enough money to go back to California, but he shortchanges her on a bracelet. Lenny comes to town and kills all of them. So here was Caroline trying to punish a guy for murdering hookers who was punishing people for murdering a hooker. It shocked her, looking at all that Lenny Ryan had discovered by scratching around beneath the surface and how little they had discovered by working above it.

  But something had been nagging at the back of her mind. If Lenny Ryan had reasons to kill his uncle and Burn and the pawnshop owner, then was he the same psychopath they’d been imagining, that Blanton and McDaniel had been dissecting? She had the urge to laugh just then, and she thought about Dupree and his contention that the best response in irrational situations was irrationality. She had another urge too—to find Dupree and tell him what she’d found.

  She was startled when her phone rang; still thinking about Dupree, she didn’t even check the number. Instead, she held a finger up to the drug counselor and Chloe, turned her back, and took the call.

  “Hey,” she said, fully expecting to hear Dupree’s voice on the other end.

  “Ms. Mabry,” said Curtis Blanton. “My ticket insists this big Quonset hut is the Spo-Caine International Airport.”

  “Because of Canada,” she said.

  “Oh. Of course. I guess that makes sense.”

  She felt two steps behind. “Wait a minute. You’re in Spokane?”

  “Aren’t you going to ask what I’m doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Good question. After we got off the phone I looked over your case again, and I thought of you with that sick twist McDaniel milking this thing for his next stupid book, and I knew you needed my help. So I caught the first flight out.”

  Caroline rubbed her head. “You know, I’m in an interview right now. Can you rent a car? Or take a cab?”

  “No need. I’ll wait here for you. But don’t tell McDaniel I’m in town. Okay? I want to surprise the big, neckless bastard. He’s gonna shit paper when he sees me.”

  Caroline didn’t know how to answer, so she just turned her phone off. Everything was moving too quickly. When she turned back the counselor was bent down, showing Chloe the letter he’d taken from the envelope.

  “What is that?” she asked.

  The counselor straightened up and patted his corn-rowed hair in the back. “We operate on the same model as AA or NA here,” the counselor said. “Even the counselors here, most of us have been…are you familiar with the twelve steps, Detective?”

  “Somewhat.”

  The counselor handed her the short letter and the envelope. “One of the most important steps is the acknowledgment of the people we’ve hurt through our addiction. That’s one thing we do here. We have the women write letters to the people they hurt. Some apologize. Some just make excuses. Some aren’t even ready for that and they just hit their family up for more money or blame their parents for their problems.

  “I worried about that with Shelly because she only wrote one letter. And when I tried to get her to mail it, she begged me not to because she didn’t want the man to know where she was. So I put it in her file and never mailed it. Normally, I wouldn’t think of violating a patient’s privacy like this. But…”

  Caroline looked away from him then, down at the letter in her hands, which began, “Dear Lenny.”

  43

  An undated letter from the treatment file of Shelly Nordling at the Bright Shining Day Group Home:

  Dear Lenny,

  Well here I am at another treatment place. I hope you had a good x-mas and not too lonely. Today we’re supposed to write letters to people we let down. I was sitting here thinking of a hundred people I stole from, lied to, borrowed money from and did a hundred bad things to.

  But you’re the only person I ever really LET DOWN. I don’t think you can let people down who don’t expect anything from you. I think you were the only person who ever thought I could be more than I am.

  I’m sorry about Uncle Albert and all of it. I don’t know how much you know, but you know me and you know how weak I am and how hard it is for me when I’m alone. Not that it’s an excuse. It’s what I am.

  I wish I could pretend that I didn’t know what would happen when I came up here with him. But we’ve been around too long to be stupid anymore, Lenny. No more time for that.

  You know, the day I left with him, I almost came to see you. But I couldn’t look you in the eye. I started hooking again down there, for a little crank. And up here a lot more. A couple months ago I sold your uncle’s dishes and we got into it and he beat me up a little and kicked me out. I’m glad you can’t see me now, Lenny.

