Angels Burning (29 page)

The only thing missing from the picture is a curlicue of gray
smoke coming from the chimney and an orange cat sitting in front of the door.

The paint is peeling. The windows need washing, the flowers need weeding, and the driveway needs patching, but the place doesn't look run-down; it exudes the honest shabbiness that comes from the passage of time and the owner's inability to keep up with repairs and maintenance, whether it be for financial or physical reasons or both. One glance at it and I know the owner cares.

I step out of Nolan's car and walk past a bunch of very bored troopers who are trying not to appear nosy but are soaking up every detail. I'm glad I decided to dress seriously today in a pair of navy trousers, navy blouse, and a cream boucle blazer. (Not real boucle but close enough. I got it for a song at T.J.Maxx.)

I join Nolan and we step into the house together. Two CSU guys are quietly going about their jobs gathering evidence. We turn to each other smiling, then immediately rearrange our mouths into frowns as we realize the inappropriateness of the expression under the circumstances, but on the inside we're both thrumming with excitement: the house reeks of bleach. Someone had something very messy to clean up.

We put on latex gloves and head in opposite directions.

The interior echoes the exterior. The furniture's upholstery is fraying, the throw rugs are old and worn out, and the wallpaper is an outdated paisley print yellowed with age, but everything is clean and neat.

I feel like I've stepped inside a life-size seventies diorama. The only thing missing is a wall phone and a TV set inside a huge fake wood console sitting on shag carpet. Addy does have a flat-screen, although a small one, and a cord-free phone. According to Nolan, she doesn't own a cell phone. She also doesn't have a computer or a microwave. An old-fashioned radio shaped like a toaster with knobs the size of halved Ping-Pong balls sits on a Formica-topped table in the kitchen. Copies of
Reader's Digest
and
Ladies
'
Home Journal
are stacked on an end table next to a lamp with a ceramic base shaped like a collie and a shade decoupaged with autumn leaves.

One wall is completely covered with family photos. She and Miranda
may have been estranged, but the bad feelings on Addy's part apparently weren't strong enough to have made her want to forget her sister and her progeny existed. There are too many people from too many time periods for me to identify all of them, but I recognize some. She has photos of Camio, Jessy, and Shane long after they were taken from her.

I notice one photo is missing. A nail juts out of the wall above a faded square of wallpaper where the sun hasn't shown in years.

Next to this empty space are a few old-timey, sepia-shaded photos of two little girls I assume to be her and Miranda. She has photos of them in their teens and as young mothers with their first babies in their arms. Looking at the pictures I don't see any signs of ill will on either of their parts, not in their body language or expressions.

I find her wedding picture. She doesn't have a formal staged one. It's her and Joey standing at the top of a set of church steps. She's holding her bouquet and waving. He's looking at her, not the guests, and smiling broadly at her. I like that.

Not much can be seen of the church. It appears to be a humble one. White wood with cement steps. The doors are propped open. It looks familiar to me, but all the churches around here do.

She has two more photos taken in front of the same church. In each one she's holding a swaddled baby in her arms and Joey stands beside her in a dark suit, still not smiling for the camera but smiling at each of his daughters in turn. I like this, too.

The baptisms
, I wonder, then it strikes me what's out of place about the church. Surely the Bertolinos are Catholic, which means they would have attended the nearest Catholic Church, and back then that meant going all the way to Hellersburg. I know that church and it's an impressive gray stone edifice with marble stairs. Maybe this humble church with its weathered white wood had been the one Addy's family attended. Usually the father's religion won out over the mother's, especially if it was a battle between Catholic and Protestant, but maybe smiling Joey had loved his new wife more than his old religion. I bet that went over well with his mama.

There are plenty of photos of Angela and Layla growing up, every school photo from every grade, hung in its proper place in the progression of their young lives.

