Chapter 12
As the elder sister, Charlotte grew up with competing and possibly counterbalancing senses of both entitlement and obligation, feeling she had a place in the world but also a set of duties, often unpleasant, to go along with it. Her younger sister, Ann, inherited a finely tuned sense of proportional justice, probably stemming from a childhood concern that everyone, herself in particular, receive a fair share. It’s probably too simplistic to trace their many differences in temperament and politics back to birth order, but I find myself doing it anyway.
Both sisters went into law, but Charlotte gravitated toward high-paying corporate work, scratching her civic itch with occasional involvement in the Harris County Republican Party. Ann, on the other hand, works mainly on death-row appeals, believing that while there might be guilty people behind bars, it’s a safe bet none of them received fair trials.
Even over dinner, the types persist. Charlotte, the gracious hostess, reigns over a plentiful table, while Ann subtly annoys her, double-checking that each of us gets the same amount of food and drink. Afterward, when Charlotte takes charge of clearing the dishes, Ann tries to press all of us into duty. Failing that, she insists on helping her sister in the kitchen, leaving Bridger with me.
“So I hear you got pulled into that task force,” he says. “How’s that going?”
“It would be better if you expedited those test results I’ve been waiting on.”
His eyebrows rise. “What results?”
“You said I’d need a sample to compare, so I found one – Hannah Mayhew’s mother. I think she’s the girl missing from the Morales scene. Now we’re waiting on you guys to say whether I’m right. Sheryl Green has the samples in her lab apparently.”
“Really,” he says. “That’s news to me.”
“If you could light a fire under her, I’d appreciate it.”
He gives a noncommittal nod. “I’ll look into it.”
I’d like to get more out of him, but Ann saunters into the dining room with coffee, followed by Charlotte, who looks lovely in a white linen blouse and mustard tan trousers, her lipstick freshly reapplied. I pause to admire her.
To say the years have been kind to my wife, at least physically, is an understatement. As time passes and her contemporaries either go to seed or under the knife, she only improves, still as thin and leggy as the day we married, the patina of fine lines on her face never detracting from its essentially placid symmetry. Looking at her now, the thought that my eyes could stray even for a moment seems ridiculous. A show of ingratitude toward God or the cosmos, whoever arranges such things.
In contrast, Ann sips her coffee with a harried, squinched look, like she’s worried or anticipating a blow. I wonder if this is general agitation, or the result of words that passed between the sisters while they were busy in the kitchen.
“So,” Ann says, adding more cream to her cup. “Alan says you’re assigned to the Hannah Mayhew task force. Is that right, Roland?”
I nod.
To my left, I see Charlotte tense up. Her unspoken rule about no work at the dinner table is being violated by a longtime offender.
“How are you dealing with it?” Ann asks.
“I’ve been trying to get a little help from the ME’s office.”
Alan smiles distantly. “I told you I’d check into it.”
“That’s not what I mean, though,” Ann says. “How are you dealing? I mean, a case like that, and you of all people . . .”
Charlotte’s spoon hits her saucer. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“You know –”
“No, I don’t know. Why should Roland have to deal with anything? He’s a professional, Ann. This is what he does. You don’t ask Alan how he deals with having to cut people up.”
“That’s not what I’m saying – ” Ann begins.
“It’s all right,” I say, holding up my hands. “I’m doing fine. I’d rather be back in Homicide, and if some tests come through, I should be back there soon. In the meantime, I’m just keeping my nose clean and trying to avoid the cameras.”
“I can’t believe all the interest in this thing,” Alan says.
“They’re trying to get the mother to go on Larry King.”
A little shiver runs through Charlotte, who folds her arms tightly. “That’s awful. The way they make such a spectacle of people’s pain.”
“But if it helps find the girl,” Ann says.
I shake my head. “It won’t. That’s not what it’s about. There’s always the chance, I guess, but the real motive is to get in front of the story, so it’s not about Channel 13 raking the department over the coals again. But maybe I’m just cynical.”
Charlotte pushes away from the table. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
She slips through the kitchen and keeps going. Ann gives me a guilty look, then goes after her, leaving me and Bridger to stare into our coffee.
“Let’s go out back,” I suggest.
The balmy night envelops us, the stars hidden behind muddy clouds that give even the moon a soft-focus halo. I cast a glance toward the detached garage and the side stairs ascending to Tommy’s apartment, then lead Bridger off the deck and across the yard. We stand just outside the pillars of light shining through the back windows, where he can smoke his obligatory postprandial cigarette without Ann telling him off.
