The Face of Death (13 page)

Exhausted. Spent. Happy.

“I had another thought,” Tommy says, breaking the comfortable silence.

“You sure seem to do a lot of thinking while we’re having sex.”

“I do all my best thinking when I’m naked.”

“So?”

“There’s a motivation that encompasses both
pain
and
justice
.”

“Yeah, I know.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“The oldest one of all,” I say. “Revenge.”

“Thought I might have the jump on you with that one.”

I kiss his cheek. “Don’t feel bad. When exactly did you have time to think of that, anyway?”

He grins at me. “Orgasms clear the brain.”

“So what you are saying, basically, is that this
came
to you?”

He rolls his eyes.

It occurs to me that I feel better. A lot better. I’d felt bad, he’d called, he’d come. We’d had sex and talked about work and—

I jolt inside as a whole new thought comes to me.

Oh my God—are we a couple?

It’s an idea as strange and alien as it is comforting and familiar. One of the things about being married for many years is the feeling of security that develops, the certainty of knowing that you always have someone in your corner. If everyone else fails you, or dies on you, or betrays you, you always have that other person. You are never really alone. To lose that is to lose a part of yourself. The empty space in the bed itches in the night like a phantom limb.

Have we crossed that line? The one that says “casual” on one side and “couple” on the other?

“What?” Tommy asks.

“Just…” I shake my head. “Just thinking about us. Never mind.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What?”

“Don’t think something and say it’s nothing. You don’t have to tell me what it was, but don’t tell me it’s nothing.”

I search his eyes. Find no anger there, only honesty, concern.

“Sorry,” I say. “I was just wondering…” I swallow, once. Why is this so hard to get out? “Tommy, are we a couple?”

He smiles at me. “Is that all? Of course we are.”

“Oh.”

“Look, Smoky, I’m not saying it’s time for us to move in together, or to get married. But we’re together. That’s how I see it.”

“Oh. Wow.”

He shakes his head in amusement. “You were married for a long time. You’re used to ‘together’ meaning love and marriage. I don’t love you.”

Something in my stomach tumbles and I feel sick. “You…you don’t?”

He reaches out, strokes my cheek. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. What I mean is, I’ll never say it unless I mean it, and I’m not ready to say it yet. But I can see a point coming where I will. If we keep going the way we’re going, I’m going to wake up one day and love you. That’s the road we’re headed down. We’re together.”

More butterflies now but not the nausea-inducing kind.

“Really?”

“Truth.” He squints at me. “How do you feel about that?”

I snuggle into him. “I like it,” I say, realizing it’s true.

I do like it. Better, it’s guiltless. I don’t feel any disapproval from Matt’s ghost.

But what about Quantico? Gonna make him fall in love with you and leave him flat?

It’s another factor to take into account, I reply to myself, stubborn. More choices. Choices are good.

Except it’s not that simple and I know it. I could hurt Tommy with what I decide. The simplicity of a “new start” is an oversimplification of my life. I know that Alan and Callie and Elaina would back me to the hilt should I decide to take the position. Everyone would be sad, but the bonds there are too old and too strong. We wouldn’t lose each other.

You can have a long-distance relationship with friends and family. Not with a guy who loves you.

Don’t forget about your mute foster-daughter, your pill-popping friend, and 1 for U two 4 me! Don’t forget about a restless house you haven’t finished packing away and a friend who just beat cancer and the fact that Matt’s and Alexa’s gravestones are here, not in Virginia. Who’ll place the flowers?

“Know what I want?” I whisper, willing my ghosts away, for now.

He shakes his head.

“I want you to take me upstairs and help me sleep.”

He lifts me into his arms without a word and carries me up the stairs. We move past Alexa’s room, but I don’t think about that, and then we’re in my bed, and he’s got me, he’s there, and I’m able to start drifting away, while he keeps me safe, my guardian against the dead.

14

“
I TALKED TO THE HOSPITAL THIS MORNING,” BARRY TELLS ME
as we walk through the parking lot. “They said that the girl was treated for shock, and she had some bruising on her wrists and ankles, but that otherwise there’s nothing physically wrong with her.”

“Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

I fill him in on my thoughts of last night, including my theory regarding vengeance as motive.

“Interesting. What doesn’t add up, though, is Sarah. If we cut her and the Kingsleys out of the picture, it makes sense. Vargas is into kids, has been for a long time. Maybe he likes torture too, caning their feet. One of the kids grows up, comes and kills him. It even explains why he went easy on the girl. Closing the eyes. No disembowelment.”

“Yes.”

“But Sarah and the Kingsleys? I don’t see where that fits in.” He shrugs. “Still, I do like the revenge motive.”

“Perhaps Sarah can shed some light on things.”

