The Last Dead Girl (6 page)

S
ophie Emerson was still wearing the engagement ring I'd bought her. That was the first thing I noticed when she came onto the balcony: the sunlight glinting on the diamond.

“I've missed you,” she said.

I sipped my coffee so I wouldn't have to answer her right away. Because there were a couple of answers I could have given.
I've missed you too—
that was one way to go.
I haven't thought of you at all—
that was another. The truth was somewhere in the middle. I'd thought of her, but not enough, not as much as I should have.

We'd been apart for ten days, and though I had visited the apartment on those days, I had always managed to come at times when she was out, working her crazy intern's schedule. She had called my cell phone, three or four times a day at first, then less as time passed. I left the calls unanswered.

“This can't go on,” she said.

I put the coffee down. “I know.”

“I feel terrible.”

“I know that too.”

“It hasn't happened again. With Brad. If you're wondering. Or with anyone else. Just to be clear.”

“Sophie—”

“And it won't. I promise you. So the question is: Can we work this out? What do I have to do, to get you back here?”

The coffee called to me again, because I needed a delay, an excuse not to answer. I left the mug on the balcony rail.

“I need to tell you something,” I said, “about what happened that night.” I almost called it the Night of the Doe, but that wouldn't have meant anything to her. For me and Sophie, it was something else. The Night of the Condom Wrapper.

“All right,” she said.

“After I left here, I went driving. And I met someone.”

“Oh.”

“I didn't mean to. It was an accident.” I gave her the story, as much of it as she needed: the rain and the deer and the girl.

She listened with a frozen expression, and I thought she wouldn't say anything. But after a time she said, “What's her name?”

“Jana Fletcher.”

“And that's where you've been, all these nights? With her?”

“Yes.”

Sophie turned away from me and leaned on the railing. I looked at the ring on her finger. The sun was still shining, but it couldn't find the diamond.

“That first night,” she said, “when you didn't come home, I got worried. Part of me knew you had a good reason to stay away. You were upset about what happened. But part of me thought that you'd gone out in the dark and the rain and wrapped your truck around a tree. All because of a dumb thing I did.”

Sophie chuckled, an unexpected sound. “I actually went in to the hospital, to make sure you weren't there. Then later on, when you didn't come home and didn't call, I got mad. I thought you were acting like a child. But when I saw you today I thought everything might be all right.” Her head bowed and her hair obscured her face. “Now you've knocked the wind out of me. Is this how you felt that night, when you found out about Brad?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'm sorry I did that to you. You must hate me.”

“I don't hate you, Sophie. I was hurt, but I'm past it.”

“You are?”

“So you shouldn't blame yourself for it. You shouldn't get bogged down in regret. I don't blame you, and I don't regret it.”

Sophie stood up from the railing and faced me. “You don't?”

“No,” I said. “I think maybe it was meant to happen. Maybe we had to go through this. If we hadn't, I never would have met her.”

Which is not the thing to say to a woman who's wearing your ring.

What happened next—I didn't see it coming. One moment Sophie's hand was resting on the railing, the next it was moving fast. She hit me twice. First with her palm—a light slap that surprised me more than it hurt me. Surprised her too, I think. The second one was more deliberate and had more behind it. She used the back of her hand, and the diamond ring cut a slash on my temple.

•   •   •

W
hat just happened?” Jolene said.

“I don't know,” said K.

“It was pretty good though, wasn't it? It picked up at the end.”

The balcony was empty now. Malone had gone in through the sliding glass door and the woman had followed him.

K started the car and pulled out of the parking space.

“We're leaving?” Jolene said.

“Nothing more to see.”

K waited for a gap in traffic and made a left onto the street. Beside him, Jolene held the red Solo cup between her knees.

“Don't worry,” she said. “It's empty.”

“It's okay,” he told her. “I'm sorry I was rude to you before.”

“You're not so bad.”

“I want to make it up to you. Take a look in the glove compartment.”

“Here?”

“Right. What do you see?”

“I see an owner's manual.”

“Underneath.”

K heard her digging around.

“A popsicle stick.”

“Keep going,” he said.

