Dead Soon Enough: A Juniper Song Mystery (28 page)

I shook my head. “I’m good. Where’s What’s-his-face, your quiet partner man? Are you interviewing me solo?”

“Redding’s around. We decided we’d keep this friendly. I told him I knew you.”

“Sure, friendly.” I smiled. “Meanwhile you’re trying to assess whether I might have emptied three shots into the back of someone’s head.”

“Hey, hey, hey. No need to get smart,” she said, waving her hands as if to disperse a fart. “But we are going to have to talk about Kizil.”

I was nervous, and she could tell. I didn’t want to talk about my visit to that apartment. I didn’t want to be one of the last people to have seen him alive. I didn’t want to implicate a scary man I didn’t even know by name.

“When did you last see him? Tell me the exact time.”

I steeled myself and answered. “It must’ve been about nine
P.M.
Wednesday.”

She asked me about Kizil’s movements that day, and I told her about his trip to the strip club.

“Was he meeting anyone?”

I hesitated. “I can only be vague,” I said.

She scowled. “This isn’t PI playtime, J.S. It’s serious.”

“I know. I mean I only know enough to be vague. But I’m pretty sure I’ve met the person who did this.”

I told her about my encounters with the man who’d claimed Kizil as his burden.

“I know nothing about him,” I said. “Not a name, not an occupation. I can’t even say he lives in L.A. My guess is he’s a Turkish national, and if so, he’s probably back home, out of reach by now.”

“You don’t know nothing. You have a theory. Let’s hear it.”

“Don’t laugh at me,” I said. “I think he’s Turkish intelligence. JITEM.”

I saw her stop herself from laughing. “What? Explain.”

I told her about EARTH and the Kahraman connection, about the speckled history of Turkey and their Gendarmerie.

“Okay, hold on,” she said. “Assuming any of this is true, why would Turkish intelligence kill Kizil if they hired him in the first place?”

“Because when they picked him, they didn’t figure him for a pervert. They didn’t count on him getting obsessed with a blogger, then stalking and killing her.”

“You don’t know that he killed Nora.”

“No, I don’t. But it looks that way, doesn’t it? It must look that way to the people he works for, and they can’t afford to have their PR tank even further.”

“How do you even know he was stalking her? You said you knew he had her address, but we didn’t find anything.”

“I had access to his computer. He opened the door for me, and he used the restroom.”

Individually, all these statements were true. Somehow, knowing this made it easier to lie. “Nora’s Web site and home address autocompleted in his web browser.”

She shifted in a way that brought her whole figure into sharper focus. “You’re sure about that.”

“I didn’t hallucinate. Why?”

“Because we pulled his laptop. The browser history was wiped. I checked personally.”

“Of course,” I said, thinking this over. “Of course it was. This guy, Kizil’s handler—he must’ve wiped it. They knew what I was sniffing around about, and they must’ve come to the same conclusion I did. But they didn’t kill Kizil to solve a murder for us. They killed him so they could cover one up.”

“You’re sounding pretty paranoid with your ‘theys’ and your government conspiracies.”

“These theories are all I can manage now,” I groaned. “Kizil died without admitting anything. He was my best lead.”

She stood up and patted me on the back. To my relief, the interrogation was over, at least for now. “It happens,” she said. “Sometimes all the answers get buried with the dead.”

*   *   *

I called a meeting when I got home. Van was out, so Rubina, Lusig, and I sat in the kitchen like we had on my first day in the house. It felt like a long time had passed since then.

I told them about my visit to the station, along with everything I knew about Kizil’s murder. They listened, rapt and gaping.

“Shit,” said Lusig, when I was done. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah, that’s about what I said.”

The cousins sat in a mournful silence, processing the news of death. I remembered that most people were pretty unacquainted with the business of murder and wondered if I was callous—Kizil’s death had surprised me, but I didn’t think the world would miss him on balance.

Lusig’s face was white when she spoke again. “And if
he’s
dead,” she whispered, “what does that mean for Nora?”

