Angels Burning (16 page)

I wasn't prepared for this teenage girl's murder to bring up so many memories of my mother's. I suppose it only makes sense that thinking about one should make me think about the other, but I've investigated a few homicides before and dealt with many accidental and natural deaths on the job and I've never been affected this way.

As I've been obsessively mulling over the facts of Camio's case today, each one has brought me back to some long-forgotten detail of my mother's crime scene: her perfume bottles and jars of lotion gleaming and glittering in the sputtering candlelight; the bloody bathwater tinting the clouds of white bubbles pink like cotton candy; her one lovely naked arm wedged against the side of the tub rising out of the water like a swan's neck.

The cheap Renaissance Faire goblet was long gone. Since she'd married Gil, she drank her wine out of crystal. The glass lay shattered on the tile floor. She must have been holding it when she was struck.

I stood there in the Dove-scented air looking down at the unharmed features of my mother's perfect face partially submerged beneath the sticky red water and knew Grandma would be pleased that the killer had struck her from behind and she could still look pretty in her casket.

One of Lucky's empty beer cans had missed the mark when he tried to toss it in the wastebasket and had rolled beneath the radiator. I was only fifteen and had no interest in police work at that time but I still remember thinking,
Fingerprints
. Neely was nowhere to be found.
Grandma arrived too quickly. “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor was playing softly on the radio; I remember thinking,
Not this time
.

I LEFT WORK
as early as I could and ran to Shop 'n Save. I tried to concentrate on my grocery list for tonight's dinner but my mind was full of lifeless human limbs—Camio's bare legs, my mother's bare arm.

I'm relieved to get home. I almost expect to see reporters outside my house—they've been popping up everywhere these last few days—but no one's out except for Bob standing in his driveway, talking on his phone, and smoking a cigarette. His mildly annoying presence is somehow comforting in its constancy.

“Hey, Chief,” he calls out while I unload the groceries from my trunk. “Did you catch the guy yet?”

His switch from the all-inclusive “bad guys” to the specific “the guy” disappoints me. I'd like to think there's at least one person around here who isn't caught up in Camio's murder, and if there could be anyone that oblivious it would be Bob, but no such luck.

“Not yet,” I call back.

I suddenly realize part of the reason why Camio's case is reminding me so much of my mother's might be the notoriety attached to it, although Camio's is a much more public crime because of the times we now live in.

This town hasn't seen a scandal to compare to my mother's death until now but no matter how horrible and lurid the circumstances surrounding her demise, it remained Buchanan's private business. She was murdered in 1980, back before the Internet and social media existed, before twenty-four-hour TV news channels and reality crime shows. Hers was a sleazy, bloody tale motivated by rage and lust, yet news of her death didn't even spread as far as the other side of the state.

Camio's death has already gone viral. Forget Scranton and Philadelphia, people in Beijing and Dubai have heard about the girl who was torched and left to burn in a town that's been on fire for more than fifty years.

People have been showing up at Campbell's Run to see the place
where she was found, so I've had to start sending a cruiser by every now and then because the area is dangerous. All I need on top of everything else is for some meddling interloper snapping pictures with a phone to go plummeting three hundred feet into a smoldering mine tunnel.

An LA graphic artist has whipped up a poster of a charred zombie girl with glowing green eyes wrapped in chains made of sparkly hearts crawling out of a flaming ditch and captioned it:
Coal Town Cutie
. Singer and Blonski found it online and showed it to me. The guy's selling it framed for three hundred dollars.

This unwanted spotlight has made not only the Trulys and the Masseys defensive but the whole town. We've started circling our wagons, trying to protect our good name along with Camio's memory.

This didn't happen with my mom's murder. People didn't want to own it; they wanted to shoo it away.

“A lot of people are saying it was her boyfriend or her dad,” Bob calls out to me.

This is the most he's said to me since I got my promotion and had my deck put on. Bob thinks he's an expert at home improvement even though I've never seen him attempt any.

