New River Blues (29 page)

‘How did your dad feel about that?'

‘Enraged! But by then Dad was so busy building stuff, he was hardly home except to sleep. He kept telling Mom they had to do something. Mom just tried to talk Adam around and tempt him with a lot of new toys. Adam took the toys gladly but kept hitting the booze and junk too. Then one day I came home from school and there was an angry couple in the house. Dad was home from work in the daytime and Mom was crying . . . it was something Adam had done. Nobody ever would tell me, exactly, but obviously it involved the daughter of the people who were there. She laughed at him about something and . . . one of my friends in school told me he tore off all her clothes. Dad did a lot of telephoning, and Adam went east to a special school. He's on about the third special school now and as you can see it's been a big success.

‘After that . . . they both felt bad about Adam, but they showed it in different ways. Dad worked harder than ever, trying to build enough good stuff to make it right, I guess. And Mom . . .' Patricia's clear blue eyes met Sarah's and wavered. ‘Mom was always kind of a ditz, you know. Couldn't balance a checkbook, forgot what she'd said she was going to do. But after Adam left she was all about anything that made her feel better. She'd been raised to be self-indulgent, and once Adam was out of the house she began to go seriously off the rails.'

‘What happened?'

A helpless shrug. ‘She'd always had mood swings and they got worse. One doctor said bipolar. They gave her medication but every time she felt better she'd stop taking it. When she was up, she gave big honking parties.'

‘And when she was down? Did she take the bad moods out on your father?'

‘Hey, we're a family, we all take everything out on each other! But Dad always kind of . . . looked after Mom, he felt responsible for her. Only . . . as she got more erratic . . . it was hard for him to exert control because the big money was hers. Big money,' Patricia said, thoughtfully, ‘kind of has its own seat in the room, you know?'

Sarah saw Menendez' face reflect her own thought:
She's so young to know that.

Sarah felt time scrolling away from her again and knew they'd have to talk to Nino soon. ‘What kind of help do you want from us, Patricia?'

‘Tell me what I can do for Adam. Dad's so angry, all he can think about right now is punishment. But if I found a good place I think he'd go for it.'

‘Will Adam, though? Go for it?'

Patricia shook her head sadly. ‘Adam's not interested in reform.'

Menendez said, ‘All the treatment guys I ever met have told me the patient has to want it for the cure to work.'

‘Before Adam wants a cure he'll be dead. Can't you steer me to a social worker who'll help me arrange for some tough love?'

Menendez, looking very dubious, turned and said, ‘Sarah?'

‘I can give you a name,' Sarah said. ‘I can't promise what she'll do for you.' She went back to her cubicle, pulled up a screen, copied the email address and phone number of the last social worker who'd helped with Janine. Walking back into the interview room, handing it over, she said, ‘I guess I'll share with you that this social worker helped me get my own sister into detox last year. So I can tell you she's very capable and she'll tell you the truth.' With Patricia's fingers already on the paper, she held it a moment longer and repeated Dietz's dictum. ‘You can't fix everything.'

‘I know. But I have to try.' She took the piece of paper Sarah handed her, said, ‘Thank you very much,' and stood, folding it carefully into her wallet. She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, and then said, in the rushed way that people say things they didn't intend to, ‘My mother's being cremated this afternoon.'

The six terrible words seemed to suck up all the air in the little room. In the vacuum they left behind, for a long moment nobody moved. ‘They're going to cook up what's left of my beautiful mother,' Patricia said at last, ‘into a little heap of ashes that fits in an urn, and we're going to bury that tomorrow.' Her knees buckled and she sat down with a thump on the wretched little round stool.

ELEVEN

N
o two suspects are exactly alike, of course. But Nino Giardelli brought more mixed signals into the room than most. He was as dirty, weather-beaten, and ragged as the least-favored miscreants they got in interrogation, but he didn't give off the usual aura of hostility or evasion. He looked into her face searchingly, she thought, as if he wanted to talk and was hoping she would listen.

Espinosa had put him in full chains, and the patrolman who met him, rather than go to the trouble to take all that equipment off and gear up again, had simply traded out a set of restraints, escorted him as he hobbled past gaping customers to the restroom at the gas station, put him into the locked back seat of a patrol car, and sped home.

