Angels Burning (34 page)

“Maybe you should tell him to stop,” I say to Shawna.

“Won't do no good.”

I get up and walk to the end of the table, put my shoulder under it,
and heave with all my strength. The table tilts and Derk slides off onto the floor. He grabs the chair I was sitting on and swings it around while backing into a corner. Once safely situated, he squats down and sets the chair in front of him like a cell door.

“Your mother has something to say to you, Derk,” I tell him. “I know you think you're pretty tough, but even the toughest guys in the world listen to their moms.”

He puts his hands on the back of the chair and peers through the metal railings at Shawna.

“Go ahead,” I say gently, hoping she might still feel a little of the empathetic connection we had the last time we spoke and still trust me.

The three of us sit in silence for what feels like an entire afternoon but is probably only a minute.

“This ain't a game,” Shawna finally speaks.

Her voice is low and quiet, barely audible. She doesn't look at Derk but stares at her hands clasped between her knees.

“Your sister's dead. And she loved you. You know how rare that is? To have someone who really loves you? It don't happen much. Now she's gone. Forever.”

I know she's talking about Camio being gone forever but I can't help wondering if she's also thinking about herself before she met Clark and Miranda Truly and even Sugar, the sacrificial cat.

Derk watches her, fascinated.

She raises her head and stares back at him.

“Derk, I want you to tell us where you found that phone. I'm not going to tell you to do it for Camio. She's an angel in heaven now, like Grandma told you. She's happy. I want you to do it for me. Your old mom. Because I'm very, very sad.”

He shifts around behind the chair but continues to hold the seat's back rails like they're bars he can't shake loose.

“I'm going to get in trouble,” he replies. “I'm going to get kilt.”

“Don't say stuff like that,” Shawna tells him. “I won't be mad at you no matter where you were.”

“You're not who's gonna kill me.”

“I won't let anyone kill you.”

His mother's promise appears to be the key that frees him from his corner. He pushes the chair aside and walks over to her.

“You will be the mighty good queen?” he asks with extreme gravity.

He's a slip of a boy, all wiry muscle and bone hidden beneath his dirty, ill-fitting clothes. He looks like he'd be easy to subdue, but I imagine trying to physically force him to do something he didn't want to do would be like taking on a rabid weasel.

“Yes,” his mother answers him.

“I go in her house sometimes and take things and put them back later,” he confesses. “I want her to think she's crazy. She locks her doors, but I know an upstairs window I can get in.”

Understanding shines briefly in Shawna's eyes. She knows what he's talking about.

“You found Camio's phone in your grandma's house?” she asks him.

“On the table next to her bed with her Bible and her
TV Guide
,” he confirms.

He moves closer to her.

“Now you can make me a knight,” he states.

From his shorts pocket, he pulls out one of the novelty toothpicks Mason accumulated on his road trip that he traded with him for Camio's phone and gives it to her. She takes it and holds it delicately between her chubby fingers.

He kneels down in front of her and bows his head. She gently taps his skinny shoulders and all the burdens he carries there with the tiny plastic sword.

NOLAN DOESN'T SAY MUCH
to me after questioning Derk other than to ask if I want to hang around for Miranda's interrogation. I tell him nothing on heaven or earth would keep me from seeing that.

It makes no sense for me to drive all the way back to Buchanan, then back to the barracks. I find a nearby Dunkin' Donuts, have a coffee and cruller, and feel like a cliché.

Upon my return I find Nolan standing statue-still in the parking lot, his hands in his pants pockets, his Ray-Bans affixed firmly to his face, his shoulder holster and gun peeking out from underneath his suit jacket.

I don't know what this means at first, then I think I do.

I want to see Camio's killer brought to justice as much as anyone—sometimes I think I want it more than her own family—but the official investigation doesn't belong to me. I'm doing all I can to assist, but aside from listening to future grumblings from residents about the incompetence of the local police department and irate blogging and letters to the editor bemoaning their once idyllic community's loss of innocence, it's not going to impact my career.

Nolan is at the end of his, but this doesn't make a bit of difference. Every case has always been of equal importance to him. He works as hard now as he did when he first joined the force. In some ways, I think he works harder. He's no longer performing his duties with an eye toward advancement and glory but out of accountability.

A teenage girl from a small town brutally bludgeoned to death and lit on fire is a very big deal. He needs to close this case for his own peace of mind as well as for everyone else he has sworn to protect.

He's nervous.

I park, get out of my car, and walk toward him.

“She's here,” he says.

I wait for him to expand on this narrative, or he might say nothing more and I wouldn't be surprised.

“I don't have to tell you how important this interview is,” he finally continues. “Once she talks, Eddie will talk, too. I can't screw this up.”

“You won't.”

“Don't patronize me.”

“I'm not telling you what you want to hear,” I jump to my own defense. “I didn't say you will get the confession; I said you won't screw up. There's a difference.”

We both fall silent. I know from experience that Nolan can remain this way indefinitely until he decides to depart without any explanation.

I'm getting ready to say something when he speaks again.

“We checked Eddie Truly's phone records and right around Camio's TOD he received a phone call from his mother on her landline. After what we've just learned from the boy, we were able to access her phone records, and before she called Eddie she received a call from Jessyca's cell. We already have her records, since her line is on a family plan under her father's name. Originally we didn't pay much attention to her calls.”

He pauses. I know he's upset he let this get by him. He's feeling regret but not guilt.

“Why would you?” I reason. “A girl calls her grandmother. So what? Even if it happened around the time her sister was killed, there was no reason to suspect either one of them.”

“Now we know what we're looking for,” he goes on. “We checked the origination of the call. It bounced off a tower near Adelaide Bertolino's home.”

