Rite of Wrongs (18 page)

T
HIRTY
-S
EVEN

Tuesday, 9:00 a.m.

“How is she today?”

Miriam asked the question of Dorothy Lacey’s nurse, José. He’d met her and Melvin in the lobby of Caring Hands and was walking them to see his patient.

It occurred to Miriam again how nice the center actually was. Not that she particularly wanted to end her days living in such a facility, but considering she was getting a little long in the tooth for having children and would have to rely on her nieces and nephews to keep her in tequila since neither her brother nor her sister would be able to afford her habit—

“She’s quite good today, actually,” José was saying, the swinging door whooshing shut behind them, the glare of the lobby diminished down the length of the corridor by softer lights. Oh, the lobby was attractive enough, and serviceable, but not terribly inviting. Or encouraging.

Miriam wondered why, but kept her observations private as José went on.

“A lot less belligerent than last week when you were here.” He added an apologetic laugh.

“That’s fairly normal with dementia patients, though, isn’t it?” she asked, recalling Melvin saying much the same.

“It is. It’s one of the things families find hard to deal with, that personality change in a loved one.” José gestured toward the common room, which opened immediately after the admin offices off the right of the hall. “We had a long conversation after breakfast today about the children she’d taken care of. She doesn’t understand why they’re all being killed.”

“Neither do we,” Melvin said, his tone of frustration echoing the anchorlike weight in Miriam’s chest. And then he added, “Yet,” which was so very Melvin and had her smiling.

“I told her that’s what you were working to figure out.” José led them across the big room filled with the chatter of residents involved in checkers and Monopoly and bridge. Two women sat in armchairs knitting, silently focused, leaving Miriam to wonder about the safety of needles in this sort of facility.

“She knows about Autumn, then?” Melvin asked.

“Oh, yeah,” José said, his half smile speaking to Dorothy’s interest in current events. “There’s nothing Miss Dottie likes more than her Fox News.”

And that’s where they found her, sitting in front of the TV, the volume almost too low to hear, though her frown said she was making a hell of an effort.

José dropped down in front of her, his hand on the arm of her wheelchair, as he asked, “Miss Dottie? Do you feel like talking to the police officers again?”

Without moving her gaze from the TV or looking at even one of her guests, Dorothy asked, “About Autumn?”

“Yes, ma’am. About Autumn.”

“I suppose I can do that,” she said, and José stood, moving to a nearby table and hopping onto the edge to sit.

Miriam grabbed a chair from beneath it and pulled it close to face the older woman. After last time, José staying nearby was probably a good thing. “Good morning, Mrs. Lacey. I apologize for interrupting you so early.”

“I’ve been up since five, Detective,” she said, though still without meeting Miriam’s gaze. “Nine is hardly early.”

Today she was dressed similarly to the last time Miriam had seen her. Her clothes were clean: her muumuu, this one purple and royal blue, her slippers, her socks. Her person was clean, too—her nails, her hair. Even without eye contact, Miriam sensed the other woman was aware of her surroundings.

Not wanting to waste any of that alertness, Miriam jumped right in. “This may seem like a strange question, but was Autumn in the habit of cursing?”

Dorothy tapped her fingers against the pillow in her lap, frowning as if the memory was unpleasant. “The girl had the foulest mouth I’ve ever heard.”

Good. That jibed with the bloody Scripture in the parking garage. And the requisite biblical punishment, though being sliced in half for using bad language seemed rather extreme. As if the killer was escalating for reasons having nothing to do with the fosters’ supposed crimes.

“Was this just as a teen, or—”

“Oh, no.” Dorothy shook her head in a way that said she was walking down memory lane in bright sunshine. “She came to me with that vocabulary. Obviously, she picked up the words from her parents because I did not allow that sort of language to be spoken in my home.”

“So, you punished her then. For the cursing.”

That was when Dorothy finally looked away from the TV, her gaze locking on Miriam’s in a way that was hard to process. Was she angry? Frustrated? Was she struggling for words?

“I did not spare the rod, if that’s what you’re asking. Neither did I reach for a switch on a whim.”

Miriam opened her notebook, more out of a need to feel grounded than anything. Something about this woman unnerved her. “You tried other things?”