Layla was barely out of high school when she got pregnant with Shane. We've checked the records. Layla Bertolino had three children, Shane, Jessyca, and Camio, with fathers listed as unknown on their birth certificates that we've now been led to believe were the product of a union with her cousin Clark Truly. The three children went to live with Clark after a drunk driver in a Dodge Ram pickup T-boned Layla's car. There's no reason to doubt what Shawna told us. Why else would Addy have let them go?

What a triumph that must have been for Miranda when she told the sister she hated that her beloved grandchildren were freaks spawned by first cousins and the father was her own son. Or did this knowledge disgust Miranda even more than it did Addy? After all, she supposedly hated Addy. The feeling didn't seem to be mutual. Addy seemed to only fear her.

Regardless, Miranda took her grandchildren from her. She was the big winner. I can imagine her victory speech.

We're taking them, Addy. They're Clark's children. Don't make us prove it. We don't want to call outside attention to this and we don't want the children to ever know. It's for their own good. How much do you love them? Enough to let them go and never see them again and let them have a normal life? Or is your need to keep them so strong that you would tell them the vile truth behind their parentage and ruin them?

I take down one of the photos with the church in it and remove it from the frame to see if anything is written on the back. Nothing. I try with the other two.

Suddenly it comes to me and my head swims with memories of stained glass and Nolan on a respirator.

I hurry off, looking for Nolan, and find him in the guest room staring at a bed made up only with sheets. The comforter is missing but the incriminating bed skirt is still on it.

I hand Nolan the photo.

“This is the church at Campbell's Run,” I tell him. “The family has a tie to the place where Camio's body was dumped.”

He studies the picture.

“Good work,” he says.

I'm momentarily stunned and equally thrilled by his praise, but my good mood only lasts a second as I consider the bed in front of me and what it's telling me.

“Look at this,” I say to him, and grab one of the pillows off the bed. “She even has the matching throw pillows. She has the whole set, and it's not cheap. Whether she bought it for herself or someone gave it to her as a gift, she obviously loved it. There's no way she used the comforter to wrap up a dead body.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm saying if Addy were present and a willing participant in Camio's murder, she would've objected to using the comforter and used a different blanket. If she wasn't present or wasn't able to object . . .”

I don't finish the sentence. I don't need to. Both Nolan and I are holding out little hope for a happy ending to her disappearance.

I follow him into the kitchen.

It's one more small, spotless room that looks like nothing has been touched in it for the past forty years. I don't see a single modern appliance. Not even a food processor or a blender. The toaster is a shiny silver affair with a red-and-white-striped cloth cord that looks sturdy enough to drop from a ten-story building without putting a dent in it.

A set of canisters made of tarnished copper line one counter. A drying rack holds one plate, one cup, one fork, and one spoon. A snarl of steel wool sits near the sink faucet. One of her dish towels has fabric sewn to a corner along with a button and is looped through a drawer handle and fastened. My grandma did the same thing with hers. She said it kept her from misplacing them.

The stove is an old gas range. Sitting on one of the back burners is a cast-iron skillet.

I walk toward it, slowly, softly, holding my breath as if the pan were a living thing that might bolt if it hears or senses me.

It can't be this easy
passes through my thoughts. I'm still wearing the latex gloves I put on earlier. I pick up the skillet by its handle and feel the heft of it. I turn it over as a matter of course, not expecting to find anything. Flaky patches of orange rust speckle the bottom and a small dark stain near the perimeter catches my eye.

I don't have any glasses on me. I hold the pan away from my face at arm's length, hoping the mark will come into better focus.

“Holy shit,” I hear Nolan say behind me.

He reaches around me, puts his hand over mine, and brings the skillet up to his face.

“What is it?” I ask.

“If I'm not mistaken,” he says in a whisper, reinforcing the same sensation I had that our evidence might disappear if we spook it, “it's hair stuck to a clot of dried blood.”

Within moments, our discovery is confirmed. Slowly but surely every bored trooper manages to wander in and eyeball the weapon.

