Whatever Remains (25 page)

             
Jared blinked, and he wanted to believe. He chewed at his chapped lower lip and wiped his nose. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

             
“I’m trying to figure out which sicko murdered a little girl,” Ben said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t give a shit what you do with your personal life.”

             
Hesitation was on the verge of shattering.

             
“Are you so paranoid you think I’ve got it out for you?” That was for Riley and her suspicions. “I just wanna rap this case up and go have dinner.”
With my girls
.

             
Jared broke: “I didn’t kill her,” he said in a rush. “I never even talked to her, like,
ever
, you know? I saw her spying on me a couple times – with her sister – but they ran off when I caught them. They always acted all scared, ya know? Like I was
scary
or some shit.”

             
“The key?” Ben prompted, and he nodded.

             
“Yeah. I knew it was there. I went over a few times – twice, maybe – after she called the cops on us. I was pissed.” He made a face that could have been regret. “I was gonna break in, throw a rock through the window or something. My friend – Miles – he was with me. He said we should tape a note on the rock, like they do in the movies, ya know? ‘We’re gonna kill you’ or some shit. Scare her, ya know?”

             
He took a breath. “But I saw the key sticking out from under the mat. It was just there, like, she didn’t even care if people could see it. Like she was just asking to have someboy walk in.” In his stupid, little shit mind, it had felt like justice. It had felt like being a big man. “So that’s what we did.”

             
Ben made a note to the effect, with a star beside
Miles
. “What’d you do when you got in?”

             
Jared shifted in his chair.

             
“Remember: I don’t care. Just spill it.”

             
“We…we pissed in her mouthwash.”             

             
This
, Ben thought.
I gotta out bed today for this. Piss in mouthwash
. “You…and you actually lied to cover for that?”

             
“I didn’t…I mean, that bitch is crazy. She woulda got me in trouble.” His hands went back in his hair.

             
“You didn’t go into Heidi’s room?”

             
“Dude, I’m not a perv.”

             
“You didn’t touch any of Heidi’s clothes?”

             
“
No
.”

             
“You didn’t kill – ”

             
“I’ve told you, like, a hundred times! No! I didn’t kill her! Why the fuck would I kill her?”

             
Ben studied him a long moment, repulsed to the roots of his hair. “You wouldn’t,” he said at last, standing. “Not that I can see. But someone had a reason.”

             
“Wait,” Jared said as Ben turned for the door. “I told you the truth! Aren’t you gonna let me go?”

             
“I’ll drop your charges,” Ben said over his shoulder, “just as soon as you can explain why your father would want Heidi dead.” When he left, door clicking shut, he could hear the rattle of Jared’s breathing. If nothing else, the kid would think twice about protecting his dad. Otherwise, Ben had done nothing today but waste time.

             
Leaving the uniforms to escort Jared back to his cell, he headed for the squad room…and found someone waiting for him at his desk. Alicia Latham had been looking better by the day – better color, clear, dry eyes – but her face was drawn and pale today, the puffy skin beneath her eyes gray. She was in blue scrubs and a sweater, purse clutched against her chest, half her hair fallen from its clip.

             
“Oh, Detective Haley,” she greeted when he reached her. She was propped against the edge of his desk. “I’m so glad you’re here. I brought Grace in to talk to your partner and that woman – the sweet one: Monica – and there’s something I need to tell you.”

             
He should have put a coffee IV drip in his arm that morning. “What? Mrs. Latham, Grace is a minor; she can’t be questioned without a parent present.” He was going to kill Trey, and…glare severely at Riley.

             
“It’s okay,” she said with a fast, uncertain smile. “They’re not ‘questioning’ her, not like you mean. They just wanted to talk to her, and I trust them with her. Grace doesn’t know anything anyway.” She shook her head. “But I think your friends just want to make sure…anyway, I’m fine with her there alone. Grace is fine, too. And I really wanted to talk to you.”

             
“Mrs. Latham – ”

             
“Alicia.”

             
“Mrs. Latham, I’m going to strongly urge you to go in with Grace. If anything she says turns out to be pertinent to the investigation, then it won’t be admissible.”

