Dear Daughter (29 page)

“Where the fuck did you come from?” slipped out.

“The can,” he said.

“The one in your cell broken or something?”

“If I sit on it too long it leaves a mark on my ass.”

His eyes dropped to the folder. “What are you doing with that?”

I stuffed the folder in my bag. “Historical research,” I said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s past my bedtime.”

He grabbed my arm. “I’m going to ask you just one more time: What are you doing with Tessa’s file?”

My heart stuttered. “What do you know about Tessa?”

“That you shouldn’t be asking after her.”

“Hey, look, I’m not trying to cause any trouble,” I said. “I’ll leave the folder here with you, okay? No harm done. Just—I’d just like to ask you a few questions first, if I could.” I lifted my chin and looked him in the eye as best I could. “Please.”

All of a sudden, his frown resolved into something else, something fearsome, something that made me think of shadows upon shadows.

“Oh, holy fuck,” he said. “You’re Janie Jenkins.”

•   •   •

When I had thought about this moment—the moment I was Found Out—I’d anticipated terror or sadness or maybe even relief. A grand emotion of some kind, anyway, the stuff of sinking stomachs and heaving bosoms and other emphatic anatomical gestures. But when it finally happened, I didn’t feel anything at all. I didn’t even think. I just ducked under Walt’s arm and ran.

He caught me before I even made it to the door.

He hauled me up by my underarms and carried me out to the main room. He set me on Billy’s desk and sat down on the chair in front of me, looking pleased with himself.

“It’s actually a pretty good disguise,” he said. “Props.”

I made another break for it. This time I managed to get a whole foot away before he caught me and plopped me back on the desk.

“My god, you really
don’t
think things through, do you?” He shook his head in disbelief. “I guess that explains why you did it the way you did it. I always figured you just couldn’t think of a better way. Who would’ve thought I was actually giving you too much credit?”

“You’re referring to my mother, I presume?”

“
Duh-doy
. I mean, a shotgun? Seriously? Hel
lo
forensics.”

I squared my shoulders. “I never actually fired that gun.”

“So you got the gunshot residue on your hands—how, again? Does Cover Girl put potassium nitrite in its concealer?”

“No, I had residue on my hands because—”

“Oh, right,” he said, “I remember: you have a story for that one, too.” He leaned closer, his face tight. “You have a story for everything, don’t you?”

I let out a noise of pure, animal frustration. “Why do you even care? Is this about the reward money? Because if it is, I’ll give you more. Lots more. Hell, I’ll set you up with your very own grow op. . . .” I trailed off, catching sight of something over Walt’s left shoulder: the cell door was open.

“I don’t want your
money
,” Walt was saying. “I want the truth.”

I gauged Walt’s expression—and the distance between the desk and the cell door.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Truth it is.”

He sat back. “I can’t wait to hear this.”

I took a breath for dramatic purposes. “I never planned on using the gun.”

“What?”

“Pills and wine, that would’ve been the way to go. I thought about that one a lot. I could’ve just dissolved some Valium into her wine. She had a prescription for about a thousand milligrams a day, so I would have had easy access. And then—here’s a neat trick—just for kicks, I could’ve slipped her some potassium supplements. The raised potassium levels in her vitreous fluid probably would’ve convinced the coroner that the time of her death was later than it was. An alibi would’ve been a piece of cake.”

A muscle jumped in Walt’s jaw. Confidence growing, I slid forward until I was teetering on the edge of the desk.

“There’s also nicotine,” I said. “It’s one of the deadliest poisons on Earth, did you know that? You can cut up some cigarettes and distill it. It might even have been relatively undetectable in a smoker, which my mother secretly was.”

I let my toes touch the floor.

“But the easiest way would have been to arrange something when I was out of town. In New York, maybe. Or I could’ve taken one of those creepy hosting gigs at a club in Vegas. All I would’ve had to do is loosen the fitting on the gas boiler before I left. At night my mother kept the house tight as a drum—no open windows, no drafty doors. She would have fallen asleep and never woken up.”

“So why didn’t you?”

My legs tensed.

“It would’ve been too kind.”