“I’m thinking about quitting,” he says, fitting the cigarette between his lips, firing the tip with a shiny Zippo.
“You should.”
“That’s easy for you to say.” He exhales into the darkness. “You’re an all or nothing kind of guy when it comes to vice. No moderation.”
“Are you moderating your smoking?” I ask.
“Considering it, anyway.”
Unseen in the surrounding bushes, cicadas chirp and mosquitoes buzz, forcing us to occasionally shrug them off. Across the fence, the neighbors are grilling outside, scenting the air with barbeque.
“Are you ‘dealing’ all right?” he asks.
“I’m better than all right.” I tell him about the approach from Joe Thomson, with its promise not only to shed light on the Morales killing but also to shovel some dirt over what will hopefully turn out to be Reg Keller’s professional coffin.
“You’ve got a lot of irons in the fire. Hope you don’t get burned.”
“Yeah, yeah. If you could come through on that victim identification and Thomson gives up the names of the shooters, then everything will turn around for me.”
“Everything?” he asks, jabbing his cigarette toward the house. “You and Charlotte seem a little on edge. Are things okay with you two?”
I sniff the air. “They’ve been better, I admit. But I’m working on that, too.”
He gives me a sideways look. “You mean you’re considering it.”
“More or less. It’s that time of year.”
He nods. “You’ve got something special, Roland. I mean that. After all you’ve been through together, I’d hate to see it go off the rails.”
“It won’t.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“It won’t,” I repeat.
He rubs out his cigarette, half-smoked, and we head back inside. At the doorway he gives me a pat on the back, a gesture of solidarity, maybe sympathy. We find Ann sitting on the couch with the television on, volume low. A yearbook photo of James Fontaine is on-screen, cutting quickly to a mid-forties African-American couple standing in the driveway of what turns out to be the Fontaine home. I can see one of the concrete lions at the edge of the frame. The man is talking about how outraged he is by the behavior of the local police.
“Where’s Charlotte?” I ask.
Ann clicks the tube off. “She had a headache, so I gave her some aspirin and put her to bed.”
Bridger gives me a second pat. I could go the rest of my life without another one.
I see them out on my own, then climb the stairs, finding Charlotte in front of the bathroom mirror in a camisole and socks, brushing her teeth with excessive vigor. Her eyes follow my reflection a moment before drifting away.
Gina Robb comes to the door in a T-shirt and shorts, the cat-eye glasses the only reminder of her eccentric appearance the first time we met. Behind her, blue light flickers across an overstuffed couch and a shadowy hallway leads deeper into the apartment.
“I’m sorry it’s so late. With a job like mine, you work odd hours.”
She ushers me inside, frets over the best place for me to sit, then decides the vinyl armchair is the only choice. Once I’m settled, she goes to the kitchenette to pour coffee, which I don’t have the heart to refuse.
“It’s hazelnut,” she says, handing me the mug.
They live on the second floor of a gated apartment complex across from Willowbrook Mall. The spot where Hannah Mayhew’s car was found is just about visible from their tiny balcony. The furniture has a haphazard hand-me-down quality, and apart from a clock over the breakfast nook, the walls are unadorned. The television is flanked by bookshelves filled with crimped paperbacks and DVDs.
Robb appears at the mouth of the hallway, also in shorts and T-shirt, toweling his hair dry. He pours himself coffee and sits on the big couch, then changes his mind and scoots closer toward me.
“Just taking a quick shower,” he says.
Gina flips on a lamp, then feels along the cushions until she finds the TV remote, switching the set off. She sits on the edge of the couch, hands clasped over white knees that seem never to have been touched by sun.
“Is it all right if I stay?” she asks.
I shrug. “Fine with me. You heard we pulled in James Fontaine today? He mentioned an incident we hadn’t heard anything about. Did you know he accused Hannah of vandalizing his car back in late February?”
They exchange looks, then Robb gives an awkward nod. “Donna didn’t mention that?”
“Nobody did. You want to clue me in?”
He takes a deep breath. “After the drugs were found in Hannah’s locker, she told everyone they weren’t hers. But she wouldn’t point the finger at anyone, either.”
“Why not?”
“She’d told Fontaine how Jesus suffered unjustly for the sins of others, so how does she turn around and complain for suffering unjustly herself ?”
“She said that?”
“Not in so many words. But I think that’s what she thought. Because she wouldn’t talk, Donna felt like she had no choice but to ground her. It would have looked strange otherwise, nothing happening when her daughter’s suspended for marijuana possession.”
