Angels Burning (36 page)

Country rock music blares from a speaker shaped like a softball sitting on the dresser, and a nauseating combination of smells ranging from apple cinnamon and sugar cookie to pine forest and tropical coconut waft from dozens of lit candles placed on windowsills and even the floor.

A crib is pushed against one wall. Goldie is sitting on the floor not far from an electrical outlet and a bag of potato chips. She's sucking on the lid of a deodorant.

I don't say anything to Jessy as I walk over to the baby and take the deodorant out of her hands. She starts to cry and I hoist her onto my hip.

Jessy glances over at me, her face displaying no emotion as if the chief of police breezing into her room and scooping up her baby is an everyday occurrence.

“Hi, Jessy,” I say.

“Hey.”

“Can we talk for a minute?”

Goldie grabs on to my lapels, then raises one tiny sticky fist to my lips, leaving behind a smear of orange grease on my jacket. I didn't notice she'd been eating the chips and they were barbecue.

I lick at her fingers and she laughs.

Jessy turns back to her phone and I use the opportunity to take a good look at her to see if anything major has changed since the last time I saw her.

She's in cutoffs and a cropped low-cut halter. I'm sure she thinks the amount of cleavage she's exposing is enticing, but the top also reveals rolls of the extra poundage Kirk the bartender found unappealing but appealing enough.

Her hair is still in desperate need of a touch-up, and her nails are even more chipped. It takes everything I have not to go forage in a bathroom for polish remover and cotton balls and force a manicure intervention.

Camio was prettier, thinner, smarter, had a good-looking boyfriend and a bright future in front of her. Could the motive have been something as common and biblical as simple jealousy?

Goldie continues grabbing my jacket. I look around for something to distract her that won't possibly kill her and I spy one of her stuffing-free dog toys. This one is a gray flattened rabbit. I give it to her and sit down on the bed with her.

Jessy finishes her text and looks over at the two of us. She isn't exactly glaring but she's annoyed.

“What do you want?”

On one level I feel for Jessy, but I also think there's a good possibility she killed her sister and maybe her great-aunt.

I don't think she needs someone to be saccharine nice to her. I also don't think she needs someone to be hard on her; she has Miranda for that. I don't think she'll respond to a performance or a manipulation. I think she needs someone to be interested in her.

“When did you find out?” I ask her.

“Find out what?”

“Who your mom is? Your real mom.”

She flicks a hot glance at me. I didn't know for sure that she knew, but now I do.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she replies.

“Then you're the only one who doesn't. I even know and I'm not part of your family.”

I make the rabbit squeak. Goldie smiles and grabs for it.

“Who told you?” I go on, giving all my attention to the baby. “Or, no, don't answer that. Who are you maddest at? Your grandma for lying to you all these years? Adelaide for giving you up? Your dad for being a pervert? Your stepmom for going along—”

“Shut up.”

“Or Camio for finding out the truth?” I finish.

“Camio? Camio didn't know nothing.”

This disclosure throws me off for a moment. I assumed Camio knew the truth behind her parentage, too. It gave her a reason to be at Adelaide's house with her sister, but then I remembered her project in the backpack, a treatise on her family and the declaration in her notes that she was going to visit her great-aunt soon. Maybe she was there to get more information for her book, and her sister and Adelaide continued to keep the big secret from her.

“How did you find out?” I try a different route.

She doesn't say anything at first. I know she's trying to decide how much she can tell me without admitting anything that can get her in trouble.

I give her time. She'll need to tell me eventually. People like Kirk have to explain their actions because they need everyone to think they're always right. Jessy will want to explain because no one ever asks her to.

“About ten years ago my dad was in a bad quad accident,” she begins to answer. “Almost got killed.”

I don't bother asking if alcohol was a factor. Riding around on ATVs while drunk is one of the leading causes of gruesome injuries around here.

“When he was in the hospital and thought he was going to die, he told Shane the truth. One of those deathbed-confession kind of deals, except he didn't die. Shane told me. We didn't bother to tell Cami 'cause she was still little.”

“You miss Shane?”

She gives me a surprised and slightly pleased look as if knowledge of Shane is something magical and closely guarded like a clubhouse secret handshake.

“Yeah, I miss him a lot. He's never even held Goldie yet.”

I look down at the baby in my lap, happily sucking on her dog toy. I stroke her soft curls.

“If Camio didn't know who your real mother was, then what was she doing at Adelaide's house? We know she was there.”

I stop short at saying we know she was killed there.

“And we know you were there. We traced a cell phone call you made from that area.”

I don't know what Nolan would think of me giving away this crucial piece of evidence against her but I feel it's necessary.

This is the key moment when she'll either realize she should shut up altogether or think she can still tell me a little more of her story without beginning to dig herself into a hole, not realizing the hole has already been dug and already too deep to escape.

“I thought she was old enough to know now,” she decides to explain. “She'd been asking Miranda questions about Aunt Adelaide lately and making her really mad. I wanted to keep the peace, so I told Cami I'd take her to see Addy. I thought she could meet her and see how nice she was and we could tell her together.”

“So you've been in touch with Adelaide over the years?”

“I go see her when I can, but no one knows about it.”

“And how did Camio react?”

Now she does clam up. I wait but nothing seems to be forthcoming.

“And hearing this long-kept secret devastated her,” I try providing an answer. “This family Camio loved so much was damaged beyond all repair. She found out the poison wasn't in your hearts or your minds; it was in your blood. How do you get rid of that?”

She gives me an incredulous look.

“What are you talking about? You sound like one of my mom's cheesy romance novels.”

“Your mom reads?”

“We're not stupid,” she shouts. “We know how to read.”

She wags a finger at me.

“Grandma told us all about you.”

“I bet she did.”

“You came from trash.”

