Flame Out (21 page)

“Interesting,” Hale said. “Ashley gave up Dan's calendar without a warrant, and he most certainly was not in Las Vegas. I don't believe
for a second that Jake went to New Mexico and kidnapped Luisa, but I now have little doubt that Brian did. And if I had to bet, I'd say he did it for dear old dad. So he's at the center of the Vera murder and close to the center of the Luisa kidnapping.”

“And don't forget his old girlfriend Oksana,” I said. “We don't know she's dead, but we can't confirm she's alive either.”

“For the simple reason that we aren't working with decades-old evidence, Luisa's kidnapping seems the easiest to prove,” he said. “We should try to get that one locked down.”

“Did you get the phone records so we can confirm Brian and Jake's whereabouts that week?”

“Put in a request to the Department of Justice,” he said. “All that's left to do is wait for them to say no.”

He was right. The chances were very slim that they'd see justifiable cause. We had to come up with more proof, but I wasn't sure what. I suggested we take a break and get lunch and hope inspiration struck.

We were half a block away from Maria's diner when we saw Bernie weaving up the sidewalk from the other direction, bumping into a
NO PARKING
sign before righting himself. Arresting him for public intoxication would be a PR nightmare. But no, he wasn't walking off a drunk. He was staring straight up, surveying the buildings, smiling. I couldn't figure out what was making him so happy—half the stores were boarded over, and I'd hardly call the check-cashing place a tourist destination. We were right in front of him before he saw us.

“Officer Lyons,” Bernie said, “and . . .”

“Special Agent Bascom.” Hale put out his hand and the two men shook.

“Recovered from yesterday?” I asked.

“What's to recover from? It's the best day of my life.” He reached out, running his fingers over the letters on a plaque identifying the building as the original site of the Simmons Axe Manufacturer. It had closed in the twenties; a dry grocer, an electronics store, and
most recently an optometrist had all opened and gone bankrupt in the century since the axe company closed.

Bernie pulled his hand away from the wall. “Had a tough time talking my family into giving me a few minutes alone. Deirdre thinks if I'm unsupervised the press or the police will grab me off the streets.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “You're not here for that, are you?”

“Just lunch, Bernie.”

“Lunch for me, too. I've been fantasizing about Maria's banana pancakes for thirty years, and I'm going to get some now, breakfast hours be damned.”

He hesitated, and I assured him we wouldn't question him during lunch. He relaxed but still hesitated before going inside, and I was thinking Hale and I would need to find another lunch spot. I was ready to talk Hale into pizza when the door opened and someone exited. Without touching the door, Bernie ducked in, and I remembered the prison: Bernie hadn't been allowed to open a door for himself in thirty years.

Like an Old West saloon, the diner got quiet as we entered. Bernie went to the lunch counter, and Hale and I grabbed a booth in the corner. People's eyes darted between us and Bernie, trying to figure out if this was some sort of last meal before we arrested him again. I ordered grilled cheese and tomato and Hale had a tuna melt, and like the rest of the people in the diner, listened as Bernie had a conversation with Janelle DuMurier, taking her lunch break before returning to driving her bus route.

“So what have you been up to?” Bernie asked Janelle.

Janelle struggled to answer. “Since . . . 1983?”

Bernie laughed. “Yeah, well. You know what I've been up to. You haven't changed a bit. You look great!”

Janelle considered her bus driver's uniform. The clothes were neat and pressed, but they wouldn't flatter anyone.

“You've been in prison for a long time, haven't you?” she said.

Bernie laughed again. “Sorry, my small talk's rusty. But you do look great.” He carefully placed his knife and fork to his left, grabbing some napkins to rest the cutlery on. “If you tell me about yourself, I promise to shut up.”

The rest of our meal was spent listening to a free man absolutely delighted to be eating his banana pancakes and talking to a bus driver about her biannual trips to Civil War battlefields. Not a bad way to spend a lunch hour.