I can’t help smiling at the irony. If Hannah really kept her mouth shut for Fontaine’s sake, she showed him more loyalty than he’d extended to any of his friends in the interview room.
“It looked strange anyway,” Gina says. “Punishing her made her look guilty.”
He nods. “But I can understand how Donna felt. Hannah did, too. But there was one thing Donna didn’t consider, which was that Evey was leaving to go back to New Orleans. Her mom had tried making a go of things here, but ultimately she missed her home. So we’d planned this big goodbye party, which Hannah now couldn’t attend. It was a big deal, because like I told you before, Hannah was pretty much the only friend Evey had.”
His wife nods. “She was a tough girl to love.”
“So what happened?” I ask.
“Evey left the party and drove to Hannah’s house, talked her into going out, and somehow the two of them ended up at James Fontaine’s.”
“They keyed his car up?”
“Well,” he says. “There are two versions of the story.”
Gina puts her coffee mug on the low table in front of the couch. “I talked to Hannah the next morning, and she wouldn’t say what exactly went down. The impression I got, though, was that Evey did all the damage. She was paying the boy back.”
“For planting the drugs?”
“Yes, that,” she says. “Also for breaking Hannah’s heart.”
Next to her, Robb shifts nervously.
“It’s true,” she insists.
“I know,” he says, “but – ”
“But nothing. Hannah had a crush on that boy.” She looks to me for support. “You don’t always choose which direction your heart goes. She knew he was bad news, and I don’t think she ever would have compromised herself . . .”
“Of course not,” he says.
“Even so, as smart as she is, she’s just seventeen. I told her, ‘You know you can’t save his soul just to make him safe to date,’ and she said she realized that. But in her heart, I don’t think she did. So when he pushed her away – and I mean really pushed – it hurt her. And that’s why Evey did what she did, because Hannah was the one person who understood her.”
Robb nods the whole time, but I can tell there’s something in this he doesn’t agree with, not entirely. “What you have to understand about Hannah is, she’s friendly with everybody, but only made friends with a few. And when she makes a friend, she holds on tenaciously, whether it’s good for her or not. She’s very open emotionally, like a child almost. And Evey responded to that, in a protective sort of way.”
“You said there were two versions of what happened?”
“Evey left before anyone could get her side,” Robb says. “But some of the girls in the youth group told me Evey liked Fontaine, too, and it was her not him who put the drugs in Hannah’s locker. According to them, Evey was going to run away with the drug dealer, and to stop her, Hannah busted up his car.”
Gina shakes her head. “Those girls are thirteen. They don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“There could be a kernel of truth, though – ”
She dismisses the idea with a wave of the hand. “They’re in my class,” she explains, “so I have a pretty good idea how reliable they are. I guess the point is, rumors were flying, and the only person who could have told us what happened was Evey, who’d already gone.”
“Where exactly?” I ask.
“Back to New Orleans,” Robb says. “I’m not sure where. They were trying to buy a house, I think, but I don’t know whether they did. The insurance payout from the old one wasn’t much, but Mrs. Dyer was a nurse, so she might have saved something while they were here.”
Gina frowns. “Nurses don’t make that much.”
“You have a number where I can reach them?”
Robb’s cheeks color. “I don’t know that we do.”
“We haven’t heard from them in ages,” Gina says.
Robb gives me a pained look, then shrugs. He’d been so proud of Hannah for befriending the girl, prompted by his encouragement, but he hadn’t bothered to keep in touch himself. Reading my mind, he nods slowly.
“I feel bad about it,” he says. “Hypocritical. But with everything going on, I have to be honest, the Dyers leaving was a bit of a relief. I kept telling myself to follow up, but I never did.”
“Would anybody at the church have a contact number?”
“I don’t know. I could check around.”
“I’d appreciate that. One more thing. Fontaine said Evey – it’s Evey Dyer, right? – he said she would kind of explode on people. Is that right?”
Gina nods. “She did it with me once.” She takes a sip of coffee, gulps hard. “It was kind of scary to be honest. The girl had a mouth on her, but it was more than that. I don’t know if Carter told you, but she’s had a tough life. Spent time on the street as a runaway, did things I don’t even like to think about. I found her in the women’s restroom up at the church one Sunday and she was just bawling. I don’t know why, or what had happened, but I went to put an arm around her and she just flipped out. She started pushing me back and screaming and her hair was flying everywhere. And the things she was saying . . .” She shudders. “Finally she pushed me so hard I fell back into one of the toilet stalls.”
Robb listens silently, hands over his mouth.
