Skies of Ash (41 page)

Before I climbed into the back of the rig, I glanced over to the Oliver house and stared at the dark first level to the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom windows. No life, nowhere.

Where were they?

TWO ONE-WAY TICKETS TO CARACAS, VENEZUELA, FOR SARAH AND AMELIA
Oliver,” Colin said over the phone. “Their plane left at three fifty-seven this morning.”

“Shit,” I growled.

“And guess what else we found in the cottage?”

“Aurora Borealis.”

“Close. Juliet Chatman’s car keys.”

I hung up and considered the jail ward at County Hospital. Injured bad guys, some wearing orange jumpsuits, others still wearing civilian clothes, sitting in plastic chairs, each suffering from a bloody condition. All were shackled to metal bars welded to the floor as they awaited stitches, bandages, and rides to jail.

“Detective Norton.” An ER doc, his thick black hair in a ponytail, his last name possessing too many consonants for me to pronounce correctly on a first attempt so early in the day, came to my side. “Mr. Chatman’s awake now.”

“And lucid?”

“I’d say more lucid than ninety percent of the folks here,” Dr. Chattopadhyay said. “We gave him charcoal to absorb the rest of the drug. And we’ll keep him under observation for at least twenty-four hours. He’s in five.”

I strode down to exam room 5, also shackled—to wires and a tiny microphone to record the most important conversation I would have since catching this case.

Christopher Chatman lay wide awake in bed. His lips were black from the charcoal, his left hand was captured in another cast and taped up with life-saving interventions, and his right hand was handcuffed to the lift bar on the hospital bed.

I read him the Miranda, then said, “You know, I was just on my way to arrest you and Sarah Oliver this morning. For the murders of your family. But then this happened. Best-laid plans and whatnot.”

Tears filled his eyes, even though his mouth lifted into a smile. “Did you arrest Sarah?”

“Your partner in crime? Nope. That’s one smart lady. She’s in Venezuela and you’re…
here
. With me.”

“The fire was her idea,” he said. “She wanted to be sure. I would have never burned…”

“Down something you loved more than your family?” I cocked my head. “Which is why you chose your wife’s pills.”

He looked away from me.

I tsk-tsked him. “I guess this is custom for you. Women one-upping you, being cleverer than you. And so much smarter. Juliet sleeps with your best friend right under your nose. Gets pregnant. Passes Chloe off as yours for how many years?

“And then Sarah. She’s pissed that her husband and your wife had this great love affair. She’s pissed that Cody Chatman,
your
son, bullies her daughter. She harnesses the power of your possessive, sociopathic nuttiness to get you to help her kill your family. And
then
! I’m guessing that she steals the money you’d stolen from your clients. Talk about girl power.”

He glared at me. “I’m no one’s helper.”

“Again: you’re here and she’s in South America eating empanadas.” I folded my arms. “Pills. And pills that won’t even kill somebody, not really. But Sarah goes hard and handles big shit like fire. I thought
I
was badass.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “So you’re parsing murder techniques now? One way is better than another?”

“No. Some are just wack and pointless.
Valium? Really?
Let me tell you: us cops sit around sometimes after a case, and we tell each other stories. And the way Sarah Oliver did it? And how she manipulated you? We’ll be talking about her forever.”

He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.

“Tell me,” I said. “What happened that night? What did Sarah do, and what did you do? Did she put the lint in the electrical outlet that night?”

“Are you really peppering me, a man just waking up from almost dying, with questions?”

“I don’t need your confession.”

He licked his stained lips. “Of course you do.”

“Why kill Juliet, though? Why not divorce—?”

“So you’re still asking questions?”

“I’m just interested in how a man can hurt an innocent—”

“Not innocent,” he hissed. “My wife wronged me. And then she lied to me. Tried to humiliate me. Tried to force me to accept this girl who—”

“Tried to?” I gaped at him. “She didn’t
try
to. She
did.
And that’s why you’re pissed and decided to play God.” I cocked my head. “But why kill the kids?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Bored now?” I asked.

“Boring question.”

I gave him a sad smile. “Everyone wants to be loved. But if you can’t be loved, you’ll be feared, right? You went Old Testament on them.”

