What the River Knows (30 page)

“Thanks,” Scott mumbled. For now, all he could think of was verifying the rest of the numbers on those tickets. Circumstantial evidence, yes, but it was one more in a growing list of evidence.

****

Tommie James sat quietly in the interrogation room, facing Bates, who, wearing rubber gloves, looked through the stack of tickets. In the darkened hallway beside the interrogation room, Scott watched through the small window. Bates paused to look at a ticket. “Oh, look here, Tommie, this one’s worth a hundred dollars.” Bates laid the ticket down and faced James. “I’ll bet it was tough to let that one sit.”

“How would I know?” James shrugged. “Them ain’t my tickets.” He looked at the stack, and his right index finger twitched ever so slightly. “I never seen ’em before.”

“Right, someone else put your fingerprints on them.”

“Must’ve.” A sheen of sweat appeared on James’ forehead.

“Or just maybe, after you killed Amy Erikson and Helen Nice, you helped yourself to most of the scratch-off tickets at the store.”

“I never killed nobody.”

“But you did steal the tickets.”

“I never said that.”

Bates leaned toward James, his voice kind. “Look, Tommie. If you don’t finger your accomplice, you’ll be the one that will go down for both murders and the burglary.” Bates sat back in his chair. “But if you let us know who else was with you in this, it would go a lot easier for you.”

“And if I don’t say nothin’, you gotta let me go.”

“No, Tommie, we don’t. With these tickets, we have enough to hold and charge you with the murders and burglary.” Bates slid back the chair. “Why don’t you sit there and think about it a while.” Bates walked out of the room.

“You think he’ll roll?” Scott continued to watch James, who now sat with his hand over his mouth as if deep in thought.

Bates sighed. “I would if it was me. I’d blame the other guy as the trigger man, cut every deal I could.” He glanced back through the window. “But this is a cool one. And unless one of them blames the other one for the murders, the case is kinda flimsy.” He headed for the hallway. “Keep an eye on him, rookie, while I go get some coffee. We’ll let him cool his heels for thirty minutes or so and then try again.” He turned at the doorway. “Did you know that there were about twenty scratch off tickets in that stack that were winners? Worth about a grand, total.”

Scott shrugged. “Who says crime doesn’t pay?”

Chapter 65

They let James think for nearly an hour, but he still maintained his innocence, and they finally returned him to his cell. By the time Scott bounced through the front door of his apartment, the wind was blowing a gale and going for a run was out of the question. He foraged through the nearly bare cupboards and finally turned up a can of chili he had purchased since Rica left. She almost always cooked from scratch, and would have been horrified at his choice of dinner. But Rica wasn’t there, so he could eat what he chose. No matter how horrible it might be.

His phone rang. He glanced at the ID before answering. “Hey, Al, what’s up?”

“Nothing much.” Scott pulled the bowl of chili from the microwave and tossed in a handful of grated cheese as Al went on. “I just have to come to the city tomorrow on some business and wondered if you’d like to do dinner somewhere that is not Debbie’s Diner.”

“Sure.” Scott stirred the chili; he’d almost burned it. Leave it to him to fuck up a microwave dinner. “Not eating my own cooking improves my chances of survival.”

“I hear ya there, Scott. I hadn’t cooked much in thirty years until Sarah got sick. After she died, I didn’t care if I ate or not. But now I can follow the instructions on a box as well as any college student.”

“How about Enrique’s?”

“Always a good choice. Six-thirty?”

“Sure, I should be off work by then.”

They hung up and Scott turned his attention to dinner. Though it tasted like chunks of cardboard, it was warm, and he ate enough to chase away the chill of the wind that still howled outside. It would probably warm up to the fifties or sixties tomorrow—he could watch the weather or be surprised—but for now, Mother Nature gave warning of how brutal Kansas winters could be, at least for a few days at a time.

Finally, with the chili sitting like a smoldering ember in his stomach, Scott pulled his laptop toward him. While Rica still lived here, he kept the computer on the desk set up in the second bedroom. With her gone, though, he had fallen to leaving it on the kitchen table or beside his chair. He spent some time each evening reading her Facebook page, but so far she had not changed her status from married nor mentioned him in her posts. All she posted were notes about the weather and her outings. And notes praising Dr. Ambrose for brilliant surgery. He opened a search window, but then he wasn’t sure what to search for. He had found everyone but Kyle Dane, and had hit a dead end in that search.