‘Let's get him out of those chains,' Sarah said when he came clanking in, ‘and give him a bathroom break right away.' They settled him in interrogation room #1 with cuffs only, brought him water, and read him his rights.

‘I guess I might want a lawyer eventually,' Nino said at the end of the recitation, ‘but I need to talk to you first.'

‘Oh, all right,' Sarah said, not daring to look at Menendez. ‘We can do that.' She turned to a fresh page in the legal tablet open in front of her. ‘Where do you want to start?'

‘With that night at the party, when Pauly got shot.'

‘Good.' She held her pen poised above the paper, but kept her eyes on his face. He had a small, crooked mouth missing a couple of teeth, and watery, uncertain eyes. But his manner right now seemed straightforward, even purposeful. ‘You were there?'

‘Sure, we were the servers. Pauly and me and Felicity. Big mother of a party, went on for hours. And even when it ended it didn't end for us, because we had to clean it up.' He described the part of the evening Felicity hadn't wanted to talk about, the little group in the prep room cleaning up the messy leftovers of the huge party, working hard at first and then not so hard because of the music and wine and dope.

‘Who put on the music?'

‘Madge, I guess. This guy that got us our jobs at the theater? Everybody's pal, always the life of the party. He had the dope, too, got everybody all herbed up and dancing. And then that Mrs Henderson, man . . .' He looked from Sarah to Ray and back again, and gave a little puzzled shrug. ‘I never seen . . . she started dancing with Pauly and pretty soon it was like she decided to keep him for a
pet
.'

‘Was Zack there too?'

‘Oh, sure, Zack was always there for the clean-up, to make certain all the supplies got back in the van. And you know, ordinarily, that Zack – he's not a mixer. Still keeping a tight hold on the first friendly thought he ever had. But that night, once the party was over, he was like, hey, let's have fun!' Nino made an almost-laugh sound, ‘Ha!' and added, ‘He even danced with Madge!

‘This next part,' Nino said, suddenly quiet and thoughtful, ‘is what I need to tell you about. And ask . . .' He leaned his work-scarred, grubby little hands on the table. The nails were all broken and filled with dirt, and there was a long deep scratch on the back of the right one that was healed over and crusty on top but looked puffy and feverish underneath. Absent-mindedly, he gently kneaded the cloth loop that fastened his manacled wrists to the table while he stared into their faces anxiously. ‘I never been much good at holding my liquor, I know that. But that night . . . I'd been working all day and then dancing, and even though I'd had some wine I would have swore I was almost sober. But Madge handed me that last drink . . . I took a few sips and whirled Felicity around a couple times . . . and came back to the counter and took a couple more swallows, I think, and then I don't remember anything until Zack woke me up on the floor upstairs.'

He was quiet a few seconds and then asked, looking into their faces, ‘Could that happen? You ever been fine one minute and the next you're passed out cold?'

He was sitting there waiting for their answer, apparently convinced they would be able and willing to settle this vexing question. Sarah remembered Leo Tobin saying, ‘I think Pauly Eckhardt was just in that house at the wrong time . . . The kid was really small-time, Sarah.'

They were both just kids from small towns.
She asked Nino to excuse them for a minute, went out, and found Delaney, standing mesmerized in front of the monitor.

‘Are you seeing what I'm seeing, boss?'

‘Yes. The real deal for once. We don't see this very often, do we?'

‘You think he's telling the truth, too?'

‘If he isn't, we should get him to run for President. He's the most convincing talker I've watched in a long time. This is an excellent interview, Sarah, the whole story's starting to open up and make sense. Keep going, get all you can.'

They went back inside and told Nino they would check ‘with their lab people' for the answer to his question. Sarah was pretty sure he'd been subjected to some form of date-rape drug, but since there was no way to prove it now she saved the speculation for later and asked him to tell her the rest of the story.

Nino described the horror of being wakened by Zack, of seeing the bodies on the bed and recognizing Pauly's earring.

‘Did you make any sound, do you remember?' Sarah asked him.

