Mortal Crimes: 7 Novels of Suspense (34 page)

Dawn Sayles lived in an upstairs apartment, 12C. Laura was surprised to see a young woman standing at the top of the steps, the door behind her slightly ajar. Hand clutching the doorknob, her expression diffident.

Dawn Sayles was slimmer than in the photos, but with the same pale skin and dark, wounded eyes. Listless dark brown hair pulled back by a clip, a grimy-looking T-shirt stretched over a pot belly, and skin-tight bicycle shorts. She wore cheap purple flip-flops. She pulled the door shut all the way, keeping her voice low. “My husband’s still sleeping, but I'm going to have to get back in there soon.” She led Laura down to the part of the steps that was in the shade of a massive pepper tree, one of several that gave the apartment its name. Laura could hear someone vacuuming on the floor above.

Dawn sat down on the concrete step and hunched over her knees, arms holding them close. “I saw on the news they found her,” she said. “I wondered if you were going to come.”

Laura sat down next to her. The shade was deep and dark, but the heat still clung to them, bouncing whitely off the steps. Laura handed Dawn the photograph she’d copied at One Hour Photo. It was the picture of Dawn and Jenny.

Dawn took it, stared at it. Her lips moving. “Can I keep this?” she asked, hope lingering between the words. Hope with every expectation of defeat.

“I brought it for you.”

She tucked it into the waistband of her shorts. “Thanks.”

Laura said, “Could you tell me what happened that day?”

Dawn Sayles looked away. “I told the detective at the time.”

“I know, but I'd like to hear it firsthand. It could really help.”

“He died, didn't he? The detective?”

“Yes.”

Dawn leaned down and pulled her ponytail around her neck, moving the strands between her fingers like worry beads. Her head almost between her knees. “I called him,” she mumbled.

“You called him? Detective Schiller?”

A nod from down near her knees. The fingers moving, twisting the lank strands of hair.

“Why did you call him?”

She shook her head.

“Dawn?”

The girl suddenly looked up. Her hair flipped back onto her neck. “When he answered? I hung up on him. I chickened out.”

Laura didn't know what was going on here, but she felt it was important. “Go on,” she said, keeping her voice low.

The girl looking at her now, her eyes wide. “Will I get in trouble?”

“Trouble? No, of course not. How would you get in trouble?”

“For lying. Lying to the police.” She grabbed at her hair again, started pulling on the strands. Harder than before. “I don't care. You came here for a reason. I don't care I don't care I don't care!” Fuming now, the anger coming out of the deepest part of her.

She suddenly looked around, shocked at what she had said, and lowered her voice. She looked up at the landing. When the apartment door remained closed, she visibly relaxed. “It's something I can't get away from, even though I'm an adult now and my dad is … my dad is dead.” She tapped her forehead. “I know up
here
he's not around to punish me, but it's hard … ”

“Why would he punish you, Dawn?”

“When I lied,” she said.

“When did you lie?”

“According to my dad, all the time. He couldn't stand liars. You know what he would do? He had a riding crop, and if I lied, I knew I was going to get it.”

“He whipped you.”

She nodded her head, up and down, up and down, the movement fierce. “Did he
ever
.”

She added, “He was always saying I lied, even when I wasn't lying.”

Laura had to pick her way carefully. “Why did you call Detective Schiller? What did you want to tell him?”

She looked at Laura. “You probably already know. Jenny didn't go to Rose Canyon Lake.”

________

Laura needed to be alone with her thoughts, so she drove a couple of blocks over to a park. The shade under the trees was deep, but it didn't cut the velvet warmth of summer. A little humidity to it, so at first it didn't seem as bad as the blaring heat of just a day or so ago, but she knew it would wear her down if she stayed here too long.

She set her notes on the picnic table and stared at them.

According to Dawn, Jenny had stayed behind on the day the campers went to Rose Canyon Lake. Dawn had covered for her, telling the counselor in charge of their van that Jenny was there, she was just in the bathroom or she was talking to another kid in another van.

She had even taken along Jenny's tag, the flat, coin-like piece of metal with Jenny's number stamped on it.

She had understood how important it was for Jenny to stay at the camp, because she had once had a dog of her own, before her father got rid of it.

Jenny had been on a mission of mercy. On one of her walks—she was always going off by herself—she had come back both angry and elated.

Jenny had been walking along a logging road below the camp, when she’d come across a box half-squashed in the road. She'd looked inside—a puppy. The puppy had not been squashed, but it had blood in its mouth, and she could tell it was dead.

Then she’d heard whimpering.

She’d looked around and seen another puppy, hiding under a log. Jenny had said the puppy hadn’t been a newborn puppy, but older. Old enough to run away when Jenny had approached it.

Jenny had tried to get the puppy to come to her, but after a while, she'd given up and gone back to the camp. After stealing some food from the mess hall, she’d gone back down to where she'd last seen the pup. She’d known the puppy wouldn't survive long by itself in the woods, that he and his brother had been dumped there by some uncaring person, left to be run over.

Jenny had been a girl on a mission. For three days, she had looked for the puppy, and when she’d found it, she’d tried to lure it with food.

