The Last Dead Girl Page 9

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  He looked different. Less tired than last night—that was part of it. But also smaller. In the room with the white-tile walls he had seemed like a large man, but now I could see he was no more than five nine.

  “I can’t answer you,” I said.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “I spoke to a lawyer today,” I said. “He warned me not to talk to the police.”

  “He should have told you not to return to the scene of the crime. What did Agnes have to say?”

  “Agnes?”

  Moretti nodded toward the old woman’s door. “Agnes Lanik. What did you two talk about?”

  I looked at his car in the rearview and wondered where he’d come from and how long he’d been watching.

  “Have you been following me?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been following you,” he said dryly. “I’ve had a whole team of guys busting their asses following you, earning overtime. You’re just that important.”

  I thought of another possibility. “You’ve got someone watching Jana’s apartment.”

  “You’re getting warmer. Are you going to tell me what Agnes said to you?”

  “She told me to go away.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. So why are you still here?”

  I thought about the green file folder in Jana’s desk. I could tell Moretti about it now and he would go in and collect it, and I would never get a chance to look at it. Or maybe I was wrong, maybe he’d be grateful. Maybe we’d sit in the cab of the truck and go through the file together. Maybe Agnes Lanik would bring us cookies. . . .

  I decided not to mention the file.

  “What do you know about Gary Dean Pruett?” I asked Moretti.

  He took his time answering. I tried to read his expression, but all I could see was annoyance. Eventually he said, “I know he killed his wife.”

  “Some people think he might be innocent.”

  “What people are those?”

  “Jana Fletcher was one.”

  He let out an irritated sigh. “Where’s this coming from?”

  “The lawyer I talked to—he was one of Jana’s law professors. Roger Tolliver.”

  I gave Moretti a thumbnail sketch of what I’d learned: about Tolliver’s Innocence Project and Jana’s part in it. About Napoleon Washburn, who told Jana he lied about Pruett’s confession.

  “Napoleon Washburn,” Moretti said when I’d finished.

  I nodded. “Apparently, people call him Poe.”

  “I’m supposed to believe he killed Jana Fletcher?”

  “Maybe not him. Maybe someone else who wasn’t happy he was talking to Jana.”

  “And I’m supposed to go chasing after this shadowy figure?”

  “I’m not telling you what to do.”

  Moretti gave me a slow-burning look. “No, you’re not,” he said. “You might keep that in mind.” I started to respond and he stopped me with a raised hand. “Listen to me,” he said. “I want you to leave here and go home. I want you to stop talking to people about this case. I want you to realize how lucky you are. I could go to a prosecutor right now with the information I’ve got about your relationship with Jana Fletcher and your nonexistent, I-was-out-driving alibi, and I’ll wager I could get him to bring an indictment. I haven’t done that, because I’m willing to dig deeper, to look past the obvious. And every word out of your mouth tends to make me regret that decision.”

  He opened the door beside him, started to climb out.

  “Wait,” I said.

  He glared at me. “You’ve dodged a bullet. Stop trying to get back in front of it.”

  • • •

  When I got home that night Sophie was asleep. I found leftover Chinese carryout in the refrigerator. I took the food onto the balcony, along with a bottle of beer, and sat out there as the night grew chill.

  At some point I went in and found a candle, because candles made me think of Jana. I put it on the balcony railing and watched the flame. At another point I went into my office and brought back the phone book, because I wanted to know where Napoleon Washburn lived. Apparently, I liked dodging bullets.

  There were four Washburns in the phone book, but only one with the initial N. The address was on Lynch Street. A rough neighborhood. Suitable for a thief.

  By eleven o’clock the food was long gone, the bottle was empty. I hadn’t made up my mind about Washburn. Eleven was too late to visit civilized people, but maybe not too late to visit Poe.

  Moretti had given me a lot to think about. I remembered his glare as he climbed down from the truck, but that wasn’t the end of our conversation. He was too keyed up. He had more to say to me.

  He stepped up into the truck again, slammed the door. “I’m giving you a gift,” he said. “You don’t deserve it, but I’m giving it to you anyway. You think we’ve been watching Jana’s apartment? Wrong. We’ve been watching the old woman’s. There’s an unmarked car across the street. Don’t bother to look. We’re watching for the grandson, Simon Lanik.”

  He paused before continuing. “Simon hasn’t been seen since Jana died. There’s a warrant out for his arrest in Massachusetts, for something that happened years ago. He assaulted his girlfriend outside a bar in Boston.”

  “That’s not quite the same,” I said. “Jana wasn’t—”

  “Shut up. Listen. Agnes Lanik owns seven other houses in this neighborhood. Simon collects the rent for all of them. We’ve spoken to the tenants. Most of them are young women. They told us how he operates. If Simon comes around for the rent and you don’t have it, he suggests there might be another way you can pay. The suggestion’s not very subtle. Sometimes he makes it even if you’ve got the cash. Sometimes he cops a feel on the way out, just because he can.”