  I wish I hadn’t let you go down alone for my stash. I was just scared. I’ve been scared so long I don’t remember what it’s like to not be.

  When I get out of here next month, I’m going to get some money together and come down and see you, even though I have no right. I got a few things to pay off but I plan on being there when you are released. I don’t expect you to want to talk to me or anything, or for us to be like it was before. I don’t expect anything, Lenny, except that it’s going to be hard to see you. I’m even scared of that.

  I’m afraid I’ll look in your eyes and see how much I let you down and then I know I’ll have to get high. You will want to know what happened to me and I will have to tell you. And you will see how weak and ugly I am now. I wish I would have taken better care.

  But what scares me the most is already inside me. It’s been there a long time. It’s knowing I didn’t deserve you. That I’m bad for the only person who ever made me feel good. I love you. I wish that meant more than it does, Lenny.

  Shelly

  A note stuck with a magnetic apple to Kelly Baldwin’s refrigerator at his home in Moses Lake, Washington:

  Kelly,

  You fuck! I thought we was going on great! In case you wonder where your wallet is, I took it, you fuck! That’s because I usually get eighty bucks for that shit you made me do today! After you fell asleep I got Scott to drive me to the bus station! How about that! Fuck you! By the time you read this, I will be long gone and don’t try to find me because I’m going back to my boyfriend in Spokane and he’s black and he knows Tie Quan Doe! And will kick your ass!

  I don’t know why you had to be like that Kelly! We could have been better. You go fuck Scott and his computer and you shouldn’t tell people you’re a doctor! OK.

  luv-u-4-ever (NOT)

  Shayla (Rae-Lynn)

  A letter typed on Spokane Police Department stationery, folded in half and slid into the mail slot of Assistant Chief of Police James Tucker:

  July 26, 2001

  Asst. Chief James Tucker

  Office of the Assistant Chief

  Spokane Police Dept.

  Dear Chief Tucker,

  This letter is my official request to be considered for early retirement, effective immediately and per our discussion. This decision is based on personal reasons and not on recent decisions showing a lack of confidence in my abilities as a detective.

  I ask that you act on this request as expeditiously as possible, although I will continue to perform my duties as patrol sergeant for the David Sector until a reasonabl
e conclusion can be reached in reference to this issue.

  I have served the city of Spokane the last 26 years with my deepest energy and commitment. Any errors I made were with the sincere belief that my actions were taken in the best interest of the city, in the department, and in my colleagues, for whom I will continue to have the greatest respect.

  Sincerely,

  Alan J. Dupree

  cc: Lt. Charles Branch, Major Crimes

  City of Spokane, Human Relations

  Police Guild

  Chris Spivey, prick

  PART V

  AUGUST

  What the Thunder Said

  44

  A jogger found the fifth body in a blind of wild grass on the steep riverbank, a mile from where the first victims had been dumped. From the condition of the remains it was clear this one had been dead for weeks, and only recently had been moved to this spot. Caroline held back, letting the crime scene people do their work, but the moment she edged forward and saw the dried patches of flesh, the sun-bleached teeth, she felt with dread certainty that this pile of orderly bones was Rae-Lynn Pierce.

  As Blanton had promised, the pressure increased exponentially with the discovery of another body, and in those first days of August, the office thrummed with activity. Calls came in from psychics, along with tips from prisoners in Texas and Florida, and requests for interviews from CNN and Newsweek. The work itself felt natural; with the two profilers and the growing expertise of the task force, the kind of details that had stumped them three months ago were quickly fitted to Lenny Ryan’s ever-changing methodology. This time, the twenty-dollar bills were stuffed in the victim’s mouth, a detail that sent the profilers into frenzies of supposition that devolved into an argument in the middle of the task force office in which they yelled over each other without making eye contact, like two professors who’d been assigned the same lecture hall.