“Wait, are these rolling papers?”

“Getting warmer.”

Then a squeal as she pulled out a baggie and held it up. “Jackpot!”

“There you go.”

“Oh, you're the best,” she said. “The absolute best.”

•   •   •

K
drove out into the wild. That's how he thought of it. Out on the back roads beyond the edge of the city. He looked for a spot he remembered: a turnout and a broken-down fence made of wooden posts, and an old mule path that ran off under the trees. By the time he found the turnout, Jolene had opened up the baggie and the papers—working smoothly in the moving car—and rolled two thick joints.

They left the car and climbed over the fence, and when they were out of sight of the road Jolene took a lighter from her purse and fired up one of the joints. She held the smoke in her lungs for longer than K would have thought possible, and let it out in a burst of a laugh that tipped her head back and turned her face up to the sky.

The path ran straight and level. They followed it east in the warm afternoon and the only sound they heard was birdsong and their own footsteps. They passed the joint between them until it burned down to a nub, and K thought Jolene would want the second one right away, but she strolled along for a while, humming, taking things in.

There were trees growing on one side of the path, and on the other a channel of water, low and wide and dark. Jolene stopped and looked down into it, as if she were noticing it for the first time.

“What is that?” she said.

“It used to be the Erie Canal,” said K.

“No way.”

“I promise you.”

“I didn't know it was still around,” she said. “I thought it was from, like, the eighteen hundreds.”

“A lot of it's been filled in, but you can still find pieces of it here and there.”

He watched her lean out over the water.

“This path used to be part of it,” he said. “Mules would walk along here, towing the barges on the canal.”

“I knew that,” she said. “We learned it in school. We used to sing a song about it.”

“Low bridge,” K said. “Everybody down.”

“That's the one.”

“I've got a mule and her name is Sal,” he sang. “Fif-teen miles on the Erie Canal.”

“Are you sure you never sang in a choir?”

K laughed. Jolene was still leaning over the water, and he realized she was trying to see her reflection. He took her hand to steady her.

“You don't want to fall in,” he said.

•   •   •

I
used to sing in a choir,” said Jolene.

They were walking east again. She kept close to him so that once in a while their arms brushed together.

“It was in high school,” she said. “We took a trip once to a competition in New York City. We didn't win. But I remember it was Christmastime and we went to see a show. The Rockettes.” She seemed to hesitate, making up her mind how much to tell. “And I decided I wanted to do that, to be a dancer. But my mom said I wasn't tall enough.”

K kicked a small stone down the path. “How tall do you have to be?”

“I don't know.” The words came out soft and sad.

“I could see you as a dancer,” he said. “You've got nice legs.”

That cheered her. “You're sweet,” she said, taking his arm shyly, as if they were kids and he was walking her home.

“I've been tryin' to figure you out,” she said. “I've decided you're some kind of private eye, and you were following that guy today because his wife hired you. You're supposed to catch him cheating. Am I close?”

It was nothing like that, K thought.

“It's something like that,” he said.

“So the woman on the balcony, was that the wife or the mistress?”

“I can't really talk about it,” K said. “It's confidential.”

Looking ahead on the path, he spotted a bullfrog lounging in a patch of sunlight. He stopped short, held Jolene back, pointed it out to her. After a few seconds he took a cautious step forward and the frog hopped to the edge of the canal. Another step and it leapt down into the dark water.

Jolene went to look for it, standing on the side of the path, staring down at the rippling water. K came up behind her.

“It's gone,” she said.

K said nothing. He wrapped his arms around her middle and she leaned back into him.

“This is nice,” she whispered.

She smelled of cigarette smoke, and pot, but there was something else too. Something sweet. He thought she must have snuck a breath mint from her purse.

“I know why you brought me here,” she said.

“Do you?”

“It's a pretty place. Out of the way. Perfect.”

“It
is
perfect, isn't it?” said K. “You know, there's something I have to do later and I've been worrying about it all day. I need to relax. And being with you has helped.”

“That's cool. That's what I want too, to help you relax. Just the two of us out here, I think we can make that happen. It might be easier if we had a blanket, but we'll make do.” She wiggled her bottom into him. “That's what you want, isn't it?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so.”