‘Yeah, I hollered, “Pauly!”'

Sarah looked at Menendez, whose eyes said,
There's your second scream.

‘Zack put his hand over my mouth and said, “Shut up, we gotta get out of here.”' Nino described the confusion, the gun that seemed to be in his hands and then not. ‘And I kept fading in and out . . . so it's hard to know now what I remember from what I was told. When Zack said I killed them . . . it was like some terrible dream, but he was sober and I was drunk, so I believed him. Him and Felicity, man, they practically carried me to that theater and put me to bed. And when I woke up I was so hung over I wanted to die.'

He described the confusing combination of taunting and helpfulness with which Felicity helped him out of the theater next day. And the creepy unreality of Zack, who always seemed to begrudge everybody the air they breathed, suddenly acting as if they were buddies. ‘But I was so sick . . . he said I was welcome to take a snooze, and I almost did.'

He told them about the car that ran the stop light on Orange Grove, and the sudden insight that told him to get out of Zack's vehicle. ‘Or get
him
out, I thought, all of a sudden. So that's what I did. Is he hurt bad? From when I pushed him out?' He was watching their faces, getting disappointed. ‘What, you haven't caught Zack yet?'

‘We've talked to him,' Menendez said. ‘He hasn't, um, said a whole lot.'

A funny little smile began to grow on Nino's face. ‘Lawyered up, I bet. Sounds just like the sneaky sumbitch.'

‘So if you'd like to get your story on the record first,' Sarah said, ‘now's your chance. Tell us more about this man named Madge, what's his story?'

‘Madge is just . . .' he shrugged, ‘looking for a way to pass the time, I guess.' He described a man who seemed to be several steps up the social ladder and a lot better educated than himself, and she asked him, ‘How'd you get to know him?'

During the whole interview, considering his limited vocabulary he had done a remarkably good job of describing the personalities at the Henderson house on Sunday. Now for the first time he became evasive, looking around the small room at nothing while he muttered something about a chance meeting in a bar. From his reaction, she guessed at a sexual connection he didn't want to talk about, and she didn't press it. She asked Menendez later and he said he had the same hunch. Ray figured with Nino it was more a way to earn the rent than a matter of desire.

What he wanted most to talk about was his flashback, the wonderful moment in the field at Hatch when he remembered how he had felt just before he passed out. ‘Everybody dancing and laughing,' he said, ‘watching old Pauly getting a hard on for that rich broad. I could remember just how I felt, having fun, not mad at nobody.'

‘That made you feel good, when you remembered?' Menendez asked him.

‘Like a million bucks!' Nino said, smiling his crooked smile. ‘I mean I'm still sad he's dead, but at least . . . Pauly was the best friend I ever had. And all along I'd been asking myself, why did I go and kill that silly little turd?' He looked from one to the other, to see if they understood. ‘When I remembered I wasn't mad at him, I knew I couldn't have killed him.' His eyes lingered on Sarah's face, which she was having a little trouble keeping neutral. ‘You see what I mean? I feel like, for once I got a second chance.'

‘Why'd you leave the gun in your room?' Sarah said.

‘What?' He sat up straight and, for the first time, looked at her with suspicion. ‘There ain't no gun in my room.' He looked around wildly. ‘You guys trying to frame me for this?' His face got red and indignant. ‘I told you the truth!'

‘Nino, wait now, don't get excited.
Calm down.
Nobody's trying to frame you, we just want to get at the truth. You've been doing great in here, hasn't he, Ray?'

‘Terrific. Yes. Just keep it up. Are you saying there wasn't any gun in your room when you left it?'

‘Hell no, there wasn't. I told you, didn't I? Maybe I didn't. When they carried me back there that night, Zack said, “I'll take care of the gun,” and that's the last time we ever mentioned it.' He looked from one to the other. ‘You found the gun in our room? Then they was all in it together, wasn't they? Because for Zack to get the gun up there he must've had help from Felicity. Boy –' shackled in place on his stool, he still managed to turn his face to the wall for a long, sad moment of thinking – ‘them guys was all out to hang it on me all along.' He looked really bowled over, as if for the first time he realized the depth of the evil he'd been playing with.