One of Us Page 18

  “We appreciate that,” Billy replies.

  “Of course we’re expecting to experience the most activity at the gallows and the jail, but we’d also like to get inside the house where Marcella Greger was killed.”

  “That won’t be possible,” Rafe speaks up. “It’s still a crime scene.”

  Velma gives him a once-over, too. A slight wince crosses his features as his eyes land on Rafe’s corduroy blazer and skinny knit tie worn with a plaid flannel shirt.

  “And you are?”

  “The guy in charge.”

  “Well, Guy in Charge, can we see crime scene photos?”

  “No.”

  “You’re no fun at all. Can I bribe you? Can I buy you some doughnuts or a sports jacket from this century?”

  Rafe narrows his eyes until they are nothing more than two bright blue slits set among the rest of the lines in his face. His candy chewing has slowed to a contemplative rhythmic clicking.

  “The investigation has been taken over by the state police,” he explains, “and I’d pay good money to watch you try and bribe one of them.”

  “Where’s Wade?” Troy asks, hoping to change the subject.

  “Oh, Wade,” Velma sniffs. “He’s in the van having a drink. The temperamental genius. He’s still pouting over losing that fan-favorite reality show award to that blond tranny Real Housewife. When he found out he threw up. I kid you not. Blech! All over the couch.”

  “He seems way too classy to do something like that,” Billy says.

  “Oh, he is. He was mortified. But don’t let his public façade fool you. He has his moments. Once at a party at Woody Harrelson’s house that got completely out of hand he pissed all over Woody’s patio! Scout’s honor. Fortunately he and Woody are good friends and Woody thought it was hysterical. I can assure you he’ll never let Wade forget that one.”

  Velma finally notices me.

  “Oh my God,” he gasps. “Is that the John Varvatos shimmer peacoat? In navy? I didn’t know he did it in navy. He does everything in black and gray, although he does have a prewrinkled black-and-white-checked shirt with a fine line of aubergine shot through it that I’m completely jonesing for.”

  “I almost didn’t buy this coat,” I confide in him. “His clothes are a little too rock and roll for me.”

  “Nonsense. You look amazing. I should’ve gone with my first instinct and bought one in black instead of this old thing. I’m too short to pull off a duster.”

  His gaze finally makes its way down to my feet. He lets out a clipped shriek.

  “Laceless wingtips?”

  I nod.

  “Who are you?” he asks breathlessly.

  Before I can answer he holds up his hand requesting silence as he receives a communiqué through his Bluetooth ear bud.

  “His Highness has finally deigned to grace us with his presence.”

  He steps back and holds the door open. Everyone in the station, including the impossible-to-impress Rafe, moves closer and peers outside at the open van waiting for the renowned psychic’s appearance.

  A teeny brown and white dog in a green argyle sweater comes flying out of the van and proceeds to high-step jauntily across the icy parking lot until he enters the building, where he rushes crazily from person to person sniffing at ankles and occasionally pausing to gaze soulfully into someone’s eyes.

  “Wade Van Landingham is a rat in a coat?” Rafe asks.

  “He’s a fox terrier,” Velma replies with a languid haughtiness, “and that’s a cashmere cardigan.”

  The dog comes to a skidding halt in front of Rafe, who towers over him. Their eyes lock. Wade sits up in a begging position, throws his head back, and flails at the air with his little paws like he’s paddling to stay afloat.

  “He senses something special about your aura,” Velma explains.

  All movement ceases and Wade closes his eyes. The dog holds the position sitting back on his hind legs with his paws crossed in front of him for at least a full minute. No one moves or speaks or even seems to breathe. He finally breaks his trance and addresses Velma with a few high-pitched staccato barks.

  “He says you feel guilty about the lives you took during the war,” Velma translates. “He says there’s a Vietnamese soldier who wants to speak to you from the other side.”

  Rafe doesn’t respond in any way. He knows how easy it is to research the backgrounds of the local police officers and how anyone knowing he’d been in Vietnam could take a wild guess that he might have killed an enemy soldier. I know all of this as well, but I also know his story of killing a soldier in hand-to-hand combat who was “just like” him, and I’m taken aback for a moment, but the feeling quickly passes. As for everyone else in the room, their awe is palpable.

  “Let’s see how good he really is,” Rafe says, breaking the silence. “Let’s see if he can read my mind.”

  He places his middle and index fingers at his temple and glowers down at Wade, who holds Rafe’s stare for a few seconds until his entire body begins to shiver. He lets out a loud yelp, turns, and runs away with his tail tucked between his legs.

  Rafe grins broadly.

  “He’s not bad,” he says.

  Velma shoots him a scathing look and chases after his canine charge.

  On our way to Rafe’s car we pass Velma surrounded by the rest of the paranormals. Wade is lying on his back cradled in his arms performing a very convincing dead faint, but turns his head and opens his eyes as Rafe walks by. I swear the dog winks.

  “I ALMOST QUIT AFTER that,” Dave Rosko says, throwing a shovelful of snow off his driveway into his yard. “I walked out of that house and said to myself, that’s it. I can’t ever look at something like that again.

