Old School Bones (8 page)

NOON. Bright and sunny. The dry snow sugaring out of the oaks and maples. Tiny diamonds. She waits in her Saab at the far corner of the freshly plowed parking lot of the public boathouse on Jamaica Pond.

Surely no one will see her here. See them together.

When his jeep rolls up, she feels the bridge of her nose flush. Knows that she is happier to see him than she will tell him. This is the way she used to feel every time she saw her brother Ronnie.

Before his war. Before he came back from Iraq with his hideous confession. Land of Allah. Land of a thousand and one Arabian nights. Land of flaring skies, weeping oil, and sin so dark it should never be named.

I have to tell you something, Awasha. I HAVE to tell you, but you have to promise not to tell another living soul. Promise. By the Great Spirit, the Medicine Circle, Maushop, and …”

“Hey!” He’s knocking on the passenger-side window. Smiling. “Want to walk around the pond?”

She is out of the car, taking both his gloved hands in her deerskin mittens.

He’s an old friend, now, right? Sort of.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“
Cristo.
You look amazing.”

Her coat is knee length, pale white deer hides stitched together, the fur visible at the seams, at the hem, inside the collar. Her boots, reaching above the calves, the same material. Her hat a beaver crown. Long black hair in braids tailing over her shoulders. Lips deep red.

“My mother made these clothes for me. They are stitched like the traditional winter wear for our people, but the style is all her own.”

“Your mother had an eye for it. Beauty. I think she would be embarrassed for me to come to meet her daughter looking so shabby.”

She looks at him. Slightly-too-large black hooded sweatshirt, jeans, black clamming boots. Beneath the hood, his cheeks dark with the shadow of a beard coming.

“A swarthy stranger in our midst!”

“Is that good?”

“I don’t know yet. Are you still my ally?”

She gives him the slightest wink and wiggle. A devilish smile.

He wonders for a moment if Lou Votolatto could be right. That she’s possibly playing him. Maybe so. But well, screw it, he is already breaking the law. A girl’s dead. Others may follow. Unless he hangs with this lady … who sure as hell does not look lonely or desperate today! A lady who could have every man she wants.

She takes his arm. Leads him along a path through the fresh, eighteen-inch snowfall cut by nordic skiers and dog walkers. Into the woods.

“My friend is checking out the can again. For fingerprints, and other stuff.”

“I could be in a whole lot of trouble if someone finds out about what’s in that can and where we found it, couldn’t I?”

“We both could.”

“What about the girls? Do they know about the GHB?”

“I haven’t told them. Should I? Maybe they have a right to know.”

“Why put them outside the law, too?”

The trail through the snowy woods narrows. Now she takes the lead.

“You mean we are actually … already … technically … a conspiracy?!”

“Sweet, huh?”

“We could go to jail?”

“Oh yeah.”

“And somebody might actually try to pin a murder on me.” She sighs. Resignation.

“Unless we find some prints on that can other than yours and mine and Lou’s.”

“So what do we do?”

“You said the girls told you Kevin Singleton supplied them with drugs.”

“Pot and ecstasy. He sold them some.”

“And we know from Gracie that he and Liberty were having some kind of spat.”

“Right.”

“Did he have access to chemistry equipment at the school? I mean could he have cooked up that batch of X for the girls?”

“His father is the chair of the science division, one of the faculty old-guard. He has keys to the labs, chemicals.”

“You know anything about GHB?”

She says just what she has learned in drug seminars. It’s a lot stronger than other popular date-rape drugs. Pretty easy to make if you know a little chemistry.

“Some addicts like to use it to add zip to their crystal meth and heroin. You can take it with booze too.”

Her stomach feels on fire. She stops so fast to ride out the pain that he crashes into her from behind. Grabs her in a bear hug to keep from falling.

“Hey!”

With his arms around her, the burning beneath the waistband of her wool skirt begins to melt away.

“We definitely need to talk to Kevin Singleton, don’t we?” she says at last.

He releases her. “Sooner rather than later, Awasha.”

“This isn’t going to be easy.”

“Whatever it takes … at this point.”

She’s silent for a minute, just watches a pair of cardinals chasing each other among the branches overhead. Thinking. “You want to pretend you’re a cop, Michael?”

“Not really.”