“Then, as quick as it started, it all went away. She helped me up and kept apologizing and she was begging me not to tell anyone.” She glances at her husband. “Besides him, I didn’t.”
“Was she ever like that with Hannah?” I ask.
She shrugs.
“They had a strange bond,” Robb says. “Evey told Hannah a lot of things about herself she wouldn’t share with anyone else. Most of what we know, really, comes secondhand from Hannah. Like I said, when she and her mom moved back, I was relieved. After Gina told me what had happened in the restroom, I was always afraid of a repeat.”
According to the breakfast nook clock, it’s edging close to midnight. I’ve imposed long enough, especially considering how easily this could have been handled by phone. Still, in person there are nuances you miss over the line. And it’s not like I was going to get any sleep.
“Last thing,” I say. “You don’t happen to have a photograph of Evangeline Dyer, do you? Maybe the two of them together?”
They glance at each other, then shrug.
“No problem. I’ll check the computer. Sounds like this girl might have a record.”
As I descend the stairs outside, Robb comes out of the apartment alone, trailing after me, calling in a hushed voice.
“What’s the problem?” I ask.
“What I said the other day? I was serious. I need to do something. There has to be some way I can help.”
“You’re doing plenty. I don’t know what more to tell you.”
“I could track the Dyers down for you,” he says. “Or that picture you wanted? I could ask around and find one. Maybe I could talk to people again, see if they’d open up to me in a way they wouldn’t with the police.”
He looks to me for agreement, with a desperate eagerness that’s a little appalling, unaware that not only is he asking me for something I don’t have the power to grant but he’s also conforming to a stereotype well known to law enforcement: the guilty helper. When a civilian suddenly offers up his services, you always take a harder look at him, because more than likely he’s involved – or so the thinking goes. I think I know what motivates Robb, though. Not his involvement, but his lack of it, for he’s convinced if only he’d invested more of himself before the fact, none of this would have happened.
“I appreciate your feelings, Mr. Robb, but – ”
“Anything,” he says.
I stroke my chin, buying time, wracking my brain for a non-binding exit strategy. “If you can track down a number for the Dyers in New Orleans, that would be fine. And if you want to talk to the kids in your youth group, see if anything else comes up, go right ahead. But beyond that – ”
“Thank you.” He grips my hand and gives it a shake. “I’m grateful, really. I’ll do whatever I can and get back to you. And if you think of anything else, just let me know.”
“I’ll do that,” I say, slipping away, making a beeline for my parked car before he can offer up additional thanks.
The next morning I roll over to find Charlotte’s side of the bed empty. The slight dimple in the mattress is still warm. I throw on some clothes and pad down the stairs. She’s in the kitchen, fully dressed, gazing out the window over the sink.
I kiss her warm cheek, then brush the hair from her neck. “You all right? You’re up early.”
“Just thinking,” she says.
I open the refrigerator, pour out the last of the orange juice, splashing half of it into a second cup, which I place in her waiting hand.
“I’d like things to be how they were,” she says. “No, that’s not right. I want them to be how they should be. In the future, I mean.”
“Okay.” I’m a little baffled.
“Ann said something last night. When we were doing the dishes. She said we didn’t seem happy anymore. Do you think that’s true?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re lying. I can tell, you know. My husband’s a detective.”
“Things can be like they were – ”
“They’ll never be like they were,” she says. “I know that. I’m not naive. But I want them to be good again. All right?”
I down the orange juice, lower the glass. “I want that, too.”
Upstairs, my mobile phone starts to ring. I should honor the moment by letting it go, but the moment’s already as good as it can get. I kiss her on the juice-dampened lips and rush the stairs two at a time. The phone flashes on the nightstand charger.
“Hello?”
“March, it’s Wilcox. Good news.”
“I have the go-ahead to approach Thomson?”
“So long as he’s willing to give us everything, we’re prepared to work with him on the rest.”
“He wants it in writing.”
“Should I fax it over, or do you want to swing by?”
“I’d better come by. The fewer people who know, the better.”
When I head back downstairs to tell Charlotte, she’s standing in the open back door, arms crossed, glaring up at the apartment over the garage. I come up behind her, resting my cheek against her neck. At the top of the stairs, I catch sight of a girl in a crop top and tight jeans just disappearing into the apartment.
“You’ve got to take care of that, too,” she says.
“I did have a talk with him.”
“A talk’s not enough.” She turns, puts her hands around my waist. “He’s got to go. It’s past the point of talking. Just get him out.”
My hand rests on the small of her back and I inhale the scent of her hair.
“I’ll do what I can,” I say. “Whatever you want.”