             
She waved off the concern. “She doesn’t know anything,” she said again, and Ben understood how she could have gone to lie down, leaving her little girls awake and unwatched. She was a worry-free-now and regret-it-later mom. He didn’t have much respect for that; Jade wasn’t like that. “Detective.” Her eyes widened; her voice became earnest. She laid a hand on his arm, her fingers thin and dry, the nails chewed worse than Jared’s had been. “I really need to talk to you.”

             
“About?”

             
She leaned in close, voice dropping to a whisper. “Someone tried to scare me last night, too,” she said. “Like they tried to scare Jade.”

             
His pulse jumped. Jade had told? “How do you know about Jade?”

             
“I went to see her. I was so afraid, after last night – I wanted to check on her. She said you’d been by – ”

             
He brushed her hand away and it startled her. “Alicia, you can’t mention Jade. If anyone here – ”

             
“I know,” she said in a rush. “I know, I’m sorry. I would never tell the other detectives.”

             
He flashed on Jade, her watery blue eyes and the taste of longing on her tongue, and his mental picture clouded over with red to think that she’d been gossiping. She knew better, damn it; she knew not to go telling the neighbor – the victim’s mother – that he’d been over playing white knight.

             
“But, Detective Haley – Ben; can I call you Ben? – I wanted to know if you knew who might have been scaring us. My nerves right now are shot and I…Grace and I can’t live like this.”

             
“Sit,” he told her with a sigh, motioning to his chair. “I need coffee. You want some?”

             
She shook her head no, so he left her; went to the break room and topped off a Styrofoam cup with black and two sugars and returned. Alicia was holding her purse in her lap, swiveling side-to-side in his chair, staring at the contents of a folder he was ninety-nine percent sure hadn’t been open when he’d left. He cleared his throat and she started.

             
“Okay, so, someone was outside your house, too?” he asked as he dropped into Trey’s chair.

             
She tucked her hair back and glanced up at him with guilt stamped across her features; she’d been snooping. “I heard someone in the bushes, at my window. It was – ” She was nervous, all of a sudden. “It was probably nothing. Or probably whoever was spooking Jade, and you didn’t see anything so…” She stood, abruptly. “I should check on Grace. I’m sorry to bother you, Detective Haley.”

             
“Hold on, Mrs…” But she was walking away, back toward the lobby. He contemplated going after her, but moved to his own chair instead. The file she’d been looking at – the one she must have opened – was her daughter’s case file.

             
Shit
.

“Grace said,” Trey said as he fell into his chair fifteen minutes later, “that Heidi was ‘bad.’ It was the same story Clara gave me the other night, only creepy. That kid needs to try out for a ghost movie, man.”

              Ben had been going back over the case file, note by note, bit by bit, and he glanced up, stopped drumming his pen on the edge of the desk. He’d calmed – actually, he was ready to fall asleep – since Alicia had left. He wasn’t sure he’d been angry with Trey, but at Alicia herself. Damn. He didn’t know. He was ready to be done with this case. “Neither of you,” he asked in a flat voice, “felt the need to insist that Alicia stay in the room during the questioning?”

             
“Oh, I insisted,” Riley said, stepping up behind Trey’s chair. She blew out a tired-sounding breath and folded her arms. “Not hard enough, I don’t guess. She was hell bent on talking to you. What was that about, by the way?”

             
“Nothing,” Ben lied. “She thought she heard something outside her window last night. She’s just wired and paranoid.”

             
Riley nodded, seeming to accept that. Trey examined his fingernails. “It didn’t matter,” she said. “Grace is even more withdrawn since I talked to her last. Heidi was ‘bad’ was all she would say. I’m assuming that means they weren’t supposed to go outside at night alone, which we already knew. So. Nothing new.” She moved around and sat on the edge of Trey’s desk. “What about you? Did you get anywhere with the son?”

             
Ben gave them the rundown.

             
“So Scott acted alone,” Trey said.

             
“Looks that way. If Jared knew the key was under the mat, then Scott probably knew it too.”

