Whatever Remains (12 page)

             
He sighed. “Yes, sir.”

9

             
P
atrol had canvassed Iris Lane, getting rough alibis. Since he had the “manpower,” Ben decided to enlist Woods and Riley for the follow-up interviews. He gave them half the street, and he and Trey took the other – the more lucrative half, in Ben’s opinion.

             
Tina Davis who kept the Latham girls after school lived in a brown split-level with too many concrete angel statuettes in the front flower beds. Someone had written “wash me” with a finger through the dirt crusted on the back window of her gold Caravan in the drive, and the inside of the house wasn’t in much better shape. Toys – plastic trucks and dinosaurs and Transformer things that a boy would like – were everywhere: under their shoes (Trey stepped on something that snapped), across the floor, between ceramic angel knick-knacks on the coffee table and mantel. Piles of folded and unfolded laundry were on the post at the bottom of the banister, on the back of the couch in the formal sitting room, on the dining room table. Someone had had a thing for rosy floral wallpaper in the nineties. The carpet was mashed. It smelled like burned toast and wet dog. A TV murmured somewhere in the background.

             
Tina showed them into a living room that belonged in an RV, shag carpet and brown plaid sofa included. She was in a hot pink velour track suit, hair pulled up in a wispy bun, the underside shadowed with gray. She could have been in her fifties, or just turned forty: she hadn’t taken care of herself and it was hard to tell. Incoming sunlight laid stripes of shadow beneath her crow’s feet and laugh lines.

             
She gestured to the mess around her – empty, sticky glasses on the side tables and someone’s brown-bottomed socks under a TV tray – and ducked her head. “I’m sorry the house is a wreck. My husband took Tommy to the ball game, and I didn’t know –  ”

             
“It’s fine, Mrs. Davis,” Ben said, easing down onto the recliner across from her, not really wanting to touch the thing. “We just need anything you can tell us about Heidi.”

             
“God.” She glanced away from them, presenting a profile gone soft beneath her chin. The sunlight framed a halo of thin frizz along the crown of her head. She swallowed, throat working. “She was here, just before…She picked up Grace when she got off the bus. If I’d kept them here; if I’d told Alicia to leave them here for dinner –  ”

             
“Mrs. Davis,” Trey soothed. “There’s no way you could have known.”

             
She drew in a deep breath and faced them. Her eyes…Ben had thought she had allergies, but she’d been crying, he realized. There was a frailty to her composure that was authentic. Heidi’s death had been upsetting for her. Her gaze moved between the two of them, she wet her lips, but she didn’t say anything.

             
“Describe her for us,” Ben said, prompting her along. “What was she like?”

             
It was always easier to talk about the living. Tina nodded and her eyelashes flickered as she reached back through her memories. “She’s…she
was
…a sweet girl. Serious. Quiet.” She dashed a knuckle under her nose. “I always felt like she was really shy, but smart, probably. You know what those kids are like – the ones who don’t say much, but their heads are working all the time?”

             
“We do,” Trey said.

             
“She is – was – always respectful. Polite. Yes, ma’am, and no, ma’am. How could anyone want to –  ”

             
Ben didn’t want her to get tripped up in the brutality of the crime; she needed to be focused on Heidi during the last few weeks of her life. “Had she seemed different lately?” he asked.

             
Tina blinked, shaking off the tears that had been forming. “Different how?”

             
“Did she seem distracted? More quiet than normal? Frightened, even?”

             
She thought about it for a minute, chin quivering. “She…hold on, now, lemme see…Usually,” she said, voice getting stronger, “she came in for a bit when she picked up Grace. Grace likes to play with my son – she and Tommy are always in the backyard with cars or trucks or something. So Heidi always comes in and has a Coke and a cookie till Grace gets her stuff together.” She squinted at something in the near space, scrutinizing the image in her head. “Last week, though…she didn’t come in Tuesday. Or any day after that. She stood on my front step and wouldn’t even let me bring her a cookie. She just kept saying ‘no thank you, Mrs. Davis’ and stared at the dandelions.”

             
This was good: if Heidi had known there was something nasty in the wind, there’d be a trail to find, somewhere. “And she hadn’t ever acted this way before?” Ben asked.

             
“No.” Tina shook her head, frizz dancing. “Never.”

             
“Did you try to ask her about it?”

             
“I did. At first, anyway, but she wouldn’t talk to me; I gave up.” Her shoulders jumped and she ducked her head as tears clouded her eyes. “I should have tried harder. I should have
made
her tell me.”

             
Ben motioned to Trey with a two-fingered wave.

             
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Trey told her in an assuring lie. Ben couldn’t bring himself to be that dishonest; this girl had been killed – had had something stabbed through her throat – and there had been signs. No one had done anything.

             
But then, who was to say that he might have done something? He lived by a code of detachment. He supposed he expected better of others. For some reason.

             
“You’re doing fine,” Trey said. “We just need to go over a few more things and then you can get back to your afternoon.”

             
Tina lifted her head and Ben watched her eyes track across the garish landscape of her cluttered living room. She took a deep breath, squared up her shoulders. “Okay. Sure.”

**

The house next door to the Lathams’ was two-story and stacked stone, with lots of eaves and a wide stone porch and a black Land Rover in front of the three car garage. Iris Lane was an odd little road, wealthy families living shoulder-to-shoulder with blue collar workers getting by paycheck-to-paycheck. The name etched in gold on the mailbox of this place was “Redding,” and it was obvious that someone – probably Mrs. Redding – was a fan of mini stained glass portraits. They hung from the front windows by suction cups – flowers and hummingbirds and what looked like a lighthouse – catching the evening sun in bright jewel-toned flares.