A
S EXPECTED, OUR REQUEST FOR A WARRANT FOR THE PHONE
records was denied.

“It was a long shot,” I said. “It was all circumstantial.”

Hale continued frowning down at his phone, which had delivered the bad news about the warrant.

“Something up?” I asked.

“Nothing related to this case. I could tell you about it if—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Why don't we assume every conversation will include some element of you begging me to rejoin the FBI, and me saying no, and we can save each other the trouble.”

Hale went to take care of business and I decided to visit Dave, more as a welfare check than to move the case forward. His cell phone went right to voicemail, and he didn't answer the door. I banged on the door again, louder, but there was still no response. It was four p.m., and Dave's car was in the driveway. If he didn't answer the door in thirty seconds I was going to let myself in. Luckily for him, I knew the location of his spare key and wouldn't have to smash a window.

I followed the path around to the back, past a pile of two-by-fours under a blue tarp, treated and waiting for Dave to build a pergola.
When Dave's leave was extended, he made plans to do some home improvement, but those plans were long forgotten. Last year Dave had grown enough squash to keep the department in zucchini bread until Armageddon, but right now his yard was a patchy mess, barren except for a pink rose bush that Dave swore he was going to pull up by its roots one of these days.

Dave kept his spare key hidden in his tool shed. I found it behind some rose fertilizer—Ha! I knew he was trying to keep it alive!—and let myself in. The kitchen was no longer a public-health disaster. While the recycling was spilling over with beer bottles, dishes had been washed and the floor was swept. I wound my way toward the dining room, dim in the afternoon light with all the shades drawn. I felt my way along the wall and flipped on the light.

And then wished I hadn't.

Dave always claimed he was a visual learner, and for any case that wasn't easily solved he would often take over one of the interview rooms in the station, creating a timeline with tape marking relationships, actions, and evidence. I had appreciated it when we worked a murder together earlier this year, the crisscrossing tape marking the intersection of victims and suspects and revealing snarled relationships and gaps in people's alibis.

Here, Vera topped the evidence tree, the picture of her in the green dress, smoking and hollowed out, the point from which everything else flowed. The lines of tape shot down in four threads, with pictures of the factory, Dave's childhood home, Jake's bar, and Bernie's house posted midway on the wall. From there the four lines snaked together and broke apart, crisscrossing awkwardly, with visible gaps where the tape had been ripped off the wall and repatched, the layers creating a thick broken line that converged on one suspect: Bernie.

Below Bernie were different pictures of Vera, dead and decaying: curled in the barrel; small and shriveled on an autopsy table; a close-up of her mouth, decomposed skin exposing a row of perfect
teeth; and skull fragments lined up on white background, clumps of black hair clinging to the bone. Autopsy photos.

I furiously ripped the autopsy pictures off the wall, tearing them in the process, but I didn't care. Dave shouldn't have these, Dave should never have
seen
these, and when I found out who had given them to him, I would do anything within my power to have them fired.

I balled the pictures up and continued to the living room where I found Dave on the couch, passed out in sweats and an old Yankee shirt. The TV was on mute, light bouncing off his skin, the screen showing Paul Newman eating fifty eggs.

“Dave!” I yelled. He sat up suddenly, squinting despite the low light.

“Lyons. Hey.” He rubbed his head, his curls flat and dirty, heavy with oil, and smiled up at me. “Whatcha got there?”

“What does it look like?” I wanted to throw them at him but was afraid he would unwrap the pictures, flatten them, and hang them back up. “Where did you get these?”

Dave pushed himself up into a standing position, faltering briefly before he was steady on his feet.

“I have my ways.” He waggled his eyebrows. “You'd be surprised how few people can resist my charms.”

“This isn't charming, Dave. Did my dad see these?”

“No. I took them down when I was expecting visitors. Today . . . I was expecting to be alone.”

“And how long have you had them?”

“Almost two weeks. You'd know if you ever visited.”

