Close to the Bone (20 page)

‘We heard,’ Theresa said. ‘We should go. Ja— dear. Come on.’

‘Right in the kitchen,’ the woman added.

James’ hand tightened on her arm until the lack of circulation made it ache. But the sharp point disappeared from her back. He must have secreted it in a pocket or waistband, because when they turned away from the woman, she didn’t screech or immediately run to call 911. When Theresa glanced back she still stood there, watching them go.

TWENTY-THREE

A
gain, Theresa drove, James in the passenger seat with the knife in his hands. The medical examiner’s office would be opening now, and Don would have had a few hours to explain the situation to Shephard and for them to decide on a plan. She had no doubt that Don would have called Shephard immediately, despite the warnings James had issued. This was not television. Forensic scientists did not try to deal with four-time killers on their own. It did not reflect any feelings, or lack of same, that Don had for her, of that she felt sure. And she found it oddly comforting to think that Shephard might be out here, looking for her. Or at least monitoring patrol officers who were. Yin and Yang might have the homicide investigation, but surely the sergeant on duty would be coordinating her particular investigation since she had been abducted, not murdered.

Not yet, anyway.

‘Why did you want to know where Wanda was?’ she asked.

‘She would be able to describe the ring – Diana’s ring. She said she saw it just before Diana … was killed.’

‘James,
I
can describe the ring – I mean, in general,’ she added when he turned toward her with apparent excitement. ‘I remember it had a large square blue stone and small white diamonds all around it … they looked like diamonds, anyway, or cubic zirconia.’

‘That’s it. See, the ring I pawned had a round sapphire and a single diamond on either side. Tell the truth, they look like diamonds to you? Around that square stone?’

‘Yes, but I just glanced at it.’

‘A woman your age knows fake from the real thing,’ he stated flatly. ‘Tell me. Was that ring real?’

‘I’m not much into expensive jewelry. Never been able to afford it.’

‘
Would you just answer me
?’ The knife moved toward her side, and once again the car seemed entirely too small.

‘Yes! I think so. It looked real to me. But I could be wrong – seriously,
I don’t know
. I’m not joking about never having been able to afford it.’

‘Did you ask how Diana afforded it?’

‘No. I didn’t ask anything about it, just said it was pretty. She told me the same thing she told you – that she bought it at the mall. Maybe that was just the truth, James.’

‘It’s still gone, ain’t it?’

‘So maybe it doesn’t matter whether it was real or not, only that a thief thought so.’

He appeared to think about that.

‘What about the one you pawned?’ she asked, trying to get him on to a new topic. The time they’d spent together had not warmed him to her, or vice versa. If anything he seemed more sullen, more impatient than ever. The stress and the exhaustion and, if she were lucky, the remorse were catching up. ‘What happened to it? Did your attorney try to get it back?’

‘Yeah, but the asshole at the pawn shop sold it as soon as he saw my picture in the paper. He figured I wouldn’t be coming back for it so he didn’t have to worry about the thirty-day rule. The newspaper article didn’t say anything about the ring so he didn’t think it would be important. By the time my attorney got around to question him – too late.’

‘But didn’t the pawn shop have a picture or description of it?’

‘Just the standard form. It said “sapphire ring with diamonds”. That’s it.’

‘Did your attorney try to trace the new owner?’

‘Some guy who paid cash. The store don’t ask for names or addresses, so she had no way to trace him.’

‘That’s stunningly bad luck.’

‘Tell me about it. That ring is the whole reason the judge pushed a plea bargain on me. He said if it went to trial he’d give me the maximum sentence.’

She stopped at a red light at Union Avenue. ‘James – why
did
you plead?’

A long pause. ‘Some of that stuff, it takes a while to get out of your system.’

That didn’t sound exactly like an answer, but she waited.

‘I couldn’t believe she was gone. I couldn’t believe people thought I did it. And prison sounded better than dying while somebody stuck a needle into my arm. My head was this hurricane of thoughts, and I couldn’t keep any of them straight, for maybe a year. Then all of a sudden I woke up one morning and wondered where my wife got a ring that looked like it cost four months of her salary.’