Walt never saw it coming. I threw myself at him, pinning his arms and thrusting with my legs as hard as I could, rolling him and the chair back toward the cell door. By the time he realized what was happening, I had momentum on my side. I kicked the chair the rest of the way in and ran for the open door. I pulled Leo’s keys from my pocket. Walt hit the back wall and bounced forward. He flew up from his seat and ran at me, one arm outstretched.

I slammed the door on him.

He snatched back his hand, giving me just enough time to shove the biggest key into the lock and send up a prayer. It turned; the lock clicked into place. The moment I pulled out the key, Walt’s other hand shot out from between the bars and grabbed onto my hair, pulling me back toward him. I wrenched myself away, howling when I felt a hank of hair rip from my scalp.

“You
suck
,” he shouted.

We looked at each other, both breathing heavily, him cradling his hand to his chest, me pressing a hand against the back of my skull. It came away wet. This was turning into a rough night.

“Yeah, well, I don’t like you much either,” I said. “Jesus Christ, that hurt.”

“Good,” he said. He sat down on the cot; his chin fell to his chest. “I think you broke my hand.”

“I did not, don’t be a baby.”

He scowled. “I don’t know what you think this is going to accomplish,” he said. “Leo and Billy’ll be back in the morning. I’ll tell them everything.”

“I know,” I snapped. “And if you’d just shut up for a second I could figure out what to do.”

“You’re nuts.”

“No
shit
.”

I sat back down, glaring at Walt and rapping my knuckles on the desk.
Leverage, leverage, leverage, where was my leverage?
“What are you in for, anyway? Possession? Distribution?”

“None of your beeswax.”

Oh. Something worse, then.

My smile must have been a very special one, because Walt visibly flinched. He thought I was the dumb one? He may as well have said “restricted entry.” I went back to the record room, found Fe–Fr, and returned to the desk. I opened Walt’s file. “Drugs, drugs, drugs, boring, boring, boring—ah ha! Breach of computer security and online impersonation? That’s interesting. Leo sure never mentioned that.”

It wasn’t easy to track his eyes, shadowed as they were, but I caught their brisk back-and-forth. I followed the line of his gaze to his bulky black laptop, which was still sitting on Billy’s desk from earlier that day.

“Is that yours, Walt?”

His eyes dropped. “No.”

“Nice try.” I picked up the computer and hugged it to my chest. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m going to put this somewhere
very
safe—which is a particular skill of mine. It kind of runs in the family. And as long as you keep your mouth shut, I’ll be happy to give it back when I’m ready to leave town.”

“Like I’d believe you,” he said.

I held up a middle finger. “Thieves’ honor.”

“Whatever, take it, see if I care—it’s backed up and encrypted anyway.”

Liar.
I know how to tell when something’s important to a person. If I didn’t, how would I ever get anything done?

“Sorry, dude, I don’t really have any other options, so I’m going to have to call your bluff.”

His hand gripped the bars. I could see the white of his knuckles from across the room.

“I’m not going to be stuck here forever, you know.”

“Yeah, well, getting out’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A half hour later, I was sitting at the reception desk in the Prospect Inn, strangling my left hand with the telephone cord.

Jared Vincent’s folder lay in front of me. Beneath the notes on the robbery and the mountain of paperwork generated by his long list of petty offenses, I’d found his last known address and phone number—from eleven years ago.

For so many reasons, I desperately hoped the address was still up to date.

I checked the time—seven o’clock. Surely someone would be answering by now.

I dialed the number. The phone rang. I swallowed and clutched the receiver.

“Custer County Jail, how may I help you?”

“I’d like to schedule a visit, please. For today, if possible.”

“Today’s visitation is for last names L through Z. If that’s not what you’re looking for, you’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

“No, that’s fine.”

“Who do you want to see?”

I forced my mouth to move. “Jared Vincent.”

As I listened to the sound of keystrokes being entered, I wrapped the cord even more tightly around my wrist. My palm began to swell.

“Do you want to come at nine, nine-twenty, or nine-forty?” the clerk asked.

I opened my hand and let the blood flow back into my fingers.

