The Moon Stands Still

by Sibella Giorello

  Mid-tide, Washington’s longest beach was about forty yards wide. Above me, amber moonlight stitched together night, and far ahead, one pair of headlights beamed into the darkness. Cars were legal on this beach, just like that beach in North Carolina where Lani and I met as teenagers.

  Pacing my steps, I counted my way toward the location mentioned in the police file. Wind rushed over my face and on my left, the tide drew water away, a shushing wash of waves, and I tried to imagine what this night beach felt like to a fourteen-year-old girl, secretly escaping to witness a lunar eclipse, carrying her beloved sketch pad. Tom O’Brien hadn’t mentioned the sketch pad, and it wasn’t collected in the crime scene evidence. I made a mental note to find it.

  When I saw the skeletal outline of a dead tree, I turned right, jogging away from the water. The tree was notable because so few of them grew in coastal sand, and because it was the tree that marked the final Northwest stop for Lewis and Clark, their initials still carved into the trunk. I slowed to a walk, still counting my steps, as the sounds of wind and waves filled my ears. Deafening white noise. And during a lunar eclipse with a full moon, the tides would’ve been even stronger, louder. Maybe that was some kind of mercy. Maybe the girl never heard her killer approaching.

  I stopped at the location where her dead body was found. Turning a full circle, I gazed at the surroundings. No beach houses nearby. A quarter mile back, the tourist hotels stood facing the hummocky dunes and sea grass and ocean. Otherwise, all that was here was sand and ocean and darkness.

  I took out my phone, turning on the flashlight. Divots of sand cupped small pools of water. When I shifted the light beam, I saw heavy shovelfuls of sand heaped beside the pools, like shallow graves. A fresh shiver rattled down my spine. Krystal Jewel, according to all the interviews I read in the police report, had no enemies—and no friends. Quiet, artistic, she kept to herself, no doubt also traumatized by her home life. A bad start for a creative girl, and finished with one crushing blow to the skull. I turned another slow circle. Was she killed during the eclipse, I wondered, or after. And in that moment when her short unhappy life was taken, did the moon stand still? Was there a kind of evil so repellent that God himself was forced to pause in horror?

  I snapped off my flashlight.

  Walking back to the car, I combed over the other details. No other attacks were reported out here, nothing that linked to her killing in any way. And with no other suspects, it seemed possible Joel Fisher killed Krystal Jewel. But I understood why Tom had doubts. DNA was forensic proof, but in this case, it carried some circumstantial elements. We needed that third DNA for conclusiveness. And yet, Fisher’s state-appointed lawyer was already telling him to find a place for his daughter. Because any reasonable jury might convict him.

  Pushing through the sand, calves burning, I knew that finding the source of that pegmatite wasn’t just a long shot. It was a long, long shot.

  When I made it back to The Ghost, leaning on the hood and brushing the sand off my feet, I considered one other clue. The abuse, the molestation. Someone close to the victim, I suspected. Family? Avis Jewel’s latest husband? Even, possibly, Joel Fisher?

  I turned the ignition key. The Ghost growled to life, prowling the night like a white panther. At the main intersection, where the lane led out of town, the road was bare, damp from an earlier rain. I sat there for several minutes, thinking, wondering, deciding what to do next. Because whoever stole Krystal Jewel’s life might also be the person who stole her innocence. Maybe she planned to come forward, name her predator.

  I turned onto the bare road, knowing that if I could find that man, I would very likely find her killer, too.

  18

  On my way out of town, I stopped at the only open restaurant, that cantina with two-for-one tacos. Inside, an enormous sombrero hung over the cash register. Behind the counter, a dark-haired woman with blue tattoos running up and down her muscular arms mopped the burnt-orange floor tiles. The place was otherwise empty.

  “Hi,” I said.

  She didn’t break the mop’s stride. “I’m closing in ten minutes.”

  “It’s to go. Two tacos, please? Extra cheese. One extra-large Coke.”