“How can you say that?!” I was about to list all the things I had been doing to find his mother's killer when I really looked at him: slumped sideways on the couch, empty cereal dishes and beer bottles clustered on the side table, blocked off on every side by newspaper articles about his mother's death and the release of the man Dave believed had killed her.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “You are absolutely right.” I had been trying to be the best friend I could to Dave by finding his mother's killer, but Dave needed more. I would start by getting him away from that ghoulish mural. “How about you get cleaned up and we go out and get some dinner. Will you slip and smash your head in the shower?”

“No more than it's already broken,” he said. “And no need to eat out. Make whatever there's a pan of in the fridge. Annie's been dropping off a casserole every other day. She throws out the old food, so we can avoid food poisoning, no problem.”

“Good to hear,” I said. I wondered if Annie was the source of the gruesome photos. Had Dave put on a sob story, manipulated her into bringing over copies? Annie seemed like the opposite of a soft touch, but Dave had a refrigerator full of food proving otherwise.

I found a lasagna on the second shelf of his refrigerator, a post-it note taped on all four sides to the aluminum foil: “To heat up, bake in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes, or, if you insist, in a microwave for 3. Take post-it off before you put it in the oven. Eat with a salad.” I pulled out the tub of spring mix I found next to the lasagna. “Dressing is optional.” And then underlined. “Do this instead of drink.”

I cranked the oven up and put the lasagna in. Upstairs I could hear the shower running for a long time. I worried if he had slipped and fallen, then the pipes went quiet and I heard him pad to the bedroom.

I went around the house collecting empty beer bottles. Dave's trash and recycling pickup was the next morning, so I dumped all of them in a barrel and dragged them and the trash out to the curb. When I returned, he was at the kitchen table, freshly shaven and with a glass of water in hand. I applauded his beverage choice.

“I read Annie's note and figured I'd try to follow her instructions,” he said. “I owe her big time.”

I tried to keep things light, but I needed to know where he'd gotten those photos. “How much do you owe her for supplying you with the autopsy photos?”

“She didn't supply me with photos from the investigation. I helped myself.” He took three huge gulps of water. “Plus, Lucas wanted to see the pictures.”

“You showed Lucas?!” I was back to being furious. “Dave, that could destroy the investigation.”

“I had to. Lucas was ready to jump Bernie outside the courthouse, demanding answers. I had to throw him a bone.”

A bell pinged, announcing that the lasagna was ready. It was burnt around the edges, but was edible. I served two plates while Dave served himself a vodka tonic.

“Don't let Annie find out about that drink.”

He pointed at his meal. “There's a dinner plate
right here
.”

“I think she was encouraging you to eat instead of drink.”

Dave shrugged. “Life's about compromise.”

He dug in, but the cheese was too hot and he ended up burning his tongue. He blew on it twice and took a gulp of his drink.

“I'm sorry about the photos, June,” he said.

I put down my own fork. “I know. And I know why you did it—any feeling person would. That said, I'm going to have someone cut off your access to the system.”

“But—”

“This is not negotiable. I'm doing it to keep you safe.”

The two of us ate in silence for a while. If he had his way, we'd talk exclusively about the case. Me, I wanted to know how he was. I asked.

He finished chewing his food, swallowing. “To be honest, I have no idea. I feel like Aunt Natalya and I are constantly on alert, waiting for Lucas to blow.” A reasonable fear from what I'd seen this afternoon. He put down his knife and fork. “In a way, it's a lot like the way my dad was with my mom.”

“What do you mean?”

“My father, in his whole life with my mother, he never had a moment's peace. She didn't like him, and he certainly wasn't loved.
Mom was always telling him about how his love was a burden, and if she hadn't been foolish enough to get knocked up with Lucas, they would have never been married.”

“Your father told you that?”

“Oh, no. Never. But my mother had these conversations loud enough that the whole house could hear them—loud enough that everyone on the Island knew what she said.” Dave took a drink. “So I heard how much of a loser my dad was, and Lucas got to hear, over and over again, how he ruined her life. It fucked him up.”