He grunted.

“So here Juliet is, thinking that Sarah has forgiven her, now they’re BFFs and doing Zumba. But in reality Sarah’s working with
you
to one day kill Juliet and the two children she resents.”

“Your intellect
astounds
me.”

I smiled. “I hear that a lot. Are you aware that Juliet knew you were stealing from your clients? Peggy Tanner. Sol Hirsch. Bill Levy. Those checks and deposit slips? Guess who gave them to me? Addy St. Lawrence. Guess who gave them to
her
?”

He blinked at me.

“Juliet knew, and so when the feds get this they’ll know that Juliet knew. And they’ll know that you’ve lied your way around Southern California for years and it all was crumbling around you. And they’ll know that you and your lover—”

“Sarah isn’t my lover.”

“Wow. She didn’t even have to
fuck
you to screw you?
And
she ends up with all of your ill-gotten gains.”

“I’m many things, but stupid is not one of them.” He laughed. “Last month, I took out almost all the money from that L.O.K.I. account in Venezuela.”

“I have deposit slips—”

“One slip. Where are the others? In that Bankers Box you lost track of?”

The veins behind my eyeballs throbbed.

He frowned. “My private information stolen from right under your nose. How grossly irresponsible you are. All for a dog.”

“How did you know about the dog?” I asked. “Were you there? Did you and Sarah…?” I clamped my lips shut because I knew the answer. Of course they took the boxes.

“I can’t steal something that belongs to me,” he said with a lopsided smile. “So you still have…
nothing.
”

I wanted to tell him that I had seen the tape from Vandervelde, Lansing & Gray on the morning of the fire. I wanted to tell him about the fingerprints found on the Valium vials and so much more. And I still had questions. What happened that resulted in Juliet’s blood getting in his car? Was Juliet telling the 911 operator that Sarah Oliver had planned to kill her?

Chatman had a faraway look in his eyes. “Wish I was there to see Sarah walk up to the teller and try to make a withdrawal.” He giggled. “I’m not totally cruel—I left her a buck seventy-five.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest is buried under the big W,” he said, grinning. “I also left her a note: ‘If you want the remaining six million, you’ll have to come back to the States.’ ”

I narrowed my eyes. “She may say, ‘Forget the money.’ ”

He smirked. “You obviously don’t know Sarah Oliver. Also, you’re forgetting that there’s something even more important to her than money. Amelia is a sickly child. Sickle-cell anemia. Sure, there are doctors over in South America, but right now their health-care system is as messed up as ours. Mimi needs care over here, so Sarah will eventually bring her back.”

Chatman smiled. “If it makes you feel better, Ben didn’t know—he’s a brilliant attorney but refused to acknowledge that his wife and best friend hated his very existence.” He shrugged. “She’s probably slit his throat by now, dumped him off a bridge somewhere. Don’t care. Anyway, by the time Sarah tries to sneak back into the U.S., I’ll be long gone.”

My face numbed. Ben was dead: somehow, I knew that. “Where will you be?” I forced myself to ask.

His smile dimmed. “It’s an unspoken rule of all magicians not to reveal their secrets.”

“How do I know that everything you told me is the truth? That you’re the mastermind, that you left a dollar seventy-five, that a doctor and not you made that scar on your back? Hell, that your name is Christopher Chatman? How do I know?”

“Have a merry Christmas, Elouise.” He sighed. “That was a lie, but you’re smart—you probably know that I hope you have the most splendidly fucked-up Christmas in the history of the holiday. I’m done now. Please leave.”

He wouldn’t talk to me, no matter how long I stood over him, no matter how many questions I asked. Despite my jabs, he kept his face turned and his eyes closed.

For a long time, I stood in the doorway of his hospital room, letting the tape roll even in the silence, watching him sleep, a tense, wary part of me not believing that he was sleeping but believing that the handcuffs would somehow melt and then he would be free.

“Cody,” he whispered.

I froze. Didn’t speak and silently watched a single tear roll down his cheek.

“He wasn’t supposed to… he was my boy.” He squeezed shut his eyes and wept.

