Faceless (5 page)

He looked around the kitchen and then turned his attention back to me.

“Can I get you some coffee? I need some coffee. Um, Father? Detective? We have one of those single-cup things. Tea?”

“Yes, coffee would be fine, thank you,” I answered him.

“Garrett,” Father Murphy stood up. “Why don’t you let me do that? Please relax, sit down before you fall down.”

Mr.
Camp
gestured for the priest to remain seated.

“No, Father, please—I need to do this, I need to stay busy. I’m afraid that if I stop moving, I will crash. I can’t afford to do that.”

Reluctantly, Father Murphy sat back down. “Okay Garrett, coffee… just black, please,” he said.

Mr.
Camp
turned to me, looking for my preference.

“Cream and one sugar, please,” I told him.

I could see his hands were trembling as he prepared the coffee. He managed to get all three mugs to the table without spilling a drop.

I waited until he was seated and took his first sip before I started my interview.

“I got the feeling that you and Mrs. Camp were surprised that Jamie was not at home last night, is that right?”

He nodded his head. He lifted his right hand, pinched the bridge of his nose, and then spread his thumb and index finger across the bones below his eyes.

“Yes… she… I thought she was in her bed; when I looked in her room this morning and didn’t see her, I just thought she got up early and was downstairs having breakfast or on the computer. We don’t allow her to use the computer in her room, we are very… well, we like to keep an eye on…”

He stopped mid-sentence. He reached into his pocket and took out a handkerchief to wipe his eyes.

“I know it’s kind of futile, trying to keep her from using the computer without our knowledge, but we try to keep abreast of what she is doing and what she is looking at. We hear so many horror stories.”

I could tell by the expression on his face that he just made some sort of connection. One of those horror stories had just become more than a story, it had become reality.

“What happened? What happened to my daughter? You said she was murdered. How? Why? Are you sure that it’s Jamie? I need to see her. Where is she?”

I knew there really was no way I was going to soften the blow for this man, so I just was as honest and as forthcoming as possible.

“She was found in the woods at the northern end of town, not far from Route 42, near the Forester mansion. Her friends said she came up missing, so they went looking for her. They found her body just at the edge of the woods.”

“Her friends? What friends? What the hell is going on?” He had his hand wrapped around his coffee mug, his knuckles were turning white his grip was so tight. “What was my daughter doing up there? I thought she was in bed.”

He raised the coffee mug to his mouth, but he was trembling so hard that some of the liquid splashed out and stained the neatly pressed white business shirt that he had put on just an hour ago. Immediately he made an effort to wipe the brown liquid from staining the shirt, but gave up after a few seconds.

I looked at my notebook and read him the names of the three girls that were now with Marty. I didn’t see much of a reaction when I read off Tiffany Bennett and Lisa Padilla’s names, but I did seem to get some reaction when the name Katie Hepburn was mentioned.

“Mr. Camp? Do you know these girls?”

“Yeah, I know them. Tiffany and Lisa have been friends with Jamie for years. Katie was… I didn’t know that they had reconciled. There was an incident awhile back, and Katie and my daughter weren’t getting along.”

“What kind of incident, Mr. Camp?” I asked, my interest in his answer now piqued.

“What the hell were they doing up there? How did they get there? None of those girls drive, do they?” He looked at me for answers—answers I knew I couldn’t give him.

I repeated my question. “What kind of incident, Mr. Camp?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore the question, I just… this is just so…”

“I know Mr. Camp, I completely understand, please take your time.”

He turned his attention to Father Murphy. The distraught father’s eyes seemed to be speaking a language of their own. It was times like these that people with faith would just cling onto their beliefs for dear life, or fall by the wayside, like my partner Joe had now done.

I got the impression from the look that Mr. Camp was now giving Father Murphy is that he would fall into that first category, and hang onto his faith like a captain on his ship during a ferocious storm.