I’d been running the same question through my head since I heard what happened to Kizil. Murder had been lurking at the edges of the picture this whole time, but now it revealed its true position, front and center. Even if Kizil hadn’t killed her, the possibility that she was dead rather than missing seemed more compelling now that there was another body.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Look, we all know nothing good happened to Nora, right?”

“We don’t know,” Rubina said, with a tone of rebuke.

“We can hope for the best, but the fact is she’s been missing a long time. We all know she could be dead. If she’s being held somewhere against her will, that is literally one of the best outcomes we can hope for. No one believes that she just ran away. We would be taking different tactics if we thought that were really possible.”

Lusig started crying silently, holding her face in her hands. Rubina rubbed her back and whispered in her ear.

“I’m going to lay out what I think is going on here, and then we’ll have to decide how to move forward,” I said.

Rubina nodded over Lusig’s shoulder.

“Here’s how I see it: Kizil was murdered by the people behind EARTH. They killed him because they knew about his obsession with Nora, and came to the conclusion I’ve been trying to verify—that he was responsible for Nora’s disappearance.”

Lusig sniffled. “You mean that he murdered her.”

I nodded. “It would’ve been bad news for them to have Kizil arrested, for him to be conclusively tied to her death. It would’ve made the anti-genocide cause look even more ridiculous, and if I’m right and the Turkish government is running EARTH, it might have been an international scandal.”

“I don’t see that he’s been exonerated by his own murder,” said Rubina, stroking Lusig’s back.

“He’s not exonerated, but he’ll never be charged, and he’ll certainly never talk. If there had been evidence that he killed her, it would’ve been found by now. We know that he stalked her, but that isn’t conclusive. The question is—is it good enough for the two of you?”

Lusig looked up with an expression of panic. “You mean, this is it?”

“I’m asking you guys,” I said. “Because if Kizil killed her, we may never know with one-hundred-percent certainty. And we can look for alternate theories, but obviously, if he did kill her, that’s the only answer out there. We’ll never find anything else.”

“But we have to know,” she said. “We can’t give up. There isn’t even a body. How can we say we’ve done what we can if we don’t even know if she’s dead or alive?”

I felt her protests run through me like the gritting of my own teeth. Because after all this, where was Nora? And if the answer was not in this world, then where was the body? I could feel the madness around this uncertainty. The tension entered our speech, our thoughts, and every moment we hoped and grieved, hoped and grieved, picking up her traces and wondering what they were meant to be—just things, the ordinary markings of a woman on the world, or remainders to be cherished, revered, enshrined. If her body surfaced, it would destroy the people who loved her, and yet it must bring with it a measure of relief, from the mental agony of toggling between gears, modes of thought, modes of living. I found it exhausting, and I’d never met the girl—here were all these people who loved her.

“We may never know,” Rubina said gently. “We may have to accept that possibility.”

“No,” said Lusig. “
We
don’t have to do anything. There is no
we
here.
I
am the only one here who cares about her, and
I
won’t give up, even if you do.”

“There’s something else I have to mention.” I looked at Lusig, then lowered my eyes in apology.

“No,” she said. “No, don’t.”

“I have to,” I said. I could feel the sharpness of Rubina’s attention as sure as an ant feels light through a magnifying glass.

“Please,” Lusig mouthed, her face twisting into a look of agony.

I averted my eyes from her and addressed Rubina. “I have to tell you that looking for Nora could be dangerous. And I mean more so than we thought.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“The man responsible for Kizil’s murder came to warn me off.” When she didn’t jump out of her seat, I added, “He came here.”

“Here? To this house?”

I nodded.

She scooted her chair away from Lusig. “And you were hoping to hide this from me?”

Hot tears spilled out of Lusig’s eyes.

“No. This is too much,” said Rubina. “This is over, do you understand? I want Nora found, but this child comes first.”

Lusig moaned. “No, no. It can’t be over. I won’t let it be over.”

Rubina rose, her whole body alive with fury. She started shouting. “If you want to martyr yourself, go right ahead. But not until you can leave my child out of it!” Her words resolved into a sudden loaded silence that filled the whole room, with Lusig at its center, no longer speaking or crying, her face pained and tense. Then, as we watched, she doubled over, breathing hard.

Rubina knelt in front of her and grabbed her face. “What’s wrong?” she shouted.