My heart drops. I didn't realize until this moment how badly I didn't want Jessyca to be involved.

“Jessy was at the crime scene at the time of death,” I state unhappily. “She called her grandma. Her grandma called her uncle.”

“To help clean up and dispose of the body,” Nolan finishes for me.

“Or maybe not,” I argue hopefully. “When are you talking to Jessy?”

“I want to hear what Miranda has to say first.”

“Can I bring Jessy in?”

“I guess you've earned that right if you want it.”

Silence descends once again. I don't notice it this time because I'm busy coming up with alternative theories of the crime. Nolan is the first to talk.

“Last time you saw Miranda, you got under her skin. She got personal with you. Was inappropriate?” he asks.

I nod.

“Why do you think she did that?”

“There's the obvious answer: that she wanted to upset me and throw me off my game,” I reply. “Or she might have done it to impress her family. Show them she wasn't afraid of the police. But the more I've thought about it, I think she was testing me. She wanted to see if I'd make a worthy adversary.”

“When I talked to her she was polite as can be,” he tells me, “the epitome of a little old lady who was dealing with a horrible tragedy in her family and using it as an excuse to tell me nothing.”

He pauses.

“I want to go at her together.”

An adolescent thrill rushes through me in spite of myself. He's impressed with me. He trusts me.

“Good cop, bad cop?” I joke with him, trying to sound nonchalant. “Or good cop, glorified babysitter cop?”

“From everything we know about her, she likes to control other people's relationships. If we need to, we can distract her with ours.”

“Our real relationship?”

“Hell no.”

He turns and walks into the station. I follow, knowing full well we won't end up putting on any kind of act when we confront our suspect. We will be ourselves, only Nolan won't realize it. He's an expert at reading others but knows nothing about himself.

“I'VE ASKED CHIEF CARNAHAN
to sit in on this interview,” Nolan tells Miranda.

She maintains her composure and gives me a nod, not showing the slightest bit of surprise or discomfort.

Now that I've seen a few pictures of her from her youth, I know she's a woman who has aged from the inside out. Joy, pleasure, optimism left her long ago. Not all at once; like air from a punctured bicycle tire with the nail still embedded in the tread, her compassion atrophy was probably a slow leak.

Aside from the inevitable wrinkles and gray hair, she looks remarkably like the young mother I saw posing with her sister and their babies in the photo on Adelaide's wall, but the stony condemnation in her stare and condescension in her carriage is that of ancient gall.

“You don't mind, do you?” he asks while pulling out a chair for me on the opposite side of the table from Miranda.

I smile at him, not her, and take a seat, crossing my legs, and being sure to flaunt my girlishness.

I have a stack of folders with me that have nothing to do with this case and a legal pad with a bunch of nonsense I jotted down on it before we came in. I'm wearing my plainest reading glasses and carrying a cup of coffee I hand to Nolan like a doting secretary.

“Not at all,” she says.

Despite the heat, she's costumed in a long-sleeved black sack of a dress that falls below her knees. If it weren't for the presence of her head and a pair of withered, blue-veined hands, I'd think the garment was still on its hanger.

She wears no jewelry of any kind, not even a wedding ring or a cross on a chain around her neck. Her hair has been cut since I saw her a few
days ago. The style is almost mannish now, shaved on the sides but feathered on top like a grate full of white ashy embers has been dumped on her head.

The severity of her mourning is excessive.

“We appreciate you coming in to talk to us,” Nolan says.

“I didn't have much of a choice,” Miranda counters.

He takes off his glasses and levels a concerned gaze at her with his baby blues.

“How's that? The troopers didn't explain? I told them to answer any questions you might have.”

“They don't always listen to you,” I say snidely.

He makes a point of ignoring me.

Miranda is already watching us closely.

“They said it had something to do with my granddaughter's murder. That's all,” she provides.

She doesn't know we've found the crime scene. She doesn't know Eddie has been detained and is in a holding cell in the basement of this very building. His phone was taken from him the moment he was picked up and since then, he hasn't asked to call anyone, including a lawyer.

“Is it true things have been disappearing from your home?” Nolan asks her, going completely off topic.

Miranda's eyes shift quickly from him to me. I raise my pen, poised to take notes.

“Yes. I mean, no,” she stutters. “I misplaced a few things. Then I found them again. I'm an old lady. How do you know this?”

“You're lying,” I state flatly. “You didn't misplace anything. You might be old, but you're sharp as a tack.”

“Don't speak to Mrs. Truly like that,” Nolan commands.

“Don't you speak to me like that,” I snap back at him. “You were my superior eons ago. Not anymore. I know how to conduct an interrogation.”

He leans back in his chair, puts his hands behind his head, and stretches out his legs.

“Fine. Go ahead. Conduct away.”

“Mrs. Truly,” I begin again. “Has something of substantial value gone missing from your home recently?”

She glances at Nolan. He's staring at the ceiling.

“I don't own anything of substantial value,” she answers me in a prickly tone.

“I don't mean expensive. I mean something important. Like your dead granddaughter's phone.”

I got her good. Panic dances in her eyes for a split second followed by the fight-or-flight reflex. Flight is impossible for her at the moment. She decides to fight. I'd expect no less from her.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Camio's phone was found in your house. We have it in our possession now and we have the testimony of the person who took it from you.”

The seed has been planted. We know who invaded her home and messed around with her stuff and her sanity. This is a piece of information she'd love to have.

“You have the testimony of a thief then,” she responds angrily. “What good will that do you?”

“He's only a thief if he took it. So you're saying someone did take the phone from your home?”

My backward looping logic has her temporarily confused.

Nolan jumps in.

“We just need to know how you came to acquire the phone,” he says conversationally.