Faceless (8 page)

Unless we were able to get one of them to tell us something different, I had no reason to hold any of them.

I threw the envelope down on the table in frustration.

“Maybe after a good night’s sleep, Katie, your memory will be a little clearer,” I told her, my eyes targeting hers.

Her eyes were almond-shaped, and in contrast to her dark lashes and the long, dark hair, they reminded me of the sky-blue crayon in a Crayola box. As annoyed as I was with the girl, I could not help but acknowledge how beautiful she was. Her skin was flawless, and even seemed to glow as if it had been airbrushed.

She looked over to her mother and then to her stepfather. I had a feeling she wanted to mouth off to me, but thought twice about it.

“Can I have my cell phone back?” she asked snidely.

I turned to Frank.

“Give her the damn phone back, and mayor, I expect you aren’t going to be planning any family vacations?”

He didn’t bother to answer me, just guided his wife and stepdaughter out of the room.

I did notice that Katie was straining her neck as they walked out of the room in what I thought to be an effort to locate her two friends, from whom she had been separated.

***

It wasn’t more than five minutes later when Marty came out of one of the other interview rooms. He glanced up and gave me a shrug. Apparently, he hadn’t had too much success, either.

He was standing next to Tiffany Bennett’s parents. The girl’s father, a tall, dark-haired man looked to be lecturing Marty as if he were a disobedient child, but Marty just stood there, nodding his head as if he was agreeing. (It was a cop trick, just pretend you are submissive and the aggressor will eventually say something stupid.)

It took only a second for me to recognize the man as an acquaintance of my husband Glenn. The man was a successful and prominent defense attorney who had a well-established law firm in the nearby town of Monticello.

The girl’s mother looked familiar to me, yet I couldn’t quite place her. She was tall, although her stilettos gave her an additional few inches. Unlike her daughter, Mrs. Bennett was quite attractive and was well proportioned. She was wearing what I assumed to be a pair of two hundred dollar jeans that fit her like a glove and a long car coat. It was apparent that under the coat Tiffany’s mother, who I guessed to be about my age, had a figure that could very well be found on the front cover of fashion magazines.

I subconsciously looked down at my unattractive cop shoes and compared them to what could be no less than a $600 fashion statement that the woman had on her feet.

I comforted myself when I looked up at Mrs. Bennett and saw the sour expression on her face. Either she was uncomfortable having to pick up her daughter at the local prescient who was being questioned about a murder in the middle of the night, or her shoes were killing her. I chose to guess that it was the shoes that made her look as if she was constipated.

Now that I saw some of the adult participants of the puzzle, and with whom I would have to deal. I realized that if these girls were in any way responsible for the death and mutilation of Jamie Camp, it was going to be an uphill battle getting a conviction.

These girls weren’t your average teenagers; they were born into privilege and money. These girls were to this town as the Kennedy clan was to Boston. Even if we could tie them to the murder, trying to get one of them convicted in this town was going to be tough. My mood was getting darker with each passing minute.

Kathy
came out of another room, followed by the third girl, Lisa Padilla, and an older couple that I also recognized from St Mary’s Church. They appeared to be a little bit too old to be her parents, and I faintly remembered hearing that the couple had taken in their three grandchildren recently. The grandchildren had been removed from their parents’ home after an investigation by the Department of Children and Families found them to be neglected and abused.

Rumor had it that a family friend had sexually abused the oldest two female children, who at the time were twelve and fifteen. The story I had heard was that the children’s parents were crack addicts and were convicted of actually selling their daughters in return for drugs.

The third child, a six-year-old boy, had been neglected and beaten so badly that he had been hospitalized for two weeks before he was able to join his older sisters in his grandparents’ home.

The older woman hovered over Lisa, who appeared to be in some sort of respiratory distress. Her grandmother was holding an inhaler and Lisa took a long and intense drag on the portable device, her eyes focused on her grandmother in what looked like real panic.

Kathy
walked over to me.

“Asthma attack. I asked them if they wanted me to call an ambulance, but they said no, they had it under control. My kid brother’s son has asthma and it’s frightening to watch.”

“She didn’t happen to confess to killing her friend, did she?” I asked, in a futile attempt to be funny.

“Nope, just that she was a fan of Jeff Dahmner and wanted to be just like him.”

Her attempt at humor was just as poor as mine.

“No,” Kathy said, and then added, “she’s standing by her story. They all went up there together, they realized Jamie was missing, and they went looking for her.”

“Mysterious driver picked them up, no distinguishing features… just a man?” I asked as I watched the threesome walk down the stairwell and exit the building.

“Yeah, but that’s when she had the asthma attack. The minute I brought up the driver, she started to wheeze. Thought it was a little obvious. She might be the most vulnerable, Jean—I would lean on her.”