I got up and put a hand on Lusig’s back. It came away wet with sweat.

She grabbed at Rubina’s shoulders and told her, wheezing with effort: “He’s coming.”

Rubina shook her head. “No. It’s impossible. This would be three weeks early. You’re bluffing. You’re trying to punish me.”

“Get me to the hospital,” Lusig said. “He’s
here
.”

*   *   *

As it turned out, Lusig was not bluffing. Rubina’s fear had come true—Lusig’s stress had impacted her pregnancy, causing her water to break during her thirty-fifth week.

And like that, the concerns of death gave way to the urgent, gushing demands of life. Rubina and I loaded Lusig into my backseat, and I drove us to Kaiser Permanente, Lusig roaring at every stoplight.

Alex Gasparian was born seventeen hours later, on the morning of March 22, healthy and weighing six pounds and one ounce. Lusig stayed in the hospital for two days, and though Rubina told me I was welcome to stay as long as I needed, I moved quietly out of the Gasparian house.

Instead of subletting the apartment, Lori had offered it up for short-term rentals, collecting hotel rates without locking in tenants for the entire month. I was grateful; there were two sets of visitors lined up for the next week, but I wouldn’t be stranded for longer than that. Rob and I went on a date that didn’t involve genocide denial, as a result of which we got to know each other better. He offered to let me crash until I could move back into my place, and I split my time between him and Lori. I didn’t like the feeling of floating between homes, but this, at least, felt like a shift back toward my own life.

Thirteen

When I walked into the office that Monday, Chaz and Arturo both peeked out of their offices, expecting to see a prospective client.

Chaz gave me a sympathetic smirk. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “They killed each other.”

I shook my head.

“You got fired,” guessed Arturo.

“Neither. She had the baby early,” I said, before the guesses could get more insulting. “If you guys have time, I’ll update you. It’s a pretty long story.”

We gathered in Chaz’s office and I told them the whole thing, top to bottom.

“I haven’t heard shit from Lusig since she had the baby,” I said. “And as far as Rubina’s concerned, my job is done.”

Arturo got up from his chair and patted me on the back. “You did good. It was a tough job,” he said. “I’ll leave the counseling to Chaz.”

He closed the door on his way out.

“I don’t know,” I said, grateful to Arturo. “It doesn’t feel right.”

Chaz chuckled. “Of course it doesn’t. Kizil didn’t record a confession for you before he died.”

“I’m not at all positive that’s even the right story,” I said. “I feel like I did all this work, figured all this shit out, and for what? An educated guess?”

“Some cases aren’t solvable,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you didn’t do the best you could.”

“Lusig thinks I failed her.”

“Then let her see if she can do any better. She’s got her body back.”

“I don’t know, Chaz. I feel terrible.”

He sighed. “If you can’t handle uncertainty, you’re in the wrong business, I can tell you that.”

*   *   *

I landed an easy case that afternoon, and by Friday, I moved back into my apartment in Echo Park, feeling the old rhythms, when I got a call from Lusig.

“What’re you doing tonight?” she asked by way of greeting.

“I’m supposed to watch a movie with Rob. How have you been?”

“Cancel,” she said, ignoring my question. “Let’s go out tonight. I want to get wasted.” She paused, then added, “You owe me that much.”

We arranged to meet at my place at ten and pre-game before cabbing to a club downtown. Lusig showed up wearing a blousy black dress that cut off mid-thigh and a black leather jacket on top.

“You look good,” I said.

“I know. This is the best I’ve looked in, like, a year. What’re you wearing?”

“I don’t know. Want to help?”

I gave her free rein to rummage through my drawers and brought two beers from the kitchen. She took a thirsty sip, and smacked her lips with an appreciative sound.

“Take it easy,” I said. “You’re probably a lightweight now. Did you eat a good dinner?”

“I’ve been eating nothing but salami and sushi since I got out.” She spoke of pregnancy like ex-cons spoke of prison. “Cheers.”

“I thought you were pissed at me,” I said clinking my bottle against hers. “I was glad to hear from you.”

“I was pissed. But I also kind of missed you.” She blushed and took a swig of beer to cover it.