Retribution (28 page)

"Race cars?"

She nodded. "Indianapolis 500. Mears, Ongais, they all had shops in the county then, and others hoping to make the circuit. He was just a kid, but he liked cars, and he was good with them. He helped her keep hers repaired. She had an old, beat-up car. It was all her dad and I could afford to get her. So they dated. But he was jealous, worried about her, worried she didn't love him."

"Did she?"

She shrugged, her pointy shoulders rising and falling. "Who knows? She told him she did, she told me she did— but she also said, 'There's a lot of other guys out there, Mom, who knows who I'll end up with?' " Edna Finley smiled faintly, as if she could hear her daughter's voice in her head.

"Was he violently jealous? Ever hit her? Stalk her?"

"No, nothing like that. But they had a fight that night. She came in with a guy from one of her classes. He made fun of Sean. She tried to defend him, that made him madder. They had a couple of beers and they started to argue, so she left. She called me first to tell me she was going out for a drive and she'd be home in an hour. So I'd know. She was like that." She paused, her quick eyes darting over him, watching him take notes. "Sean had her car fixed. He called it… what… a sleeper."

"A sleeper?"

She bobbed her head up and down. "Yes— a sleeper. He put a big engine in it, rebuilt— that car could move— a big engine that that kind of little car didn't usually have. Linda loved it. She loved having all that power right there. She said no one could box her in on the freeway. They used to laugh about it. She could pull away from a light faster than anyone, even cars meant to go fast. Sean was very proud of the condition he kept her car in. He'd done bodywork on it, got it painted for her. It was nice looking by the time…" Her voice trailed off. She waved a hand in bewilderment.

"I assume Sean was questioned about her disappearance."

"When they eventually decided to start questioning people." Edna rearranged the afghan, pulling her sharp knees up to her chest, hugging them. "I don't think he did it. He cried. He called me almost every day asking if she'd called, if I'd heard anything."

John didn't say anything. He knew from personal experience that, although it was rare, sometimes the main suspect stayed in the center focus, helping the family, offering to assist the police, enjoying being the center of attention vicariously, even controlling and setting off events surrounding the case, manipulating and feeding off media frenzy. In an infamous nationwide child kidnap, molestation, and murder case, the killer was the most helpful of any of the people involved with the missing child, even handing out flyers and setting up a volunteer office in town to field calls. A cynic would have said he did all that to keep dues from pointing to him. That had not been the case. He had been involved in the center of it to enjoy the controversy, the drama he'd caused, enthralled by the fear, the mourning, the media titillation over what the child's fate could have been, and eventually was. At the trial he announced that it kept the good feelings going for him, like a never-ending orgasm, almost as satisfying as the molestation and murder itself. When the grief-stricken father shot him to death outside the courthouse, public outcry demanded the father be set free, and he was.

Ruby looked up from his notebook, feeling Edna's piercing gaze on him. "You're thinking almost as much as you're writing," she observed.

He nodded. "You can take the boy out of the police, but sometimes you can never take the police out of the boy."

Finley grinned. "At least you're listening," she shot back. "What else?"

"Do you remember what time she called?"

Edna blew out a long breath. "Around eleven, eleven-thirty. I remember it was during the eleven o'clock news. I went to bed, cause I always heard the girls come in. I knew I'd hear her, it would wake me."

"And she never came in."

"No," said Edna tightly.

John looked back at his notebook, not because he had to refresh his mind, but because he had to look away from the primal anguish on her face. He flipped a few pages back and forth, giving her time. Then he asked, "When did the police decide something might have happened, that there might have been an abduction?"

"Took 'em three days. By then, most of the evidence where she went off the road was gone. Tire prints, that kind of thing. They brought in one of those dogs to sniff around—"

"Tracking?"

