The Dark Root (7 page)

Gail called back ten minutes later. “If Amy Lee ever contacted Women for Women, they don’t have a record of it. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. Now I can do something I should’ve done a while ago.”

· · ·

Amy Lee did not look good. She walked with her head down, her feet shuffling along the sidewalk. She was much thinner than the last time we’d met, and her clothes hung on her awkwardly. Her hair was dirty and unkempt, and she had a habit—a virtual twitch—of looking furtively about her, as if something invisible and malevolent were stalking her, which I didn’t doubt it was.

I swung out of my car and approached her gingerly, my expression open and friendly. She hesitated at the bottom of the path leading to the high school’s front door, obviously considering flight as an option.

“Amy?” I called out softly. “Remember me?”

She looked at the ground as I stopped before her, and nodded silently.

“I was wondering if we could talk a bit.”

“I don’t want to be late for class.” Her voice was a monotone.

“You won’t be. This’ll only take a couple of minutes.” I gestured to a grassy area off the path, where the building’s corner provided a little privacy. “How ’bout we go over there?”

Students were parking their cars in the lot across the street, shouting and laughing at one another as they headed for the building. No one gave us a glance as I gently steered her to the spot I’d indicated. Still, I made sure to position her with her back to the passing crowd.

“How have you been?” I asked.

“Okay.” I could barely hear her.

“You didn’t call that place I told you about, Women for Women.” She shook her head silently, her eyes still glued to the ground.

I crouched down, pretending to pluck absent-mindedly at the spring-fresh grass, but actually so I could look up into her face without challenging her. “Amy, what happened to you was a crime, and you were its victim. In that way, it was no different than if you’d been hit by a drunk driver. Both things come out of nowhere and leave you shattered. The difference is you haven’t done anything to help yourself get back on your feet. You might as well be still out there, in the middle of the road.”

Her lower lip was trembling. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, like a child, and murmured, “It’s hard.”

I reached out and touched her other hand with the tips of my fingers. “You not getting much support at home?”

“They’re angry that I can’t let it go.”

“But you need help to do that, don’t you?”

She gave a small shrug. “I guess.”

“Amy, if I drove you there, would you be willing to meet with the people at Women for Women?”

She looked at me for the first time. “My parents would kill me.”

“They don’t need to know—not at first. This would be just for you.”

She rubbed her forehead and glanced at the entrance to the high school.

Interpreting the gesture, I said, “I can take care of them. I know the principal.”

“Will you tell him?” she asked, suddenly alarmed.

I shook my head. “No. I’ll make something up and make sure he doesn’t contact your folks.”

There was a long silence.

“What do you say?” I finally asked, almost in a whisper.

“Okay” was her equally quiet response.

I stood up and grasped her hand in mine. “I’ll take you to my car first. You wait there while I set things up.”

Like an abandoned wanderer, she took me on faith.

Ten minutes later, after a chat with the principal and a quick call to Women for Women, I rejoined Amy Lee in my car, where she was sitting wedged into the far corner of the front seat, her body pressed against the door, her eyes fixed to the ground outside her window.

Now, I thought, comes the hard part, where I hoped I wouldn’t be seen as a manipulative and heartless hypocrite. I settled next to her and closed my door, adding to the sense of privacy, even though the human flood tide outside had dwindled to a few latecomers who were jogging across the school’s broad lawn.

“Amy, before I take you to Women for Women, can I ask you a couple of questions about that night?”

As small as she was, her body made a spontaneous effort to shrink even further, hunching over. She finally brought her knees up to her chest until she was sitting in a tight ball.

“I don’t want any details,” I added quickly, “nothing you’re not willing to tell me—just some general things. Would that be okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Fair enough. Let me ask something to start, and you see if you want to answer. If you don’t, that’s fine.”

I paused, not really expecting a response, and then asked, “How many of them were there?”

There was an extended silence. Finally, just as I was about to move on, she murmured, “Three.”

“Good. Were they Asians?”

She nodded almost immediately.

“Did you or your parents know them?”

She shook her head vehemently. “No.”

