Angels Burning (8 page)

We spent our childhood there until we moved to Gil's mansion when we were fourteen, twelve, and nine. His wall-to-wall-carpeted four bedrooms, two bathrooms, formal dining room, living room, eat-in kitchen, and even a rec room enclosed behind a pink brick façade, two white columns, and sparkling clean windows we could actually see out of wasn't really a mansion, but compared to Chez Cissy it certainly was, and we always referred to it in an English accent as Rankin Manor.

We were even able to get Grandma in on the game. She's ninety-two now and in a nursing home, but to this day if our conversations turn to her daughter's brief, ill-fated marriage, she raises her voice to an imperial croak that would make Dame Maggie Smith proud and reminisces about Rankin Manor and Lord Gil.

On the surface Gil's house certainly seemed better suited to our freshly scrubbed, expertly made-up, flashily dressed mother than our previous one, but she never seemed as comfortable there as she did in the pseudo-shack. None of us were. This was through no fault of Lord
Gil's. He did his best to accommodate us. He decorated one of the bedrooms in marshmallow Peep yellow and teal for Neely and me. We both found the room too alarming for sleep and took our bedding into the walk-in closet that was bigger than our old room anyway.

He did better connecting with Champ. Neely and I weren't offended. We chalked it up to them both being male and the fact that little kids are easier for adults to deal with than older kids. I was a teen and had the feeling Gil looked at me as a piece of adolescent pottery that had already been fired in the kiln. I was hard and set, whereas Champ was still squishy and malleable and his wide-eyed, frisky presence cried out for caresses and shaping.

Neely was only twelve, but she was an intense, eerily observant, uncompromising kid who wasn't to everyone's liking. She wasn't shy or standoffish. Timidity stems from fear, and aloofness comes from a feeling of superiority; neither applied to my sister.

I've never known anyone else like her, and lacking anyone to compare her to, I was never able to come up with an adequate summation of her personality in my mind until she began her work with service dogs and subsequent love affair with German shepherds in particular. Neely is just like her dogs. Her silence is louder than most people's shouting.

The house I live in now is on Springfield Street. A psychologist might have something to say about my deciding to live a few blocks down from my childhood home, one that wasn't necessarily bursting with good memories, and he'd probably have even more to say when he found out that it was torn down and replaced by a beer distributor long before I moved here.

I wanted to live in this house when I was a kid, and I can't think of a better reason for purchasing a home as an adult than this. The attractions were many, but what drew me to it the most was that it looked like a bunch of houses thrown together. The bottom half was constructed of pale gray rock and set into a slight rise in the yard that gave it the appearance of having been excavated right out of the ground. The top half was wood and painted an outrageous shade of sea foam green with windows
and eaves trimmed in flamingo pink that screamed cheap Miami motel. An all-glass sunroom overflowing with potted plants took up one side;
If we ever live in this house
, I'd tell Neely,
we're going to call this the jungle room
. An exposed set of stairs clung to the other side of the house leading to a tiny third-floor room in the shape of a turret. I called it the grotto until I said the name out loud one day and Neely corrected me, explaining that a grotto was a little cave. She was pretty sure I meant garret.

I'm always happy to see my house. I did eventually replace the original trim with a more respectable white, but I've changed nothing else.

After my visit to the Massey residence, I spent the rest of the day back at the station being ignored by Nolan while having to deal with the media he sent my way. He knows I have a knack for placating the public, plus this allows the state police to stand behind their usual wall of reticence. If I say something they don't want said, they can blame the incompetence of yokel law enforcement while secretly hoping what I let out might help the investigation. Nolan counts on this. He knows I'm a strategic leaker.

Two of my officers are on vacation: one in the Outer Banks with his family, the other in Canada somewhere hunting bears. I've rallied the other four and explained the best thing they can do right now is circulate and talk to everyone they can without seeming to care what answers they get. Small-town gossip is 95 percent unreliable but the 5 percent based on fact is pure gold, and usually the people who know something relevant don't realize they do and are willing to chatter away.