“Hang on a sec,” Barry says as we get near the entrance, nervous. “I need a smoke before we go in.”

I smile at him. “You don’t like hospitals either?”

He shrugs as he lights his cigarette. “Last time I was in one, I was watching my dad die. What’s to like?”

Barry looks bleary-eyed. I notice he’s wearing the same clothes he had on last night.

“Did you ever go home?” I ask.

He puffs a few times and shakes his head. “Nope. Simmons didn’t wrap up until almost seven
A.M.
I had to call in a couple of software experts too. They’re still there.”

“Why?”

“The boy, Michael? His computer has some kind of super-duper protection program installed on it. They gave me the technical rundown, but it’s over my head. Enter the wrong password and it wipes the hard drive clean. That part I understood.”

Hey, try 1 for U two 4 me. You never know!

I suppress an eye twitch. “Interesting.”

“It gets better. They say it’s a custom job, very advanced, and—get this—they don’t think the boy put it on the computer.”

“Why?”

“Too advanced. Something about the level of encryption provided. We’re talking beyond military-grade.”

“It could have been put there by the perp then.”

“That’s my thought.”

“It would make sense. He has something to say to us. That’s why the writing on the wall at both scenes, why he called me to tell me about Vargas. He’s telling us something, but he’s doing it at his own pace.”

“I like it when they get all clever like that. It means they’re ripe for fucking up.”

“Was anything else found?”

“We have the footprints and the computer. No prints, no hairs, no fibers. The feet are good though. We catch him, we can definitely get a match. Like I said—fucking up. Bodies went to the medical examiner, we’ll see what happens there. Did you hear anything from Callie?”

“I haven’t talked to her yet. I’ll call her when we’re done here.”

“Maybe he was dumb there too.” He takes another deep drag on his cigarette. “About the girl. I don’t have much yet, but here goes: She’s been with the Kingsleys for a little over a year, real name is Sarah Langstrom.”

Sarah Langstrom, I think, trying the name on for size.

“I checked for a record,” Barry continues. “She was arrested for drug possession when she was fifteen—smoking a joint on a bus bench in broad daylight. Nothing else came up. I’ll get her file from Social Services tomorrow.”

“She said her parents were murdered. When she was six.”

“That’s great. I love a happy ending.” He sighs. “How do you want to handle interviewing her?”

“Strictly straight and narrow. This girl…” I shake my head. “If she feels like we’re not being honest with her, or we’re not taking her seriously—she’ll stop trusting us. And I don’t think she trusts us much anyway.”

“Fair enough.” He takes a final drag on his cigarette before flicking it into the parking lot. “I’ll follow your lead.”

Sarah has a private room in the children’s wing of the hospital. Barry has a guard posted outside the door. Young Thompson again. Tired looking but still excited.

“Any visitors?” Barry asks him.

“No, sir. No one.”

“Sign us in.”

It’s nice enough, as hospital rooms go, which as far as I’m concerned is like saying that it’s the best one available at the Bates Motel. The walls have been painted a warm beige, and the floor is some kind of faux-wood. Better than white linoleum and institution-green, I admit to myself. There’s a large window, and the drapes are pulled open, allowing the sunlight to pour in.

Sarah’s in a bed near the window. She turns her head to see us as we enter.

“Aw, geez,” I hear Barry say under his breath.

She looks small and pale and tired. Barry is appalled. This is another reason I like him. He’s not jaded.

I walk up to the side of her bed. She doesn’t smile, but I’m happy to see less
deadness
in her eyes.

“How are you?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Tired.”

I indicate Barry with a nod of my head. “This is Barry Franklin. He’s the homicide detective in charge of your case. He’s a friend of mine, and I asked him to take on your case because I trust him.”

Sarah looks at Barry. “Hi,” she says, disinterested. She turns back to me. “I get it.” She sighs, her voice resigned and bleak. “You’re not going to help me.”

I blink, surprised.

“Whoa, honey. The local police are always involved. It’s how things work. That doesn’t mean I’m not a part of it.”

“Are you lying to me?”

“Nope.”

She stares at me for a few seconds, eyes narrowed and suspicious, gauging the truth of what I’m saying. “Okay,” she says, reluctant. “I believe you.”

“Good,” I reply.

Her face changes. Hope, mixed with desperation. “Did you get my diary?”

I choose my words carefully. “I couldn’t take the original diary. We have rules about how we handle things at a crime scene. But”—I raise my voice as I see her face begin to fall—“I had a photograph taken of every single page in it. Someone is going to be printing those photographs out for me today, and I’ll be able to read them. Just as if they were the pages from your real diary.”

“Today?”

“I promise.”

Sarah gives me another long, suspicious stare.

