Angels Burning Read online

  “I never thought of it that way.”

  Tug appears from behind the office before we reach it. A huge bag of dog food is flung over one of his shoulders, and I’m amazed he’s not staggering beneath its weight. He’s one of the skinniest fourteen-year-olds I’ve ever seen; a boy made of pipe cleaners with hands and feet too big for the rest of his body like a puppy’s oversize clumsy paws. He has on a pair of long, baggy camouflage shorts I bet are held up with a belt that’s been looped around his nonexistent waist three times.

  He stops when he sees the dogs. Maybe runs up to him first.

  Tug and Maybe came into Neely’s life on the same day. She received a phone call from a boy who wouldn’t tell her his name. He asked her if she only trained dogs or if she saved them, too.

  She told him she could put him in touch with the local ASPCA or animal control or even the police but he insisted this was a top secret situation that couldn’t involve any official agency, or as he put it, “I’ll get beat.” The matter-of-fact way he stated his possible fate along with the tremor that came into his voice when he spoke about the dog convinced Neely to help him.

  The dog belonged to Tug’s uncle, who kept him penned outside and went for days without feeding him because he believed a hungry dog would make a more vicious guard dog. To this day neither Neely nor I have been able to figure out what the man owned that needed guarding.

  Tug’s uncle also liked to kick the dog, and when he got drunk, he liked to take wild potshots at him with his rifle while shouting, “Maybe I’ll kill you; maybe I won’t.”

  Tug explained to us after we got to know him better that his uncle also used to do this to his ex-wife.

  The plan was remarkably easy to carry out; it just required the right heroine with the right skill set. Neely showed up with a leash, a muzzle, and a bag of liver treats while Tug’s uncle was at work and stole the dog.

  Tug was with her, and when they arrived back at her home and she put the newly christened Maybe in one of her kennels with a bowl of food and a promise to Tug that she would be able to erase all the suffering he’d endured and soon he’d be able to love again, the boy burst into tears.

  She offered Tug a job on the spot. I think for her the rescue mission was a package deal.

  “Hey, Chief Carnahan,” he says to me with a teenager’s verbal shrug of forced unenthusiasm.

  “Hi, Tug. How are you?”

  “Good.”

  He continues on his way with the dogs trailing after him, except for Smoke, who waits to see what Neely will do next.

  I can’t stay. I need to get back to work. There’s not going to be an easy way to bring up what I want to tell her, so I just say it.

  “The reason I stopped by was to let you know Lucky’s out of jail. He stopped by to see me this morning.”

  Neely shows exactly the kind of disinterest I hoped she would except that she unthinkingly rubs her jaw where he smacked her hard enough to send her toppling out of her chair at the kitchen table, where we were doing our homework and Champ was diligently working on a sticker book.

  Neither one of us will ever forget Mom’s reaction. She flew over to Neely and scooped her up in her arms. She kicked Lucky out of the house. She tended to Neely all night, even running to the grocery store to get her favorite ice cream and to the newsstand to buy her a Mad magazine that she would’ve never approved of under normal circumstances. The next day, Neely had a bruise on the side of her face and her lip was puffy where she’d bitten the inside of her mouth. Her jaw clicked when she opened and closed it. Mom let her stay home from school for two days, and both nights she provided slurpable dinners: Campbell’s Chicken & Stars soup, Snack Pack pudding, mashed potatoes and gravy from Kentucky Fried Chicken, applesauce, and more ice cream with gobs of Cool Whip. We joked afterward that the way to get Mom’s attention was to have someone hurt us. It stopped being funny, though, when we realized we actually believed it.

  “What did he want?” she asks casually.

  “I think he wanted to rattle me, but he didn’t succeed. He said he’s going to see us around. Both of us.”

  Neely snorts.

  “Yeah, well, he’s welcome to come see me anytime. If he can get past my dogs, I’ll talk to him.”

  “He’s an old man now,” I tell her. “He’s not going to cause any problems.”