  Moretti looked at Jana’s door, then back to me. “So what do you think is more likely?” he said. “That Jana died because she talked to Washburn—or that Simon Lanik came to hassle her about the rent and things got out of control? Say Lanik propositions her. Maybe he gets grabby. She tells him to back off, says she’ll file a complaint. That’s the last thing he wants. He puts his hands on her throat, just to shut her up. It goes from there.”

  I could imagine it: Simon Lanik with his greased hair and silk shirt and leather pants. His arrogance. Jana, thinking she could handle him. Threatening to go to the police, because the law would be on her side. Was that the way it happened, on the spur of the moment, with no premeditation on Lanik’s part? It didn’t seem quite right.

  “What about the popsicle stick?” I asked Moretti.

  He shook his head as if I’d disappointed him. “What about it?”

  “If Lanik didn’t plan to kill her, if it just happened, how does that fit with the idea that someone was watching her from the woods?”

  “We don’t know that anyone was watching her.”

  “We don’t know that Lanik killed her either. Was he violent with any of the other tenants?”

  Moretti gave me the slow burn again and his voice went quiet. “I’m through discussing this with you. Go home.” He reached for the door handle, opened it.

  “Did you even look for the popsicle stick?” I said.

  He held the door open and breathed the night air. “Yes,” he said after a while. “I found it. I sent it to the county lab. One of these days, they’ll get around to testing it. And they won’t find anything on it, because it’s been lying on the ground for who knows how long. Or maybe they’ll find a fingerprint, and maybe they’ll match it to Poe Washburn or someone he knows, someone involved in an elaborate plot to cover up the truth about who murdered Gary Pruett’s wife.”

  Moretti climbed out of the truck, turned back to me, and said, “I can tell you right now it won’t happen, because it doesn’t happen. What happens is that women like Jana Fletcher are killed by m
en they know, men like Simon Lanik. And the reasons, when you discover them, turn out to be small and ordinary and stupid.”

  No anger in his tone, just resignation. He closed the door; he didn’t slam it. I watched him in the rearview mirror, the same unhurried walk to his car. Engine. Lights. He backed out onto the street and drove away.

  And at eleven o’clock I sat on my balcony, staring at a candle, thinking about Simon Lanik and Poe Washburn. One or the other could be involved in Jana’s death. I didn’t know where to look for Lanik, but I had an address for Washburn. Eleven o’clock. Not too late to go calling. The flame of the candle guttered. I made up my mind.

  13

  K found himself missing Jolene.

  She had died easy. He felt glad of that. Oh, let’s be candid, she had died hard at first: twisting, struggling, clawing at the arm he held around her throat. Luckily he’d been wearing long sleeves; otherwise she would have left marks.

  She tried to step on his feet too. Tried everything. Pushing back against him. Kicking. The kicking accomplished nothing, apart from launching one of her shoes into the canal. And in the end, she went easy. All the flailing stopped and her limbs went slack, and there was only the gentle weight of her as he settled her down to the ground. Like putting a sleeping child to bed.

  K thought of leaving her like that, lying by the side of the trail. He folded her hands over her stomach, crossed one slim ankle over the other. Used a handkerchief to touch her, because there was always a chance of leaving fingerprints, even on someone else’s body.

  He tried to close her eyes, but they wouldn’t stay. He covered them with her hair instead, ribbons of bottle blond to make a blindfold.

  The sunlight fell on the stone of her amethyst ring.

  She looked peaceful, he thought, standing over her. Maybe even beautiful.

  Sentimental K.

  Putting her in the water would be better. He knew that. If her body held any trace of him, even a single hair, the water could wash it away.

  He looked again at the ring on her finger and wondered who had given it to her. Someone who loved her, he thought. The idea filled him with something verging on regret.

  He thought about taking the ring as a souvenir. Decided he’d better not.

  After one last look he dug the toe of his shoe under her back, lifted her up, and rolled her over the edge into the canal.

  • • •

  Jolene had been good practice. In a way, she had saved him, because when he paid his visit to Jana Fletcher that night, he was ready.

  He wore steel-toed boots, for one thing. And gloves, black leather. A commonsense precaution.

  He wore a long-sleeved shirt again, of course. And a jacket over it, for extra padding. The padding made a difference when Jana came at him with the two-by-four.

  That was unexpected.

  She seized it from the fireplace mantel, candles and all, and swung it like a club. Fire and hot wax coming at him. He might have been burned if not for the jacket.

  But she couldn’t hurt him. He was too strong for her. He wrenched the board from her hands and got her down on the floor, and then it was a matter of time and pressure. Her legs kicked, her feet stomped. Her nails would have dug into him if not for the gloves and the long sleeves. She went out hard, and then easy, just like Jolene.

