Homicide Related (26 page)

Besides the school pictures, there were some snapshots taken by someone else, not Lorraine—Lorraine had never owned a camera—and a bunch of pictures taken in those little photo booths you see at amusement parks and in train and bus stations, four pictures for a toonie. He remembered that whenever they passed one of those booths, Lorraine, especially if she was in a good mood, having what she called a good-hair day, would want to duck in and get her picture taken, and Dooley would do what he could to ruin the experience by pulling faces, the goal being to crack Lorraine up so that she'd look goofy in spite of her good hair. At least, that had been his goal at first. Later he just plain acted up and made faces, anything he could think of to be uncooperative, especially if they were a threesome, Dooley, Lorraine, and whatever guy Lorraine was seeing at the time. But he hadn't seen any of those pictures in a long time. He was surprised she had kept them, let alone put them in an album. Dooley leafed through the pages, trying to remember who the guys were, most of them hard-faced or bleary-eyed. Jesus, why did Gloria Thomas think he'd want to look at the past like this? All those things he'd done to himself, that was so he could forget. After a while, the pages were blank, all the way to the last page where there was one more picture.

He stared at it for a few minutes before getting up and locating and looking at the picture Detective Randall and his partner—what was that guy's name again?—had given him. He held the two side by side. They were the same. The same, but different.

He pulled the last photograph out of its sleeve and dumped the album into the wastepaper basket in his room. He stared at it down in there, then went to his desk and picked up the book he had brought back with him from Lorraine's apartment. He opened it and inhaled her scent one last time, and then dropped that in on top of the photograph album. He was sorry now that he'd retrieved the package from Warren. Looking at Lorraine didn't do any good. It only made him remember, and remembering made him angry. If the cops didn't think she'd been murdered, he was pretty sure he would have put her out of his mind by now.

Or would he? No matter how he looked at it, Beth was right. She was his mother. That should mean something. He stared at the one photo he hadn't dumped. He held it over the wastepaper basket, too, but he couldn't make his fingers release it.

She was his mother, and it did mean something.

The way Dooley had figured it: He would drop by the cemetery after school; he'd walk up and down the rows; he'd use the picture Randall had given him as a guide for finding what he was looking for; and then he'd compare that to the second picture he had found at the back of the album that Gloria Thomas had thrust into his hands.

The way it turned out: He wandered around helplessly for at least an hour before the sun started to drop to the horizon and he knew that (a) he'd never find what he was looking for without help because the cemetery was too freaking big; it was like the Energizer bunny; it kept going and going, down this path, over along that one, across this busy thoroughfare into another expanse of headstone after headstone after headstone, mausoleums, too, and crypts; and (b) Jeannie would unlock the front door any minute now and wonder where he was. She would also probably wonder if she should be worrying, if she should be calling his youth worker.

Shit.

He dug in his pocket for his cell phone and Jeannie's business card, which she had given him at breakfast—scrambled eggs and toast, juice, coffee, a couple of slices of melon on the side of his plate, just like at a restaurant—and on which she had written her cell phone number. Call me anytime, she had said. He punched in her number, told her he was sorry, he was still at the library, he'd be home in an hour, he promised.

“No problem,” Jeannie said, which made Dooley wish she was the one who was responsible for him, not Uncle Third Degree.

He meandered through the cemetery checking gravestones until a guy on a golf cart—that was a sight, a golf cart in a cemetery—pulled even with him and said, “You look lost, son.”

Dooley showed the man the picture the cops had given him. The man studied it for all of ten seconds and said, “Hop on. I'll give you a lift.” He drove Dooley down a paved road, took a right, then a left, then another left, and kept going. “Relatives?” he said.

“Grandparents,” Dooley said.

The man took a final right and slowed the golf cart.

“Here we are,” he said, pointing at three headstones inside a small square area marked off by a chain that ran through wrought-iron pinions. Dooley stepped off the golf cart and read the names and dates—his uncle's mother, his uncle's father, his uncle's sister.

“We close the place up at dusk,” the man with the golf cart said. “If you need a lift back to the gate—”

Dooley pulled the other picture from his pocket, the one from the back of Lorraine's album, and held it out to the man. “When would you say this was taken?” he said.

The man squinted at it. He got out of the golf cart, tramped up and down for a few moments. Then he said, “I'd say twenty years ago, maybe more. See? Those aren't in the picture.” He pointed to some nearby stones. “Nor are those.” He swept his hand off in another direction. He studied the picture again. “Definitely more than twenty years.” He left the main path and examined a few neighboring headstones, comparing what he was looking at to the photo Dooley had given him. “My mistake,” he said at last. He tapped a headstone. “This one clinches it. This picture here was taken twenty-two or twenty-three years ago. Here. You can see for yourself.”