  “What about Champ? Did he ask about him?”

  “He could barely remember his name.”

  We fall silent as we always do when the topic of Champ arises. Our sibling love for him has placed us in a special kind of hellish limbo: we’re not allowed to be part of his adult life, which we choose to imagine as a kind of heaven, yet our earthly childhood ties to him are too strong to ever let him go completely. Modern technology has made our plight worse, not better. We could be texting daily. We could be friends on Facebook. We could be following his tweets. Instead, we hear from him once a year on no particular date. One of us will get a text from a number we don’t recognize with a random area code hundreds of miles away: I’m doing good. I hope you are, too.

  No matter how we respond, he never replies.

  When he left all those years ago, I was twenty-three, already a state trooper, and already looking for another job. Two years later a position opened up in my hometown police department, and I’ve been there ever since.

  Champ had become a man seemingly overnight. His teen gawkiness was gone. He was tall. He had muscles and facial hair. His once chirpy voice was now low and slow. He had a mop of almost black hair and dark eyes the color of tea that’s been left to steep too long. The Envelope’s genes had apparently prevailed when it came to Champ’s coloring.

  He stood next to the beat-up Chevette he was planning to drive across the country. All his belongings in the world didn’t even take up half the trunk space.

  Neely and I didn’t have a serious heart-to-heart talk with him that day. The taboo subject from years earlier remained as inaccessible to each one of us as it had always been, but for the first time since our mother’s demise he cracked that particular closet door just enough that the rancid smell of an improperly stored trauma wafted out.

  “It’s nobody’s fault,” he said.

  I knew it was definitely somebody’s fault, but if he needed to think this way, I wasn’t going to correct him.

  “What are you thinking about?” Neely asks. “You’ve got a funny look on your face.”

  I don’t want to talk about Champ.

  “I was just thinking about how Singer and Blonski had never heard about our mom,” I reply instead. “It happened long before they were born, but still . . . something that big happens in your life, you feel like it’s written on you somewhere. That it’s the only thing people see when they look at you.”

  I make brackets with my fingers against my forehead where the words would be spelled out. “My mom was murdered,” I recite.

  “I remember feeling that way.”

  “Especially in a small town like Buchanan. It was all anyone talked about. Now it’s about to start again. People aren’t going to be able to forget about this murder for a long time. A teenage girl. What was done to her.”

  “You have no idea who she is?”

  “There was no ID on her and her face and her hands . . .” I decide not to finish this part of the description. “She had pink toenails and a glittery anklet.”

  I notice Tug standing behind Neely. He has the same ghostlike ability to sneak up on people unobserved as Smoke.

  He’s pulling on his left ear, which is sticking out from beneath his ball cap. This habit is the source of his nickname. He tugs on his ear whenever he’s nervous or afraid; he told Neely he’s been doing it since he was a baby.

  “What is it, Tug?” I ask him.

  “My sister Camio has one of those ankle things. It’s got hearts on it,” he replies, staring at the ground. “She wears it all the time. Her boyfriend gave it to her.”

  He continues to furiously yank his ear lobe as he
adds in a broken voice, “She didn’t come home last night. She ain’t never done that before.”

  Smoke takes inventory of the three humans with his head tilted to one side. He lets out a solitary, clipped bark. He knows what we’re thinking.

  chapter four

  I’VE NEVER PAID much attention to the Truly family. They’re too noxious and pervasive to ignore entirely, but like the colony of red biting ants that have taken up residence in the crack in my back stoop concrete, I’ve found I can usually step around them.

  Miranda Truly, the matriarch, gave birth to eight children during her union with chain-smoking, hard-drinking, overeating, diabetic Walt, who died tragically but not surprisingly in his fifties from the failure of too many body parts to bother listing. Of these children, six lived to adulthood, five stayed out of jail, four stayed off crack, three worked from time to time, two were sober, and one found Jesus. All six would procreate many times over.