             
Riley shrugged. “Slam dunk, then. Once the lab gets back with the DNA results, it’ll be up to the DA to make the case.”

             
There were nods all around.

             
“One thing,” Ben said, before he could catch himself. He couldn’t shake a blooming sense of unease. Riley had been right before, about opposing counsel making it look like he’d jumped the gun on the arrest; but it was more than that. Something about this arrest was wholly unsatisfying, when it should have felt anything but given they were putting away a child killer. “Doc Harding found vomit in and around her mouth at the scene. Not much: she still had dinner in her stomach. But that doesn’t match the struggle and stabbing.”

             
“She had no drugs in her system?” Riley asked.

             
“Nope.”

             
Her face pulled to the side as she thought, and somehow, it made her look more feminine. “If there was a struggle, she was scared. It could have been nerves: just a little regurge.” She frowned. “Why? Of all the things to bother you, I didn’t figure that would be it. Especially not this late in the game.”

             
Ben snapped the file shut and slotted it away in his desk drawer. “No reason. I’m just tired, I guess.”

             
“Okay,” she said, like
whatever
. She hopped off the desk. “Woods wants to pretend we’re buddy cops; he’s dragging me out for a beer. You guys wanna come with?”

             
Trey looked to Ben for an opinion; it was nice, his partner deferring to him.

             
“I can’t,” Ben said, and thought a flicker of disappointment tweaked the kid’s face. “You go, Trey, if you want. I’ve gotta check up on something.”

             
Trey didn’t want to go by himself, his expression said, but Riley gave him a play smack in the arm. “Come on, kid. I’ll treat.”

             
Dude
, Trey mouthed as he was towed away. Ben forced a tight smile for him, then shrugged into his jacket. It was time to talk to Jade again.

17

              “
O
h no. No, ma’am.”

             
Clara, caught with one foot up on the rung of the hayloft ladder, turned around with a dejected sigh. “But
you
go up there.”

             
Jade leaned against her broom. “And it’s dangerous when I do it, too.” Clara walked to her, pouting, and she reached to lift a sheet of her dark curls and set it back over her shoulder. “Can’t you humor your poor mom? You don’t want me to have a heart attack, do you?”

             
Clara giggled. “No.”

             
“No you can’t humor me? Or no you don’t want me to have a heart attack?”

             
She laughed. “Both!”

             
“You, little girl.” Jade resumed sweeping the barn aisle, the cloud doubling up through shafts of rich gold late afternoon sunlight. “Have been spending too much time with Uncle Remy. He’s a bad influence.”

             
“Bad influence? Talking about me?” a deep voice asked behind her, and she whirled to find Ben framed in wide-shouldered silhouette at the mouth of the aisle, watery green-and-gold landscape tossing behind him.

             
Clara had seen him enough in the past few days that he was no longer a novelty; she went to him, but it was at a walk. She said, “Hi, Daddy,” but didn’t shriek it. Her caught her under the arms and swung her up against his shoulder, her long dark hair flying. Jade watched Clara press a kiss to his cheek – they looked like an impressionist painting in the waning daylight, father and daughter – and felt a rich warmth surge behind her breast bone, spreading beneath her skin and brightening her insides.

             
“No,” she said as Clara was set back to her feet, “for once, your name wasn’t the one being blacked.”

             
She’d meant it as a joke, had said with a smile in her voice and on her lips, but the glare Ben shot her had a dimming effect. “Can you come out here for a minute?”

             
Her face burned. She managed a nod. “Clara, baby, go feed the kitties please,” she said, to keep her out of the loft, and Clara went scampering into the feed room calling, “here, kitty-kitty.” Jade walked out into the sun-dappled evening and folded her arms tight across her middle, feeling protective. “What?” she asked Ben.

             
He’d parked at the house and walked down, which was why he’d surprised her. He went to the picnic table to the side of the door and leaned back against it, his arms folded too. The scene wasn’t lost on her – the metaphor of them armoring themselves. Last night, it turned out, hadn’t counted for anything. He stared at the toes of his boots a long moment, and when his eyes lifted, they weren’t the complicated deep brown of her lover, but the cold black of a cop. “You do understand that broadcasting our relationship to your neighbors could jeopardize this case, don’t you?” And just like that, he struck a match to her temper.