“The puppy had a collar,” Dawn had explained to Laura. “Jennie figured if she could just get the puppy to eat out of her hand, she could grab him by the collar and bring him back with her.”

The day of the Rose Canyon Lake outing, Jenny had chosen to stay behind to try and save the puppy.

No good deed goes unpunished
, Laura thought. God only knew what kind of a monster Jenny Carmichael had met somewhere on the mountain.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Steve Lawson wore another one of his long-sleeved shirts, this one dark green. Laura thought the sleeves had been rolled up and that he had unrolled them hastily, because the cuffs were unbuttoned. Maybe he was self-conscious about his scar. She thought about the ten-year-old boy who had risked his life to protect his mother. You couldn't always tell heroes by looking at them. Steve Lawson seemed ordinary, but there was something about him that inspired confidence—despite or maybe because of the wire-rimmed glasses and the slightly-long brown hair, the eyes that seemed self-contained, but held humor in them. Not her type at all, but he lured her.

He seemed so normal. And yet his childhood had been anything but normal.

Steve's eyes had widened briefly when he saw her on his doorstep. “I didn't expect you,” he said, opening the door wider for her to come in.

“I should have called first,” Laura said. It was a lie. She never called first.

“I heard about your partner on the radio. Jaime Molina, right? A car fire?”

Laura nodded.

“But he's going to be all right?”

Laura thought he might never be all right. “They're doing everything they can.”

Steve Lawson cocked his head. “I guess it's a very dangerous job.”

Laura nodded. She glanced around the room, noticed the place was a lot tidier. “Looking better,” she said.

“It's coming along.”

“Are you planning on living here?”

An expression she could not read flickered across his face. “To tell you the truth, I've been thinking about it.” He motioned to a chair and sat down himself. Jake sat at his feet. “Is this about Jenny Carmichael?”

There was tension here she hadn't felt before. She decided it was time to push harder. “Julie DeSabato came to see me.”

That shocked him, she could tell. But he covered up for it quickly.

Laura said, “Julie has an interesting perspective on what's been happening up here. She told me you saw Jenny.”

He smiled, uncertain. His eyes, though, stayed on hers. “Jenny?”

“She said you saw a 'manifestation.’ Of her. Jenny. She told me about the Ouija board, all of it.”

Silence. His hand tightened slightly on the armrest of the chair he sat in, but he held her eyes. They were dark teal blue with gray in them, like the ocean when the sun slants just right. His hand fell down from the armrest, and he scratched Jake's neck. Jake's tags jingled. Steve continued to look at her. Laura thought he was trying to figure her out. Trying to divine what she was thinking. She decided to help him. “That's why you dug up that place out there,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the kitchen window. “Isn't that right?”

His lips were a line. His eyes were still. She knew he was working it out in his mind whether or not to admit to what he'd seen.

At last he said, “Yes.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“You won't believe me.”

“What makes you think I won't?” She leaned forward, until her knees were almost touching his. She was thinking about the best way to get him to tell her what she needed to hear. “I talked to Jenny's best friend today, from camp. She told me Jenny never left Camp Aratauk. Instead, she came down here looking for a lost puppy.”

That got to him. His fingers rubbing Jake's neck again. Jake shifting underneath Steve's fingers and looking up at him, an injured expression in his eyes. Laura had seen how tightly Steve had gripped Jake's fur—and probably some skin—and now Steve realized it as well. He lifted his hand and put it back on the armrest.

Laura said, “Julie said you told her about a puppy. She said you found a collar. She said that you heard Jenny—”

“Okay.”

“She said Jenny was yelling at the puppy—”

“Okay.” He stood up. “You want to go for a walk?”

“A walk?”

“If I'm going to tell you this story, I want to be outside, walking. I don't feel comfortable in here.”

________

“It's hard for me because I don't believe in things like this,” Steve said.

They walked through the forest, Jake running ahead of them. Steve’s hands shoved into his pockets.

“Just describe to me what you saw. Pretend you're telling a story.”

He paused. “It started on July Fourth.”

Laura prodded. “What happened?”

“Jake and I went for a walk. We headed up along the stream bed … ”

All the time he talked, Laura was thinking of Frank Entwistle. How she knew in her soul it was Frank who had awakened her the night of the explosion. What would have happened if she'd answered the door when Jaime knocked? Would she be in St. Mary's Burn Unit fighting for her life, too?

But Laura heard Steve's story, too. What he described was close enough to Julie's version, but much more detailed. Once he admitted to seeing Jenny's ghost, he must have decided to be as clear and accurate as possible.

When he got to the part about the newspaper in the porch ceiling, Laura said, “Why did your grandfather put that particular newspaper up into the porch rafters?” she asked.

He halted and looked at her. They'd stopped near the crime scene tape, the excavation. Jake running ahead of them, coming back, circling around, sniffing the ground, coming back again. The sun caught Steve Lawson's hair, touched off a golden light in his dark eyes. “The newspaper?” His voice puzzled. “I guess it was handy.”

“That's quite a coincidence, don't you think?”

His mouth turned grim. “My grandfather didn't kill that girl.”

“You don't know that.”

He looked at her. “I do know that. I have
faith
.”

Back at the cabin, he opened a kitchen drawer and produced the collar he'd found in the shed. “Evidence,” he said.