“I thought you said you were taking me to see Liberty’s mother, Dr. P!”

Kevin Singleton stands just inside the threshold to a guest room in the Tolchester Arms, a boutique hotel serving the school’s alumni and guests from a little nob of a hill on the western edge of the T-C campus. He has an uneasy look on his face, the corners of his mouth turned down in a frown as he looks around for some sign of a black woman.

Awasha closes the door quietly behind her.

“Hi, Kevin. Have a seat.” Michael motions to one of the vacant chairs next to his at the little breakfast table by the plate glass window.

He is doing his best to look like one of the plain clothes detectives on TV. Black trench coat, his father’s gray gabardine blazer, white collar shirt open at the neck. Blue tie, tightly knotted but pulled down a few inches, manila file of papers in front of him. The wooden grip of his gas pellet pistol peeping out from under his left arm, held in place by a shoulder holster contrived from a bungee cord.

“Where’s Mrs. Baker?”

“She had another commitment.” Awasha nods toward Michael. “The special agent’s here from homicide.”

His chest nearly buckles from the boldness and inaccuracy of her bluff. Hopes this kid doesn’t know that neither the local nor state police have any officers called special agents working their murder detail.

The boy glares at him with the righteous indignation of someone who has fallen for a bait-and-switch scam.

Kevin is a tall kid. At least 6’2”. Unkempt curly brown hair. Brilliant blue eyes, very anglo facial features—the fine nose, thin lips, cleft chin. No facial hair at all. Clear skin. His style mostly preppie. Layers. An over-sized green zip-up fleece over a plaid flannel shirt, red waffle-weave undershirt, ski gloves. Jeans just a touch too baggy and low on the ass. Hiking boots.

“I don’t understand. What’s this about? You said Lib’s mom wanted to talk to me.”

“Please sit, Kevin. We really need your help.” Her voice sounds oddly deferential.

The boy doesn’t move. Seems to be considering his next move. “Did you say homicide? You think someone killed Lib?”

“We need to talk.” Michael holds the boy in his gaze, tries not to blink.

“What? You lure me to this room with some bogus story about how it would mean a lot to Lib’s mom just to talk for a while? And then you do this: a cop … No. Hell no, Dr. Patterson. You deceived me. I’m not going to talk to you or this man. But I am going to report you to the headmaster for harassment.”

“Kevin. Look, I’m sorry, but—”

“You can’t treat people like this. Jesus Christ, my friend just died!”

“Kevin—”

“No! Absolutely not! I’m out of here.”

The boy turns for the door, but Awasha stands in his way.

Michael feels the hair rising on the back of his neck, takes a deep breath, tries to assume the professional cool Lou Votolatto projects in an interview.

He clears his throat so that his voice will sound low, a confident whisper when he speaks.

Then he starts to lie. Hates it. But the words keep bubbling forth. Because a girl is gone in the prime of her life, because her friends feel sick and threatened. Because this kid’s arrogance is starting to piss him off.

“Go ahead, Kevin. Leave. But if you do, leave with the knowledge that you’ve blown your chance to be on the side of the good guys here.”

“What?”

“We’re pretty sure your girlfriend did not kill herself. And we think you know it too.”

“Wait, are you saying I—”

“I’m saying you can talk to Dr. Patterson and me, now, off the record … tell us what you know. Or some folks in blue will be back here tomorrow to haul you out of class in cuffs under suspicion of murder.”

“Are you threatening me? Screw you, mister. You have no reason to think I had anything to do with—”

“We have it on good authority that she had a fight with you the night before she died.”

“What?”

“We also know about the pot and ecstasy you’ve been selling. Have you been stealing your father’s keys to the chem cab and mixing up some recreational flavors to earn a little spending money?”

“No.”

“Then you better talk to us because you never know what will turn up if we get the narcotics boys to search your room. Your house.”

“They can’t do that.”

He can see that this kid is not going to fold unless he calls his bluff with a bluff of his own.

“They can and they will.” He pulls a phone from the pocket of his trench coat. “What is it Kevin? You want to talk, off the record? Or do I hit speed dial to send the narco squad over to 1122 Union Ave. right now? Which?”

The boy wrings the loose gloves in his hands. The Adam’s apple begins to pulse in his throat, his ears suddenly red.

“Can I think about this for a second?”