But Kyle had a mother. He looked at his notes again and typed in “Irene Dane.” In an effort to narrow the search, he typed a comma, and added “Nevada.” Surprisingly, several references popped up. The first was an obituary:

“Irene Karina Dane, 60, of Reno, Nevada, passed away after a long illness in Trinidad, Colorado, on January 13, 2008. She is survived by one daughter, Charlotte, of Trinidad and a sister, Lucinda Hayes, of Greenville, South Carolina.” The obit went on to list Dane’s birthplace as somewhere in Tennessee, with a marriage to a Ken Dane, from whom she was divorced after only five years of marriage. He went on to read the rest of the entries. None of them proved fruitful or appeared to have any connection to the woman who had borne the boy he remembered.

He played a few games of solitaire on the computer, trying to calm his mind. He knew he should put on a batch of laundry or load the dishwasher, but he could always do that later. Right now, he focused on trying to get his percentage won back up to 48%. Maybe solitaire proved the anti-gambler’s theory that the house always wins in the long run. At long last, he gave up the game, checked the weather (yup, 60’s tomorrow, but a freeze over the weekend) and headed for bed.

The next day crawled by, spent in checking Craigslist, Facebook, E-Bay, and other public sites for stolen items offered for sale. They wasted one of the last nice days of fall indoors, instead of finding some excuse to be outdoors. Finally, at five, he hurried home to change for a short run, before showering to meet Al. He went north, away from the spot where he found Delia, and tried to keep his mind calm.

But when he faced Al over a steaming plate of Burritos Monterey, Al’s conversation brought him back into the search. “Status on the hometown case?”

He shook his head. “Officially, it’s been moved to cold-case, no active investigation status, but we never close a case. Some theorize that she’s a victim of the serial killer that committed suicide by cop in Florida last month.”

“But you’re still working on it on your own, right?”

Scott nodded, mouth too full to respond.

“It bugs you, doesn’t it?”

He nodded. “I guess I feel like I owe Delia more, since I knew her.”

“A lot of debts to people have to be paid forward, because we can’t repay them to the ones we owe.” Al busied himself with Enchiladas Rancheros. “I heard you got more evidence in the Quick Shop case.”

Scott shrugged. “Conviction might be iffy, though.”

“That’s too bad.” Al paused to watch the diners around them.

“You miss reporting the news that bad?”

Al grinned. “Am I that transparent?”

Scott laughed. “Only to a highly-skilled detective.”

“So what have you found on the Enfield homicide? Unofficially.”

“Nothing, really.” He gulped his iced tea to put out a jalapeño fire. “I’ve found everyone connected with Delia except the boy she befriended, Kyle Dane. So I started looking for his mother. Found nothing except for an obituary that doesn’t even appear to be hers, except that it lists her residence as Reno, Nevada. That’s the school that requested his high school transcript. And she didn’t even die there.”

Al focused. “Where did she die?”

“Trinidad, Colorado. Said after a long illness. But it only listed a daughter, no son. Usually if they have kids that died, they say ‘preceded in death by.’ It’s like Kyle Dane dropped off the face of the earth.”

Al picked up his coffee cup, sipping, his elbows propped on the table. “Maybe Kyle Dane did drop off the face of the earth.”

“Where else is there to go?” Scott guzzled another half glass of tea. “We haven’t begun colonizing the moon yet.”

“No, but—” Al set down his cup. “Did you know that Trinidad is, or at least was a few years ago, the ‘Sex Change Capital of the US?’”

“What?” Scott dropped his fork.

“Hear me out, I’m just speculating here.” Al paused to sip more coffee. “If Kyle’s mother moved him near Vegas to find a place that would be more accepting of him as an effeminate or gay man, maybe Kyle had enough struggles within himself that he would have felt more comfortable as a woman.”

“Do many people really do that?” Scott thought about the surgery required and shuddered.

“More than you would think.” Al shivered himself. “I don’t remember the numbers but our paper did a story on it about ten years ago, and it was surprisingly high.” He looked around the room, as if the details of the old article could be found on the walls of the restaurant. “Some start the process, with hormone therapy and never completely transition, but still live as the opposite sex. I think the doctors require a person to live as the other sex for a year or so, maybe longer, before they will even do the surgery.”

