Immoral (9 page)

Rachel didn’t offer any names. So Emily called him Snowball. He was small, white, and fast, and his cold nose on her face in the morning felt like winter
.

Driving home, even half asleep, she began to smile. Thinking of Snowball did that to her. Only when she thought of Rachel did the lines of worry creep back into her face and the smile fade into a weary frown. In the early days, after Tommy’s death, she had taken Rachel to a psychologist, but the girl refused to return after a few sessions. Emily talked to her teachers. She talked to Dayton Tenby at church. They were all sympathetic, but no one had been able to reach her. As far as Rachel was concerned, the hurt of Tommy’s death would never go away, and the only solace seemed to be to punish her mother over and over again
.

Emily pulled the car into the narrow driveway of their tiny house, two stories with two bedrooms upstairs, with a yard that had long been neglected. The driveway had deep cracks with grass sprouting in tufts through the cement
.

Inside, she expected to hear the thunder of paws as Snowball pounded to greet her
.

“
Snowball,” she called. Emily listened for a distant bark, assuming that Rachel had banished the terrier to the backyard
.

She continued down the hallway to the kitchen. Her stomach growled. She retrieved a plastic tub of cut broccoli from the refrigerator and munched a few florets. Emily heard her daughter clump down the stairs. Rachel joined her in the kitchen but didn’t greet her. The girl tucked her sweatshirt underneath her, slumped in one of the kitchen chairs, and sifted out a Victoria’s Secret catalog from the pile of mail. She reached into Emily’s bucket and retrieved a piece of broccoli
.

“
Looking for a Wonderbra?” Emily asked, smiling. Rachel looked up and gave her mother an unpleasant stare. Emily was feeling tired enough not to care what she said
.

Emily pushed her nose up against the back window. “It’s getting cold,” she said. “You shouldn’t leave Snowball outside
.”

Rachel turned a page in the catalog. “He’s not outside. He got loose out front earlier
.”

“
Loose? How
?”

“
He ran through my legs when I came home
.”

Emily realized she was frantic. “Well, did you look for him? Is he lost? I’ve got to go find him
!”

Rachel glanced up from the catalog at Emily. “He ran into the street. A car hit him. Sorry
.”

Emily fell against the back door. Her hands flew up to her open mouth. A giant pit welled in her stomach, and she felt her chest heaving. Then the sting came to her eyes, and she sobbed uncontrollably, tears flooding down her cheeks and through her fingers. She bit her tongue and ran out of the kitchen. When she tried to suck air into her lungs, nothing happened. She staggered to the front door, tore it open, and fell against the porch railing. She hardly noticed the cold wind. Leaving the door open, she stumbled into the driveway, then felt her knees give way under her. She sank down on the cold pavement and leaned against the car, which was still warm. She closed her eyes
.

Emily wasn’t sure how long she lay crumpled in the driveway. By the time she thought to move, the car was cold again, and so was she. Her fingers were stiff. The tears had frozen into icy streaks on her face
. It was only a dog,
she told herself, but that didn’t matter at all. At that moment, she felt worse than if she had come home and found that Rachel had been the one to die in the street
.

She wandered aimlessly down the driveway. There was no evidence of the accident in the street. She slid back to her knees and stared vacantly ahead. She was so distracted, and the streetlight was so dim, that she barely saw the tiny thing nestled on the opposite curb. It was almost invisible, like a piece of junk that had fallen from a garbage can and been left there. She almost missed it, but something about it caught her eye and held it. Through her tears, a puzzled expression crept onto her face. Then the puzzlement turned to horror
.

She knew what it was. But it couldn’t be
.

With a burst of strength, Emily pushed herself to her feet. She crossed the rest of the street hesitantly, not wanting to look into the gutter, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Finally, she stood over it and shook her head, still not believing. Even when she bent down, picked the dirty thing off the street, and held it loosely in her hands, she wanted to be wrong
.

Then her hand curled around it into a fist
.