Dooley joined him and looked at everything the man had pointed to.

Twenty-two or twenty-three years ago.

Dooley did the math.

Either his uncle had been wrong, or he'd been lying.

Again.

There were voices in the kitchen—two of them, Jeannie's and Annette Girondin's.

“—looking for?” Jeannie was saying.

“They didn't say.” That was Annette. “All I know is they subpoenaed his bank records.”

“Tessie said they went through his computer at work. What does that have to do with anything?”

“I don't know, Jeannie,” Annette said wearily. It sounded to Dooley like it wasn't the first time she'd said it. It also sounded like Jeannie was worried. “If I find out anything, I'll let you know.”

Dooley heard a sigh. Jeannie.

“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I'm sorry. It's just that—”

“It's unnerving, I know,” Annette said. “You just have to hang in there. We'll get this all sorted out. It just takes time.”

There was a moment's silence, and then Jeannie asked Annette if she wanted to stay for supper. Annette declined. Dooley tiptoed out onto the porch. He was standing there, doing his best to look like he was just getting home, when Annette came through the front door a minute later.

“Ryan,” she said, catching her breath. “You startled me.”

“Sorry.” He offered her an apologetic smile. “How's my uncle? What's going on?”

“There's nothing new to report,” Annette said. Jesus, a lie. Why? Because his uncle didn't want him to know anything? Or was it that attorney-client privilege thing?

“The cops got anything else on him?” Dooley said.

“I'm afraid I'm not at liberty—”

“I heard they've been asking about him and Lorraine when they were kids. About something that went down between the two of them. You know what that's about?”

She wasn't surprised by the question. Dooley bet anything that she'd spoken to Jerry Panelli. Maybe she'd talked to Lorraine's friends, too.

“I have to go,” she said.

“I just want to know—”

“Goodnight, Ryan.”

And that was that. Her high heels clickety-clicked down the front walk and around the front of her car. A moment later, she was gone.

Dooley went inside.

Jeannie had supper waiting for him—grilled salmon and a green salad. Dooley cleaned his plate in three minutes flat. He got up, opened the fridge, and rooted around inside, but it looked like groceries hadn't been on his uncle's mind when he'd been putting his affairs in order. He remembered the envelope of money that Annette Girondin had given him and wondered how Jeannie would react if he ordered himself a pizza.

“Can I get you something else?” Jeannie said, not so breezy now. Dooley heard doubt in her voice. He pulled out a container of milk and poured himself a glass.

“I'm fine,” he said.

Jeannie picked at her salmon. “Not enough food for a teenaged boy, huh?” she said. “Are you still hungry, Dooley?”

“No, really, I'm fine.”

She studied him for a moment and then reached for the phone.

“What do you like on yours?” she said, boy, like she was reading his mind.

“Onions, pepperoni, and extra cheese.” It was what he always ordered, unless he knew he was going to be seeing Beth. Then he skipped the onions.

Jeannie smiled and placed the order. It was no mystery what his uncle saw in her. She finished her own meal, accepted when Dooley offered to clean up, then said she had some work to do, if that was okay with him.

It was fine. Dooley spread out on the dining room table—homework and pizza. Well, homework and pizza and Lorraine, twenty-two or twenty-three years ago.

Had she had that photo from the album back then? Or had she found it later? If so, when? Had someone given it to her? Who?

He remembered what his uncle had said:
She was one of those girls, they hit puberty and all hell breaks loose.

Was that it? Was it puberty? Twenty-two years ago, Lorraine was thirteen. Or was it something else?

To the best of my knowledge,
his uncle had said,
they
(They? Who the hell were they? His grandparents?)
never told her.

Then how to explain that picture? And what about his uncle's arrest?

I don't like her because she killed my mother.

Now Dooley wondered: Who had killed whom?

Lorraine, from the outside: a party girl. Always laughing.

Always wanting to be the center of attention. Always looking for some guy to be the one. Drinking, snorting, smoking, shooting up, getting that party high. Dooley knew what that was all about. Get out of your head, out of your skin, out of yourself, out of your life. Kill the emptiness; kill the uncertainty; kill that lurking, aching, sucking feeling, the one that's always whispering in your ear,
You're not the one.
Not the one they want. Not the one to succeed. Not the one to win. Not the one to be happy. Not the one I carry in my heart. Not the one I see when I close my eyes. It's not you.

It's not you. It's not you.

Worse.

It's someone else.

He thought back.

He had come home that Friday night and had circled around to the side of the house, meaning to go in through the kitchen to get that DVD, then maybe stop in the kitchen again on the way out and check the fridge in the hope that his uncle, who was a good cook, had some leftovers stashed in there. But when he'd got to the door, he'd heard Lorraine's voice, and it had frozen him to the spot. He'd stood there and listened. Now he replayed every word he had heard.