“Wow.” Scott sat with his mind churning, meal forgotten. Something about what Al had said, though, made sense, especially as he reviewed what little he remembered about Kyle. The boy was small and delicate, with those unusual pale hazel eyes. He would have made a very pretty girl. “That has certainly given me food for thought.” He scooped up rice and beans with a chip and chewed slowly. “Maybe I’ll do a search for Charlotte Dane.”

“I could be all wrong, of course, but there are enough coincidences to make it worthwhile to consider.” Al picked up the dessert menu. “Flan?”

“What?” Scott was still considering how a man could want to make the sacrifices necessary to give up manhood to become a woman. Much as Scott loved women, he would never want to be one. He enjoyed being a man and all that went with it: doing the heavy lifting, getting the car in the rain while a woman waited indoors, not worrying about his wardrobe, killing bugs, shaving only his face, being the protector. Yet he hadn’t done a good enough job of protecting Rica to make her want to stay with him.

“Dessert, would you like dessert?”

“Oh, sure. I never turn down dessert.” The conversation steered him into another memory. “I sure do miss Rica’s
dulce de leche
bars. Though she wouldn’t make them very often, said they were too many calories for us.” He broke a chip in half, then the piece in half again. “And the desserts her mother made.” He swirled the chips into his beans. “I wonder what Mama Hernandez-Duncan thinks of her
guero
son-in-law now.” He broke another chip. “She never was too keen on me, but she kinda warmed up after I painted her house and roofed the porch.”

“You need flan.” Al signaled the server and ordered two. “How is the counseling going?”

Scott shrugged. “Going. I don’t think we are getting anywhere, but I guess she’ll keep me coming until the number of visits the city will pay for runs out.”

“My, aren’t we cynical today.”

“Well, it’s against ‘the code.’” Scott toyed with his napkin, now that the waitress had taken his plate. “I’m gonna go see my mom after Thanksgiving.” Until he said it, more to himself than to Al, he hadn’t really made up his mind.

Al studied him for a long few seconds. “I think that is an excellent idea, Scott.” He looked up as their dessert approached. “Almost as good an idea as flan.”

Chapter 66

Scott sat with his cell phone in his hand for ten minutes, watching commercials and a sitcom he didn’t even like, before he finally hit the speed dial for his brother’s house. His niece answered on the second ring. “Hey, Uncle Scott,” she chirped. “Z’up?”

“Not much, Vanessa. Z’up with you?”

“Made the cheerleading squad for next semester. And may be going to state in debate.”

“That’s great, sweetheart. You always did like to argue.”

“Not fair, Uncle Scott. You want to talk to Grandma?”

“Well, it’s always a trip talking to you, Nessa, but moms like to think they are the reason their kids call.”

“I totally get that.” He could hear her moving around. “Here, Grandma. It’s Uncle Scott.”

“Son, how are you?” Somehow, his mother sounded even smaller than the last time he talked to her.

“I’m okay, Mom.” Fine sure didn’t seem like an honest answer. His life was in shambles; okay was the best he could do. “Would you guys like company for the weekend after Thanksgiving?”

“Sure!” New life came into her voice. “Alicia, Scott and Rica are coming up for Thanksgiving. Well, I mean the week after, but still—they’re coming!” He heard Alicia say something, but she must have been in the kitchen. He could also hear the TV in the background. He didn’t hear his brother’s voice; probably still at work.

“Let me know what you need me to bring, Mom.”

“Oh, honey, just yourselves is all we want to see.”

“Okay, Mom. I haven’t officially put in for the time off, wanted to clear it with you guys, but I’m sure it’ll be approved.”

“Oh, son, I can hardly wait to get my arms around you.”

“And I can hardly wait to get there.”
And let you know what a total failure your baby is.
“I’m gonna go right now and send an email to the chief putting in for the leave time.”

“Okay, son. Call again before you start this way.”

“I will, Mom. Love you. Bye.”

****

“Of course, you can have the time off, Aylward. You are covering Thanksgiving, and you gave up sixteen hours of vacation last year that you didn’t use.” The chief hesitated, then went on, in a softer tone. “You know, Scott, maybe—” He stopped, then plowed ahead. “Maybe it would have been better for your marriage if you had taken more time off.”