“Of course I tried other things,” Dorothy snapped. “It’s what a parent does. Teach respect to earn respect.”

“But Autumn wouldn’t learn.”

“She had already learned.” The words were harsh, the tone of voice acidic. “She used those words to get attention. From me, from strangers, from people she knew. From those she knew she could hurt. She acted out because she needed to be noticed. She was almost nine years old when I got her. Do you know how much of who you will be is carved in stone by then?”

Miriam nodded. She knew well. She saw the same in her nieces and nephews and wished her siblings good luck. She’d been set in her ways at about the same age. Augie, too, having taken his father’s treatment of his brother to heart, and determined to be as good.

She thought back to Friday’s conversation with Melvin. “Mrs. Lacey, do you happen to recall the names of friends Autumn or the others had? Close friends? Maybe a teacher?”
Someone who might remember Darius and Corky and help me find them?
“Or even kids who might have bullied them?”
And held a grudge worth killing for all these years later?

“Why would you want to know those things?” Dorothy asked, her eyes mean and narrow. “Why would any of that matter now?”

Miriam opted for the truth. “We’re trying to locate Darius and Corky.”

Dorothy snorted, digging her fingers into her lap pillow. “I don’t know why. No one has ever cared about those kids except me.”

“Can you think of any reason someone would want to hurt them?”

“You mean murder them?”

Miriam answered with a nod. It was a long shot of a question, but she wasn’t too proud to ask.

“No. I cannot,” Dorothy responded, as if putting the subject to bed.

“We’re very sorry for your loss, Mrs. Lacey,” Melvin said then, his hands laced between his knees. “Even though your children didn’t stay in touch, their deaths must be hard for you.”

Dorothy frowned at him, her demeanor growing distant. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Edward visits every Sunday.”

“Yes, of course,” he said, glancing briefly at José, whose gaze was focused on Dorothy. “I was referring to Gina, and Franklin, and Autumn.”

“Those weren’t my children.” Dorothy’s left hand began shaking. She held it on her pillow with her right. “They were ungrateful sons of bitches who took advantage of me, and ran off my husband.”

Melvin went quiet. Miriam felt as if she’d been slammed in the solar plexus. She couldn’t catch her breath. Edward had led her to believe that neither he nor his mother had any idea what had become of his father.

“Is that what happened?” she asked. “Your husband left because of the children you fostered?”

“Of course he did,” she said, spit flinging from her mouth with the words. “What other reason was there?”

Miriam thought back to her conversation with the woman’s son. “You and your husband were still married when he disappeared? You weren’t divorced?”

“We were not. I don’t condone divorce. Weak people divorce.” She looked around as if judging the home’s other residents.

Fearing she was about to lose the older woman, Miriam asked, “Was he in touch at all after he walked out?”

“He went to work one morning. He never came back. He left me with his spawn and those five foster ingrates, a mountain of debt, a house falling down around me, and a closet full of his clothes.”

Miriam was stymied. Was Dorothy recounting the past, or recalling a long-ago movie? Was anything she was saying reliable? “And you never saw him again? He never got in touch?”

“Not a fucking word. Worthless bastards. Men. Every one of them.”

That was all she got out before José was at her side. “Let’s get you back to your room, Miss Dottie. I think it would be good for you to rest up before it’s time for lunch.”

She made a sound that was more growl than grumble. “Are we having tuna casserole again? That slop ain’t fit for no pig I ever knew.”

“I believe today is salmon croquettes,” he said, glancing over at Miriam with a shake of his head.

Dorothy slapped at him as if he were in charge of the menu. “Salmon golf balls is more like it. Salmon turds. Why am I paying you people good money if you can’t feed me food worth eating?”

Miriam got to her feet as José unlocked the wheels on Dorothy’s chair and turned her. “Sorry about that,” he said. “Stress tires her out, and when she gets tired . . .”

“I understand completely,” Miriam said, taking a deep breath as nurse and patient made their way from the common room into the hallway leading to the residents’ quarters. Then she looked back at Melvin and shrugged as she set off for the lobby.

Melvin fell into step beside her. “I shouldn’t have said anything. She seemed fine until I did.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head as she shoved at the front door to open it. “She seemed fine until reminded that the fosters didn’t stay in touch. And then it was like she didn’t want anything to do with them. As if that mattered more than three of the five being dead.”