  She dropped the mop and huffed into the kitchen, leaving me with a local newspaper somebody had discarded on an empty table. Four-pages thin, The Chinook Observer reported on weather, fishing, tides, and school sports. The basketball teams were winning, and I finally got an answer for all those divots dug into the sand. This week was clam season.

  “Hey. You ready?” The dark-haired woman plunked a brown bag on the counter, right beneath the suspended sombrero. I tilted my head around it and handed her the money. She punched the cash register like it had personally insulted her. Behind me, the door groaned. A cool breeze brushed across the back of my neck. The woman behind the cash register looked up.

  “Go away,” she said.

  Standing in the open doorway was a short red-haired female wearing a police uniform. “Maggie, there’s two minutes left.”

  “And I’m closing in two minutes.”

  “Throw everything into one of your stale taco bowls, I’ll take it.”

  The dark-haired woman started to hand me my change, but I pointed to the empty tip jar. She gave me a begrudging look of thanks, then stomped back into the kitchen. I picked up my bag and turned toward the cop. Her skin was heavily freckled—the skin of an outdoorsy redhead—and an embroidered patch on her right shoulder read Long Beach Police. Her name tag read Officer T. Franklin.

  “Hi.” She smiled. “How’re you?”

  “Better.” I shifted the bag and took out a business card. “You got a minute?”

  The ocean district’s police department kept a satellite office on Pacific Avenue, next to an ice cream shop. Around the corner, a high sign curved over the wooden boardwalk heralding the “World’s Longest Beach.”

  Tammy Franklin led me to her corner of the office and pulled up an extra chair at her desk. No one else seemed to be around. We unwrapped our meals in silence. I took a bite of my taco. The meat was cold.

  Tammy Franklin dug a plastic fork into her taco bowl shell, as if searching for something. “Who’ve you talked to so far?”

  “Avis Jewel and Joel Fisher.”

  Her fork stabbed some shredded iceberg lettuce. “And what’d you think?”

  “Avis seemed defensive. Fisher seemed scared. He also had opportunity to commit the crime, but I don’t see the motive. Unless you can convince me he was having an affair with Krystal Jewel.”

  She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin and chewed. It was hard for me to guess her age because she seemed girlish one moment, in her early twenties. But when she frowned she looked older than me, maybe because of the freckled skin. It was deeply wrinkled from the sun. But overall, she had a wiry vitality, as if the amber curls of her hair were actually copper wires ready to conduct electricity.

  “At first,” she said, swallowing, “I totally thought Fisher did it. Fights with the wife, meets a student at night on the beach. It was like, Right, buddy, the whole lunar eclipse thing is a great story. Smooth move. But now I wonder if he’s actually telling the truth. Which almost sucks because all the evidence still points at him and everybody around here’s ready to convict him. Even though nine months ago, they loved the guy.” She combed the fork through the beans and corn and chicken and rice and beef and shredded cheese—every single leftover from the cantina’s kitchen—and sighed. “Here’s what I think, just between you and me. Fisher’s probably telling the truth but he seems totally guilty. Whoever actually killed Krystal Jewel probably has a story that sounds totally innocent. Sucks. Am I right?”

  And there it was again—that young and naive part of her combined with law enforcement wisdom.

  “Tammy, how long have you worked here?”

  “One year come February.” She took another bite of the kitchen-sink meal. As she chewed, freckles danced on her face. “I never expected to get a murder case. I mean,
domestic calls? All the time. Especially in winter when people get stir-crazy. But nobody out here kills each other. People just get mean with the drizzle. I spent the summer tagging people for speeding, open containers of alcohol, clam digging out of season. And drugs, because that crap is everywhere now. Winter was supposed to be easier.”

  “Are you from around here?”

  “Naw. San Diego. Joined the Navy out of high school. Military Police for three years.”

  I sipped my Coke. “San Diego has better weather.”

  “Not for me. The sun hates me.” She lifted the plastic fork, pointing at her face. “Sun makes my face look like I lost a paintball fight. Soon as I left the Navy, I came up here. Rent’s cheaper and there’s more rain than sun.”