“Take all the time you need,” she says.

“Here.” Michael stands up, walks to the mini-bar in the room, fetches a bottle of Poland Springs, offers it to the boy. “Sit down. Have some water.”

HAPPY hour. They are sitting at the bar, drinking black coffee, in the Dolphin Restaurant on Main St. in Barnstable village, the Cape.

The detective, looking shaggy and rumpled this afternoon, eyes him between sips.

“Jesus H. Christ, you were impersonating a police officer? Are you crazy?”

He shrugs, dips a wheat roll in a large bowl of clam chowder, stirs. Sops up the broth. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I must have been out of my mind to have ever, I mean EVER, gotten involved in this. When this caper turns sour—and the way this is going, it most fucking assuredly will—I’ll be kissing my pension goodbye and begging for a job as a night watchman at the power plant over in Sandwich. You know that?”

“Well you could always come fishing on the
Rosa Lee …”
He smiles, teasing the cop a little.
What the hell else can you do?

“That’s supposed to be funny, but I lose my day job over this and I’m going to be your worst nightmare.”

“Come on, Lou. You’re my new best friend.” He doesn’t know why he’s in such a fuck-all mood. Maybe way too much coffee. Or denial bred from fear. Or the memory of the way her body molded to his for a few seconds during that accidental hug at Jamaica Pond. Or …

“Screw you, Rambo. Stupid Portagee squid peeler.”

“Hey, is that any way to talk to a guy who has just brought you a perfect set of prints from perhaps the last person to see Liberty Baker alive?”

Votolatto looks at the half-empty Poland Springs water bottle in the Ziploc bag on the bar. “At least you did one thing right.”

“Yeah, well maybe. I guess we’ll see if you can match Kevin’s prints with the ones on the Red Bull. But … shit … I don’t know, Lou.”

“Oh Jesus, here we go. Now, NOW, that you’ve got us into this cesspool up to our necks, you tell me you’re starting to lose your nerve?”

“Not my nerve. It’s too late for that. I’m just not sure Kevin Singleton is our boy.”

“You mean you think you got bum information about his fight with his girl? He didn’t really sell drugs to her friends?”

“No. All that stuff seems solid. And maybe he was lying about what happened the last time he saw Liberty. But his story kind of held together for me. At least on a gut level. And then there was that racist note. I can’t see him writing it.”

“Could be the note has nothing to do with the crime. Ever think of that? Just a red herring.”

He says he remembers fights with his girlfriend in high school. And with Filipa. A whole storm of emotions, anger to denial. The urge for revenge followed by self-loathing. He heard all of that in Kevin’s voice yesterday at the hotel.

“That’s when people kill. Their emotions fry. They just lash out. But slipping someone a GHB cocktail, then slitting her wrists with such finesse that even an experienced M.E. buys the suicide, seems like a pretty tough act for a teenager whose heart is in meltdown.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Maybe we have to chase down some of these rumors about a secret society.”

“Don’t say that word again. Or I walk right out of here. You won’t see me again, hear?”

“What word?”

“WE. You want to try playing hero, have at it. I’m going to watch from the bleachers.”

“But you’ll see about the prints?”

“Think about this. Everybody has secrets. Especially teenage boys who pedal drugs, and guys with dead girlfriends. What do you think this kid Kevin is hiding? Why? And … how long do you think it will be before he tells someone that you and Pocahontas tried to roast him at the stake?”

“MISS Liu, you’re next!” Malcolm Sufridge holds the immense paneled door to his office open to the great hall of the gothic administration building, sweeps Tory out with a shoveling motion of his hand.

Her face is red, blotchy, her blond hair looking stringy, lifeless. Eyes drop to the floor when she sees Gracie. “Sorry,” she mumbles, then scurries away.

Sufridge points to an empire chair next to his desk. “Please take a seat.”

She settles hard into the chair, takes a deep breath, tries to gather strength for what will surely come. Her eyes, flat, unreadable, watch his black academic gown flow behind him as he scoots across the room to face her over the corner of his huge desk. The judge and the accused.

“I think you have something that belongs to me.”

“Excuse me?”

She’s stalling. The moment she got the email requesting her presence in the headmaster’s office after classes, she guessed this was all about Liberty’s journal. No surprise. The mystery is why does he want it back? How badly does he want it? What will he do to get it? What does he know about Liberty’s murder?

