The Woods (27 page)

When Lucy got into the car, I pressed the button for the CD player. Bruce's "Back In Your Arms" came on. She smiled. "You burned it already?"

"I did."

"You like it?"

"Very much. I added a few others. A bootleg from one of Springsteen's solo shows. 'Drive All Night.'"

"That song always makes me cry."

"All songs make you cry," I said.

"Not 'Super Freak' by Rick James."

"I stand corrected."

"And 'Promiscuous.' That one doesn't make me cry."

"Even when Nelly sings, Is your game MVP like Steve Nash?'"

"God, you know me so well."

I smiled.

"You seem calm for a man who just learned that his dead sister might be alive."

"Partitioning."

"Is that a word?"

"It's what I do. I put things in different boxes. It's how I get through the craziness. I just put it somewhere else for a while."

"Partitioning," Lucy said.

"Exactly."

"We psychological types have another term for partitioning," Lucy said. "We call it 'Big-Time Denial.'" "Call it what you will. There's a flow here now, Luce. We're going to find Camille. She's going to be okay." "We psychological types have another term for that too. We call it 'Wishful or even Delusional Thinking.'"

We drove some more.

"What could your father possibly remember now?" I asked.

"I don't know. But we know that Gil Perez visited him. My guess is, that visit stirred something in Ira's head. I don't know what. It might be nothing. He's not well. It might be something he imagined or even made up."

We parked in a spot near Ira's Volkswagen Beetle. Funny seeing that old car. It should have brought me back. He used to drive it around the camp all the time. He would stick his head out and smile and make little deliveries. He would let cabins decorate it and pretend it was leading a parade. But right now the old Volkswagen did nothing for me.

My partitioning was breaking down.

Because I had hope.

I had hope that I would find my sister. I had hope that I was truly connecting with a woman for the first time since Jane died, that I could feel my heart beating next to someone else's. I tried to warn myself. I tried to remember that hope was the cruelest of all mistresses, that it could crush your soul like a Styrofoam cup. But right now I didn't want to go there. I wanted the hope. I wanted to hold on to it and just let it make me feel light for a little while.

I looked at Lucy. She smiled and I felt it rip open my chest. It had been so long since I felt like this, felt that heady rush. Then I surprised myself. I reached out with both my hands and took her face in mine. Her smile disappeared. Her eyes searched for mine. I tilted her head up and kissed her so softly that it almost hurt. I felt a jolt. I heard her gasp. She kissed me back.

I felt happily shattered by her.

Lucy lowered her head onto my chest. I heard her sob softly. I let her. I stroked her hair and fought back the swirl. I don't know how long we sat like that. Could have been five minutes, could have been fifteen. I just don't know.

"You better go in," she said.

"You're going to stay here?"

"Ira made it clear. You, alone. I'll probably start up his car, make sure the battery is still charged."

I didn't kiss her again. I got out and floated up the path. The setting for the house was peaceful and green. The mansion was Georgian brick, I guessed, almost perfectly rectangular with white columns in the front. It reminded me of an upscale fraternity house.

There was a woman at the desk. I gave her my name. She asked me to sign in. I did. She placed a call and spoke in a whisper. I waited, listening to the Muzak version of something by Neil Sedaka, which was a little bit like listening to a Muzak version of Muzak.

A redheaded woman dressed in civilian clothes came down to see me. She wore a skirt and had glasses dangling on her chest. She looked like a nurse trying not to look like a nurse.

"I'm Rebecca," she said.

"Paul Copeland."

"I'll bring you to Mr. Silverstein."

"Thank you."

I expected her to lead me down the corridor, but we walked through the back and straight outside. The gardens were well tended. It was a little early for landscape lights, but they were on. A thick row of hedges surrounded the premises like guard dogs.

I spotted Ira Silverstein right away.

He had changed and yet he hadn't changed at all. You know people like that. They get older, they gray, they widen, they slump, and yet they are exactly the same. That was how it was with Ira.

Ira? No one ever used last names at camp. The adults were Aunt and Uncle, but I just couldn't see calling him Uncle Ira anymore.

He wore a poncho I'd last seen in a Woodstock documentary. He had sandals on his feet. Ira stood slowly and put his arms out toward me. Camp had been that way too. Everyone hugged. Everyone loved each other. It was all very "Kumbaya." I stepped into his embrace. He held me tight, with all his strength. I could feel his beard against my cheek.

He let go of me and said to Rebecca, "Leave us alone."