  He’s a short, stocky man with a grizzled crew cut, a lightning bolt scar on his forehead from a quad accident, and a bumper sticker on his truck that reads: I Support PETA: People Eating Tasty Animals. When his mother wasn’t able to do it, he identified his father’s remains after the explosion in Lost Creek Mine No. 6. He’s been Barclay’s fire chief for twenty years. Rafe tells me it takes a lot to disturb his sensibilities.

  “You think you can handle it because you’ve seen it in movies,” he continues, “although I gotta tell you I never saw anything like that even in the movies. She was . . .” he begins with a grimace, then pauses.

  He lets the shovel fall to the ground and crosses his arms over his chest while pulling one knee up into a partial fetal position.

  “She was kind of like this, protecting herself from the pain. Her skin was completely charred but she was still recognizable. Her face—”

  He stops altogether and stares hard at the sky.

  “People don’t burn fast. You could see the expression on her face. It was still there. The agony. Her mouth was open, screaming. Most fire victims die of smoke inhalation. It’s not a good way to go either, but at least they don’t know the pain of being burned alive.”

  He shakes his head like he’s trying to get rid of the image.

  “Wasn’t there a police investigation?” I ask Rafe.

  “Not much of one. We found a suicide note and a gas can and part of a lighter in her room.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “‘I want to die. I hate it here.’”

  “‘I hate it here’?” I repeat the words. “That sounds like something a child would say. Where did you find it?”

  “In the kitchen. It was in her handwriting. There were notes from her posted on a bulletin board in the pantry. We compared them. It looked authentic.”

  “Still,” I say skeptically, “suicide? The only instances of self-immolation I know of have been related to extreme political or religious protests. Women traditionally commit suicide by taking an overdose or cutting their wrists, but almost always in a bathtub. They’re concerned with not leaving a mess behin
d for others to clean up.”

  “Well, Anna Greger sure as hell wasn’t worried about a mess,” Dave says. “Accelerant fires burn hot and fast. The entire room was a loss. We found her near the windows. She’d pulled down the curtains.”

  “She had second thoughts?” I ask.

  “Looked that way. Would be hard not to. But she’d poured a whole can of gasoline all over herself. There was no way she could’ve put it out on her own once she lit up.”

  “Suicide?” I ask again.

  “I admit I never felt right about that explanation,” Dave says, “but there was the note and—”

  “There were no suspects,” Rafe joins in. “No motives. She was a single woman with no immediate family who took care of Walker Dawes’ kids and lived with them full time. She didn’t have a husband or boyfriend. Who would want to kill her? And kill her like that?”

  “How did the Dawes family react?” I ask Dave.

  “The wife was hysterical. Walker was pretty shaken up, too, but he did a good job of concealing it. We never even saw the little boy, Wesley. He was only five, I think. Then there was the daughter, Scarlet.”

  He shakes his head again.

  “She saw it.”

  “What did she see?”

  “Her nanny burning.”

  “She said that?”

  “I’ll never forget it. She said, ‘I saw Nanny burning.’ Cool as a cucumber.”

  “She was in the room with her?”

  “Mrs. Dawes told us Scarlet had bad dreams and sometimes she got up in the middle of the night and went looking for Anna. Problem was she also said Anna always slept with her door closed and if the fire had been started when the door was closed and someone came along and opened that door, the back draft would’ve created an explosion. The whole hallway would’ve went up with her in it. The burn pattern was all wrong. The fire started while the door was open.”

  “So the night she decides to kill herself Anna leaves the door open? And Scarlet just happens by? No one thought this sounded suspicious?” I say.

  Rafe and Dave look at each other.

  “What were we supposed to be suspicious of? To think this cute little girl had something to do with it? She was ten years old. We figured she was in shock. Something like that happens, you can’t blame her for getting her facts confused, except . . .”

  “Except what?”

  “She didn’t act like someone in shock. She wasn’t upset at all. She gave us the facts like she was reading them off a script.”

  “How did her parents react to her statement?”

  “I got the feeling Walker didn’t want us talking to her at all, which I guess is understandable considering what had just happened. But her mom insisted she talk to us. She was a nervous wreck. Pacing the whole time. Wringing her hands. After Scarlet said something, she’d look at us, not at her, like she wanted to be sure we heard what she said. I have to say she was a creepy kid.”

  “You just said she was a cute little girl.”

  “Not creepy-looking, mind you. She was beautiful, all dressed up in a long nightgown with lace around the neck. She had these big green eyes and long shiny hair. Looked like a doll. But there was something off about her. I raised five kids and none of them ever looked that good when they just got out of bed.”

  “She was too calm,” I state.

  “Not just calm. It was like she was bored. When she finished talking to us, she looked right at her mom and asked if she could have some ice cream.”

  None of us have anything to say after that. We stand in the cold and snow without speaking at all for a length of time that would be impossible among any of the people I know back in the city.

  Dave reaches down and picks up his shovel.

  “One more thing that’s always kind of bugged me about that night. It’s probably nothing, but I was one of the last guys out, since I was the youngest and I got all the crap work. I was lugging out some equipment when Mrs. Dawes caught hold of my arm and said, almost begging, ‘Can you help me?’ I thought she was talking about cleaning up the fire damage, and I told her we didn’t do that. They’d have to call a private contractor.”