There’s no trust in this girl, I think. No trust at all.

What had it taken to make her this way? Did I want to know?

“Sarah,” I say, keeping my voice even and gentle, “we need to ask you some questions. About what happened in your house yesterday. Are you ready to do that?”

The gaze she gives me is filled with too much experience, a kind of empty indifference I’ve seen before in victims. It’s easier to be indifferent than it is to care.

“I guess.” Her voice is flat.

“Do you mind if Barry is here while we talk? I’ll ask all the questions. He’ll just sit away from us and listen.”

She waves a hand. “I don’t care.”

I pull up a chair next to her bed. Barry sits down in a chair near the door. More of our easy dance. He’ll be able to hear everything, but he’ll remain unobtrusive. It won’t be hard for Sarah to forget that he’s even there.

There’s an intimacy to victim recollection. It’s personal. A sharing of secrets. Barry knows this, and he knows that Sarah is going to be most comfortable sharing those secrets with me.

She’s turned her head back to the window. Away from me, toward the sun. Her hands are folded. I see black nail polish on every nail.

Let’s get this row on the shoad, inner-me says.

“Sarah, do you know who did this?” The key question. “Do you know who it was that killed the Kingsleys?”

She continues staring out the window. “Not in the way you mean. I don’t know his name, or what he looks like. But he’s been in my life before.”

“When he killed your parents.”

She nods.

“You said you were six when that happened.”

“June 6,” she says. “On my birthday. Happy birthday to me.”

I swallow, stumbling inside for a moment at this revelation.

“Where did that happen?”

“Malibu.”

I glance at Barry. He nods, makes a quiet notation in his notepad. We’ll be able to track down all the details of this earlier murder, if it happened.

“Do you remember what occurred back then? When you were six?”

“I remember all of it.”

I wait, hoping she’ll elaborate. She doesn’t.

“How do you know the man who killed the Kingsleys yesterday is the same man who killed your parents ten years ago?”

She turns to look at me, a faint expression of resignation and muted anger on her face. “That’s a stupid question.”

I regard her for a moment. “Well, then…what’s a good question?”

“
Why
is he the same man?”

I blink. She’s right. That’s the most incisive question of all.

“Do you know why?”

She nods.

“Do you want to tell me?”

“I’ll tell you a little. The rest you’ll have to read about.”

“Okay.”

“He…” She struggles with something. Maybe to find the right words. “He said to me once, ‘I’m making you over in my own image.’ He didn’t explain what that meant. But that’s what he said. He said he looked at me and my life the way an artist looks at clay, and that I was his sculpture. He even had a name for the sculpture, a title.”

“What was it?”

She closes her eyes.
“A Ruined Life.”

The scritch-scratch of Barry’s pen pauses. I gaze at Sarah, trying to digest what she’s just said.

Organized, I think to myself. Organized but driven by something specific and obsessive. Revenge is the motive, and destroying her is a piece of it. A big piece.

She continues talking. Her voice is a little bit faint and faraway. “He does things to change my life. To make me sad, to make me hate, to keep me alone. To change
me.
”

“Has he ever told you why?”

“He said, when it all started: ‘Even though it’s not your fault, your pain is still my justice.’ I didn’t get it then. I don’t get it now.” She looks at me, searching, inquisitive. “Do you?”

“Not specifically. We think this is about some kind of revenge for him.”

“For what?”

“We don’t know yet. You said he does things to change your life. To change you. What kind of things?”

A long, long pause. I can’t tell what’s moving through her eyes. I only know that it’s sorrowful and huge and that it’s not new to her.

“It’s about me,” she says, her voice small and quiet. “He kills anyone who is good to me or could be good to me. He kills the things I love and that love me back.”

“And no one’s caught on to this before?”

She goes from calm tones to a low roar in an instant, startling me. Those blue eyes are blazing. “It’s all in my diary! Just
read
it. How many times do I have to tell you? God! God! God!”

She turns away, back to the sun once more, trembling and twitching and overflowing with rage. I can feel her pulling away, going inside herself.

“I’m sorry,” I say, soothing. “And I promise, I will read it. Every page. What I need to know now is what happened yesterday. In the house. Anything you can remember.”

Another long pause. She’s not angry anymore. She looks tired, right down to her molecules.

“What do you want to know?”

“Start at the beginning. Before he came to the house. What were you doing?”

“It was mid-morning. About ten o’clock. I was putting my nightgown on.”

“Putting it on? Why?”

She smiles, and that old hag Sarah keeps inside herself is back in full force, chuckling and ugly.

“Michael told me to.”

I frown. “Why did Michael tell you to?”

She cocks her head at me.

“Why, so he could fuck me, of course.”