  Clark Truly, the baby of the family, has managed to avoid prison, drugs, and religion, but not the bottle. He’s in his forties, married to Shawna Ridge, employed by a trucking company, and the father of five, including Tug and Camio. One of his older brothers, Eddie, is the former owner of Maybe.

  I called Nolan and we discussed our best course of action regarding the victim. We agreed that we didn’t want to bring the parents of the girl to the morgue and have them try to identify her. Due to the condition of her face, we’re not even sure her own mother would be able to recognize her. She doesn’t have fingerprints anymore. We decided I should visit the family and ask them to release Camio’s dental records.

  I’m sure there was a time when this house was clean and pretty, none of its parts sagging, faded, or warped from neglect or misuse, a classic American symbol of hope and possibilities. The same could be said for Shawna Ridge Truly, whose lovely, fresh face atop a willowy body wrapped in lacey virgin white smiles out from a yellowed wedding photo on a shelf behind the large, listless woman she’s since become. She sits in the middle of a once-blue velveteen couch now covered in a soot gray patina of worn-at-the-knees shininess. Her long, lank hair is the color of potato peels, and she has a dark, dull gaze that keeps wandering away from me to the plasma TV taking up most of the wall next to me. She hasn’t offered to turn it off or even mute the sound.

  The coffee table in front of her is covered with stacks of tabloids, overturned soda pop cans, rank gym socks, crumpled tissues, a clear plastic container empty except for a few smears of blue cake frosting, a plate encrusted with swirls of hardened ketchup, and a baby bottle half-filled with something brown and fizzy.

  The curtains are drawn against the bright sunshine. An overhead lamp has been turned on, but little light can shine through the powdery layer of dead insects accumulated at the bottom of the fixture. The room has a fried food, dirty diapers, damp dishrag odor to it. The carpet made a spongy squish when I crossed it a few moments ago. The feel of it beneath my feet made me think of tromping through a field of mushrooms. I had no problem taking my shoes off to walk around Campbell’s Run, but I’d never do it inside this house.

  Shawna’s eldest daughter, Jessyca, stands off to one side of the couch loosely holding a baby on one hip while expertly navigating an iPhone in her other hand. A substantial roll of aggressively tanned flesh spills out between her cropped T-shirt and a pair of denim cutoffs. The baby’s tiny fingers grasp the fabric of her top and try to bring it to her mouth. She gives the child a quick glance full of maternal affection and I have no doubt they belong to each other.

  Shawna doesn’t appear to be the least bit interested in why I’m here. I don’t think Jessy is either. The difference between them is that the first one couldn’t care less if I spent the rest of the day sitting here with her watching moronic daytime TV while the second one wants me gone. Jessy watches me closely, her eyes shiny with distrust.

  “Is your husband around, Mrs. Truly?” I ask.

  “He’s on a job. Been gone for two days. Be back in two more,” Shawna replies without looking away from the TV.

  “What do you care about my dad?” Jessy asks, the suspicion in her eyes hardening into outright hostility. “Is he in trouble?”

  “No. This isn’t about him. I have a few questions about Camio.”

  “Camio? That little bitch better not show up around here anytime soon.”

  “Jessyca Lynn, shut your fat face,” Shawna snaps, again without tearing her gaze away from her program.

  “You’re the one who’s been calling her that,” Jessy shoots back, sounding a little hurt.

  “Is there a problem?” I ask.

  “No, there ain’t no problem,” Jessy says to me in a mocking tone. “She didn’t come home last night, and she was supposed to do a bunch of stuff for me and Mom today. We’re just mad at her, that’s all.”

  She leans over to put the baby down on the floor.

  “Don’t do that!” I cry.

  She gives me a funny look. Even Shawna glances in my direction.

  “I mean, can I hold her?”

  I reach out my arms.

  Jessy plunks the baby in them. Apparently her dislike of me doesn’t extend to a need to protect her offspring from me.

  “Have you talked to Camio today?” I ask her sister.

  “Tried texting earlier. She’s not answering.”