The grief subsided and became rage. She had never felt such basic hatred filling her soul. It wasn’t just Snowball. It was years of cruelty coming to roost in a single crystallized moment. Emily trembled, almost washed away by the flood of anger inside her. Her jaw clenched. Her lips tightened into a thin line
.

She screamed, dragging the name out into a wail
. “Rachel!”

Emily sprinted back across the street, up the driveway, and into the house, slamming the door behind her with such ferocity that the whole frame of the house shook. She didn’t care if the neighbors could hear. She kept bellowing her daughter’s name. “Rachel
!”

With deadly intent, she stormed into the kitchen, where Rachel was still calmly flipping pages in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. The girl looked up, utterly unfazed by Emily’s screams. She didn’t say anything. She just waited
.

“
You did this!” Emily shouted in an agonized voice
. “You did this!”

Emily stuck out her hand and uncurled her fingers, in which lay the grimy blue chew-toy that Snowball happily fetched on command. “He didn’t get loose,” Emily hissed. “You let him out in front. And then you tossed the toy for him when the car was coming. You killed him
!”

“
That’s ridiculous,” Rachel said
.

“
Don’t give me that innocent shit,” Emily exploded. “You killed him! You heartless fucking little bitch, you killed my dog
!”

The years of restraint gave way. Emily bent down and yanked Rachel bodily out of the kitchen chair. She swung her arm back and slapped the girl fiercely across the face. “You killed him!” she screamed again, and then hit Rachel again, harder. “How could you do this to me
?”

She hit her again
.

And again. And again
.

Rachel’s cheek was beet red and streaked with the imprint of Emily’s fingers. Blood trickled from her lip. She didn’t fight back. She stood there, her eyes cold and calm, not flinching as each blow pounded her face. She absorbed the punishment until Emily finally ran out of fury. Emily staggered backward, staring at her daughter, then turned away and buried her face in her hands. The room was suddenly quiet again
.

Emily nursed one hand in the other. She felt Rachel’s eyes boring into her back. Then, without another word, her daughter stalked out of the kitchen. She heard Rachel climb the stairs, then heard the clanging of pipes as she ran water in the bathroom
.

It was the one thing Emily had sworn to herself she would never do, no matter how bad things got between them
.

And she had done it
.

“Mrs. Stoner?” Bird Finch repeated. “Is there anything you’d like to tell Rachel right now?”

Emily stared hollowly into the camera. Tears filled her eyes and burst onto her cheeks. To everyone watching on television, it was the pain of a mother faced with the ultimate agony—the loss of a child. They didn’t need to know the truth.

“I guess I’d tell her I’m sorry,” Emily said.

Stride sat alone in his basement cubicle at city hall on Friday night. The chrome desk lamp cast a small circle of light over the files he was trying to read. He had returned to his office in order to catch up on paperwork and review reports on the other crimes that had occurred in the weeks since Rachel disappeared. Most were straightforward domestic disputes, auto thefts, retail break-ins—the kind of investigations he could delegate to the seven sergeants he supervised. But the sheer volume was catching up with him. He couldn’t see the pockmarked wood of his desk underneath the files and papers.

The downstairs headquarters of the Detective Bureau was quiet. His team had gone home. Stride liked it here at night, when the silence was complete and the phone didn’t ring. He only had to worry about the buzzing of his pager, like a mosquito biting him to alert him to bad things happening in the city. He didn’t spend much time in his office during the day. The bureau was small, and he had to share the weight of serious investigations himself. That was fine. He liked being in the field, doing the real work. He squeezed in the administrative half of his job at odd hours when he wouldn’t be interrupted.

The city didn’t pay for plush quarters anyway. The foam tiles over his head were water-stained from the many times that pipes had leaked and dripped down onto his desk. The industrial gray carpet carried a faint aroma of mildew. His cubicle was large enough to squeeze in a visitor’s chair, which was the only real difference between a lieutenant’s office and a sergeant’s office. Stride didn’t bother personalizing his space with posters and family photos the way most of his team did. He had only one old picture of Cindy tacked to the cork bulletin board, and even that photo was half covered by the latest advisories from Homeland Security. It was a messy, cold place, and he was happy to escape from it whenever he could.