Once he had the Yukon running, Melvin cranked the AC to max and tugged on the knot of his tie. “I guess now we need to go looking for the husband.”

Something felt off. Something wasn’t right. Miriam had missed something somewhere. She was sure of it. “Yeah. And find Darius and Corky. Stat.”

T
HIRTY
-E
IGHT

Wednesday, 1:30 p.m.

It was the next afternoon before Miriam finally had time to get back to the case. Though Judah had assigned the M and M team to the Bible-verse murders exclusively, they’d been the only two available early this morning for an assault call that had taken them from the female victim’s hospital room to her place of employment.

The woman had made it all the way to her office before realizing she’d left her laptop in her car. When she went back for it, she interrupted the guy helping himself to her satchel along with her bagged lunch of yogurt and grapes. He’d used the computer bag to deck her, then started in with his fists, beating her all to hell.

Thankfully, she would recover. She was strong. And she’d gotten a good look at the tattoo on his neck, his eyes behind his ski mask, and the color of his hair before she’d blacked out. Then there was the part where she’d scratched the hell out of one of his forearms and had all kinds of blood and skin under her nails.

Miriam liked it when the bad guys picked the wrong people to victimize.

Back at her desk with a Subway Cold Cut Combo, she’d settled in with her notebook, flipping through the inserts and transferring the unresolved bits and pieces of the Gardner, Weeks, and now Carver cases to a new page. Each check box she’d drawn frustrated her further.

She should’ve uncovered more than she had by now. She shouldn’t still be juggling so many questions and leads. She was waiting on too many people to call her back, too many information requests to come through, too many leads to pan out.

She knew people. How to read them. How to approach them. How to get what she wanted out of them without their realizing how much they’d given up until it was too late.

But this case . . .

She wasn’t getting much of anything useful. The puzzle pieces, when they came, were falling out of the sky unexpectedly. She didn’t like unexpected. She liked being in control.

Something was off with her process. She wanted to blame Judah for insisting that she see if Augie could help. But she had to blame herself for not being able to let go of the reins.

Augie had stopped by the station earlier, just as she was unwrapping her sandwich. She’d slid half of it in front of him without saying a word, just like she’d done in the old days.

He’d had a free hour to use for lunch, and he wanted to spend more time with the files. He did so while eating. She used the same time to finish consolidating her bulleted to-do lists.

Neither of them spoke about her walking out on him during last night’s dinner. Their dual avoidance didn’t surprise her. Hell, it was what had driven them to where they were now.

Sitting in the chair at the end of her desk, Augie stirred a fresh cup of coffee and watched her flip between pages in her notebook, watched her click her pen as she thought. It wasn’t an unfamiliar state of things, or it hadn’t been five years ago—her working, his watching, both of them thinking through the crime on their way to solving it.

But that had been then. She had no idea what he had on his mind now, and she was doing her best to keep her head in the game. It was time to go back to the beginning. To tick off everything she knew and figure out what she was missing.

Melvin was in court this afternoon. Something he couldn’t get out of. Ballard and Branch were following a new lead on an old unsolved they were the only ones familiar with. They’d been out all day. For now, she was on her own.

Okay. Diving in.
She tapped the end of her pen on her desk. “It’s pretty clear that even if Edward Lacey didn’t keep in touch with his foster siblings, they kept in touch with one another.”

Augie sipped at his coffee, then returned the cup to the desk. “How so?”

She slid a sheet of paper toward him. Since Ballard was already handling Franklin Weeks’s finances, he’d done a quick run-through of Autumn’s, too. And he’d hit a small jackpot, one he’d handed Miriam before heading out this morning with Branch. “Here’s a check deposited into Autumn’s account. Another one signed by Sameen Shahidi. The memo section is blank, so I’m not sure if this is adoption related, but . . .”

“Sixty-five thousand?” Augie asked, his eyes going wide.

Melvin had been just as incredulous when she’d shared it with him before he’d left for court. “This means she’s connected to all three murder victims.”

Augie twisted his mouth to the side as he thought. “Maybe the fosters kept in touch but kicked Edward out of the family.”

