Stranger in the Room: A Novel (3 page)

High school handed me a strawberry-blond boy named Bobby Nash who was the best kisser I’d ever known. Propped up in the back of his pickup truck, Bobby played his guitar and sang quietly to me on moon-brushed evenings in the Winnona Park neighborhood, where I grew up among the filigreed leaves of massive pecan trees and fat white oaks in the only blue county in the state on our voting map. Years later, just a few yards from where Bobby’s bashful hands helped me to discover myself, the ruthless fluidity of life, as razor-sharp as a machete, brought me to my knees in the cold, red clay. But that’s another story.

“You were the
hot
Chinese chick.” Miki laughed. “Good-looking, track star, honor roll. Me, I was already cutting myself by high school. You know it wasn’t always about trying to kill myself, right? It just felt good. To hurt, I mean. To bleed.” Miki ran a finger over scar tissue inside her left arm. “I think those rude cops had my hospital records. One of them said something to the other about calls from my address. It’s been, like, two years since I was that sick, but I guess once they see you as fucked up, you’re always fucked up. Can’t you say something to your boyfriend about how the police treat people?”

“Did anyone else come out? Did you speak with detectives?”

“No,” Miki said. “But I’ll never forget the way that freak looked at me. Eyes through the slits in that mask. So scary.”

“Could you tell what color eyes?” I glanced back at the bar and the flirty bottle of Grey Goose. I drank some club soda and thought about the way the carbonation hits your nose when it’s loaded with good vodka—clean and sharp and just a hint bitter. I needed to get out of the bar.

“No. It was dark.”

“Make me a list later of people you’ve dated in the last couple of years. We’ll also check out your neighbors and poke around a little. I’ll apply to APD for increased patrols on your street. It can’t hurt. How about coming to my place tonight?”

Jesus, what was I thinking?

  
2

I
woke to Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)” coming out of my phone—Homicide Lieutenant Aaron Rauser’s ringtone. I fumbled for the clock. Two a.m., just one of the hazards of dating a cop. I’d been asleep for exactly an hour. “Long day, huh? You get all the bad guys?”

“Uh-huh,” Rauser said in that slow, drawn-out way meant to express his cynicism. “Be more likely Lisa Ling would wanna make out.”

“You have a thing for Asian girls, don’t you?”

“I got a thing for you.” He had said it with no enthusiasm. I knew him. Something was wrong. Then I heard noise in the background, a lot of it, voices, the random blast of police scanners. A siren blared. He yelled, “Tell them to turn that shit off. Listen, darlin’, I got five open cases and we gotta keep moving before they get cold. That long weekend we were planning, it’s just not gonna happen.”

I thought about long days on the couch with paperbacks and the Braves on television, making love in the afternoon, dinners out. It was so rare. We’d planned music and a catered picnic basket at Chastain Park, a cookout at my parents’ house on Monday, the fireworks on the square in Decatur.
My parents. Yikes
. With Rauser working and my brother in Seattle, there was no one to deflect Mother’s attention.
She always seemed to behave better when there was a man around. Maybe I could talk Miki into going with me.

“It’s a kid,” Rauser said. “I fucking hate it when it’s a kid.”

“Oh no. I’m sorry.”

“He was left in the bushes like he was disposable or something.”

I sat up. Switched on the bedside lamp. “How old was he?”

“Twelve, thirteen maybe.”

“You have a cause of death?”

“Looks like he was strangled. Ligature marks on his neck.”

I thought about that. “Disposal site in the boy’s neighborhood? Can you tell if it’s the primary scene?”

“Still processing the scene, but that’s what it looks like. Victim was only two blocks from home. We’re talking to people, but we haven’t established motive yet.” He was quiet for a minute and I could hear the sirens and police scanners. “Neighborhoods used to be safe, Keye. We’re failing. We can’t keep up. Oh shit. News trucks are here. I love ya, Street.”

M
y bedroom door eased open shortly after four a.m. Rauser’s square shoulders in the shadows. He leaned over the bed and kissed me. “Where’s White Trash?” Rauser and my cat were having a thing. Lately, she seemed to prefer him over me. But then, he’s hairy and hot. It’s like spooning a fuzzy furnace. Cats are all about body heat. I try not to take it personally.

“Miki took her to bed,” I told him.

Rauser unzipped his jeans and let them fall on the floor. Boxers underneath, a gift I’d given him last Christmas, black and white checks. “Miki’s here? That can’t be good.”

“She had a break-in at her house. It shook her up. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

“It is tomorrow.” He pulled his T-shirt over his head and dropped it on top of his jeans. “I’ll pull the report later.” He went naked to the shower. I lay there looking after him, remembering coming in late from crime scenes and morgues and heartbroken families and standing
under a stream of hot water until it turned cold. I could never wash it away, though, and I didn’t think Rauser could either.

I drifted off while he showered and woke to his arms around me, lips against my neck, hot breath. He didn’t say a word when he pushed into me and we made love. My big Homicide lieutenant is no different from the rest of us. He uses whatever he can to putty up the cracks his job hammers into him. Sometimes I think there’s more pain in him than desire. I wondered if my life would have been different if I’d come home to open arms after spending the day reconstructing murder scenes. If my ex-husband had wanted me, pushed his slim fingers through my hair just once, whispered, pretended. Would I have still reached for the cognac that put me to bed? I didn’t think so. I wasn’t trying to shift blame for my drinking, but it would have been goddamn decent of Dan to give me a soft landing just once in a while.

At seven, when the bed jiggled, I opened one grouchy eye. Rauser was sitting on the edge holding White Trash. He was shirtless, wearing navy slacks, the only clean spares he had at my place. I smelled coffee and turned to see my favorite cup, a mug from Jekyll Island, filled and steaming hot on my bed table.