I looked at my watch. It was almost eleven a.m. and I had been at it since three this morning. Nothing more was going to be accomplished today, since it was still too early to get back the autopsy report from the ME and I was worried about my own daughter at home.

I looked around to see if I could spot Marty. He was nowhere in sight.

“I’m going to call it a day, Kathy. Can you tell Marty I will speak to him later?”

I didn’t even wait for her to give me an answer. I grabbed my purse hanging on the chair of my desk and headed for home.

Chapter Six

Thursday Afternoon

By the time Marty walked out of the building, the pain in his head had become a constant throb. As soon as he got into his car, he reached into his console and grabbed a bottle of generic painkillers. Popping into his mouth two red and white capsules, he took a slug of what remained of his cold coffee.

He had had every intention last night of waking up this morning and sneaking into the kitchen to fix Hope his version of a gourmet breakfast. He had gone shopping before she had gotten home and had hidden the ingredients in the back of the refrigerator, hoping to surprise her with a Keal omelet when she woke up.

It would have been the start of a special day that he had planned for them both. He leaned over in the bucket seat a few inches in order to maneuver the small navy blue velvet-covered box from his pocket. Opening it up with the thumb of his right hand, he sat and stared at the Princess cut diamond engagement ring that Hope’s friend Diane had helped him pick out just two days earlier.

Hoping the pain in his head would subside, he stared blankly at the rainbow of brilliant colors that the ring dispersed, reflecting off the thin chrome that trimmed the car’s windshield.

He wondered now if it had been a mistake to buy the ring. They had never actually discussed marriage. He knew that she had been burned badly by her husband Richard’s philandering ways. Although he had never met the guy, he wanted to slam his face into a wall for hurting her.

Hope
seemed to be perfectly content with their arrangement as it was, having Marty as a guest in her home a few nights a week, spending long weekends together, and occasionally getting together with Justin and Diane and their new baby, Christopher.

Justin
and Diane had been the catalyst that had brought Marty and Hope together. For that, he would be forever grateful. Hope seemed genuinely happy for her best friend and his best friend when they made it official and got married six months after they all met that fateful night at the Lion’s Den.

He had gone to the pub that night just to be Justin’s wingman. Justin had a date with Diane, someone he had recently met, but she was bringing a friend for security and Justin dragged Marty along to make it a foursome. He had been surprised to see who his blind date was. He had met Dr. Hope Rubin briefly before; the beautiful child psychiatrist had been assigned to treat Brad Madison, the ten-year-old boy he discovered in the home where his parents had been murdered.

Marty and Hope, both stubborn and strong willed, had gotten off to a rocky start as a couple, but they now had fallen into a familiar and comfortable arrangement. There was no question in Marty’s mind that this woman was someone he could never afford to lose. She made him feel so satisfied and complete. He knew in his heart she felt the same way. He felt it odd, that neither he nor Hope had ever really verbalized aloud how they really felt.

Time was passing them by. Marty’s father and his seven brothers, seven sisters-in-law, one sister and numerous friends and co-workers were getting on his case about starting a family of his own.

He agreed with them. He was fast approaching thirty-five and had never been married. In hindsight, he had never been in love. Yes, he thought, he had been attracted and lusted wildly after a few women in his past, but never did he feel the strong connection that he felt with Hope.

He used to think that the expression, soul mate, was a crock, until he fell in love with this green-eyed beauty with the hair the color of chocolate pudding.

Looking at the ring, he realized that he was scared to death.

What if she says no?

“What if?” he said out loud to himself. “What if Richard screwed up her head so bad that she says no?”

He leaned back in his seat, returning the small velvet box to his pants pocket. His headache was starting to ease off and he jumped, startled, when a loud horn blared from a car waiting for his parking spot.

Marty let his foot off the brake and pressed lightly on the accelerator. He decided to head for home—the one he shared with his father, to get some sleep. He had been at it since almost three o’clock this morning and the day he had planned was shot to hell because some crazy bastard decided to take some young girl’s life.

Besides,
he thought to himself.
Maybe today wouldn’t be a good day to show Hope the ring
.
Maybe getting that call this morning was an omen, and not a good one at that
.

***

Thursday afternoon

As anxious as I was to get home, I was also dreading it. I did not relish the thought of explaining to Bethany what had happened to one of her schoolmates. She was an extremely bright and articulate child, and I believed she was somewhat wise beyond her years.

Glenn
and I had always tried to be honest and up front with both our children, but I always tried to give them information that I felt was appropriate for their maturity levels. I always found it necessary to give Bethany more information than her older brother, who seemed to take things more in stride and required less detail.

Bethany
was more like me, she needed to know every little thing. She would insist on knowing every little detail in order to understand what she was being presented with. I often wondered if it was more of a female trait than it was a personality difference between the two children.