Maybe she can find out, if she plays this scene right. That’s the only way to think of it. Just another play, another role. The drama tank all over again. Improv. Sometimes she’s pretty good at it. And if she nails this bit, maybe she can help Michael find the killer. Maybe he’ll see her more clearly, see Ninja Girl … before the killer tries to get her too.

“Please don’t be coy with me, young lady.”

“Dr. Sufridge, I don’t know—”

“Of course you do. The last time you visited this office there was an important notebook on my desk. It disappeared.”

She stares at her hands folded in her lap. Gone are her defiant Red Army clothes, nose stud. Now she’s all about subtle make-up, lip gloss, eyeliner. A camel cashmere coat, flowing ruby scarf, navy turtleneck sweater, brown suede skirt, fashion boots. She has wallowed in films like
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
Hopes she knows what it takes to play the role of the seemingly submissive female who can disarm even a man of immense power.

Her head lowers slightly, her palms press together, the traditional Chinese sign of obedience. She purses her lips ever so slightly, then raises her eyes to meet his. Her look, the studied pose of a concubine in the royal court.

He looks away, clears his throat, fondles his fountain pen.

“Do not play games with me, young miss.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Sufridge. I don’t understand.” She wonders what Tory told this bastard. What he knows. But really, who gives a flying fuck. She has her role to play. Her mask.

“I want that notebook.”

“What does it look like?”

She gives him her most demure smile, the hidden dragon.

He stands up. Runs his fingers through the waves of gray hair at his temples. His jaw starting to grind, eyes glaring down at her.

“Stop this!”

“But, Dr. Sufridge, I just …” She crosses, uncrosses, recrosses her bare legs for his benefit.

Looming over her, he cannot help but look.

“My god, Grace! You … Do you wish to destroy this school? Do you want to remain a student here? Do you still hope to go to an Ivy League college? Pursue a career in theatre and art?”

Here comes the threat,
she thinks. The I-could-kick-you-out speech. It’s time to lie, at least about the college and career stuff.

“I’m not so sure anymore. Maybe it would be better if I went home. Should we call my parents?”

She looks him straight in the eye, just lets him catch a glimpse of her tiger.

He turns away, his academic gown rustling, fanning open. A blurry shadow in the middle of the room. Some raw noise escapes his mouth. Maybe a clearing of the throat, maybe a growl.

“So that’s how things stand? Well …” His voice strained, frazzled, desperate to find any means to take back the advantage.

She stares at his back as he stands before a huge gothic window facing west. A silhouette. Shuddering with anger.

He wheels around to face her. Bars of red rising on his neck.

“Listen to me, my defiant young friend. If you care about your beloved Dr. Patterson, you will find that notebook and give it to me.”

“What? Doc P?”

“This is not just about protecting the school. Perhaps that does not matter to you. This is about protecting Dr. Patterson. If I do not get that notebook back, her life is ruined. Do you hear me, Grace? Utterly ruined!”

“Dr. Patterson?”

She had someone in her bed with her. She thinks I don’t know about her boyfriends …

His face is suddenly ashen. As if he has lost his grip on something.

“I don’t understand,” she says.

But maybe I will,
she thinks.
Someday.

Because she has seen it. This lost thing. Just for a second. A shadow escaping his hands. A suspicion. Or a secret. It floated out the window. Rose into the pale blue sky of this winter afternoon, disappeared. Leaving nothing but the taste of dried blood in her heart … a vague sense of victory. And a clear view of how to end this scene. With one more lie from Ninja Girl. A lie to buy herself time to figure things out, to tell Michael.

“I REALLY don’t understand, Dr. Sufridge.”

“You heard me. This is all in your hands now. I have nothing more to say. Stop trying to make a fool out of me and give me Liberty Baker’s journal!”

“Oh! That’s what you are looking for? I’m so sorry Dr. Sufridge. It’s right here. I guess I accidentally …”

She opens her green backpack, produces the red, cloth-bound notebook. Denzel Washington, Civil War soldier, staring solemnly from the cover.

“Smart girl.”

Ninja Girl smiles, pushes the journal toward the center of the headmaster’s desk. The photocopied version folded safely in the back of her American history text.