“I see you found White Trash.” It was the nicest thing I could think of to say. I wanted to sleep about six more hours.

Rauser kissed White Trash’s head and put her down, then pulled on dark blue socks. “Uh-huh. And I saw your cousin in her underwear too. Big morning.”

I sat up. “I’m sure that was excruciating for you.”

“Horrible. Plus, she was kicking White Trash out of the guest room, said she was staring at her like she was judging.”

I reached for my coffee. “Yeah, White Trash gets really judgmental when she needs her litter box.”

Rauser chuckled. “What’s your day like?”

“A failure to appear for Tyrone, a bunch of routine assessments to be delivered. The usual.” I took a sip of coffee. It was strong. Rauser didn’t have a lot of patience for measurements. “How ’bout you?”

“The usual,” he said, and kissed my cheek. “Thanks for letting me pop in last night.” He stood, grinned down at me, raised his eyebrows up and down a couple of times.

“You’re so immature.”

“You didn’t think so last night,” he said, then ducked the pillow I hurled at him. “You want some breakfast? I’m going to have some Shredded Wheat.”

“I’d rather eat a bale of pine straw. But I guess you have to think about fiber at your age.”

He grinned at me, pointed his finger. “You better be nice to me, Street. I’m probably the guy that’s going to go through menopause with you. And we all know that ain’t gonna be pretty.”

“Get out!” I hurled another pillow.

He stuck his head back in the door a minute later. “Hey, talk to me for a sec?”

I smiled, looked at him over my coffee cup. He was holding a file folder. “What?”

“That crime scene last night, something about it is bugging me.”

I set my coffee down and held out a hand for him. “It was a little boy. Of course it bothers you.”

“It’s more than that.”

“You didn’t find motive?”

He ran a hand over his face. Bright morning light came through the long windows along Peachtree Street, and the lines around his gray eyes looked dug in like trenches. Snowy dark hair touched the tips of his ears. “There’s no sign of molestation, though the autopsy isn’t scheduled until later this morning. We’re looking in the usual places.” He looked at his watch. “Starting with the parents’ interview in an hour.”

“That’s where the treasure’s usually buried,” I reminded him, but this was something he was already well aware of. Motive in child murders is usually found in family and close associates. I glanced at my coffee cup. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation five minutes after I’d opened my eyes and with only half a cup. I thought about Miki and the bar last night. The urge to spike my coffee slapped me awake. Four years of waking up sober and it was still a choice I had to make every day. It felt especially hard this morning.

He sat down next to me, opened his folder, spread it out on the bed between us. “Wow. Will the fun ever stop?” I said, and looked down at photographs from the crime scene that had kept him away most of the night, at a boy’s lifeless body, facedown, shorts, athletic shoes, an arm
at shoulder level, another over his head, one knee slightly higher than the other. He looked like he was trying to crawl away. There was a baseball cap on the ground next to his outstretched fingers. I studied the photographs of the scene around the body—cigarette butts, a piece of red plastic, fast-food wrappers, cups and straws. “What’s with all the trash?”

“Construction site a few yards away. People that own the lot where the kid was found said it blows onto their yard all the time. We bagged everything around the body.”

“Who found the body?”

“Jogger,” Rauser said. “We haven’t excluded him yet. Or anyone. Hard to get a lot out of the mother and father last night. Kid was some kind of super-athlete. We know that much. Varsity coaches were waiting for him to get to ninth grade.”

I studied another photograph of the body. “Another athlete might have motive. And the strength. Looks tall for his age, and sturdy. No other wounds on the body apart from the ligature marks?”

“Nope. We think the perp grabbed the kid from behind, knocked him down, and got the rope round his neck.”

“It was fast,” I told Rauser. “Ground cover’s barely disturbed around the body. And see that?” I pointed at the victim’s clenched right fist. “It happens sometimes with hangings and violent strangulation.”

  
3

N
eil was wearing shorts or swimming trunks, I wasn’t sure which. They were cobalt blue with big black flowers that reached his fuzzy blond knees. The shirt was cream and tan, Cuban, with wide vertical panels, partially unbuttoned—Neil’s uniform. It varied only slightly from season to season—shorts or long pants with deck shoes, Vans slip-ons in checkerboard or plaid. He liked his shoes loud. The TV was on the morning news. Neil had nearly everything in our office controlled by a voice-activated smart panel with remote-control backups. The big flat-screen, the brainchild of the passionate and perhaps disturbed designer I’d hired, eased down smoothly on a silver pulley system from the rafters in our converted warehouse. It was one of my favorite things about our commercial loft.

“Morning,” I said when I walked into the office early. I’d showered as soon as Rauser left me to go save the city, fed White Trash, and left my cousin still asleep in the guest room. “I need a list of property owners in Inman Park. Satellite images with the owners’ names on the appropriate lots would be great.” I went to my office, which was really just a desk and chairs and two file cabinets behind a towering fence—part chain link, part barbed wire—another gift from the designer whose vision for our space had not exactly matched mine.

“It’s nice to see you too,” Neil grumbled. He seemed even poutier than usual. I get this attitude from him whenever he feels barked at.
I first met Neil Donovan when I was working with a digital evidence specialist at the Bureau on a series of cyber-crimes. Neil, being a repeat offender in the piracy and cyber-crime arena, ended up making a deal with the Bureau. Later, a few of the companies whose security he’d breached hired him to design and maintain their security systems. When I was ready to start my private investigating business, I looked him up. A guy like Neil is a real find. He has the perfect attention span for skip traces and absolutely no moral borders when it comes to privacy.