He rested his chin on her shoulder. “But I don't know if I should.”

“Oh, I think you should.”

“It's complicated. There are a lot of things to consider.”

“Keep it simple,” Jolene said. “Think about the things I can do for you, to get you to relax.”

K's hands slipped under her shirt and she drew in the muscles of her stomach. Then she yawned, a big yawn that arched her back. She giggled at the end of it. “Pot does that to me sometimes. Tires me out.”

“What else does it do?” K asked. “Does it ever affect your memory?”

“No. It never has.”

“What about drinking—does that make you forget?”

She laughed. “How much drinking do you think I've done today?”

K looked down at the still surface of the water. “So you're not going to forget me? You're not going to wake up tomorrow with just the haziest idea of what I look like or where you saw me?”

Jolene rubbed herself against him. “Not a chance,” she said. “I'm definitely gonna remember you.”

K took one of his arms from her middle, put it around her neck.

“That's what I thought.”

I
n the room with the white-tile walls—after Jana Fletcher died, after I found her body—I watched Detective Frank Moretti pinch the bridge of his fleshy nose between his fingertips, I heard him draw a deep breath.

“A popsicle stick?” he said.

“In the woods behind Jana's apartment,” I said. “I can show you where.”

He laid his palm on the table between us. “Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I need to know everything about her, whatever you can tell me. Start with the day you met and we'll go from there.”

And we did. I told him everything I could remember about the Night of the Doe, and the night in the moonlight when Jana thought she was being watched. I told him about Simon Lanik, the landlady's grandson. We talked about every time I'd seen Jana, every place we'd gone together. Sometimes Moretti took notes. Once in a while, one of his colleagues would knock on the door and call him out into the hallway, and I'd hear snatches of their conversation—as the door closed when Moretti left and as it opened when he came back.

We talked about Sophie Emerson too. I would have left her out of it, but Moretti already knew about her—knew we were engaged. And he could see the cut on my temple and wanted to know how it happened. When I told him, he laughed. “You got off easy,” he said.

Sophie had regretted hitting me as soon as it happened—at least, she said she was sorry. I don't know if she really was, or should have been. She offered to stitch up the cut for me or drive me to the hospital where someone else could do it. I wound up tending it myself—swabbing it with alcohol in the bathroom of our apartment, covering it with gauze and tape.

At that point, Jana had a few hours left to live, and nothing I did in those hours was any use to her at all.

I slipped out of the apartment without another word to Sophie. Easy enough—it's not as if she wanted to stop me. I ate lunch in a diner downtown. After that, I drove out to a subdivision with an artificial lake and a nine-hole golf course and did a home inspection for an insurance salesman and his pregnant wife. Four bedrooms, three baths, finished basement—all in good shape, apart from a roof that needed to be reshingled.

I collected a check from the insurance salesman, took it to my bank. Stopped for coffee. By then it was going on five o'clock, and I was scheduled to meet Jana for dinner at seven-thirty at The Falcon, the restaurant with the canoe hanging from the ceiling.

That was the plan. But I could've deviated from the plan. I could've gone to her and done the thing I'd been putting off—I could've told her about Sophie.

I went driving instead, to think it over, to plan it out. You could say the cut on my temple had left me skittish about talking to women. Or you could say I was a coward and my cowardice cost Jana her life.

It's hard to remember everywhere I drove—though Frank Moretti wanted me to remember; in the room with the white-tile walls, he questioned me about every detail. I know I went out to Quaker Hill Road. There was nothing to mark the spot where Jana met the deer, except for a few specks of glass from the shattered windshield of her Plymouth.

At seven-thirty I was sitting in our usual booth, the one beneath the canoe. I peeled the tape and gauze from my temple, because I figured however bad the cut might look, it wouldn't be as noticeable as having a white square stuck to my head. I waited.

When Jana didn't show by seven forty-five, I used my cell phone to call her apartment. No answer. I left a message on her machine. At eight o'clock I called again. Same thing.