             
The cut-glass oval insert in the front door revealed a high-ceilinged foyer full of slanting sunlight. Ben got a glimpse of tasteful beige furniture and hardwoods, a whole wall of windows on the far side of the house.

             
“I’m gonna take a wild guess that Heidi and Grace didn’t come over here. Ever,” Trey said as he pushed the bell.

             
Ben didn’t answer.

             
The guy who shuffled to the door in sweats and a wrinkled UGA t-shirt looked to be early forties; his hair was the color of mud and sticking up like he’d spent his Sunday sleeping in. When he cracked the door and stuck his head through, he blinked at the sunlight; he had one of those puggish, footballer-gone-old faces. He looked between them with all the observatory powers of a cow. “Can I –  ”

             
“Cobb County Police, Mr. Redding,” Ben said, and flashed his badge. “Detectives Haley and Kaiden. We’re investigating the murder of Heidi Latham next door. Can we have a word?”

             
Blank shock – so complete Ben thought it must have somehow been an accomplishment – left him expressionless a beat. Then he frowned. Then his forehead doubled over on itself, wrinkled and too tan. “Latham?” he asked. “That bitch. What’d she do? Did she say I killed her kid? I’ll choke the bitch.”

             
Trey made a sound that might have been “whoa.”

             
Ben checked his own reaction. “You’re talking about Alicia Latham?”

             
Mr. Redding – charmingly – hawked and spat on his front step. “Bitch,” he repeated. “That fucking busybody called the cops on us every chance she got.” He realized what he said, and his expression arrested, caught between embarrassed and indignant.

             
“Really?” Ben asked. He pretended to inspect his fingernails; he realized he must have been chewing them, but hadn’t been aware. They were jagged. “Lots of criminal activity going on over here?”

             
“No,” Redding said, and it sounded like he swallowed. Some of the fight bled out of him. “It was just stupid shit. She didn’t like Jared having a party one night. She got pissed that I burned leaves. Every time we goddamn breathe she’s up our asses.”

             
“Huh. So it’s safe to say you don’t get along.”

             
“Um,
yeah
.”

             
“And if you had a chance to get back at her somehow, you’d take it?”

             
“I mean, I…Hey!” His eyes sprang open and looked like they belonged on a stuffed toy. “You think I don’t know what you’re getting at?”

             
“No,” Ben said, tonelessly. “I really don’t. Can we come in and talk to the rest of the family…”

             
The door slammed before he finished his question.

             
“Asshole,” Trey said. “Do you think there’s even a chance he…”

             
“Nah. He is an asshole, but no way is he smart enough to clean up his mess. He strikes me as a panic-and-vomit-and-bolt type.”

             
“There’s others in the house, though. Patrol said there’s a wife and three sons.”

             
“We’ll talk to them again,” Ben said. “Let’s ask Alicia about them first.”

**

All the neighbors on the block said the same thing: Alicia was friendly; the girls were quiet, but not alarmingly so. None of them had seen anything odd – no one creeping amongst their shrubs or hissing outside their windows. Everyone had alibis that would be tough to confirm: home with the family, eating dinner, watching the game on TV. A few had been out having drinks, with solid-enough witnesses to corroborate.

              Riley called to confirm that Heidi’s teachers were singing the same song: smart, quiet, decidedly not the life of the party Alicia had described her to be. Without photos to go by, or a diary, friends were proving hard to track. By the time Ben parked the Charger in the Latham driveway, he was ready to beat his head on the steering wheel.

             
Grace answered the door, small and sallow-skinned and looking like she weighed about ten pounds. They showed her their badges and she walked from the door without a word, leaving it open.

             
“She’s still in some kinda shock,” Ben said. “Not clinically – I mean, it’s been too long for that – but she’s bad shook up.”

             
“Gee, I didn’t notice.”

             
He gave his young partner a sideways look before he stepped over the threshold. “Smartass doesn’t look good on you.”

             
“You don’t think?”

             
The house was dated, and a little ragged around the edges; the furniture was old and patched and the light fixtures had been popular the same time as the kitchen linoleum, but it was spotless. Tidy. Not one smelly sock on the floor or out of place toy. Alicia was in the dining room – it was set up as a home office – on hands and knees, going at the white baseboards with a rag and bucket, hands encased in elbow-length yellow gloves. The smell of lemon cleaner shot straight up Ben’s nose and teased at his tear ducts. She was so absorbed in her task, hair swinging as she scrubbed, that she didn’t hear their approach.

             
“Mrs. Latham?” Ben said, and she bolted back on her heels, gasping, gloved hand flying to her heart. “We didn’t mean to scare you. Grace let us in.”

             
Her eyes pinged crazily across both their faces before recognition dawned. “Oh, detectives.” She let out a deep breath and slopped her rag back in the bucket; water splashed over the edge. She tucked her hair behind her ears, gloves still on. Most of the makeup she’d had on that morning had smudged away and she looked almost sick. The bags under her eyes were a new shade of purple. “I was just…well.” She took a shaky breath. “Sundays are cleaning days and I thought…I guess I thought it would help to have something to do.”

             
Ben nodded. “Keeping a routine helps.”