“Some boy Jamie and Katie had some sort of falling out over a boy. I think that Katie was giving Jamie a hard time about this kid. My wife knows more about it than I do. Apparently, they actually got into some sort of physical brawl over him. They both got suspended from school for a week. My daughter was punished and she missed out on one of her modeling jobs because she was grounded. She was not a happy camper.”

He started to smile at his own joke, an expression that the family probably used often, and then, once again, reality slapped him in the face.

“Your daughter was a model?” At that moment, it had occurred to me that I had not seen any photographs of Jamie or her family in the two rooms that I had been in. The living room walls were adorned in what appeared to be expensive oil paintings. The kitchen in which we now sat had on one wall a clock and a calendar. An intricately carved large wooden spoon and fork decorated another.

I turned around to see if I could see back into the living area. A rounded archway separated the two rooms. From where I sat, I could just make out the edge of one of the oil paintings of a landscape. Other than that, the walls were barren.

I found it odd that there were no family photos. In my home, dozens of photographs of my kids’ faces adorned the walls and any other spot a frame could occupy.

If Jamie’s face had not been so horribly disfigured, I probably would have had the same feeling that I had had with the other girls, that she looked familiar. But now I realized that I had no idea what Jamie Camp had looked like in life.

“Yes, Detective, Jamie was just starting to get some work as a model. She was hoping to earn enough money to buy a car. My wife and I tried to dissuade her from that type of career, because we didn’t want her to become shallow and vain, but we didn’t want to keep her from pursuing her dreams. Jamie was blessed with a natural beauty, but we want our children to be more than what she was on the outside. She’s… she was beautiful… isn’t she, Father?”

I couldn’t help but notice that he kept on mixing up his tenses. He was having trouble referring to his daughter in the past tense.

“Do you have a picture of your daughter, Mr. Camp?” I asked him.

“You didn’t see her?” I saw a spark of hope in his eyes. “Then how do you know it’s Jamie? Look, I want to see my daughter; I want to make sure you have the right girl. Maybe you’re mistaken.”

He pulled out his wallet from his back pocket and handed it to me. It was opened to a wallet-sized picture of his daughter.

It wasn’t just a father’s bias talking when he said his daughter was pretty. The girl was stunning. Long blond hair framed a heart-shaped face. Her cheekbones were prominent, but not too sharp. A mouthful of perfectly straight white teeth made up a captivating smile. It now was that much more real to me, as I was saddened by what was taken from this family.

I turned to Father Murphy, hoping that he would answer the man.

“Garrett.” He took the other man’s hand in his. “Garrett, something terrible was done to Jamie, something beyond explanation. I’m afraid that seeing her would not be a wise idea.”

Mr.
Camp
looked bewildered. “What are you talking about Father, what did they do to her?”

“I’m afraid that Jamie was burned, Garrett. Someone burned your daughter’s face beyond recognition.”

It was at that moment that all the self-control that Mr. Camp had showed until this point had abruptly slipped away. The man let out a deep and agonizing howl, and then broke into sobs that were so intense that they violently shook the table. I found myself holding down the table to stop the coffee from spilling out of my mug.

Chapter Four

Marty

Thursday morning

Marty decided to start his interview with what he considered the top of this particular teenage hierarchy.

The statuesque and somewhat exotic looking Miss Katie Hepburn seemed to be the leader of the pack, and Marty wanted her away from the other girls as soon as possible.

He had been uncomfortable with the teenager’s behavior from the moment he arrived at the scene. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the girl was not being completely up-front with her answers. He also had a nagging feeling that she was acting a bit flirtatious.

He found her behavior suspicious for a young girl who had just found her friend not only dead, but also in an extremely grotesque condition.

He walked her into an interrogation room.

“Why don’t you have a seat? I’ll be right back,” he told her, and then asked, “Can I get you a soft drink or some coffee, Katie?”

He flashed a dimpled smile at her. If she was going to flirt with him, he was going to take full advantage of any vulnerability he could find, just in case she had some knowledge about her friend’s death.