“Really? And why are they saying that?”

“Because that's who usually kills teenage girls if it ain't a psycho.”

He pauses.

“It ain't a psycho, is it?”

“I'm pretty sure it wasn't a psycho,” I assure him, and note the relief that passes over his face.

He gives me a big smile and raises his cigarette in a salute before going back to his phone call.

Once inside my house, I'm able to put aside all thoughts of either murder and think about something almost equally troubling: my brother, Champ.

I'm happy he came back but also worried. A person doesn't disappear from his hometown and cut all ties with his family for twenty-five years, then suddenly return for no reason other than a flimsy claim of wanting to take a cross-country road trip with his son.

I put on the brightest piece of clothing I own to balance out my
somber mood, a sleeveless sundress of smiley-face yellow with big orange daisies splashed across it. The skirt has a little flare and hits midthigh. I suppose I'm too old to wear something this short and skimpy. I never questioned my clothing choices during my forties, but now that I've rounded the bend into my fifties I second-guess everything. I don't want to look my age, but I also don't want to look like I'm trying to look some other age.

I give a quick twirl in front of the mirror. If I had a giant lollipop and a pair of patent-leather Mary Jane tap shoes with lace ankle socks I could pass for an oversize Shirley Temple. It's not a dress I'd wear out, but I'm entertaining at home.

Along with steaks and some steamed green beans from my garden, I'm making homemade mac and cheese and my world-famous potato salad. Mason can't object, since I don't use a mayonnaise-based dressing. Mine is white wine, olive oil, white wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, minced shallots, and lots of fresh parsley tossed with diced boiled red potatoes and Jarlsberg cheese.

I made sure to avoid everything on Mason's list. Especially cupcakes.

He and his dad and Neely arrive at my front door looking exactly the way they did when I left them. One more red flag goes up in my assessment of Champ. The first thing I'd want to do after driving hundreds of miles for many days is take a shower and change my clothes and I'd make my child do the same but Champ and Mason remain rumpled, battered, and bleary-eyed.

Neely's still in jeans and a gray T-shirt, but she's shed the old, faded brown work shirt she was wearing over it earlier and traded her navy blue K-9 Training Corps ball cap for a red one advertising a dog food brand. This is about as dressed up as she gets.

She stops short when she sees me and eyes me up and down.

“What is wrong with you?” she asks exactly the same way she would if I were one of her human students who has just revealed she lets her dog sleep on her bed instead of crating him.

“I feel festive,” I reply.

“Wow,” Champ laughs.

He takes me by the hand and spins me around.

“I feel like I should take you salsa dancing.”

Champ still has the same infectious smile he had as a kid. A few good nights' sleep and a little fattening up and he'd be what I'd call a good-looking man. I study his features anew. I've lived my entire life in this town, and I have a very public job and personality. I know everyone, but I've never been able to track down Champ's father. I've searched the faces of every man I've ever met who would be the right age, but I've never found a resemblance to anyone.

“I like your dress, Aunt Dove,” Mason chirps up.

I glance down at him standing next to Neely, holding his binder under one arm.

“You remind me of the ladies painted on the walls in a Mexican restaurant we went to in Arizona,” he goes on. “They had good tacos. Remember, Dad?”

“I sure do, bud.”

He rips open his binder, rustles through his folders, and comes up with a cheap paper menu for Manny's Mexican Food. He hands it to me.

“Dad tried to talk to the waitress in Spanish,” he goes on, cracking a big smile. “It was a disaster.”

“What do you mean?” Champ teases him.
“¿Dónde está el baño?”

Mason dissolves into giggles.

“She was from Cleveland,” he can barely get out.

I skim through the menu and give it back to him.

“What's for dinner here?” he asks. “I'm starving.”

“Steaks, mac and cheese, potato salad, and green beans.”

“I love all those things!” he gushes, his big dark eyes growing even bigger and darker. “I'm so happy to meet you.”