At ten after eight I finished off the drink I'd ordered and left some money on the table for the waitress. I drove to Jana's apartment—fast, but not too fast. Because on the one hand someone had given her a bruise and maybe spied on her from the woods, but on the other hand I didn't want to overreact. Maybe something unexpected had come up, maybe she had car trouble.

I turned onto her street around eight-thirty and saw her beat-up Plymouth in the drive—with the brand-new windshield, the one the shop had put in after the deer shattered the old one. All the lights in the apartment seemed to be off, but beyond that nothing looked wrong. Even the front door looked normal at first. But when I went to put my key in the lock the door swung inward and I saw that part of the jamb had splintered away.

And I was wrong about the lights. There was a light burning inside. A single tea-light candle on the living room floor, about eighteen inches from Jana's left foot.

•   •   •

I
flipped a switch and the overhead light came on, and if there had been any doubt in my mind that Jana was dead, it went away.

She lay on her back with her eyes open, her face tipped toward her right shoulder. I remember thinking that the crescent bruise on her cheek was gone.

(It's fading. In a few more days you won't be able to see it.)

She had other bruises now: ugly ones on her neck where someone had pressed his thumbs into her throat. Her blouse had been torn open. Her jeans and underwear had been pulled down to her knees. Her feet were bare.

The two-by-four from the mantel over the fireplace lay on the floor beside her. It was four feet long—longer than a baseball bat—and she might have used it as a club. I'd like to think she did; I'd like to think she got in at least one good swing at her killer.

If she did, it would explain what happened to the tea-light candles. They would have been burning on the mantel, nestled in the shallow holes drilled into the two-by-four. Now they were scattered across the hardwood floor, three of them extinguished, one still glowing.

I can still recall the scene, but what I can't picture now is the expression on Jana's face, and that's a blessing. I can only remember that it was wrong. Like when you catch a glimpse of someone you know on the street and they don't know you're watching them, and they're miserable or angry or depressed, and you're seeing them in an unguarded moment. They don't look right; they don't look like themselves.

That's not it exactly, but it's close. As close as I can come.

•   •   •

S
o you never checked for a pulse,” Frank Moretti said.

“No.”

“Some people would have.”

“I didn't need to,” I said. “She was gone.”

“And you didn't cover her.”

“Cover her?”

“With a sheet or a blanket.”

“Should I have done that?”

“It's better you didn't. It tends to screw up the forensics.”

“Then why—”

“Because it's something people do,” Moretti said. “She's there on the floor, exposed, vulnerable. Someone who cared about her might have been tempted to cover her up.”

“Meaning I didn't care about her.”

“I haven't said that.”

•   •   •

F
or what it's worth, I held her hand. I called 911 on my cell phone and knelt beside her to wait, and her hand, when I took it, was neither cold nor warm. It felt empty as a glove, but I held on to it anyway. I'm not sure how long—as long as it took for the first cop to show up.

He was young, a patrolman on traffic duty. I met him at the door and he caught sight of the body right away and brushed past me. I stood in the archway to the kitchen watching the back of him as he looked down at Jana. I think it must have been his first murder. When he finally turned around, his face looked ashen. I stepped backward into the kitchen and gestured toward the sink. I thought he might need it.

He didn't, in the end. He bent over it with his mouth open and gulped air, but that was all. When he straightened up, he wiped his sleeve across his mouth, though it looked dry enough to me.

“You're all right,” I told him.

The wrong thing to say, because it reminded him that I'd been there all along. He'd been careless. Who knows what I could've done while he had his back to me? I could've clocked him over the head and swiped his gun and gone for a joyride in his car. He decided to get tough retroactively.

“Put your hands on your head.”

“Oh, come on.”

“Do it.”

He unsnapped his holster and touched the grip of his gun, and I put my hands on my head. When he told me to turn around, I did that too. I was facing the wall beside the archway. I could hear cars pulling into the drive, more cops coming. I felt his hand on the back of my collar, heard him say I had the right to remain silent. He shoved me forward roughly and if I hadn't turned my head I think he would have broken my nose. As it was, the side of my face hit the wall and the impact opened up the cut on my temple.