  I nodded, waiting a moment to get back to the case. “The coroner found signs of repeated sexual abuse. Any idea who that perp might be?”

  She frowned and scraped her fork across the bowl, gathering rice and black beans, then dropped her fork, as if unable to eat. “I’m still learning, okay? I’ve only been a real cop ten months.”

  “That’s fine. Just wondering if you had any idea who’s responsible.”

  She gathered up the taco shell—and my garbage—and walked it to the door, dumping it in the trash can sitting outside on the sidewalk. “I can tell you this,” she said, coming back to the desk. “Half the people in this town must be related to the Jewels. That family’s been here for generations. Unfortunately, they’re not choosy about who they sleep with.” Her lip curled. “I mean, it’s literally disgusting.”

  “Are you saying incest?”

  “I wouldn’t rule it out. Krystal’s dad had skipped town before I got here. But the next guy Avis hooked up with is a real loser.” She reached down to a desk drawer, yanking a couple times, then lifting a work boot and delivering a good kick. The drawer popped open. “Back when I suspected Joel Fisher, I went down to the middle school. Just to ask around, you know.”

  She laid a black plastic binder on the desk and flipped through the pages, glancing up at me with sea-blue eyes. “School nurse is great. She’s been there so long she treated parents when they were little kids. Even some grandparents. She told me Krystal came into her office a lot, complaining of stomach cramps. Like, all the time with stomach cramps. But always at the same time, every day. During art class.”

  “Did she say anything else, anything more conclusive?”

  “The nurse saw bruises on her body.” Tammy Franklin pointed to the small of her back, where her gun belt wrapped around her uniform. “Looked like she’d been whipped.”

  Avis. The food in my stomach curdled. “The nurse reported it?”

  She sighed. “People around here don’t report.”

  “What about an anonymous call to Child Protective Services?”

  “Great idea, except the CPS social worker is Avis’ cousin. I told you, the Jewels have cousins like I have freckles. See what I’m saying?”

  “Nothing happened about the beatings.”

  “Well, not nothing. The school nurse later ran into Avis at the A&P. People heard her in the frozen food aisle threatening to call the cops if she ever found another mark on Krystal again.”

  “Good. And?”

  “Two weeks later, Krystal was dead.” She pushed the open binder toward me. “The nurse blames Fisher, like everybody else. I think they all want to feel better about not doing more.” Her ocean-blue eyes held a storm of sorrow. “I’m not judging any of them. I pretty much did the same thing.”

  I turned the pages. Pages and pages of handwritten notes and photographs, speculations and checklists. Officer Tammy Franklin visited the combined middle-and-high school three times. She went to the Jewel house twice, and was turned away by Avis both times. She also attended Krystal’s funeral, taking notes on attendees and those who appeared suspicious in any way. Joel Fisher wasn’t there. He was in the Grays County jail. Franklin went there, too, to interview him. I looked up at her somber freckled face. “Why isn’t this information in Krystal’s file?”

  “That is her file.” She blinked. “Right there.”

  “I’m talking about the file with the state patrol.”

  “Oh.” She gazed down at the paperwork. “I didn’t think I had anything to give them. I mean, these are just my thoughts. Not any official investigation.”

  A wave of despair washed over me. The longest of long shots just got longer.

  She squinted. “Did I screw up?”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “So I really screwed up.”

  “You don’t have a supervisor?”

  “Chief retired end of summer.” She glanced around the tight space. “City council’s still interviewing people. There’s only three of us for the winter. Me and another guy, we rotate. I take nights—keeps me out of the sun—and the part-time guy takes two days. In the summer we get four more part-timers. One of them’s the husband of the school nurse, that’s how I found out about her.” She blinked again. “How bad did I screw up?”

  I looked at the notes. Tammy Franklin kept detailed records. Time, place, who was present. Military training. “How old are you, Tammy?”

  “Why?”

