The Bone Fire_A Mystery

Chapter TWENTY-THREE

Sunday Morning

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Gerald pronounced the woman dead, as Lucy went to get a sheet to cover her. They had to wait for the medical investigator to show up before they could leave.
Lucy draped the woman’s body and maneuvered the sheet so it also covered up a pool of blood nearby. Deputy Segura, who had been with her on the car fire two days ago, approached her and said, “I need your help.” He looked overwhelmed and tired, so Lucy agreed. She followed him over to a minivan parked on the side of the road, a few yards beyond the crash scene. In the back sat a woman and a child.
“Hi,” Lucy said softly. “How are you doing?” She assumed this was the dead woman’s family, who had been called to the scene by the police. Lucy had been asked once or twice before to check out a family who had just been given the news that a loved one had died, to make sure they were not suicidal or homicidal. The woman was just looking off into space, holding the little boy, who looked to be six.
“Ma’am,” Lucy said, “I just want to talk to you for a moment and see how you are.”
The woman said nothing. Lucy wondered if this was the dead woman’s sister.
Deputy Segura, standing next to Lucy, said, “This is Karen and Max.” Lucy smiled at the little boy and said, “Hi, Max.” He said nothing.
“Karen, I just want to say that I can’t imagine how difficult this is for you,” Lucy said. She was glad that she had thrown the sheet over the body. The accident scene was a few yards behind them, and the body wasn’t visible from the van, but Lucy wouldn’t want Karen to inadvertently see her dead sister just lying on the road.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Lucy asked.
Karen cleared her throat and said, “The officer mentioned that he could arrange for someone to take us home.”
“Of course,” Lucy murmured as she turned to look for Deputy Segura, who suddenly was nowhere to be seen.
“We can have your car towed to your house,” Lucy said.
“No,” Karen said strongly as she started to cry. “I never want to see this car again. Never.”
Max had started to cry as well now, but Lucy couldn’t tell if that was fear or grief.
Something in Max’s eyes made Lucy stop. He looked so scared. So petrified. She got out of the van slowly and walked to the front. It was dented in two feet from the impact. The bumper was painted red with blood. Lucy looked back at Karen and Max inside the van.
Lucy needn’t have bothered to cover the body for their sakes, because they had already seen much worse.
Joe was sitting silently next to Gil, not jumping in as much as usual. It concerned Gil slightly as he went on with Stevens’s interrogation.
“So I admit I’m a little confused,” Gil said. “Why didn’t you say from the beginning that you were in Socorro when Brianna disappeared?”
“Okay, well, here’s the thing,” Stevens said. “I had been drinking on the drive back to town, and then I got Ashley’s call that Brianna’s missing, and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I can’t go home because there are cops all over the house. So Ashley said that I should keep driving around to sober up and she’d say I’m out looking for Brianna.”
“So that’s what you did?” Gil asked. It wasn’t much of a master plan to avoid a DWI. It also wasn’t much of a reason to lie.
“Yeah,” he said. “I stopped and got some coffee and just sat in my truck until I was sober enough to go home.”
“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “Why not just tell the police that you were in Socorro and then when you got back to town you went to look for Brianna? Why lie about where you were? The only thing you really needed to lie about was driving while drunk.” Gil winced a little every time Joe used the word “lie,” but Stevens didn’t seem to notice.
“I don’t know,” Stevens said. Gil thought Joe made a good point. The lie Ashley came up with was overkill. It was too complicated.
“How long were you and Ashley dating before Brianna disappeared?” Gil asked.
“Like two months.”
“So you started dating while Brianna was still living with Donna Henshaw,” Gil said. Stevens squirmed a little in his seat at the mention of the adoption. Clearly, he had been told not to talk about it.
“It must have been hard when Brianna came back,” Joe said. “A little kid sure does put a damper on your love life.”
“That’s for sure,” Stevens said.
“I know I would have been mad as hell,” Joe said. “It was like being tricked. You didn’t sign up for no little kid.”
“It was messed up,” he agreed.
“You must have told Ashley how hard it was with Brianna around,” Gil said. “We know Brianna cried all the time. That must have really got on your nerves.”
“I did tell her, but she said there was nothing she could do,” Stevens said. “That kid was so spoiled and just screamed whenever she didn’t get what she wanted.” Gil looked over at Joe, knowing that he was protective of Brianna, but he showed no sign of his usual anger.
“I mean,” Stevens continued without prompting, “she was supposed to be f*cking adopted, but all of the sudden, she’s back again, like nothing happened. What was I supposed to do?”
“I know what I would do,” Joe said. “I’d tell Ashley it’s either the kid or me.”
“Exactly.”
“So what did Ashley do?” Gil asked a little more quietly, maybe because he was afraid of the answer.
“I dunno,” Stevens said, looking down.
“Do you think it’s possible that Ashley did something to Brianna?” Gil asked.
“I dunno.”
Gil thought of Ashley, only twenty. No job, no money, no education—and the man she loves threatening to leave.
“Alex, do you think it’s possible that Ashley made sure Brianna was gone so you would stay?” Gil asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe.”
Lucy found a deputy who offered to take the woman and her son home while she went in search of Gerald. She hoped he was doing the paperwork so they could get out of there soon. She found him talking to Deputy Segura, who asked, “How are they?” Lucy just shook her head, not knowing how to answer. Instead she asked, “So what’s the deal? How did this happen?”