“Someone killed that girl by smashing her skull in with a skillet, then put it right back on the stove?” one trooper asks me. “That may be the coldest murder I've ever heard of.”

I know of one colder, but I keep it to myself.

NOLAN DOESN'T DROP ME
at the station until almost five. If I had been driving my own car, I would've left much earlier. After my discovery of the murder weapon, I felt pretty useless for the rest of the day. Nolan's team works together like a well-oiled machine; I'm a similar cog, but one that belongs to another team.

I gather my men for a meeting around the murder board the moment I get back. I called to let them know what was going on. Along with the discovery of the skillet, hair and blood were also found in the trunk of Adelaide's car, and microscopic blood evidence was found in the cracks of the kitchen linoleum along with a few tiny splatters the killer missed while cleaning up. None of it has been confirmed as belonging to Camio yet, but there's little doubt.

My four officers are strutting around, barely able to contain their excitement over our department breaking the case and besting the state police.

I also put Singer on the job of finding out what tied Miranda and Adelaide to the town of Campbell's Run.

I tack up Adelaide's photo beneath the word “motive” written in all caps in the middle of the board followed by a bunch of questions marks. I've run out of new marker colors. In black I write beneath her: M
issing, presumed dead
.

Next I draw an arrow between her and Miranda.

“A lot of bad blood between these two,” I tell them.

Then I underline Miranda's alibi:
Home alone but too old?

“We all agree she's too old to have done this on her own, but she could have been part of it.”

I draw an arrow between Eddie and Addy.

“We know he tried to kill her once before, although it's only hearsay at this point from one source. He has no alibi, and now we also know he was at the scene.

“There were no usable fingerprints on the murder weapon but there were some on the driver's side interior car door handle and steering wheel that belonged to Eddie Truly,” I explain.

“They were able to run the prints before they even finished clearing the scene. Eddie's prints were in the system from prior arrests. He's been picked up and Corporal Greely is interviewing him as we speak.”

“Poor bastard,” Dewey says with a grin.

“Singer, did you find out the significance of Campbell's Run?”

“Yes, ma'am,” he replies eagerly.

The three other officers snort and shake their heads at his enthusiasm.

“The two sisters are originally from the Run. Their parents were some of the people who lost their homes. The sisters were already married and gone by then, but it still would've been rough watching the town where you grew up get bulldozed under.”

I can easily see Miranda coming up with the idea of hiding a body there. She's well acquainted with the town's
ability to swallow up lives.

“Excellent,” I say to Singer.

He blushes. Blonski throws a pen at his head.

I turn my back to them and study the board for a moment.

“But,” I announce when I face them again. “What does any of this have to do with Camio's murder?”

We all mull over the question.

“You told us she was about to go see her great-aunt,” Everhart points out. “Maybe she was there when Miranda and Eddie showed up?”

“Okay,” I say, nodding. “Good observation for a guy who was asleep at his desk when I came in.”

He gives me an embarrassed smile.

“The Jakester woke up every couple hours last night. He wants to eat all the time.”

“Isn't your wife nursing?” Dewey asks.

“Yeah but she wakes me up, too, even though I don't do anything. She says it's a matter of principle.”

“Maybe Camio was collateral damage,” Blonski interrupts, not the least bit interested in the woes of new fatherhood. “Maybe Eddie and Miranda killed Adelaide and Camio witnessed it? They had to take her out.”

“They killed her?” Singer wonders. “That's cold. Couldn't they have convinced her to keep her mouth shut? They're a tight-lipped bunch.”

“I don't know,” Blonski goes on. “She seems like she would've been the kind of kid who'd want to do the right thing. Go to the police. She was the black sheep.”

“Or she was the white sheep in a family of black sheep,” Dewey comments.

“It would also explain why we've never been able to come up with a motive,” Blonski adds. “Because there wasn't one. She was collateral damage.”