  Because she was a newbie cop and a diligent investigator—of her own initiative. “Because I think you might want to apply to the FBI someday.”

  “Really?” Her grin broke out the dancing freckles. “Ya think, really?”

  “Yes, really.” I closed the binder, handing it back to her. “Make me some copies of your notes. Let’s see what we can find.”

  19

  The Ghost lived up to its name on the drive home, soaring like a white apparition down dark roads and through evergreen forests tall enough to make moonlit clouds disappear. I wove through the empty little fishing towns and thought of Krystal Jewel skipping art class when she apparently loved to draw. On the night she died, she took a sketch pad to the beach. A sketch pad her mother claimed she couldn’t find. The mother who was probably beating her. And maybe allowing her boyfriend to molest her.

  Before I realized it, The Ghost was floating across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and dawn was sneaking across the eastern horizon. I pulled into Eleanor’s driveway, tiptoed upstairs, and slept like the dead.

  When I woke, a soggy gray daylight was leaking through my bedroom window. Next to me in bed, something thumped on the covers. I lifted my head.

  Madame wagged her tail, then traversed the mounds of twisted blankets to curl up beside me. Judging by the blankets, I didn’t sleep like the dead. More like the distressed. My feet were tangled in the top sheet and my hair poofed, probably from racking my head back and forth on the pillow all night. In my last dream, I slogged through quicksand, crying, and going nowhere fast.

  With the dog beside me, I waited several long moments before checking the clock.

  The time was 1:24 p.m.

  I kissed Madame’s soft head, showered, dressed, and ate sugary cereal while Eleanor trumpeted instructions at me about this evening.

  The D.B. Cooper festival.

  I promised.

  We were going.

  Tonight.

  I drove the dog to the asylum and sat in the car, reading through Officer Franklin’s notes. She’d included a short local news article from The Chinook Observer. Three years ago, sixth-grader Krystal Jewel won a local art competition. The newspaper featured her winning entry on its front page, a charcoal drawing of a tidal pool. I pulled the copy close to my eyes, examining the speckled sea creatures shown floating in still water. Starfish. Baby crab. Kelp. Technically, the drawing was very good, especially for a kid. But something more than technique was at work. Her drawing conveyed a forlorn and haunting suspense, as if asking the viewer to wonder whether these creatures would still be alive when the tide came back.

  I lifted my face, staring out the sloping windshield, barely seeing the November gray. In my last forensics case—an abduction-murder in the Cascade Mountains—the victim’s father refused to giv
e up. He wanted answers. He demanded justice. He pushed me. But Avis Jewel? She didn’t want my help.

  Why not?

  Taking out my phone, I dialed Officer Franklin’s number. She sounded happy to hear from me, and was just starting her night shift.

  “Were you at the crime scene that night?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It was awful.”

  “Did you find a sketch book?”

  “Uh-huh. It was in the sand, kinda near where she died. Her mom wanted it back.”

  “So Avis has it?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Go by her house, see if you can get it back.”

  Tammy Franklin sighed. “I screwed up again, didn’t I?”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “You say it like that counts.”

  “Because I think you’re the kind of person who never makes the same mistake twice.”

  “Thanks.” She gave a shorter sigh, relief. “I needed to hear that.”

  “Let me know if Avis won’t turn over the sketch pad. We’ll figure something out.”

  I ended the call and walked into the asylum, thinking about my own screw-ups. One of them was right here, right now. Ten years ago, straight out of college, I went to work for the Bureau’s forensics lab. But I told my mom I was working as a geologist, because my dad and I didn’t think her paranoia could handle the FBI connection, especially since she sometimes got the idea our water faucets were bugged with listening devices. But truth never stays buried forever. And when my mom found out the truth about my work—how I’d kept it secret from her—her mind fractured. So did our relationship.

  Closing the door behind me, I waved to the receptionist, Gaelynn. She buzzed the locked stairwell and I climbed the steps, feeling bad about myself. And thinking about something my dad used to tell me.