She shook her head. "No. One of those dogs trained to look for blood. They told me the dog's reaction was positive. And they could see what looked like blood traces in the photos… and drag marks. So they went over the car. What they determined was that she spun off the road, hit her head on the steering wheel, most likely. Got out of the car, dazed and bleeding. And disappeared into thin air."

"Someone might have forced her off the road."

Edna Finley shrugged again. "No one saw anything. That stretch of highway was pretty deserted at night, then."

"Why did the police think at first that she might have run away? Where would she run without the car?"

She licked her dry lips, tongue flicking over her small mouth quickly. "She'd been in some trouble. They weren't real sympathetic about it. There was talk that she had disappeared on purpose, maybe even that Sean had picked her up and helped her hide."

This was information John could not possibly glean from the newspaper, or even from the police reports. "Tell me what kind of trouble."

"She had a drunk driving trial coming up. She didn't do it, she took the blame for a friend of hers who was driving, but she was accused of manslaughter."

"She told the officers she was driving? In a case where there was a vehicular death?"

"Linda was like that. She took the rap for her girlfriend. They didn't think it would go to trial. It happened on the freeway, he was drunk himself and stepped out of his stalled vehicle, right in front of them. No way they could have missed him."

"But you say Linda wasn't driving."

"No."

"So the police thought that she might have been avoiding the trial."

"That was the general thought when they did a background check on her, and found out who she was."

He felt a twinge over the assumptions he and his coworkers had sometimes made, snap judgments, undeserved but there all the same. "So they bore down on Sean? Thought he helped her disappear and avoid the trial?"

She nodded several times. "It wasn't true, of course, and eventually they decided they had a case of some kind. Probable homicide, based on the photographic and blood evidence. And they started investigating. They started looking at Sean again. Nearly tore the kid apart. And we, my husband and I, we kept waiting for her body to turn up. Somewhere. She never did."

"What happened to the DUI charges?"

"Well, Devon felt awful about everything. She confessed that she was driving, her father got her a good lawyer, and the charges were dropped. Like I said, he stepped out into the freeway traffic. There was nothing they could have done."

John did not respond to that. A sober driver made quicker, better, safer responses than a drunk one. But it seemed to him that Edna Finley did not deserve to pay the price she'd already paid. He closed his notebook. "Mrs. Finley, if I showed you some photocopies… do you think you could stand to look at them?"

Her attention hopped away and back again. "I thought you said you didn't know anything about her body?"

"I don't. As far as I know, it hasn't been found. This isn't that kind of picture. But I'd like you to take a look at them, if you would." He pulled out a folder and opened them. He'd taken photos of Charlie's paintings, had them developed and then made color copies, slightly enlarged, to show the detail.

Finley's hand trembled slightly as he passed the folder over to her. She dropped her knees so that she sat cross-legged, and set the photocopies in her lap. She took a look at the first one, sucked in her breath sharply, then lay them out, spreading them around. One started to drift off the recliner and she snatched it up in midair.

"What is this?" she said sharply.

"I'm not sure. I was hoping you could tell me."

"These are paintings."

"Yes."

She stabbed a twig thin finger at the papers. "This is my daughter's car. And this is Linda. Hard to see her features real well, because it's shadowed. Night time. But this is her." She looked up, her eyes snapping with anger. "Who did these? What kind of maniac would paint something like this?"

He leaned forward intently. "Someone as tortured by Linda's death as you are," he answered softly. He put his hands out for the copies.

Finley blinked at him, then gathered them up, and the folder, and started to pass them back. Holding them in midair, she began to cry, quietly at first, and then with sobs that made him ache to hear them.

Behind him, at the step to the family room, Becky said, "I think it's time for you to go, Mr. Rubidoux."

He stood slowly. "Mrs. Finley, I am sorry to have hurt you with this—"

Edna looked at him, her sharp face streaming with tears. "Did she see it? Did she see it happen? Why didn't she tell anyone then? Why, in God's name, didn't she say anything then?"