             
“Do-do I?” she stuttered. “Do – are you serious?”

             
“Don’t be a bitch; just answer the question,” he said with such coldness, such dispassion, that she fought the urge to hit him. She wasn’t a hitter by nature. She’d never hit him, ever; though there had been an incident, rain streaking down her windshield, her headlights catching him around the waist while he stood with his hands braced on the hood of her truck, in which she’d had a fleeting wonder what it would feel like to run him over. She’d scolded herself then, just as she did now, and she was left with an impotent clawing rage that she could be full of such fury and unable to vent it on him. Love wasn’t beautiful; it was crippling.

             
She dug her nails into her palms until she was afraid she’d draw blood. “I have
never
,” she bit out, “told anyone
anything
about you. How could you possibly think I’m that stupid? Or that cruel – that I would try to sabotage a
murder investigation
over personal bullshit?”

             
His scrutiny was cutting. “How else would she know?”

             
“Damn it, Ben,” she hissed. “Alicia saw Clara go to you that first night. Do you think she missed that? ‘Daddy!’ at the top of her little lungs. Alicia figured it out – anyone would have – and when she brought it up, I asked her to please not mention it to anyone because it would sway the investigation.

             
“I,” she continued, “
covered
for you, because the second you heard my address go out on the scanner, you should have handed the case off to someone else. This is your screw-up, not mine, and I won’t let you put the blame on me.” She was shaking and wished she could hide it. “You push us away and hide us and don’t acknowledge us – no one you work with even knows you have a daughter – and yet somehow, Alicia knowing about us is
my
fault.”

             
Ben shoved off the table and she didn’t allow herself a moment to find out why. “Go away,” she said, dashing at her eyes. “I am so
fucking
done with always being the one at fault; you just
go away
.”

             
In a rare feat, she’d stunned him. His arms unfolded and his hands went in his back pockets. He blinked and his cop-eyes brightened with life. His face didn't soften, but the harshness left it. “Damn. How long you been keeping that one in the holster?”

             
“Shut up.” She turned to whirl away and he caught the hood of her zip-up sweatshirt, holding her fast back against him as if she were no more than a child.

             
“You don’t want to set a bad example for Clara, do you?” he asked in a smug voice she
hated
.

             
“Ben, I swear to God – ”

             
“Alright.” He turned her around by the shoulders and sighed. “So you didn’t tell anyone.”

             
She braced her hands on her hips and lifted her brows.

             
“Sorry,” he consented. “I was a jerk.”

             
You were – are – worse than that
, she wanted to say. But she pressed her lips and nodded. He had to be rewarded for even the slightest kindness or she was sure not to see another. “Yes you were,” she said, with an effort.

             
“So Alicia found out about us. And that’s not your fault,” he added. “How do we stop her from bringing it up? She showed up at the precinct telling me about someone trying to scare her.”

             
The same flushed prickles erupted down her arms again. “She went to the precinct?” she asked, not quite believing it.

             
“She brought Grace in to talk to Trey. But she wanted to know if I saw anything last night…” He frowned. “You did tell her I was here.”

             
“Not on purpose.”

             
“Jade – ”

             
“She’s lonely, I think,” she interrupted. “It’s just her and the girls all alone over there and – ”

             
“Mommy,” Clara called from the barn door. “Ginger won’t share.”

             
“Okay,” Jade called back. She flashed Ben a false smile. “Gimme a minute; the cat’s out-ruded you, apparently.”

It was a nice evening: early autumn in all its bright, crisp brilliance, everything gold around the edges, the air clear and sweet. Jade’s face, even when she was scowling at him, was vivid and ceramic, dark hair tangled with breeze, eyes as blue as robin’s eggs. She’d been teaching today, in jeans and short boots and brown fleece jacket with the collar turned up over her hoodie. Watching her sort out jealous cats and their dinner with Clara was the highlight of his day. Clara had one side of her hair pulled back with a pink bow that matched the silkscreen carousel horse on her sweatshirt. She smiled at the cats, completely delighted by something Ben found below notice. She was pure magic in that way: enchanted by nothing at all, just an orange cat crunching kibble.