That still didn’t sound like an answer. Theresa had begun to believe that the reason James couldn’t recall many of the details of that day might be because he didn’t really know. His brain had been out of focus, and now he couldn’t sharpen the images. Like a gas station surveillance video, he couldn’t increase resolution. Look closer, try to blow up the images, and it pixelates into one big blur.

He might not have killed his wife. But he might have.

She no longer knew which seemed more likely.

‘Then she had told me about this being pregnant thing. So after lyin’ around in a cell for months and months, I finally put it together. This other guy, he gave her the ring. She’s having an affair, and it’s somebody who can afford private school for their kids. See?’

‘Yes,’ Theresa said. ‘I’m following.’

‘And you work in a building full of doctor types, who have money.’

‘I see. So you think her boyfriend worked at the medical examiner’s.’

‘Even if the ring is fake and he’s handing her a line about how much money he’s got, even then – Di doesn’t have a lot of spare time. So where did she meet this dude? And when do they have time to—? So I figure, it’s got to be a guy at work. After a few more months of lyin’ around, I start to put in more time in the exercise yard. And I start to picture them, picture this guy who maybe doesn’t want a baby, or maybe has a few of his own at home already with a wife and can’t afford for his piece on the side to start making noise, screwing up everything for him. He’s got to deal with this, right?’

‘I see,’ Theresa said, and she did. But he finished anyway.

‘And that’s who killed her. Someone you work with.’

‘So that’s your end game, here? The real killer. But then why are you spending so much time on this missing ring?’

He leaned over and poked a finger into her right temple, twice. ‘Don’t pretend like you’re not following this! Who would have a reason to take her ring, other than the guy who gave it to her? Once she was dead he had to figure they’d be digging into every aspect of her life. He couldn’t have known the cops would railroad me into a prison cell before her body got cold! No, he had to cover his tracks. He forgot to take it when he killed her, so he had to get it back afterward. At the ME’s office.’

‘So if you find the thief—’

‘Then I find the killer.’

They parked in Calvary Cemetery, under the railroad bridge that bisected the property. The graves, trees and wet grass were deserted except for a plodding maintenance worker they had passed on the way in.

The tunnel was not wide, and the sun broke through the clouds long enough to brighten even its shadow. Theresa started to roll down the window.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I need some air.’ She lowered the glass a little more than halfway, breathing in with a gasp that told her how claustrophobic the vehicle had become.

With the window open she could hear birds chirping and the rumble of a train in the distance. Nothing else. Calvary was the largest Catholic cemetery in the city and one of the largest in the state – 105 acres – with graves dating to 1893. Frank Lausche, mayor of the city during the second world war and elected governor of the state for two non-consecutive periods, had been buried there. A large stone memorial along a treeline somewhere on the grounds commemorated Frank Yankovic, the Polka King. And some day Theresa hoped to have the time and safety – this was not the greatest of neighborhoods – to search for her paternal grandparents.

Provided she didn’t join them shortly. ‘Okay. So you’re guessing that the thief is also the killer. I agree that’s likely, but it’s not proven. Whoever took the ring might have simply seized an opportunity, especially if the stones were real. Tell me again why you’re sure it couldn’t be one of the cops at the scene.’

‘Because I’m related to him.’

‘Oh, yeah. The cousin who’s a cop.’ Theresa didn’t dare cast aspersions on this still-unnamed relative. ‘But surely he left the scene at some point, securing the house, waving in EMS? Another officer or emergency responder could have taken it.’

‘He bagged the hands himself, my cousin.’

‘Oh.’

The tracks above them began to rattle. ‘And no one could have gotten the bags off without breaking the evidence tape, right?’

Something occurred to her, one of those insights that seem so absurdly simple that you can’t believe you didn’t think of it before. ‘No. But – if one wanted to – they could be replaced with new ones. All you’d need is two fresh paper bags, some evidence tape, and a sharpie. And a moment of privacy.’

‘And then they’d, what, forge my cousin’s initials on the seal?’