Rebecca turned away. He led me to a park bench of cement and green wood. We sat. "You look the same, Cope," he said. He'd remembered my nickname. "So do you." "You'd think the hard years would show on our faces more, wouldn't you?"

"I guess so, Ira."

"So what do you do now?"

"I'm the county prosecutor."

"Really?"

"Yes."

He frowned. "That's kind of establishment."

Still Ira.

"I'm not prosecuting antiwar protestors," I assured him. "I go after murderers and rapists. People like that."

He squinted. "Is that why you’re here?"

"What?"

"Are you trying to find murderers and rapists?"

I didn't know what to make of that so I went with the flow. "In a way, I guess. I'm trying to learn what happened that night in the woods." Ira’s eyes closed. "Lucy said you wanted to see me," I said. "Yes." "Why?" "I want to know why you've come back." "I never went anywhere." "You broke Lucy's heart, you know." "I wrote her. I tried to call. She wouldn't call me back." "Still. She was in pain." "I never meant for that to happen." "So why are you back now?" "I want to find out what happened to my sister." "She was murdered. Like the others." "No, she wasn't." He said nothing. I decided to press a little. "You know that, Ira. Gil Perez came here, didn't he?" Ira smacked his lips. "Dry." "What?" "I'm dry. I used to have this friend from Cairns. That's in Australia.

Coolest dude I ever knew. He used to say, 'A man is not a camel, mate.'

That was his way of asking for a drink."

Ira grinned.

"I don't think you can get a drink out here, Ira."

"Oh, I know. I was never much of a booze man anyway. What they now call 'recreational drugs' was more my bag. But I meant water. They got some Poland Spring in that cooler. Did you know that Poland Spring comes to you straight from Maine?"

He laughed and I didn't correct him on that old radio commercial. He stood and stumbled toward the right. I followed. There was a trunk-shaped cooler with a New York Rangers logo on it. He opened the lid, grabbed a bottle, handed it to me, grabbed another. He twisted off the cap and chugged. The water spilled down his face, turning the white of his beard into something darker gray.

"Ahhhh," he said when he finished.

I tried to get him back on track.

"You told Lucy that you wanted to see me."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because you're here."

I waited for more.

"I'm here," I said slowly, "because you asked to see me."

"Not here here. Here, as in back in our lives."

"I told you. I'm trying to find out-"

"Why now?"

That question again.

"Because," I said, "Gil Perez didn't die that night. He came back. He visited you, didn't he?" Ira's eyes took on that thousand-yard stare. He started to walk. I caught up with him.

"Was he here, Ira?"

"He didn't use that name," he said.

He kept walking. I noticed that he limped. His face pinched up in pain. "Are you okay?" I asked him. "I need to walk." "Where?" "There are paths. In the woods. Come."

"Ira, I'm not here-"

"He said his name was Manolo something. But I knew who he was. Little Gilly Perez. Do you remember him? From those days, I mean?"

"Yes."

Ira shook his head. "Nice boy. But so easily manipulated."

"What did he want?"

"He didn't tell me who he was. Not at first. He didn't really look the same but there was something in his mannerisms, you know? You can hide stuff. You can gain weight. But Gil still had that soft lisp. He still moved the same. Like he was wary all the time. You know what I mean?"

"I do."

I had thought the yard was fenced in, but it wasn't. Ira slipped past a break in the hedges. I followed. There was a wooded hill in front of us. Ira started trudging up the path.

"Are you allowed to leave?"

"Of course. I'm here on a voluntary basis. I can come and go as I please." He kept walking. "What did Gil say to you?" I asked. "He wanted to know what happened that night." "He didn't know?" "He knew some. He wanted to know more." "I don't understand." "You don't have to." "Yes, Ira, I do." "It's over. Wayne is in prison." "Wayne didn't kill Gil Perez." "I thought he did." I didn't quite get that one. He was moving faster now, limping along in obvious pain. I wanted to call him to stop, but his mouth was also moving. "Did Gil mention my sister?"

He stopped for a second. His smile was sad. "Camille."

"Yes."

"Poor thing."

"Did he mention her?"

"I loved your dad, you know. Such a sweet man, so hurt by life."

"Did Gil mention what happened to my sister?"

"Poor Camille."

"Yes. Camille. Did he say anything about her?"

Ira started to climb again. "So much blood that night."

"Please, Ira, I need you to focus. Did Gil say anything at all about Camille?" "No." "Then what did he want?" "Same as you." "What's that?" He turned. "Answers." "To what questions?" "The same as yours. What happened that night. He didn't under stand, Cope. Its over. They're dead. The killer is in jail. You should let the dead rest." "Gil wasn't dead." "Until that day, the day he visited me, he was. Do you under stand?"