“Suicide by car,” Segura said.
“What?” Lucy asked. “How is that a good suicide plan?”
“I didn’t know there was such a thing as a good suicide plan,” Gerald said.
“I’m not sure on the details,” Segura said, “but it sounds like she and her boyfriend were up all night drinking and then they got in some big fight. I guess she was always telling him about how she was just going to walk into traffic if he ever left her. Tonight she said something like ‘You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.’ They live in a trailer just down the embankment there.” He gestured over to the left. “She went out for a walk and never came back.”
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Joe, starting to get the feel for the interview, said to Alex Stevens, “It takes a lot of love for a woman to choose her man the way Ashley chose you.”
“Yeah,” Stevens said, not sounding convinced.
“You don’t think Ashley loves you?” Gil asked.
“I dunno,” he said. “Sometimes, I know she does. Other times . . . who knows.”
“What makes you think she doesn’t love you?” Joe asked. “She must love you if she’s having your baby.”
“I’m not even sure it’s my kid,” Stevens said, then instantly seemed to regret he’d said anything.
“What do you mean?” Gil asked.
Stevens stopped and leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling, as if he were imploring God to deliver him from this interrogation. He rubbed his eyes and then said suddenly, “Okay, look. I love Ashley, man, but she’s a trip. She’s got issues.” He started bouncing his leg. Gil said nothing. He would let Stevens’s tension do the talking for him. With that much nervous energy, he would eventually have to talk it out. A moment or two later, after some deep breaths, Stevens said, “Just so you know, I’m, like, a normal guy. I like sex and everything.”
“Yeah, I can tell,” Gil said, because it seemed important to Stevens that he be seen as normal.
“Okay, so, things sex-wise with Ashley were always kind of different,” Stevens said, not looking at Gil or Joe. “She just has problems, you know. I try to be understanding of that.”
“What kind of problems?”
“Just, you know . . . okay, like for instance she can’t have sex unless she’s had a few beers,” Stevens said, as if he had just laid something out on the table. Just given up his king of hearts. It was an important card, but it wasn’t the most telling. He was still holding an ace.
“I get that,” Gil said as a filler response to show that he wasn’t judging the man.
“You know, if she’s drinking and then I’m drinking . . .”
“So you’ve only ever had sex when you were both drunk?” Gil asked. Stevens shifted in his seat uncomfortably, but there was nothing strange about the conversation yet. It was common for women who had been sexually abused to need alcohol to overcome their fears in bed.
“Yeah,” Stevens said. He was still bouncing his leg. There was something else.
Gil said, “When both people are drunk it gets complicated.” It was almost a nonstatement, but it might move the conversation along.
“Yeah, like, okay, so we haven’t had regular sex for a really long time,” Stevens said, leaning in closer and talking quietly.
“You mean intercourse?”
“Yeah, I mean, we’ve done other stuff . . . you know, but not that,” Stevens said.
“When was the last time you had regular sex?” Gil asked, thankful that Joe wasn’t jumping in to ask questions about his favorite subject.
“We got drunk one night about eight months ago, and then later Ashley said we had sex, but I can’t remember it. Plus, like a guy can tell, you know.” This was Stevens’s ace of spades. The card that would break him. Gil quickly realized why this fact, this one instance, was so important. “So you’re not sure you’re the new baby’s father?” he asked.
Stevens leaned back and said, “It’s not that . . . maybe . . . I don’t know.” His leg started jumping again. He let out a few more slow breaths before saying, “I have to be the dad, you know? Ashley would never cheat on me. And then plus, with all of her hangups . . . we were dating for four months before she could even have drunk sex. So, like, who would she have sex with?”
That had been the question from the beginning.
Gil stood outside the interview room with Joe, who rolled his neck and said, “I have no idea where this leaves us.”
Gil wasn’t sure either. He had one of the uniformed officers bring Alex Stevens a soda and a bag of chips so he wouldn’t get too nervous and ask for a lawyer while they considered filing false statement charges against him for fingering David Geisler.
Gil and Joe went back to the conference room and looked at the whiteboard, which still displayed Brianna’s timeline, as well as all the lists and the phrase I was dead and buried.
They stared at the board in silence until Joe said, “I know the family is lying to us, but I can’t see any of them putting Brianna’s bones up in those displays. It’s just too evil.”
“That’s my issue with it, too,” Gil said.
“I wonder about the David Geisler thing,” Joe said. “I know he could still be our guy . . .”
“Although it seems less likely since Stevens lied about seeing him with Brianna.”
“But he fits the profile perfectly.” Joe got up and stood next to the board. “I don’t know. Maybe the profile is wrong.”
“Our profile is solid,” Gil said. “I know it is. Whoever killed Brianna and left her bones fits this profile.”
“The profile that describes David Geisler,” Joe said, exasperated.
Gil’s head was starting to hurt again. “So let’s change tacks here,” he said. “Alex Stevens seems pretty convinced that Ashley got rid of Brianna, but you and I both know that no one in the family put up the displays of Brianna’s bones. So let’s assume both things are true. How would Ashley get rid of Brianna in a way that explains how we found her bones?”
“The only thing I can think of is that Ashley sold Brianna to a psychopath,” Joe said, “and now we are back to creepy land.”
They kept looking at the board until Joe said hesitantly, “Could Ashley have sold Brianna to David Geisler?”
It was a measure of how much of a toll the investigation was taking on Gil that he actually considered it.