She nodded. “I just wish there was an explanation for Sameen knowing Autumn or Frank.” Or an explanation as to the nurse’s whereabouts. Her suspicious absence was making Miriam nuts. “Gina’s the only connection between them.”

“What about Darius and Corky?” Augie asked after a minute of turning that over. “You think Sameen knew them, too?”

“Since I don’t have a last name for either of them . . .” She shook her head. “I can’t even rule them out as suspects until I talk to them.”

“Have we found anything to help us locate them? Who they are? Where they are?”

It was strange hearing him say
us
and
we
, even while it was completely normal. “Nothing. And I think I’ve developed a case of black lung from digging through records.”

He nodded, then leaned forward, elbows on his knees, coffee cup cradled in his hands. “Back to Sameen, then. What
do
we know about her?”

Miriam began answering while flipping through her notebook. “She came to work for Dr. Gardner’s practice two years after he and the others set up the partnership. That was . . . twelve years ago.” Before any of his children had been born. “Huh.”

“What?” Augie asked, lifting his cup to sip.

“Not that I know how a peds clinic works, but that seems like a long time with no upward career movement.”

“Maybe there’s not a lot of turnover there.”

“Then why stay?” She waved one hand expansively. “Houston’s got the largest medical center in the world. She should’ve been able to find another position pretty easily.”

“She has no drive?” he proffered. “She makes plenty of money? She’s happy there?”

“Or she has a sugar mama taking care of her, and the job’s just a cover?”

Augie frowned. “You think that’s what the bank account is about? Gina and Sameen?”

“I don’t know, though it makes sense she would’ve met Gina through Jeff.” She swiveled her chair to face his. “Say the two women get friendly, then more than friendly, and for whatever reason, Gina puts Sameen in charge of the money she’s using to help out the fosters.”

Another sip of coffee, then Augie said, “The two big checks. Are those the only ones she wrote to Franklin and Autumn?”

“I don’t know yet. Ballard’s going through all three victims’ accounts. Obviously, those two amounts stood out, but I can’t say for sure if there were others until he gets back at it. He and Branch should be in soon.”

He nodded. “Has Gina’s name ever been on the bank account?”

She didn’t know that, either. One more thing making Miriam itch. “I’m still waiting on the warrant to get access. Sameen wasn’t a suspect initially, so . . .”

“This second check to Autumn should help with that,” he said, sounding more and more like a cop, like her partner, like he was settling in for the duration.

And because that wasn’t why he was here—even if he was right about the warrant, which she’d already told Branch to update this afternoon—she changed the subject. “You’ve seen the evidence. The scene photos. The verses. Judah was hoping you’d have some insight into what’s going on here. The motivation for the murders.”

“I seriously doubt at this point I’ve got more than you do,” he said, then when she arched a brow asking for exactly what he
did
have, he sat back and went on. “Our killer believes our foster siblings wronged their parents, birth or foster or both. Or his parents. Or someone’s parents. And he’s delivering his own retribution.”

“Does he have a God complex?” she asked, leaning back in her chair. “Or does he just feel no one else is going to take care of the problem, so he has to?”

He crossed his legs, gesturing with one hand as if delivering a sermon. All he was missing were his vestments. “Look at their ages. He’s waited a long time. Why?”

That was bothering her, too. “He’s had it bottled up and . . .”

“What was the tipping point? What sent him over the edge?”

“Did he suddenly get religion?”

“I doubt that, too. Serial murder isn’t usually the first thing on a new convert’s mind.”

On that, he was probably right.

“Which doesn’t help much, I know.”

At this point, she’d be stupid to discount his observations, whether as a former cop or a priest. She studied his expression, not sure what she was looking for. A hint, maybe? That he wasn’t as comfortable as he seemed? That he didn’t miss this back and forth they’d been so good at? She didn’t want him to miss it.

She didn’t want him to miss her. “Is it weird being here again? After all this time?”

“It’s not
not
weird,” he said with that self-deprecating laugh that always twisted her in knots. “I’m not sure what it is.”

“Uncomfortable?”

He shook his head. “Not that so much as . . . unbalanced. I lost my sea legs a long time ago. Not sure I want them back.”