"No."

"It's over. The dead are gone. The living are safe."

I reached out and grabbed his arm. "Ira, what did Gil Perez say to you?" "You don't understand." We stopped. Ira looked down the hill. I followed his gaze. I could only make out the roof of the house now. We were in the thick of the woods. Both of us were breathing harder than we should. Ira's face was pale.

"It has to stay buried."

"What does?"

"That's what I told Gil. It was over. Move on. It was so long ago. He was dead. Now he wasn't. But he should have been."

"Ira, listen to me. What did Gil say to you?"

"You won't leave it alone, will you?"

"No," I said, "I won't leave it alone."

Ira nodded. He looked very sad. Then he reached underneath his poncho and pulled out a gun, aimed it in my direction, and without saying another word, he fired at me.

"What we have here is a problem/'

Sheriff Lowell wiped his nose with a handkerchief that looked large enough to be a clowns prop. His station was more modern than what Muse had expected, but then again her expectations weren't high. The building was new, the design sleek and clean with computer monitors and cubicles. Lots of whites and grays.

"What you have here," Muse replied, "is a dead body."

"That's not what I mean." He gestured toward the cup in her hand. "How's the coffee?" "Outstanding, actually." "Used to be crap. Some guys made it too strong, some too weak. It got left on the burner forever. And then last year, one of the fine citizens of this municipality donated one of those coffee pod machines to the station. You ever use one of those things, the pods?"

"Sheriff?"

"Yes."

"Is this your attempt at wooing me with your aw-shucks, homespun charm?"

He grinned. "A little."

"Consider me wooed. What's our problem?"

"We just found a body that's been in the woods, by early estimates, a pretty long time. We know three things: Caucasian, female, height of five-seven. That's all we know for now. I have already combed through the records. There were no missing or unaccounted girls within a fifty-mile radius who match that description."

"We both know who it is," Muse said.

"Not yet we don't."

"You think, what, another five-foot seven-inch girl was murdered in that camp around the same time and buried near the other two bodies?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then what did you say?"

"That we don't have a definite ID. Doc O'Neill is working on it. We've ordered Camille Copeland's dental records. We should know for sure in a day or two. No rush. We have other cases."

"No rush?"

"That's what I said."

"Then I'm not following."

"See, this is where I have to wonder, Investigator Muse-what are you first and foremost? Are you a law enforcement office or a political crony?"

"What the hell does that mean?"

"You're the county chief investigator," Lowell said. "Now, I'd like to believe a person, especially a lady your age, reached that level based on her talent and skill. But I also live in the real world. I understand graft and favoritism and ass kissing. So I'm asking-"

"I earned it." "I'm sure you did."

Muse shook her head. "I can't believe I have to justify myself to you."

"But, alas, my dear, you do. Because right now, if this was your case and I came waltzing in and you knew that I was going to run right home and tell my boss-someone who was, at the very least, involved-what would you do?"

"You think I'd sweep his involvement under the rug?"

Lowell shrugged. "Again: If I was, say, the deputy here and I was given my job by the sheriff who was involved in your murder, what would you think?"

Muse sat back. "Fair enough," she said. "So what can I do to com fort you?"

"You can let me take my time identifying the body."

"You don't want Copeland to know what we found?"

"He's waited twenty years. What's another day or two?"

Muse understood where he was going with this.

"I want to do right by the investigation," she said, "but I don't much relish lying to a man I trust and like." "Life's tough, Investigator Muse." She frowned. "Something else I want too," Lowell went on. "I need you to tell me why that Barrett guy was out there with that little toy of his looking for long-dead bodies."

"I told you. They wanted to test this machine in the field."

"You work in Newark, New Jersey. Are you telling me there are no possible burial sites in that area you could have sent them to?" He was right, of course. Time to come clean. "A man was found murdered in New York City," Muse said. "My boss thinks it was Gil Perez."

Lowell dropped the poker face. "Come again?"

She was about to explain when Tara O'Neill rushed in. Lowell looked annoyed by the interruption but he kept his voice neutral. "What's up, Tara?"

"I found something on the body," she said. "Something important, I think."

After Cope left the car, Lucy sat alone for a good five minutes with the trace of a smile on her lips. She was still swimming from his kiss. She had never experienced anything like that, the way his big hands held her face, the way he looked at her… it was as though her heart had not only started beating again but had taken flight.

It was wonderful. It was scary.

She checked through his CD collection, found one by Ben Folds, put on the song "Brick." She had never been sure what the song was about-a drug overdose, an abortion, a mental collapse-but in the end, the woman is a brick and she's drowning him.