She looked around the room as if she was judging the furnishings. She pulled a chair away from elongated table in the middle of the room, using the very tips of her carefully manicured fingers, as if she was afraid she would catch a disease from the seat.

Katie
nodded her head. “I’ll have a Diet Coke.”

And, as if she had an afterthought “Can I have my cell phone back? I think I should call my mother.”

One of the first things that Marty did when he arrived at the scene was to separate all three girls from their phones. He wanted to be in control of who the girls spoke to before he got a chance to interview them. He knew that legally he couldn’t interview them without a lawyer or parent present, but he wanted to make sure no one else was able to speak to the three girls before he had the opportunity.

Marty turned back and looked at her.

“We’ve notified your parents, Katie, they’re on their way.” He stopped as he held the door open. “You’ll get your phone back before you leave.”

“You called my dad?” she asked him as she twirled a strand of her long dark hair around her finger. For the first time, a spark of real emotion crossed her face.

“I’m sorry… we called your mom and your stepdad. Would you like us to call your father, Katie? Does he live in town?”

“No, don’t bother.” She turned back around, clearly disappointed.

There were times Marty wished he had his girlfriend Hope’s ability to read body language, but he was pretty sure that he was reading Miss Hepburn’s correctly. It took just the mention of her father to evoke a real emotional response. For a brief moment, a look of real pain traveled across her face, but just as fast as it appeared, it seemed to disappear, leaving her with a cold, blank expression.

“I’ll be right back,” he said again as he walked out, gently closing the door behind him. Not paying too much attention to his surroundings, he walked immediately into the brick wall otherwise known as Detective Frank Robinson.

“You scared the crap out of me Frank! Could you be a little more obvious, and not walk around like a damned cat?”

Marty could never grasp how someone with Frank’s build could float around a room like a ghost. The six-foot-two-inch, 215-pound detective worked out a minimum of two hours a day, and his body reflected it. The Brooklyn native, a product of a mixed marriage between a Caucasian mother and black father, had a dark toasted-almond complexion that stretched tightly over his chiseled physique like a surgeon’s latex glove

The man walked around constantly flexing his pecs as if they were dancing to the rhythm of a tune only he could hear. As big as he was, though, Frank had an uncanny ability to enter or leave a room without being noticed.

“Sorry, buddy,” he told the younger detective. “His Honor, the Mayor, and the first lady are in the building, and they are demanding to see their daughter.”

He deliberately over-emphasized his Brooklyn accent as he spoke. It was apparent to Marty that the mayor or his wife had said something to tick Frank off.

***

Thursday Morning

Leaving Father Murphy behind with the distraught family, I started to get into my vehicle when it hit me that I hadn’t called home.

I looked at my watch, it was just a quarter past eight. My daughter was probably sitting at the kitchen table, finishing up her Lucky Charms and arguing with her father about her choice of wardrobe for the day.

We had taken her out of the public school system because Glenn and I felt that they lacked what she needed academically and emotionally. She was now at St. Mary’s Parochial School. The school no longer required the students to wear the plaid school uniforms of the past, so sometimes wardrobe choice was a bit of a battle.

I knew I had about five minutes to spare before he took off to bring her to school, science project and all.

I was glad my husband answered, and not Bethany.

“Hey, we are just on our way out the door,” he greeted me.

“Tell her she doesn’t have to go to school today,” I said. “Um, can you go in late? Actually, do you think you can take the day off?”

I heard him put something down. I heard my daughter’s voice in the background. A muffled sound told me he placed his hand over the mouthpiece, but I could still hear as he called out to Bethany. “I’ll be right there, honey.”

“What’s going on?” he asked, adjusting his volume so he wouldn’t be yelling into the phone, yet loud enough that I could hear and my daughter couldn’t.

“One of the girls from Bethany’s school was murdered. I think she may know her, but even if she doesn’t, I just would prefer that we, or you, tell her and she doesn’t hear about it at school.”