“Do you know why they chose your home?”

Slowly, she covered her face. A moment later, her whole body began shaking with her sobbing.

I remained quiet for a while, trying to convince myself that what I was doing was for the good of all. Having failed that, I reached into my pocket and pulled out three photographs I’d had J.P. Tyler extract from the video of the speeding stop on the interstate during the winter, plus an old mug shot of Michael Vu.

“Amy, I’m sorry. We’ll go now. There is just one last thing. Will you look at these photographs and tell me if any of them look familiar?”

She took a deep breath and turned slightly toward me, her face flushed and streaked with tears. I held up a shot of Edward Diep, the driver of the Nova, using him to warm her up to the process and expecting to draw a blank.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Okay. That’s fine. Here’s another one.” I held up Henry Lam’s picture, saving Truong and Vu’s for last.

But my plan, and my hopeful expectations, were upended. Amy focused on Lam’s sneering, insolent face, let out a scream, and began grappling wildly with the door handle, trying to escape from the car, her body thrashing hysterically.

I dropped the pictures and grabbed hold of her, wrestling her arms to her sides to spare us both possible injury, and then gave her as comforting a body hug as I could in that awkward confinement, issuing soothing noises into her ear as I did so. Had there been any witnesses to all this, I knew I would have made immediate dual appearances before a disciplinary board and on the front page of the newspaper. As it was, we just sat there for several minutes, until I felt confident enough to release her.

I then surreptitiously locked her door, started the engine, and began to drive as quickly as I safely could toward Women for Women and whatever solace they could offer her. From what I had just witnessed, they had their work cut out for them.

During the drive, I kept up a steady patter, fueled partly by my own guilt, but also to keep her from doing anything drastic. Her reaction had made me wonder if this girl, traumatized and isolated and emotionally cast adrift, wasn’t veering precariously close to self-destruction.

I never did show her the last two pictures, as badly as I wanted to. But putting Henry Lam at the scene had convinced me that the three Asian-related events were interconnected—parts of something bigger. The trick was going to be deciphering the common connection.

Susan Raffner, the director of Women for Women, and one of Gail’s best friends, came out personally to greet us as I pulled into the center’s driveway. I’d told her something about the situation over the phone, but I could tell from her expression that she hadn’t been expecting the near–basket case I delivered. And yielding to a cowardly instinct, I didn’t confess how much I’d exacerbated the situation. Amy Lee would get the same supportive treatment either way, and I wouldn’t have to put up with the deservedly baleful comments I knew I’d get otherwise.

It was with some relief, therefore, that I heard Dispatch trying to locate me over the car’s mobile radio just as I was wrapping up the introductions.

I leaned in through the driver’s window and unhooked the microphone. “M-80, this is O-3.”

“Could you hook up with O-10 at 234-B Canal?”

“10-4.”

I made the appropriate noises to the two women, neither of whom was paying much attention to me, and took my leave.

“O-10” was Willy Kunkle’s radio name, and the address I’d been given was one of a collection of more or less derelict buildings that were used as either storage units or auto-body shops, one of which I was hoping had painted the last car in Benny’s life.

I pulled up to a place advertising wheel alignments, body work, and while-you-wait grease jobs, and saw Kunkle leaning against the doorjamb of one of the bays, either enjoying the promising but still-anemic spring sunshine or trying to escape the screaming sounds of power tools emanating from within. He had the contented look of a truant officer who’d just nailed one of his worst offenders.

“You find the painter?” I asked as I walked up to him.

“Moe Ellis—body man by day, artist by night.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the gloomy interior of the bay behind him. “He’s inside.”

“You talk to him yet?”

“Nope. Thought I’d leave the honors to you. You want me to hang around?”

I nodded. “You’ll scare him a hell of a lot more than I will.”

“I scare everybody more’n you do,” he muttered as he abandoned his sunny spot to follow me inside.