  “Sometimes I wonder though,” he says while his eyes travel along the chimneys across the street, pausing for a moment at each plume of smoke. “I wonder if that’s what she was talking about.”

  seventeen

  MY MOTHER HAD TO have killed her baby because there was no one else who could have done it. Anna Greger had to have killed herself because there was no other way it could have happened. Neither of these scenarios were ever actually proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The explanation given for each event came from the necessity for an explanation and the inability of anyone to come up with a better one.

  Now the case of Marcella Greger’s murder looks as if it’s heading down a similar path. Two theories are currently circulating: a random psycho broke into her house and killed her even though there was no sign of a break-in or a struggle and nothing was stolen and it would be highly unusual for a psycho to have the proclivity or take the time to carefully draw a picture of a stick figure hanging from a gallows on the bathroom wall in blood. Or the ghost of Prosperity McNab did it. In my opinion, the chance of either proving to be true is about the same.

  My suggestion to Rafe that Scarlet Dawes could be involved is too outlandish. It’s as inconceivable as the thought that someone other than Anna Greger lit herself on fire or that someone other than my mentally ill mother would have had a reason or opportunity to kill her infant and bury her in our backyard.

  But what if the explanation for all three of these tragedies happening in this tiny town is an unthinkable one? Does that mean it must be otherworldly?

  My mind drifts back to my case files sitting in Tommy’s living room and the crime scene photos of Baby Trusty.

  Or could the answer be a monster did it?

  MY FATHER’S HOUSE SQUATS on a muddy slope at the very edge of the street at the end of its row as if unwanted and gradually shunned there over time, almost hidden now by vines and rogue shrubberies and a sprawling rhododendron on one side that’s grown as high as the roof. Although practically opaque with dirt, the windows aren’t broken and suggest someone is living here, however it’s obvious no one ever looks out of or into these bleary panes of glass. They’re the eyes of a beast staring slyly and stupidly at the outside world, concealing secrets and plotting destruction.

  I’m convinced this structure has a memory, and when my father dies, I’m going to have it torn down. It’s the only merciful thing to do.

  I get out of my car and start up the front walk toward the porch. My tsunami guilt rises up before me, a gigantic shimmering wall poised to crush me. It’s grown bigger in the last several hours.

  “Where’s Molly? Where’s my baby? I can’t find my baby!” my mom shrieked at the top of her lungs while being hauled off in handcuffs.

  Those were her words. Even after my dad found the body and called the police. Even after they explained to her that her baby was dead.

  “Where’s Molly?” she kept screaming.

  She’s crazy, everyone said. Only a crazy woman could look at her own dead baby and ask where she is. I agreed. My mom was crazy. I abandoned her. I didn’t stand up for her.

  But Tommy did. Tommy never wavered in his insistence that Mom was incapable of killing anyone, least of all her own child. And who would know better? Mom was his child. He’d been dealing with her problems for twenty-five years. I’d only been in her life for five, and she’d been taking care of me.

  The guilt crashes down all around me. I stand perfectly still on the bottom porch step and wait for it to do its damage then ebb before confronting my father.

  I continue making my way up the steps. No matter how many years I stay away, I can never approach the front door of this house without my heart racing and
muscles tensing. In my head, I’m already running.

  I’m about to knock when the door opens and my dad is standing in the shadows, his silver beer can and the white globe of his belly in an undershirt the only parts of him fully visible.

  The surprise makes me take a step back and I’m certain he’s been watching me from inside along with the house, the two of them muttering to each other about what a useless, chickenshit of a boy I am.

  “You finally decided to come see me,” he says. “I heard you was in town taking care of Tommy. What a wasted trip. Someone that old you just let ’em die.”

  He takes another step toward me and comes farther into the daylight.

  My eyes drop instinctively to his feet. He’s wearing slippers with tears in them where the padding shows through. He can’t do much damage with those.

  “You know there are tribes in Africa who take their old people and stick ’em up in a tree with a basket of fruit when they get a certain age and just leave ’em there ’cause they can’t keep up anymore. Someone should’ve stuck Tommy up a tree a long time ago,” he goes on.

  He’s become an old man himself, his drinking having aged him well beyond his actual years. The skin on his face is sallow, spotted with broken capillaries like someone has dipped a finger into a pool of blood and flicked it at him. Deputy Dawg bags hang beneath his foggy eyes. I wonder how much of his stomach’s girth is the result of his diet and how much is caused by the bloat that accompanies the beginnings of liver failure.

  I feel him studying me.

  “Takes a lot to get you out of that ivory tower of yours.”

  “I don’t live in an ivory tower.” I’m able to find my voice. “‘Ivory tower’ is a reference to academia.”

  “Jesus. Still can’t say a goddamn word around you without you correcting it. So what color is your tower? Green ’cause it’s covered in money?”

  I swallow back the burning in my throat.

  “I don’t have a tower.”

  He takes a gulp from his beer and lowers his gaze to my feet. He stares at my shoes. To him they represent Management.