              When they were done, Jade clicked off the tack room light and followed Clara’s bouncing progress toward him.

             
“Daddy, did you come to eat dinner with us? We’re having hot dogs!” And that was apparently as exciting as cats.

             
“I dunno,” he told her, glancing up at Jade. “Your ‘uncle’ doesn’t like me hanging around.”

             
“Jeremy has a date,” Jade said. And though it wasn’t an invite – and though she was still hot around the collar about his accusation – there was something of an invitation in the way her eyes met his.

             
“Sure,” he told Clara. “I’ll stay.”

             
She went ahead of them, skipping and walking in turns, humming to herself, and Jade fell into step beside him. “Alicia’s having a bit of a breakdown, I think,” she said, eyes on Clara.

             
“She didn’t hear anything? Making it up?”

             
“I didn’t say that.” Her frown was thoughtful. “I know I heard something, so chances are she did too. But she’s a mother who lost a child.” She glanced at him, blue eyes clouded over with sympathy and something darker – imagined grief, maybe. “I don’t think there’s a way to handle that; she’s going to reach out to any friendly faces, and that means me, and, by de facto, you. I’m not sure if she can keep your secret.”

             
“Damn, you really know how to attract freaks, don’t you?”

             
“Present company included,” she quipped without missing a beat, and he took the jab; she was right, after all. “She’s a lonely single mom who wants us to be best friends. Or something. I feel guilty about it,” she admitted. “But I’m just not in the market for a best friend.”

             
Ben didn’t give a damn about Alicia’s social calendar. “So your chain rattler,” he said, going back to the more urgent topic.

             
“What about him?”

             
“You don’t know it’s a ‘him.’”

             
“What woman in her right mind would have been out in the rain playing practical jokes?”

             
“You just like to argue with me.”

             
“Get to the point.”

             
They reached the fork in the path and turned toward the patio; Clara had already flung open the back door and was inside. Ben paused and she did the same, her eyebrows moving in quizzical sweeps. “I think I should stick around and keep an eye out tonight.”

             
“Oh, you do.”

             
He studied her face – he did love that face. “I do.”

             
She almost-smiled, almost-frowned, said nothing, and went into the house.

It wasn’t a matter of needing wine – it would only cloud her judgment, after all – but she really,
really
wanted some. She poured herself a glass of Chardonnay at the kitchen counter and reflected on dinner. Clara had been aglow, chirpy and smiling and radiant. And like she always did, she’d pulled something tender and awkward out of Ben. He loved her – for however much he’d hated the thought of fatherhood, he did love his little girl – and he didn’t have any idea how to go about showing it properly. It was the one thing that gave Jade hope: his inarticulate, backward, as Jess had put it, “mutant” love.

             
Hope? Here she was “hoping” for something he wasn’t willing or able to give. Would she ever learn? It was a willful sort of stupidity, on her part.

             
They’d eaten their hot dogs at the table, like a family, while night pulled its shade down around them and the windows grew dark, the three of them seeming to lean in closer and closer to one another. Ben asked her about work and she told him about her students, more than he wanted to know, probably. She asked him about work and he shrugged and said Trey was “tolerable” and gave away no details about any case. Typical. She’d have to get him semi-drunk and half-naked before he cracked open his own head and told her his secrets.

             
She still knew his favorite drink, and for some reason, had a bottle of it on hand though neither she nor Jeremy drank it. She put two ice cubes in a tumbler and poured two fingers of Jim Beam over it, taking it back to the den along with her wine.

             
Clara was still awake, but fading fast, bundled under Ben’s arm in the corner of the sofa, clutching Oatmeal and sucking on one of his ears the way she had as a baby. Ben had found a football game to watch and Clara stared at the screen mindlessly, just happy to be with her daddy.