Sad music was better than drinking, she guessed. But not much.

As she turned off the engine, she saw a green car, a Ford with New York license plates, pull up right to the front of the building. The car parked in the spot that read no parking. Two men got out-one tall, one built like a square-and strolled inside. Lucy didn't know what to make of it. It was probably nothing.

The keys to Ira's Beetle were in her bag. She rummaged through the purse and found them. She jammed a piece of gum in her mouth. If Cope kissed her again, she'd be damned if bad breath was going to be a factor.

She wondered what Ira was going to say to Cope. She wondered what Ira even remembered. They had never talked about that night, father and daughter. Not once. They should have. It might have changed everything. Then again it might have changed nothing. The dead would still be dead, the living still living. Not a particularly deep thought, but there you go.

She got out of the car and started toward the old Volkswagen. She held the key in her hand and pointed it toward the car. Odd what you get used to. No cars today open with a key. They all have the remote.

The Beetle didn't, of course. She put the key into the lock on the driver side and turned it. It was rusted and she had to twist hard but the lock popped up.

She thought about how she had lived her life, about the mistakes she'd made. She'd talked to Cope about that feeling of being pushed that night, of tumbling down a hill and not knowing how to stop. It was true. He had tried to find her over the years, but she had stayed hidden.

Maybe she should have contacted him earlier. Maybe she should have tried to work through what happened that night right away. Instead you bury it. You refuse to face it. You're scared of confrontation so you find other ways to hide-Lucy’s being the most common, in the bottom of the bottle. People don't go to the bottle to escape.

They go to hide.

She slid into the driver's seat and immediately realized that some thing was wrong.

The first visual clue was on the floor of the passenger seat. She looked down and frowned. A soda can. Diet Coke to be more exact. She picked it up. There was still some liquid in it. She thought about that. How long had it been since she'd been in the Beetle? Three, four weeks at least. There hadn't been a can then. Or if there had, she had missed it. That was a possibility.

That was when the smell hit her.

She remembered something that happened in the woods near camp when she was about twelve. Ira had taken her for a walk. They heard gunshots and Ira had totally freaked. Hunters had invaded their land. He found them and started yelling that this was private property. One of the hunters had started yelling back. He got close to them, bumping Ira’s chest, and Lucy remembered that he smelled horrible.

She smelled that now.

Lucy turned and looked in the backseat.

There was blood on the floor.

And then, in the distance, she heard a crack of gunfire.

The skeletal remains were laid out on a silver table with tiny holes in it. The holes made it easier to clean by simply spraying it with a hose. The floor was tile and tilted toward a drain in the center, like the shower room at a health club, which also made it easier to get rid of debris. Muse didn't want to think what got caught up in such drains, what they used to clean it out, if Drano did any good at all or if they had to use something stronger.

Lowell stood on one side of the table, Muse on the other with Tara O'Neill.

"So what’s up?" Lowell asked.

"First off, we're missing some bones. I'll go out later and take an other look. Small stuff, nothing major. That's normal in a case like this. I was about to run some X-rays, check the ossification centers, especially up at the clavicle."

"What will that tell us?"

"It gives us an idea of age. Bones stop growing as we get older. The last place of ossification is up there, pretty much where the clavicle meets the sternum. The process stops around the age of twenty-one. But that's not important right now."

Lowell looked at Muse. Muse shrugged.

"So what's the big thing you found?"

"This."

O'Neill pointed to the pelvis.

Muse said, "You showed me that before. That's the proof that the skeleton belonged to a female."

"Well, yes. The pelvis is wider, like I said before. Plus we have the less prominent ridge and smaller bone density-all the signs that she's female. There is no doubt in my mind. We are looking at the skeletal remains of a female."

"So what are you showing us?"

"The pubic bone."

"What about it?"

"You see here? We call this notching-or better, the pitting of the pubic bones." "Okay." "Cartilage holds bones together. That's basic anatomy. You probably know this. We mostly think of cartilage in terms of the knee or elbow. It's elastic. It stretches. But you see this? The marks on the face of the pubic bone? That's formed on the cartilaginous surface where the bones once met and then separated."

O'Neill looked up at them. Her face was glowing.

"Are you following me?"

Muse said, "No."

"The notches are formed when the cartilage is strained. When the pubic bones separate." Muse looked at Lowell. Lowell shrugged. "And that means?" Muse tried. "That means that at some point in her life, the bones separated.

And that means, Investigator Muse, that your victim gave birth."