I pull into my garage but walk outside before going inside for the sake of my next-door neighbor, Bob, who's always standing in his driveway in a pair of sweatpants cut off below the knees, unlaced gym shoes, and a faded concert T-shirt, talking on his cell phone, and smoking a cigarette. The only variation in his appearance is a parka thrown over the outfit in winter.

He's been on disability for the entire fifteen years I've lived here. I don't know how he was disabled or where he was working when it happened, but I do know he has a mousy wife named Candy who holds down two jobs and rarely talks except on a few occasions when she's had
one too many Bud Lights during a family cookout. Each time this has happened she shared her two favorite fantasies with me over the fence: that Bob dies in his sleep and that he dies while he's awake.

Bob always greets me in the same manner, and I fear if I don't allow this ritual to occur in our driveways, he will try to get into my house.

“Catch any bad guys today?” he calls out.

“Not today,” I reply, smiling.

I walk back into my garage.

My house is mostly books, shoes, a few sentimental knickknacks and souvenirs, lots of color, and lots of polished hardwood floors, the only element of my living space that I fastidiously keep clean. I have a well-organized but still seemingly messy kitchen where I spend most of my time if I'm not in my den, which doubles as my office with overflowing bookshelves, a TV, a big desk, and a comfy old couch where I end up sleeping more nights than in my own bed.

All the rooms are painted a different color. My kitchen is the deep blue of the sky on a perfect autumn day. My den is the reddish-brown of fallen pine needles carpeting a forest floor. My bedroom is lilac, my favorite flower that grows on a bush. My guest room is Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpet, my favorite food that comes off a factory assembly line. I've forgotten the colors of the living room and dining room; I never go in there. The jungle room is still a jungle and the grotto is barren except for a beanbag chair, a minifridge stocked with beer, and a reading lamp.

Once I was on my own as an adult and I had a dependable income, I discovered cooking could be rewarding and a lot of fun if a person could actually afford to buy the necessary ingredients. As a kid, I had no choice but to construct meals for my siblings and me from what was around and what we could afford, and for the most part this included boxes of dried macaroni, cans of cat-food-grade tuna, Wonder Bread that turned to a sticky paste the moment it hit our tongues, slimy bought-on-the-day-of-expiration bologna, ketchup and mustard packets Mom brought home from dates, Chef Boyardee's entire repertoire, and when life was good, hot dogs; sometimes I was even able to wrap them in Pillsbury crescent rolls.

Now I love to cook. It relaxes me.

I kick off my shoes, change into a pair of shorts and a tank top, and head for the kitchen, where I flick on the small TV sitting on my countertop and grab a beer out of the fridge while perusing its contents for tonight's supper.

Behind me I hear my own voice and turn around to see me on the local news telling a reporter that this is a terrible tragedy and our department will be working diligently with the state police to bring the perpetrator to justice.

I squint at the screen, then pull open a drawer looking for a pair of glasses.

I've never been to an eye doctor in my life, and I don't intend to start now. I refuse to accept that I might need serious, all-day-long eye assistance. Instead, I've become an enthusiastic proponent of reading glasses. I have them scattered throughout my house, my car, at work. I was relieved to discover they're cheap and can be bought anywhere from drugstores and grocery stores to T.J.Maxx, where I found a boxed set of three pairs with gaudy, designer frames for $12. My favorite is a pair that looks like green apple and watermelon Jolly Ranchers have been melted together.

I find a pair with leopard-print frames and plunk them on my face.

The camera really does add ten pounds, because there's no way that extra ten pounds around my middle is my fault, I assure myself while I take another swig from my beer and rip off a chunk of the crusty bread I picked up on my way home from Zuchelli's Bakery.