“I came from trash who kept her nails perfectly polished.”

She looks down at hers, then over at mine that are usually bare but happen to be pink with bling today.

“I didn't mean any offense to your mom,” I apologize. “I just meant she seems to be more interested in TV.”

“She doesn't read a lot,” she says, her anger fading. “She only reads these crappy old paperback romances. She has a bunch from when she first married Dad, and she finds them at yard sales and flea markets. It's the only time I've ever seen her get really excited. When she finds one of those old books for a quarter buried in a cardboard box on somebody's driveway.”

By the look on her face this was a good memory for her, but the feeling doesn't last and the anger returns.

“It wasn't nothing like what you said. Camio didn't love us. She was writing a book about us. Some kind of psychological profile, she called it, about how dysfunctional we all were. She told me about it in the car on the way to see Addy.”

“You shouldn't have let that upset you,” I tell her. “She was a seventeen-year-old kid. She wasn't going to write a book.”

“She'd write it someday,” she insists, her agitation growing. “Or even if she didn't, she thought all these bad things about us. She was going to leave and go tell everyone she met her family was a bunch of fucked-up rednecks.”

She suddenly stops talking. I can sense her mind is racing, once again trying to figure out if she's said anything incriminating. It's one thing to talk about the biggest skeleton in her family closet but another to reveal anything that would tie her to her sister's death. She must realize she's just put herself and Camio and Adelaide together in the house where Camio was killed and maybe Adelaide, too. She must also realize she's admitted to being very mad at her sister.

I stand up from the bed. There's no reason for me to try and get more out of her, since she could deny all of it later. I need to get her to Nolan. My only reason for prying deeper would be to satisfy my own curiosity. I'm tempted.

I glance down at Goldie in my arms and notice a stain on the underside of one of the rabbit's ears.

“Has Goldie hurt herself lately?” I ask Jessy.

“No.”

“Is this blood?”

I show her the dried reddish-brown blotch on the fur.

“Was Goldie with you? You tried to get Gina and Kirk to babysit but they wouldn't do it.”

She looks shocked that I know this.

“Is this Camio's blood?” I go on. “Or Adelaide's? If we find out that it is . . .”

She walks slowly across the room toward me as if in a trance, her eyes glued on the plush rabbit in my hand.

“I didn't know she got it on her toy, too,” she says distractedly. “She got some on her clothes and in her hair.

“Camio pushed her!” she suddenly screams. “An old lady like that. She pushed her. In front of my baby. She got blood on my baby!”

She rips the toy out of my hand and shakes it at me.

“She got so mad when Addy told her the truth. She yelled at her and said she wasn't some mutant hillbilly freak and she pushed her.”

Her voice breaks and she begins to sob.

“When Addy fell against the oven and hit her head, Camio didn't even flinch. She didn't try to help her. I don't think she did it on purpose. I don't think she meant to kill her, but once she realized she did, she didn't care at all.

“I got so mad at her. How could she do something like that and not feel bad about it? She killed our grandma. She got blood on my baby.”

My own blood freezes at the desperation behind her question. I know that free-falling panic. I see her hands tighten around the skillet handle searching for a handhold that would save her the same way mine wrapped around Champ's bat.

“Everybody thought she was perfect and nice,” she says, calmer now, tears streaming down her face. “She wasn't perfect, and she wasn't nice.”

I should place her under arrest, but I can't do it.

“Jessyca,” I say quietly. “I need you to come with me.”

She nods numbly and glances behind her at a framed photo on the desk. I didn't notice it earlier, stuck behind all the other clutter.

It shows a young woman sitting on a couch holding a baby with a little boy and a little girl on either side of her. I don't have to ask who it is. The picture was probably taken a few months or maybe even a few weeks before Layla died in the car crash.

“Grandma Addy had it hanging on her wall,” Jessy explains. “I took it so I can remember. Is it okay for me to keep it?”

“Yes,” I tell her.

She turns and reaches for her baby. I want to hold her forever, but Goldie smiles at her mom and reaches back.

THE REST OF MY DAY
and night goes by in a numb blur. My only clear memory is of the fiesta I made for Mason. He asked for Mexican food, which happens to be one of my favorite cuisines, and since there isn't a good Mexican restaurant within a hundred miles of here, I've learned how to make my own.

Cooking helped me relax a little, but sleep tonight has proved impossible. I can't concentrate on a book. It's almost two in the morning. Mason is fast asleep and I've zoned out in front of the TV when I get a cop knock at my front door: three short, hard booms.

Nolan stands outside my front door with a bottle of Maker's Mark in one hand. Neither of us are big drinkers. I don't know if this means we're going to celebrate or drown our sorrows. He's unsmiling. I'm pretty sure he's been wearing the same suit for three days. His sunglasses have been retired for the night and his eyes look tired.

“It's done,” he says.

His statement is a hollow fact; there's no joy, or pride, or even relief in it.

No one knows better than Nolan that solving a case like this one doesn't fix anything. Words like “closure” and “justice” will be thrown around, but they're only words.

He once told me the reason cops make such a point of referring to their profession as “the job” is because its vital to view it as a series of
straightforward, attainable goals like writing out a ticket, canvassing witnesses, making an arrest, appearing in court, getting a confession, filing reports. If you allow yourself to dwell too much on the human condition and think you can make things all better, he explained, the futility of it will make you quit.

“Congratulations,” I tell him.

He rubs at his eyes and the bridge of his nose and takes a strangely long time staring at a tiny cloud of dust-colored moths fluttering around my porch light.

“Yeah,” he says.

He walks past me into my living room, taking off his suit jacket and even his tie. When he also kicks off his shoes, I wonder if this case was the one to finally make him lose his marbles and he's decided to move in with me.

“Do you have any food?” he asks.