I thought the situation had fucked Dave up pretty successfully as well, but I held my tongue.

“With his wife . . . his
wives,
Lucas anticipated them leaving, and when they didn't, he pushed them into it. His last wife, she was patient and she loved him, and his behavior . . . well, I'll skip the details. You saw the police reports.”

I was happy when Dave reached for the food again instead of the booze. “You turned out OK.”

“I got off easy. She tolerated me, and she took off . . . disappeared before I understood how much of a monster she was. And I had my dad. He worked, and he did all the housework, he made sure I was bathed and fed, and then he had to listen to her rage about how no one appreciated everything she did around the house and how we forced her to drink due to our ungratefulness. Today, she'd be diagnosed with something. Back then, we called it misery.” Dave took a sip of water. “And my dad who had been through so much worse, had been through the Nazis, he thought you should be grateful for what life gave you and make the most of it. When Mom went on a tear, he would say, ‘You're right. I don't appreciate you enough. Let me take you out to dinner somewhere. Go put on a dress. I want to show you off.'

“When she would run off, every time my dad told us not to talk bad about her, that she wouldn't abandon us, ever.” Dave looked me directly in the eye. “That last time, he never once promised she'd return.”

“Did he act different?”

“No . . . yes. He got quiet.” Dave tilted his chair back until his shoulders brushed the wall behind him. “I thought he was like me but was afraid to say it.”

“How's that?”

Dave rocked back and forth on his chair and I worried it might shatter under his weight. “I thought maybe he was afraid if he said her name she'd come back, like a witch. That he didn't work hard to find her because he didn't want her to come back. So we didn't search and this,” he waved in the direction of the dining room, “happened.”

“Dave, you did more than any twelve-year-old could be expected to do.”

He shook his head. “That was after. Before, I prayed she'd stay away. With her gone, Lucas wasn't as angry, my dad was less worried, and we could go places without having to be braced for a scene, or braced for a story,” he said. “But then I saw the billboard of Luisa. Once I saw what normal people did, people who loved their relatives, I felt bad. But it wasn't because I was desperate. It was because I felt guilty that I had wanted her to go away and never come back.”

“Dave—”

Dave let his chair drop back onto all four legs. “I've had enough for today, Lyons. Why don't you talk for a while. Tell me about your day. Tell me about your
feelings
.”

Dave resisted my efforts to restart the conversation, helped himself to more lasagna, and dug in with fierce gusto. I struggled with what to say. Both cases were untouchable, and the drama with my mother was completely superficial in the face of what he was going through. I decided to tell him about Hale's apartment.

“Been there often?” he asked.

“Just the once.”

As I described the roof deck and the garage, he ate three-quarters of the pan of lasagna, and I wondered when he had last had a meal.

“Think Hale would give me the name of his cleaning lady?” He
scraped the plate with a fork. “Since she's got security clearance and all.”

His phone rang. Not his cell, but his landline, an old rotary phone bolted to the wall.

“Aunt Natalya's hotline,” he said, moving around the table. “She prefers wires to wireless.”

As he talked to her on the phone, he swayed, as if tilting with a breeze. “Haven't seen him today,” he said.

“Lucas?” I mouthed, and he nodded.

“What did he do now,
teta
?” Dave said, rolling his eyes at me. Natalya must have sensed it.

“No,” he protested into the phone. “Of course I'm concerned about my brother.” Dave opened the door to the basement, stepped inside, and closed the door. The phone cord forced the door open a crack, allowing me to hear him as he tried to calm his aunt, swinging between explanations and excuses for Lucas's behavior.

The basement door opened, and Dave slammed down the receiver. “Judge Medved is over at Natalya's. Neither of them can find Lucas, so I gotta go be the cavalry.” He pulled a pair of sneakers out of the pile next to the door and shoved his feet into them. He was stuffing his keys into the pocket of his windbreaker when I offered to drive.