He sorted the photocopies neatly into the folder, gathering his own thoughts as he did so. "She didn't see it. She dreams it, Mrs. Finley, and until this afternoon, she thought she might be going crazy."

The woman looked intently at him. "What makes you think someone who dreams about murders isn't?"

* * *

John fed Sultry her nursing mother's meal and put his feet up on the desk, dialing Valenzuela's line at the station. Hubie answered with a muffled grunt, masked by the wet cigar in his mouth.

"It's Rubidoux."

"Hey! Hold on a sec, I gotta talk to you." There was some background noise, papers shuffling, the squeak of a chair, then the line went on hold status.

He made himself comfortable, listened to Sultry clean out her food dish, and the puppies make soft noises as she climbed back into the whelping box with them. Jagger lay in the corner, not sleeping, his caramel eyes fixed on John, as if he could ponder Charlie's whereabouts and John's thick-headedness about returning the dog to her just by staring at him.

Valenzuela came back on the line. "John-boy!"

"I wanted to let you know… I went to see Edna Finley this morning."

"Ah." Then Hubie asked, "How is she?"

"I don't know how she was before. Looks frail, but I think she's tough." He added, "It's not my department, and I don't want to step on any policy toes or anything, but I think she'd appreciate knowing that her daughter has a place on the 'Unsolved but Not Forgotten' board."

"I'll give her a call, then. Hard to tell with people, you know. Sometimes they just want to forget it and let it go away."

"Not this lady."

"Thanks for telling me."

"Thanks for letting me have a look-see."

Hubie made a noncommittal grunt, then said, "Now it's my turn."

"Okay." John rubbed the back of his head, stuck a CD into his computer, and began to listen to Natalie Merchant sound as only she could sound when backed by 10,000 Maniacs.

"Who is this girl?"

"Somebody I met through the dogs."

"Somebody special?"

He breathed deeply. Then, "Yeah. I think so."

"Do you know what you're getting into? 'Cause I'm going to have to ask some questions, John."

"What do you mean?"

"Why or how she got you interested in murders from ten years ago."

Protectively, John answered, "She doesn't have anything to do with them, Hubie. She's just a kid. Early twenties. And like you said, we're talking ten years ago." No matter how awful the killer, chances were time had dealt with him, one way or another.

"No boyfriend, ex-husband, stepfather? We're not dealing with a witness here maybe, or repressed memories?"

He dropped his feet off the desk and straightened in his chair. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You started it, Ruby. You pulled up that case on Holly Gardner, the pusher who was sliced to death with box cutters. I'm not asking questions just to make myself look busy. You know what my workload is like."

"I know that. What's going on?"

"I spent most of last night at a crime scene. Nasty. Woman, lived alone, looked like a follow-home robbery, but nothing was touched— nothing but her." Hubie cleared his throat. "Blood everywhere, John. Hard to take."

It must have been bad if it bothered a seasoned veteran like Valenzuela. Something icy dropped into the pit of John's stomach. "Tell me."

"She was sliced to death. Looked like he bathed in it, then stepped out of the room without an evidence trace. Killer left a box cutter behind." Hubie breathed heavily. "Whoever the son of a bitch is, he's back."

"I want you to bring her in, Ruby."

"I can't do that, she doesn't know anything." He also knew that Valenzuela did not have enough to force Charlie in now, but that Hubie was very concerned, or he would not even be mentioning it.

"She knows enough. I saw you flipping through your notebook. She didn't just pull details out of thin air and neither did you to get a match. Listen, I've known you since you opened that kennel up. Worked with you. Played with you. Hell, got stinking drunk with you more than once. Talk to her. See if you can understand what's going on, and then talk to me."

"You know if I had anything, I'd tell you, bro."

"I know I'd like to think you would."

John looked at the folder on his desk, flipped it open, and stared at the paintings. How could he explain them? He found words, rearranged them to his satisfaction, then said, "When I figure out what's going on, Hubie, you'll be the first to know."