Sarah Oliver had done what Chatman had refused to do—kill his son, his blood. Which was why, according to Brooks’s toxicology tests, Cody had less Valium in his system than Chloe.

And Sarah Oliver also did what Juliet couldn’t do—destroy the house that Juliet had hated for so long.

As I stood there, I wished that Juliet had tried to flee that house with her children sooner. And I wished that Randall and Maris Weatherbee had pushed tradition aside to force their daughter to act. Alas, none of this happened.

The fire was burning—for twenty years, it had been burning. But Juliet didn’t smell the smoke until it was too late.

It happens to many of us. For a few of us, that failure to act, that failure to
end it
, costs our lives.

* * *

It was almost eleven o’clock when I drove back to the station. I still could not figure it out, and a part of me feared that I would never completely understand the lies, the money, the murders. I knew that Christopher Chatman had been truly shocked as he’d pulled up to see his house on fire. That he
did
try to break past the barriers and the firemen to save his son—and
only
his son. Other than that, though, I feared that the Chatman case would remain a monstrous ball of string and that I would keep pulling the string but never reach the end of that spool.

As a child, I had been introduced early to the devils within men. Friends had been raped. My father had abandoned my mother, sister, and me on a Sunday morning. And my sister had been kidnapped and murdered. So when I joined the police force, I thought I had been prepared to meet the worst.

But I soon learned that no one is prepared to find the mummified remains of a forgotten aunt collapsed on the living room floor. No one is prepared to discover a bloody tub filled with a teenage girl’s decapitated body parts. No one is prepared to stand over a man as he takes credit for murdering his family in spectacular fashion.

Someone has to stand there, though. Rough men, George Orwell said, who stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. To survive in the murder game, you had to dip your heart in molten steel. You had to pray to whoever answers prayers, and you had to believe unrelentingly in Better.

Or else…

A FEW MINUTES BEFORE NOON, I PULLED INTO MY HOME GARAGE.

Greg’s Ducati was parked in its spot.

My stomach churned with dread.

He was home.

I took cautious steps inside.

The kitchen and living room were dark. A fire report completed by that arson investigator Kendricks sat on the dining room table. Christmas presents that hadn’t been there before today sat beneath the tree.

I sniffed.

The scent of Friday night’s fire remained.

I climbed the stairs, one by one.

In the bathroom, water pounded against the shower tiles.

I stepped into the bathroom and over a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and size 13 Jordans.

Through the clear shower curtain, Greg’s muscular figure was silhouetted in the water vapor. Soapy, white lather slipped down his body.

Arms crossed, heart pounding, I leaned against the sink. “Hey.”

He stopped scrubbing and turned to face me. “Hey.”

We stared at each other with nothing but the curtain between us.

In five seconds, my sneakers were off.

In ten seconds, my pants and shirt also lay in a heap on the tile.

In twenty seconds, I stood with him, naked in the shower, my mouth on his, his hands clenching my ass, my hair soaked with hot water.

He carried me from the shower and back out to the sink.

Wild breathing, trembling, clammy sweat, months and months gone by…

He held me tighter and tighter… His knees locked.

We waited until the shakes passed, and then our eyes locked.

He wiped away tears I didn’t know I had cried.

Throat tight, I whispered, “Good-bye.”

He kissed me. “I’ll love you forever.”

“I know.”

He backed away from me, then slipped out the door.

I stayed on the bathroom sink, knees drawn to my chest.

His footsteps grew lighter, fainter.

The front door’s alarm sensor chimed.

He was gone.

Wearing only a towel, I tiptoed down to the guest room to peek out the window.

Andrew, my brother-in-law, stood on the curb as Greg loaded suitcases into the Mazda SUV.

I retreated to the living room and lay on the couch. Still dressed in the towel, I stared at the dark television screen, seeing nothing and feeling even less. I reached for the remote controls. Turned on the television. Pressed
PLAY
on the DVD’s remote. The title sequence of
The Poseidon Adventure
—big cruise ship, sun glinting off the ocean—filled the screen.

Right as the big wave washed over the boat, the doorbell rang.