‘Sure.’ She had never heard of such a thing being done, but it would be easy. The bags were simple paper bags, the size made for a child’s lunch, bound around the wrists with the easily breakable red evidence tape. The investigator would jot their initials and the date across the crushed and crimped paper and tape, conditions which hardly made for good penmanship. No one at the ME’s such as, say, Don, would recognize the handwriting of one of the many officers on the force; the signer himself would be hard-pressed to swear to a scribble on crumpled brown paper. The bags would be stored in evidence and, almost certainly, never looked at again.

The train passed over their heads, a rush of power and noise that surely must cave in upon them, that couldn’t possibly be held up by a small span of hundred-year-old stones – except that, of course, it was.

The hardest part of this scheme would be finding a moment of privacy. There is a lot of activity during a homicide investigation. EMS comes and often hangs around, happy to be out of the station. The press shows up, neighbors get nosy. Cops arrive, then their sergeants and lieutenants and other cops who are in the area and are tired of checking storefronts and supervising kids getting out of school. Family members. A crime scene is not a quiet or undisturbed area.

But the ME’s would be, she thought. Especially when ninety-nine percent of the staff have been sent home for the day.

‘Let’s play a game,’ he said suddenly, once the deafening noise fell off.

‘I don’t know that I’m up for games.’

‘Let’s pretend that you believe me. That I didn’t kill my wife – okay? You believe me?’

This had a worrisome feel to it. But she did wonder about the folic acid, the saltines, the way Diana had seemed to hum with a new energy during the last month or two of her life, when conversely her conversation had dipped to nearly mute. Plus James had a knife and an extra hundred pounds in a confined space, so she said, ‘Yes.’

‘How would you prove it? What can be done, now, ten years later, to prove it wasn’t me?’

She thought. ‘We could do DNA on Diana’s fingernail scrapings. There probably won’t be anything there except her own cells, but it’s worth a try.’

‘Okay. That’s good.’

‘We could try DNA analysis on the jump rope – of course, you used it regularly and the killer only used it once, so your cells might wash out his.’

‘What else?’

‘You didn’t have any pets, did you?’

‘What?’

‘Pets. I found some animal hairs on Diana’s clothing. Not a cat or a dog, I don’t know what it is.’

He almost smiled at this. ‘No. No pets.’

‘It could also have been trim on her own clothing, something in her closet that rubbed off on everything else.’

After a pause he asked, ‘Is that it? That’s all you got?’

Admitting it was didn’t sound like a good idea, so she said nothing.

‘You see why I need this ring? And a confession? That’s the only way anyone is ever going to believe me.’

‘So you’re just going to go around beating people to death until someone tells you what you want to hear?’

‘Until one of them tells me the
truth
! And I ain’t beat you yet, have I?’

‘Because you know I couldn’t have … couldn’t be—’

‘Couldn’t have knocked up my wife, yes. That’s it exactly. That makes you the only one there I can trust.’

She didn’t point out how odd it seemed to talk about trust as he held a knife on her. But his mind then turned to another matter.

‘What about the baby?’ he asked. ‘Why can’t we do DNA on the baby – even if it’s just a couple of cells big, you can still get the guy’s profile, right?’

She needed to step carefully but clearly. ‘James – there
was
no baby. Diana wasn’t pregnant.’

He didn’t seem as willing to accept that as he had before, and he shook his head. ‘She wouldn’t make that mistake. She’d been pregnant once, about four months after we were first married. She – we lost it. It was right after that, you know, that I went back to the crack.’

So he had a good
reason
to be a drug addict. Searching for a distraction, she asked, ‘If you only wanted to ask me about a possible boyfriend, why didn’t you just ask me at Don’s apartment? Why am I here?’

‘’Cause I thought he might be the guy, the baby daddy. And I didn’t expect to find you there, wasn’t thinkin’ that fast. But once you were, I figured you could come in handy.’

Great.

His phone rang, the shrill tone searing her nerves with an electric shock. He answered, said
yeah
,
what
, and
yeah
in quick succession, then put it on speaker and held the phone between them.

‘Theresa?’ Don’s tinny voice came from the flat rectangle.

‘I’m here.’