The noise enveloped us like an ear-splitting fog, accompanied by the pungent odor of hot metal. One car occupied the center bay like a body stretched out on a morgue table, its paint either overcoated with red Bondo or ground away to bare steel, and completely covered with a layer of dark grit. One man, wearing ear protectors and a breathing mask, was leaning into a door panel with a sander, and another, partly obscured by the hood of the car, was sending up a shower of fiery sparks from a welding torch.

I glanced back at Kunkle, who pointed at the welder.

We stepped through the tangle of power cords and air hoses snaking across the floor and approached Moe Ellis from the front, struggling not to look at the mesmerizing, retina-burning chip of sun where the torch tip touched the metal. I stood patiently, waiting for him to finish his weld. Kunkle, true to form, killed the gas at the bottle. Behind us, the grinder suddenly died.

Ellis straightened, startled, and looked around, blinded by the dark lens of his helmet. “What the fu—” he began muttering as he lifted the visor, and then he froze, his eyes fixed on Kunkle, whose powerful right hand was still resting on the control knob of the acetylene bottle.

“Hey, Moe.” Willy gestured with his chin to the other man, who was staring at us uncertainly. “Go get some coffee.”

Ellis looked from one of us to the other. With a theatrical flourish, I pulled out my badge and wordlessly showed it to him, my expression as cold and still as Kunkle’s. Ellis’s companion quickly left the building.

“Been up to no good, Moe,” Willy said flatly.

“What? I haven’t done nothin’.”

“How ’bout an eighty-six Duster, with a brand new coat of midnight blue?” I asked.

There was a telling hesitation. “You got the wrong guy. I haven’t done a paint job in months, and that was an Olds—red.”

Kunkle shifted his weight. It wasn’t much of a gesture, but Ellis took a frightened step backward, bumping into a large tool chest on casters.

“Moe, there’s nothing illegal about painting a car, unless you know something about it you shouldn’t.”

Ellis licked his lips. “What do you guys want?”

“Tell us you painted it,” Willy said.

“Okay. I painted it.”

“For who?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It was delivered to my place when I wasn’t there, and the deal was done on the phone.”

This time, Kunkle stepped forward, took the welder’s helmet off Ellis’s head, and placed it on the tool chest behind him, bringing his face two inches from the other man’s. “Careful, Moe.”

“We’re digging into a murder case, Moe. Not car theft,” I added.

His eyes grew wider. “I don’t know nothin’ about murder.”

“So tell us about a hot car instead.”

There was a long, quiet moment while he considered his options.

“I want a lawyer,” he finally said.

“You don’t need a lawyer, you stupid bastard,” Kunkle said in a near-whisper.

Ellis pulled at his ear nervously. “I don’t?”

“Who delivered the car, Moe?” I asked.

“You’re not looking to nail me?”

Neither one of us responded. He hesitated again and finally said, “Benny Travers?” as if it were a question.

“What did he tell you?”

“What he usually… I mean, he said he was in a hurry.”

Kunkle retreated to his previous position at the gas bottle. “So when did you do it?”

“The same night—the night before he died.”

“And when did he pick the car up?”

“Right after. He never left.”

Willy’s eyes narrowed. “What bullshit is that? He took it wet?”

Ellis looked slightly alarmed again. “Not wet-wet, but before it shoulda been moved.”

“Why, Moe? Why the rush?” I asked again, searching for the panic that had dogged Benny’s heels.

“I don’t know.”

Kunkle suddenly lunged forward and punched the helmet next to Ellis’s head, sending it clattering across the floor. “Stop fucking with us, asshole. You let him drive away without asking? Not even you’re that spaced out.”

Ellis actually cringed, crouching down near the car’s bumper, and raised his hand to shield his face. “Jesus Christ. What’s with you guys? I really don’t know. I asked, but he wouldn’t tell me. I told him it would screw up the job—that he was just pissing his money away—but he wasn’t interested. He told me to fuck off.”

“He was nervous?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m telling you. He hung around while I did the job—kept bugging me to hurry up… Not to worry about the fine stuff. Drank every beer I had in the goddamn house. He was wired.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

Ellis shook his head. “Nope. Just said he had to get movin’—not where, and not why.”