He sticks out his hand. I shake it, then he takes off to explore my yard.

“How old is he?” I ask Champ.

“Nine going on sixty-two.”

“He's a nice kid. You've done a good job with him,” Neely says.

“Yeah, well. What can I do to help?” he abruptly changes the subject.

“How are you at grilling?”

“I'm a master griller.”

“Great. Then you're in charge of steaks. I'll bring them out. Neely can come with me and get you a beer. Go ahead and start the grill.”

I lead them through the house and onto my deck. Neely then follows me into the kitchen. We're barely inside before I start pumping her for information.

“So where's his wife or ex-wife?”

“I don't know.”

“What do you mean, you don't know? You've just spent the entire day with a brother you haven't seen in twenty-five years who has a son we never even knew existed and you didn't bother to ask him about the boy's mother?”

She opens the refrigerator and brings out three beers.

“I'm not you,” she says, handing me one.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I didn't interrogate him.”

“I repeat, what is that supposed to mean?”

She opens her bottle and takes a swig.

“From the sound of things they've been on their own for a while, but Mason quotes his mom a lot like he's just talked to her and it doesn't seem to bother Champ. Wherever she is, I don't think they're on bad terms.”

I check on my mac and cheese in the oven. About fifteen more minutes. Perfect.

“What
did
you find out? Where are they from? What does he do for a living?”

She shrugs, reaches for a fork, and starts eating potato salad out of the serving bowl.

“They've moved around a lot. He's had a bunch of different jobs. Nothing good.”

“You mean he doesn't work with dogs.”

“Nope.”

I swat her hand out of the bowl.

“Did he . . . ?” I toss back my head and make the motion of drinking at my lips.

“Or?” I follow it by pantomiming popping pills, shooting up, and taking a hit off a joint.

“He slept,” she answers me. “I never saw him take anything, although I saw him smoke a cigarette and he definitely has the shakes.”

“What kind of shakes? Drug shakes? Booze shakes?”

She raises her hands and waves them wildly at me.

“Shakes,” she whispers dramatically, and frowns at me.

“What happened with Derk?”

“Nothing. He came back with the dogs like I said he would. Have you ever seen him climb a tree?”

“I know. He's part squirrel.”

She waits until my back is turned while I'm salting the steaks and she eats more potato salad.

“He played with Mason for a little while. I was surprised, but they seemed to get along. I took him home with Tug. I'm really worried about Tug. He's so angry.”

“What do you expect? His sister was just murdered.”

“That should make him sad, not angry.”

“Stages of grieving,” I say. “Anger's one of them.”

I pick up the plate of steaks. She grabs the beers. We head outside.

“You know Tug won't get any help,” she tells me. “He has no one to talk to.”

“We didn't get any help.”

“But at least we had each other. And Grandma.”

“He has a family.”

I say the words, but I know Tug's family isn't going to be any help to him at all.

I've decided I'm not going to tell Neely about Uncle Eddie and Hòa Bình aka Maybe for now. Neely doesn't forgive and she doesn't forget. Eddie could sell everything he owns and donate it to the ASPCA and spend the rest of his life washing baby penguins pulled out of oil spills
and tracking down poachers in Africa, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference to her. He mistreated a dog: end of story.

We have a nice meal together. Even the bugs cooperate and leave us alone. It's a softly warm night, and as the sun begins to set and the sky turns from azure to lilac, the few clouds break apart and drift away, leaving behind a twinkling spray of stars and a bright white crescent moon.

During dinner, I reassess my earlier criticism of Neely's inability to get any information out of Champ. He's surprisingly adept at avoiding all topics related to his personal life. Even I have a tough time uncovering anything meaningful.

She was right about the shakes. He's a drinker. He drinks most of my beer, and after he and Mason wash the dishes, he asks if I have anything harder. I lie and tell him no, but when he says he'll go out and buy a bottle, I miraculously find some whiskey.