“How? Do we know the family?” he asked.

“Her mother, Patty Camp, is a secretary at St Mary’s. I’ve…”

“Garrett Camp?” he interrupted me.

“You know him?” It hadn’t even occurred to me that my husband might know the family.

“I went to school with him, we played golf together just last week. Oh my God, what happened?”

I heard my daughter’s voice again. Again, he covered the phone with the palm of his hand.

“Can you handle this, Glenn?” I asked him. I was really starting to feel guilty that I was abandoning my maternal obligations.

“Yeah, babe, it’ll be okay, I got it,” he assured me.

Maybe if this were any other man, or any other father, I would have hesitated to have him talk to a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old about the murder of someone she knew. But I was confident that Glenn would handle the situation with sensitivity and courage.

I often felt jealous of the ability he had in discussing sensitive issues with our daughter. Too many times lately, whenever I would talk to Bethany, it would erupt into an argument.

After one of those recent arguments, I pictured her newly acquired hormones emitting hundreds of star-like particles, bursting out from her developing body like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. In response, my tired body was retaliating with its aging hormones, fighting them off like that arcade game “Asteroids” we used to play as a kid.

“Okay, I’ll call you later. Thanks. I love you, Glenn.”

“I love you too, Jean.” He must have heard the concern in my voice. “Don’t worry, she’ll be fine.”

“I know,” I said, trying to believe it myself as I disconnected the call.

***

I arrived at the squad room just as the shifts were changing. Normally the men and women who worked the graveyard shift would scurry to get into their personal vehicles and take off for home. Today, I noticed that they were all lingering, trying to get as much information about the murder as possible.

The three girls who arrived with Marty stirred up their curiosity, and the place was buzzing with theories and suspicions. Several of them had kids that went to St. Mary’s, so their curiosity was a little bit more personal.

“So where are those breakfast burritos you told Marty you were going to bring in?”

I turned to Kathy, the department’s only other female veteran plainclothes detective. She was six feet tall and liked to refer to herself as “big boned.” Sometimes I think she intimidated the suspects more than some of our male counterparts, and she took great delight in doing it.

“Crap, sorry, I completely forgot. Is there anybody we can send out?”

“Already did,” she replied. “They’re on the coffee table in the chief’s room. I had to threaten some of the guys with bodily harm if they didn’t get you something.”

“Thanks, you’re the best, Kathy.” I walked into the chief’s office and grabbed a breakfast burrito off the desk. I knew it would be cold, but I was disappointed just the same.

I grabbed a coffee cup off the makeshift table that served as my boss’s own personal dining area. The chief brought in his own fresh coffee beans from Starbucks and it was forbidden for any of us to help ourselves to his personal stash, but what the man didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

“Oh, yeah,” she continued, “the chief just called in… he’s at the school with Father Thomas and the school board members. They decided to close the school for the day. Some of the teachers volunteered to stay with kids who aren’t able to go home because they don’t have anyplace to go until their parents come get them. Someone said that they got hold of Marty’s girlfriend to do some grief counseling.”

I was glad to hear that they were bringing in someone with Dr. Hope Rubin’s experience. Marty’s girlfriend, whom I considered a good friend, was a child psychiatrist who worked at the Armistice Mental Health Institution for Children. The hospital was a facility that housed children with violent and criminal behaviors. She was well prepared to deal with the type of emotional reaction that some of the kids at the school were bound to experience.

I just hoped my daughter wouldn’t require her services again—which brought up a question I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer to, but before I made my way upstairs to see how Marty was making out, I turned to Kathy.

“Has anyone heard from Moran?”

She looked at me, her eyes wide in surprise.

“You don’t know?” she asked.

“Know what?” I looked around the squad room. Everyone was still milling around.

Kathy
walked over and shut the door.

“What’s going on, Kathy? Come on, I can’t take any more crap today. I’m tired.”