He heard the ding of the elevator a few feet away. That rarely happened at night. It meant someone from above, in the real city offices, was coming downstairs. He waited for the doors to open and recognized K-2’s dwarflike silhouette.

“Evening, Jon,” Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick said in a reedy voice.

K-2 used an open-toed walk and strolled through the open door of Stride’s cubicle. He looked down, frowning, at the pile of papers in the empty chair. Stride apologized and moved the stack to the floor so the chief could sit down.

“So you think she’s dead?” Kinnick asked, cutting straight to the point.

“That’s the way it looks,” Stride said. There was no point in sugarcoating what both men knew. “Nine out of ten don’t come back alive at this point.”

Kinnick yanked on the knot of his tie. He was dressed in a charcoal suit, which was baggy on his tiny frame, and looked as if he were just coming from a city council meeting. “Shit. The mayor’s not happy about this, you know. We’re getting queries from the national press. Dateline. They want to know if this is a serial killer story, something they can run with.”

“There’s no evidence of that.”

“Well, since when did evidence mean a damn thing to these people?” Kinnick warbled. He dug a finger in one of his ears. They flapped from the side of his small head like cabbage leaves.

Stride smiled. He was remembering the leprechaun parody of K-2 that Maggie did at a bureau party the previous St. Patrick’s Day.

“This funny to you?” Kinnick asked.

“No, sir. Sorry. You don’t have to tell me about the media. Bird’s all over me.”

Kinnick snorted. He was gruff with his lieutenants and an easy mark for jokes, but Stride liked him. K-2 was an administrative cop, not a field detective, but he defended his department fiercely with city officials, and he made a point of meeting with every interest group in the city, from kindergarten classes to the Rotary, to talk up the police force. He was loyal to his team, and that went a long way with Stride.

“You realize we don’t have a lot of time here?” Kinnick asked. He kicked his black wingtip in the direction of Stride’s overflowing desk. “You’re doing way too much work on this yourself already.”

Stride knew there was no point in reminding the chief that he had been the one to ask Stride to lead the case personally. It was all political and bureaucratic calculation with K-2. The city wanted this to go away—fast. “The perps are cooperating,” Stride said. “There’s nothing big here that needs me.”

“And we both know that we’re already outside the zone on this one. Odds are it’s not going to clear. I’m going to have to pull you and Maggie. Give the lead to Guppo. He can take this going forward. If we find something, you’re back in.”

“That’ll just give more ammo to Bird,” Stride protested. “It’s too soon. Give us a few more weeks. We don’t want to look like we’re walking away from the investigation.”

“You think I like this?” Kinnick asked. He scratched his forehead and patted down the gray hair that stretched across his skull from one big ear to the other. “Stoner’s a friend of mine. But you’re not making any headway.”

“I need another three weeks. You said yourself, the mayor’s hot on this one. If we don’t have anything by then, I agree, it’s a cold case. Guppo can take the lead. He’s already got Kerry.”

Kinnick shook his head and frowned. He sighed as if he were making an enormous concession. “Two weeks. And if we get anything else in here, I pull you early. Got it?”

Stride nodded. “I appreciate that. Thank you, sir.”

The chief pushed himself out of the chair and wandered back to the elevator without saying anything more. The doors opened immediately and swallowed him up. The machinery hummed as it returned to the fourth floor.

Stride took a deep breath. He knew how it worked. K-2 hadn’t come down here to pull him off the case. It was too soon for that. But he wanted Stride to know that the clock was ticking.

“What should I do?” Maggie asked. She stared down at three cards, adding up to twelve. The dealer’s up card was a six.

Stride propped his cigarette in an ashtray, where its smoke curled up and merged into the gray cloud hovering over the blackjack tables. The haze clung to the low ceiling. When he inhaled, he tasted stale smoke. His eyes burned, partly from the unventilated air and partly because it was now after midnight, more than eighteen hours after his day began. He had stayed at city hall until Maggie called and threatened to haul him out by force.