  “It’s almost two o’clock. Could you try contacting her again?”

  She taps out a quick text.

  “Might as well call her, too,” Shawna adds.

  Jessy holds the phone to her ear.

  “Camio, you stuck-up little pig. Where the hell are you? You had a lot of shit you were supposed to do for Mom today. Call me when you get this.”

  “She’s with that boyfriend of hers,” Shawna volunteers.

  “You know this for sure?”

  I get no further reply.

  “Could we try to contact the boyfriend or his family?” I ask Jessy.

  “No way. We don’t have nothing to do with them.”

  “Why not?”

  Her inability to provide an answer for the amount of animosity suddenly blazing up in her eyes makes me instantly suspect this is one of those baseless hatreds akin to racism: an inarguable prejudice rooted in nothing concrete or rational, just the insistent whispers of your tribe that shunning particular others is a requirement of membership.

  I heft the baby a little higher on my shoulder and try a different route.

  “Is it normal for Camio to disappear like this and not check in for this length of time?”

  “No,” Jessy says, dropping her petulant posturing for a moment. “This ain’t normal for Camio at all.”

  “What’s going on here, Shawna?”

  I turn at the sound of a forceful female voice, and I’m surprised to find its source is an elderly woman who at first glance looks like the proverbial wind could blow her over.

  She’s skin and bones, but there’s nothing remotely frail or sickly about her. On the contrary, her gaunt stare and emaciated frame give her a formidable aura of impossible survival, as if she stepped out of a postapocalyptic landscape in a science fiction film.

  “Nothing, Miranda,” Shawna answers her.

  “Nothing?” her voice rings out, and I half expect the TV to turn itself off. “The chief of police is standing in your house holding your grandbaby because of nothing?”

  I quickly scan through my mental contacts file trying to remember if I’ve ever come face-to-face with Miranda Truly before. It doesn’t matter if we’ve ever actually met; women like her know everyone in town and all their family histories.

  “You’re one of the Carnahan girls,” she says to me.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You’re smiling.”

  “Am I? It’s just I haven’t been called a girl in a long time.”

  “Does it feel good?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Your sister was in the same class as my Marty.”

  I reme
mber. Martin James Truly, sixteen, fell off an abandoned railway bridge into the sluggish Crooked Creek after a night of drinking and raising hell. No one ever knew for sure if he was alone when it happened or if he had help taking the header.

  A couple of years later his brother Ross was killed running a red light on his motorcycle. The state police surmised that when he saw the semi beginning to cross his path, he tried to avoid it by going underneath it but only ended up going beneath its back tires. It came as no surprise to anyone to learn he’d been an avid fan of The Dukes of Hazzard.

  Families like the Trulys make me think of the sea turtles I’ve seen on wildlife documentaries and the almost insurmountable odds against the babies surviving into adulthood. They’re picked off by birds when they hatch unprotected on the beach and then the ones that make it to the sea become easy meals for countless fish and aquatic creatures. In the case of the Trulys, their main predator is their own bad judgment.

  “What can we do for you?” Miranda asks me, and I sense the shift of power in the room.

  I wasn’t exactly in command before she arrived, since neither of the other women in the room paid much attention to me, but it was tacitly understood that I was an authority figure. Now I’ve been reduced to a well-groomed interloper in a summer-weight pantsuit and wedge heels peddling unwanted justice for all.

  It would be a waste of time to ease into any conversation about brutal, senseless death with this woman.

  “We’ve discovered the body of a teenaged girl,” I begin, “and we’ve received some information that has led us to think that she might be your granddaughter Camio. I’m sorry to put you through this, but we need to check out all possible leads.”

  “What makes you think it could be Camio?” Miranda asks.

  I hand the baby back to her mother and take a crime scene photo out of my purse.

  “Do you recognize this?”

  Jessy and her grandmother stare at the close-up of Camio’s feet, at the neon pink toenails and the strand of fake diamond hearts circling her slender ankle.