My image dissolves into one of the Truly family standing outside their home. Jessy's holding her baby in one arm and has the other around a miserable-looking, raw-eyed Tug, who's taken his cap off and holds it respectfully in his too-big hands as if he's already mourning in a church. Shawna's holding Derk by the shoulders and has him placed directly in front of her like a shield. He twists and fidgets, fighting his captor, and I watch her fingers dig into him.

There's a man with them I assume to be Clark Truly. Bad teeth and a bad mullet are his only distinguishing features. He looks a good twenty
years older than the forty-two he has under his belt. I attribute this to the booze, but some of it could also be due to the instant aging that occurs when a man's called home from the road to face the brutal murder of his daughter.

He's got a good sway going on and his words are slightly slurred.

“We got nothing to say except whoever done this better hope the cops get to them first.”

The reporter wisely decides not to pursue the family interview any further, but before the spot returns to the safety of the news desk, I notice the words of his father jerk Tug out of his grieving stupor for a moment and a flash of hot rage dances across his guileless features before settling in at the tips of his ears, turning them bright red.

I look away from the TV and concentrate on cooking instead. I chop up a bunch of garlic cloves and tear up a few slices of prosciutto and toss them into a pot with simmering olive oil, then go outside to pick some basil out of my garden and put a sliced eggplant on the grill. Back inside, I add what's left of my last bottle of red wine to the pot and reduce by half, then a can of crushed tomatoes, a little water, and a jar of my homemade sauce I put up every summer after my tomato harvest.

The sauce is simmering and the water's boiling for pasta when I hear a knock at my front door. It's a cop knock.
Boom, boom, boom
.

Nolan's standing on my front porch, preliminary autopsy report in hand.

“It could've waited until Monday, or you could've faxed or emailed it to me like I asked a hundred times today,” I say to him.

“I was busy,” he says in lieu of a greeting. “You cooking something? Smells good.”

“Come in.”

He heads straight for the kitchen. I retrieve my eggplant from the grill. He's already helped himself to a beer and taken off his tie and his shoulder holster by the time I return.

“Make yourself at home.”

“Nothing too interesting,” he begins.

Nolan doesn't believe in small talk.

“The blows to the head killed her.”

“So she wasn't . . .”

“No. She was already dead when she was lit on fire.”

I chop up the eggplant and throw it into the sauce and dump a box of penne into the boiling water.

“So it was unnecessary. It was something personal for the killer.”

“Or he was trying to get rid of the body like you said out at the site and changed his mind or someone else changed it for him.

“Two distinct wounds made from the same weapon as yet unidentified,” he continues. “There were rust particulates in the wounds. Could be from the weapon or where she was killed or how she was transported. No sign of sexual assault. Initial blood work looks clean. No alcohol or drugs.”

“Who are you bringing in besides the family?”

“The boyfriend.”

“He has a name. Zane.”

“Don't start getting mushy.”

“You're not bringing him in as a suspect already?”

I feel a little protective of Zane. In my gut, I know he didn't do it.

“I told you I talked to him earlier,” I remind Nolan.

He leans back in his chair and assesses me from behind his shades.

“He came across as a nice, normal kid who seemed genuinely in the dark and then genuinely devastated. I think he loved her.”

“Loving their girlfriends is the number one reason boyfriends kill them,” Nolan replies.

I put together two plates of pasta, top them with fresh basil and pieces of buffalo mozzarella that immediately begin to melt into the sauce, and signal at Nolan to join me outside to eat on the deck.

He grabs the bread and his beer and follows.

“I wish I had some wine to go with this,” I say, sitting down.

“I don't,” he says.

“How's the wife?” I ask to piss him off.

The correct response would've been,
Let me run to the State Store that's only a five-minute drive away and get you a bottle.

“Visiting the grandkids in Colorado,” he says with his mouth full.

“Isn't that what she was doing the last time I saw you about a year ago?”

“I think she was visiting the other grandkids in Ohio then.”

“Does she ever visit you?”

“Not anymore. What did you think about her mother?”

I take time to savor some of my dinner knowing the pause won't derail Nolan. He has one topic of conversation: work.