That was good to hear. “If you feel yourself being dragged down, you don’t have to stay, you know.”

He drained his coffee, then tossed the cup in her trash. “That sounds like you think my vocation doesn’t have a dark side.”

Actually, she did her best not to think about his current line of work. “I doubt it’s dead-body dark. Well, funerals, I guess.”

“There’s a lot of dark going on with the living, too,” he said, his expression distracted, as if he were bothered by unspoken thoughts.

He was getting too serious, so she went for flip. “Good thing you’re there to shine a little light.”

He gave her a look she wasn’t sure how to interpret. Or she didn’t want to interpret. Because it bordered on patronizing. As if he was somehow disappointed in her. “I figured after all those years we spent together, you’d have picked up on some of what makes me tick.”

She looked away, tears suddenly stinging her eyes as if they’d been waiting a very long time for a reason to fall. She was not going to cry over him. Over
them
. This was just stupid.

She was frustrated and tired and under such a crap ton of stress. And any second now the media would descend, making her life—and the case—a living hell. She just knew it.

Except she had to be real. She had to tell the truth. This was Augie, not Judah, not Ballard. Not even Melvin, whom she loved like a brother. “If I’d managed to figure that out, maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here now, pretending most of our best times together weren’t spent in bed.”

He cringed, which made her feel two inches tall. “Miriam—”

“Not the sex,” she said, though just thinking of lying naked with him had her sweating. “The time before. The time after. The time when we crawled between the sheets without ever touching. When we talked. Those hours. Lights on, lights off. It didn’t matter. We were never as honest with each other as we were when in bed.”

“Sleeping with someone, closing your eyes and trusting them while you dream, while you’re completely vulnerable . . .” He stopped to swallow, his throat working hard. “That’s pretty much as intimate as it gets.”

“Yet we still couldn’t make it work,” she said, and tossed her pen to the desk.

It took Augie a moment, but when he responded, it was only to ask, “We?”

The word hit her like a rock thrown up by a tire, a spitball shot at her face. “You’re giving me all the credit? Being noble and refusing to take any for yourself?”

That had him laughing. “Yeah. Okay. I was a shit.”

“Father Treece,” she said with a gasp. “Such language.”

He sat forward again, leaning his elbows on his knees again, the posture making her think of a penitent. She’d been thinking about penitents a lot lately. This damn case . . .

His next words, spoken softly, fell in line with her thoughts. “I’m human, Miriam. There were a lot of times I think you forgot that. Or expected me to be something more.”

“You were more. You saved my life,” she said, then wished she hadn’t. This was exactly what she’d promised not to do the day he’d walked into the squad room. He wasn’t here for this. She didn’t have time for this.

Why couldn’t Judah have left well enough alone?

She reached for her mouse and double-clicked the folder of photos on her desktop. “We’ve got three murders. Three verses. Let’s start there.”

Nodding, he rubbed his hands down his thighs. “The first. Exodus
chapter twenty
, verse twelve. That’s part of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Deuteronomy provided the Israelites with specific instructions for how to live their lives in Canaan.
Chapters twelve
through
twenty-six
contain the law code . . . civic law, criminal law, moral law.”

She read each scene’s Scripture again. “Dishonoring parents. Disobeying parents. Disrespecting parents. Those sound like moral infractions, so why such harsh punishment?”

“Rebellion against one’s parents, any sort of rebellion, is a direct rebellion against God,” he told her. “Parents are an authority ordained by God.”

Not all parents, she hoped, thinking about her mother. Then retracting the blasphemous thought, because what did she know about parenting? “So the Ten Commandments are the big picture? Since honoring would cover disobedience and cursing both?”

“That’s one way to look at it, sure,” he said. “The punishment for cursing comes in the middle of the section of God’s law dealing with servants, and with marriage. The civil law for retaliation, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, is in the same chapter. It covers a lot of death-penalty situations.” Then he grinned. “As well as how to deal with damage done by oxen.”

“Oxen?” she asked, and tried not to laugh.

“Oxen.”

“So all of these verses, both from Exodus and Deuteronomy, aren’t case specific but are just Moses laying down God’s law.” When Augie nodded, she said, “Lots of violence there in the sentencing phase of things.”