***

The world had changed since I was a child. I was brought up in a world where sad and ugly things were whispered about behind closed doors. I was led to believe there were very few dark and horrific things that happened, unless it was in the make-believe world of cinema and the arts. It was there, of course, but not quite as abundant as it is today, and was definitely not available for children to witness or hear.

My children, on the other hand, were brought up in a world where they watched on a continuous loop the death and destruction of thousands of innocent men, women and children by madmen on that fatal September 11, 2001 morning. My children were raised thinking that a child’s picture on a milk carton was as normal as their class pictures, and that Amber Alerts were part of the landscape of a normal day.

When I grew up, a crime spree consisted of the boys in the neighborhood taking joyrides with someone else’s Schwinn or scrawling graffiti in the bathroom stalls in school. A bully would call you a name and you would retaliate by calling them one back. Talking back to a parent would result in a mouthful of Ivory Soap, or a good whipping.

Today, children were slaughtering their classmates and then killing themselves in order to escape punishment. They had no coping skills whatsoever. Parents today were constrained from employing punishments that once were accepted as part of normal disciplinary actions. We received corporal punishments that, in hindsight, I realize were probably well deserved.

***

I realized that I was probably overthinking the task at hand when I pulled into the driveway. It was a beautiful spring day, and Glenn had decided to take advantage of the day off. This day would be as good a day as any to clean out the garage, something I had been pestering him about since Cliff had left for college.

My husband and daughter had boxes strewn all around, with memories half in and half out of what once were neatly packaged cardboard containers.

Bethany
and Glenn would open a carton and suddenly find something that would spark a memory, and the two would stop midway and reminisce. I arrived just moments after Bethany pulled out her pink sparkly hula-hoop. It was now making its way down Glenn’s well- toned legs as my daughter watched, doubled over in laughter, and Roxy, our mutt, ran around them both in circles.

“Hey, be careful.” I said as I shut the car door behind me. “Last thing I need is you falling on your ass.”

“Mom, he sucks at this, you know!” she managed to cry out between giggles. “But he can do a pretty mean Yo-Yo.”

“Won the Duncan Yo Yo Walk the Dog award three years in a row in elementary school!” my husband blurted out with a look of pure pride and absolutely no embarrassment.

“Let me see that.” I grabbed the pink Hula Hoop from his hands, the beads inside making a familiar sound, and slung it over my head with one arm, throwing my purse to my daughter at the same time.

Fifteen tries and fifteen minutes later, I was out of breath, my heart was racing and I was begging for a glass of water as we all walked back inside the house.

Glenn
handed me a glass of ice water and I took that moment to take a good look at my daughter’s face. Her eyes were a little puffy and the little makeup I allowed her to wear had run. It was a sure sign that she had been crying. I leaned over, dipped a napkin into my glass of water and wiped away a faint line of black.

“Did you know her, Bethany?” I asked, taking a strand of hair that was falling in front of her face and tucking it behind her ear.

“She was in my science class. She had to repeat it. She failed last year,” she told me as she played with the discarded tissue, not looking at me. She hesitated for a moment and then, looking up, she continued.

“She wasn’t very nice, actually.” Again, she paused. “She was a real bitch.”

“Bethany!” I didn’t know whether to be surprised or angry. It wasn’t like her to use that kind of tone or language.

She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Mom, but she wasn’t exactly the nicest person and not too many people liked her. She was really stuck up.”

Well I was flabbergasted. Here I thought my daughter was going to be devastated and possibly in need of professional intervention. I quickly glanced at Glenn, who raised his one eyebrow letting me know he was just as surprised at her reaction.

My daughter loved everyone, and everyone loved my daughter. From the time she had first been able to communicate, she could turn the biggest sourpuss into a smiling fool. If we were in a long line at the supermarket and some cranky old man was giving the cashier a hard time, one smile or remark from Bethany would defuse the situation. It was so unlike her to say anything derogatory about anyone. She always found something to compliment about the least pleasant person.

“Can I go over to Melanie’s house?”

I shook my head. “Honey, what do you mean she wasn’t nice? Did she have any friends?” I felt a pang of guilt, but it didn’t stop me. I went from concerned mother to detective. I was questioning my own daughter as if she was a material witness.

“She was just really mean to a lot of kids. You know, she would pick on them, call them names—stuff like that.”

“You mean she was a bully?” I asked her

“Guess so,” she replied, turning her face away from me and looking down, her hair falling over her eyes.

“What about Katie Hepburn, do you know her?”

“Yes, I know Katie, everyone knows Katie. She used to be Dylan’s girlfriend.” My daughter was in honors classes, and honors students were assigned to tutor other classmates who weren’t doing well in subjects that they themselves excelled in. My daughter had mentioned tutoring someone named Dylan previously.