“Nine, please.”

I gave the clerk my details and let the handset fall back into the cradle. It didn’t necessarily mean anything that Jared was still in jail, I told myself. He still could have killed my mother somehow—like maybe he had been out on parole or had the wrong kind of friends or commanded an army of demons. But I didn’t want that to be true. I wanted him to have the alibi to end all alibis. If he turned out to be who I thought he was, I didn’t want our first father-daughter talk to be about how he killed my mother.

I was going to need a ride to the prison, so I searched through the inn’s registration book until I found Peter’s name and room number, climbed up to his room, and rapped my knuckles against his door. When he answered he was dressed in plaid pajamas, and his hair was matted down on the crown of his head. His eyes were gloopy and confused.

“Rebecca?” I could tell that he wasn’t so much asking if I was there as he was confirming that it was actually my name.

I held up Jared’s folder and smiled.

“Told you I’d come through. What do you say to a field trip?”

•   •   •

The road to the jail was relatively smooth and straight, but Peter still flinched with every wobble of the wheels. His fingers were clenched together at the top of the steering wheel, and he was leaning so far forward his head was practically pressed against the windshield. The hair on the back of his neck was damp with perspiration. His sweat smelled like bay leaves.

New Yorkers. Useless.

I reached over and unlocked my door in case he took us off the side of a cliff and I needed to make a quick escape.

The part of me that wasn’t contingency planning, though, was glad for the distraction. I rubbed at my chest. It was like fucking Mauna Loa in there.

“How’d you get Leo to give the file to you?” Peter asked.

“I told him how important this story was to you.” I paused. “Why
is
this story so important to you?”

“Are you kidding? A small town beauty gone bad? If we can find a picture to run with it, we’re talking
Vanity Fair–
level stuff.”

I hid my scowl. I hadn’t made it into
Vanity Fair
until my trial, and the photos they’d selected hadn’t exactly been editorial quality. The best of the bunch had been 1) a picture of me with a dusting of what everyone speculated was cocaine under my nose (like I’d be that tacky) and 2) a picture of me posing with a club promoter who was later busted for, basically, being a club promoter. Other than that it was just mug shots and sketches from the trial, when I’d barely been able to stand on my own two feet. We’d brought in a makeup artist, but even in colored pencil I wasn’t remotely presentable.

I bet they’d only choose the most flattering pictures of my mother. That would just fucking figure.

“Are you going to tell me what’s in there or not?” Peter asked, jerking his chin at the folder.

I opened Jared’s file. “Okay, so, Jared Vincent, age nineteen, was arrested August 17, 1985, for the armed robbery of $13,128 from the Jenkins Savings and Loan. The day of the robbery, a white male entered the bank and asked to rent a safety deposit box. When the manager took him back to the vault, the man pulled out a gun and asked for whatever cash was on hand. Then the man shut the manager in the vault—the door was on a timer—and exited through a back door. By the time the manager was able to escape, the robber was long gone.”

“Wasn’t there anyone else working that day?”

“There was, but—” I scanned the next page. “Oh.”

“Oh?”

“There was a fire on the other side of town, and the other teller was a volunteer fireman, so only the manager was left.”

“That’s awfully convenient,” he said. “Does it say anything else about the fire?”

“It was a false alarm.”

“Sounds about right. How’d they catch Vincent?”

I turned to the next page. “Um . . . there was a hidden camera in the vault. They distributed his picture, put out an APB, and he was stopped in North Dakota trying to cross into Canada.”

“But he didn’t have the money.”

“He had
some
money—about fifty bucks. Looks like the DA suspected someone else was involved, but when they offered him a plea, he wouldn’t talk. The police ransacked his stuff back in Ardelle and interviewed all his friends, but it never led anywhere.”

“Did they interview Tessa Kanty?”

“She was already gone.”

“The police didn’t think that was suspicious?”

“They did.” I flipped through a few more pages. “And it looks like everyone they interviewed did, too. ‘Thief,’ ‘liar’—oh, ‘tramp,’ that’s a good one.”

Peter’s eyes slid in my direction. “You’re saying she wasn’t any of those things?”