•   •   •

I
n the room with the white-tile walls, my fingers kept returning to the cut. It had its own topography: a long, thin ridge. Moretti had given me a Band-Aid to cover it, but it wasn't big enough. I could feel the ends of the cut on either side.

Moretti saw me fussing at it. He closed his notebook and said, “All right. We'll take a break. Ten minutes. Then we'll start again at the beginning.”

“No,” I said.

“No?”

“I'm leaving.”

The idea amused him. “You're not leaving.”

“I've told you everything I know.”

“I still have questions.”

It was almost three in the morning and I had questions too. Not the kind that could be answered in that room. I was tired and I needed to know where I stood. The only way to find out was to press the issue.

“This has gone on long enough,” I said. “You can let me go or you can charge me with something. And I don't think you're going to charge me.”

“Why not?” said Moretti.

“Because by now you've had a chance to figure out what time Jana died.” I was guessing, but it seemed likely. It was probably the subject of one of his conversations in the hallway. “And if it happened while I was sitting in The Falcon waiting for her, that's something you can verify. You might have done it already.”

I was hoping that might be true, but Moretti's reaction—the terse shake of his head—made it clear I wasn't going to be so lucky.

“The medical examiner's best guess is that Jana Fletcher died sometime between six and seven,” he said, “which means it happened while you were out driving and thinking. According to your story.”

“It's not a story.”

“It is until I confirm it.”

I shrugged. “You're still not going to charge me. It's too soon. You want to be sure. You don't want to be proven wrong later—when you find out it was someone else. That would be embarrassing—”

“I can live with the embarrassment.”

“It would be bad for you, and for the entire police department. You're forgetting who I am. My family's name is on buildings in this city. If you get this wrong, I can make trouble for you.”

Moretti frowned. “Are you threatening me?”

“No. I'm done talking to you. If you plan to keep me here, I'll need to call a lawyer.”

I sat back and crossed my arms, and he glared at me from under his heavy brow. Up above us, the fluorescent lights hissed—a fitting sound track for our contest of wills. We might have gone on like that for a long time, but someone knocked on the door and Moretti stood up slowly and took his notebook and went out.

He stayed away for twenty minutes. After the first ten, I got up and checked the door (locked) and stretched and paced around the table. I couldn't hear any sound from the hallway, but I figured Moretti was out there talking to someone—maybe about whether I could really cause them trouble if they refused to let me go. I hoped they were talking about that, and I hoped the prospect made them nervous. But I didn't think it would—not if they made any kind of inquiry about my family's connections. Because everything I had said to Moretti was a bluff.

Moretti had been the first to bring up Austin Malone, who had managed to get his name on some buildings at Bellamy University. Austin was my great-grandfather, true enough, and he had been a wealthy man in his day. He had inherited a business from his father: a mill that produced copper wire for telephone lines and copper pipe for plumbing. But a mill is a grubby place, and Austin Malone had no interest in spending time in grubby places. He sold the mill after his father died—to the Revere Copper Company in 1928—and used the money to buy as much prestige and refinement as it could buy.

It bought quite a lot. Austin Malone kept his money out of the stock market and managed to weather the Great Depression and the Second World War. But when he died in 1949, he left behind five sons and three daughters—and a great fortune divided eight ways works out to eight rather modest fortunes. Flash forward two more generations and there was nothing much left, just a name carved into a stone façade here and there, and a comfortable middle-class existence. My father was a building contractor and sent me to college to study engineering. I had relatives with good careers—I even had a cousin who practiced law. But it was tax law, not criminal law. Not the kind that could help me.

So my threat against Frank Moretti was empty talk: I couldn't begin to make any trouble for him. And if he wanted to make trouble for me, there was no one in the Malone clan who could pick up a phone and make it go away.

I don't know if my bluff worked, or if Moretti was an honest cop who didn't want to arrest someone for murder without being sure, but something changed in the twenty minutes he was gone. When he came back into the room the glare had gone out of his eyes and they looked tired again. He had a plastic bag that held my wallet and my phone and my other possessions. He tossed it on the table and held the door for me and said, “You're free to go.”