  Afterward he felt no tenderness toward her. He gave no thought to closing her eyes or folding her hands peacefully. He kicked her in the ribs once with a steel-toed boot. Tore her blouse open, yanked her pants down from her hips. A nice, lurid scene for someone to discover. Let them interpret it any way they wanted.

  • • •

  K had nothing to connect him to Jana Fletcher. He had disposed of the clothes he wore when he killed her—bagged them and dropped them in a dumpster. The jacket too, and the gloves. Easier than trying to wash out the melted wax.

  He had nothing from Jolene either—except for her red Solo cup. It was the first thing he had noticed when he reached his car, after the hike back along the trail beside the canal: the red cup lying empty in the footwell on the passenger side.

  It was still there tonight. K leaned over and picked it up. He could see a trace of her lipstick inside. Jolene. He really did miss her. She had helped him. No denying it.

  But she couldn’t help him anymore. Not with Napoleon Washburn, for instance.

  • • •

  Washburn spent two hours in a roadhouse bar called Casey’s.

  K waited outside for him all that time. He didn’t mind waiting. When he got bored, after the first half hour, he opened his glove compartment and took out a popsicle stick and sat turning it over and over in his fingers.

  After a while he put it back. He thought about Jolene. Thought about her legs. Remembered the strength draining out of her body. He took her red Solo cup and held it on his knee. He wished he could keep it, but he knew it had her fingerprints on it. Probably DNA too. He twisted around for a box of tissues in the backseat, tugged some out, used them to wipe the outside of the cup. He opened the car door and dropped the cup on the ground.

  Add littering to the list of his crimes.

  • • •

  The roadhouse had country music playing inside, on a sound system with too much bass. K could hear it thumping through the parking lot. People came and went, driving pickups and SUVs. They wore boots and jeans and flannel shirts. That was one of the secrets of upstate New York: it was full of rednecks.

  Napoleon Washburn was a redneck. He lived in a rat-trap house on an unpaved street. Lived alone, as far as K could tell. K had watched the house from down the street. Washburn had come out around nine o’clock, stumbling down his front steps with a cigarette between his lips. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans and shit-kicking boots. Good luck strangling him. He was over six feet tall, much taller than he had a right to be with a name like Napoleon. K knew he wouldn’t go down easy.

  Washburn had a truck that looked a little like David Malone’s, but with a lot more rust and a lot less muffler. He drove three miles to the roadhouse spewing exhaust, making as much noise as a tank division. K had no trouble following him.

  And now K waited for him in the parking lot. He didn’t go inside, because he didn’t want to be linked in any way to Napoleon Washburn.

  Around eleven the main door of the roadhouse opened and Washburn staggered out, grinning. K suspected that he had started the night out drunk, and now he would be two hours drunker. He had a cigarette in one hand and his arm around a woman in knee-high boots and jeans and a long tight sweater. She had teased-out hair and was a little too heavy to look good in the sweater.

  The two of them walked hip to hip along a row of cars in the lot. They stopped by Washburn’s truck and he ditched his cigarette. They shared a drunken kiss. The kiss turned into a make-out session—Washburn grinding against the woman until she broke away from him with a laugh.

  He got into his truck and drove out of the lot, and she followed in her own car. K trailed behind them, three miles in the smell of Washburn’s exhaust, to the unpaved street and the rat-trap house.

  The woman went inside with Washburn and stayed for twelve minutes. K timed it.

  Figure three minutes to get down to business, five for the meaningless sex, and another four to get dressed and realize there was nothing more and say an awkward good-bye. The woman came out alone, no last kiss at the door. She held her chin up and took a slow, steady walk to her car, a sign of either dignity or resignation.

  When she was gone, K watched the house for any sign of movement. It seemed likely that Washburn would now stay put for the night. Which gave K a perfect opportunity. All he needed was a plan.

  No movement behind the curtains of the front windows. Washburn was drunk. He could be asleep in there. He hadn’t accompanied the woman to the door. The door could be unlocked. K could walk right in.

  K
watched the house. Imagined Washburn inside, sprawled on a bed or a sofa. If he wasn’t asleep, K could make him go to sleep. All he had to do was think about it. Picture him with his head back, his mouth open, snoring. Easy.

  K got out of the car and crossed the street. He took a pair of gloves from the pockets of his jacket and put them on. New gloves, new jacket. His clothes were becoming disposable. Washburn’s front steps were made of cinder blocks laid dry. They led up to a sagging porch. A broom stood beside Washburn’s door, broken in two pieces: straw bristles, thick wooden handle. As if it had been left there for K on purpose.

  The knob turned when K tried it, and the door opened. K entered clutching the broom handle. The front room stood empty. Peeling wallpaper. Garish furniture upholstered in flower patterns. The place reeked of cigarette smoke. An overflowing ashtray sat atop a white milk crate that served as a coffee table.

  K moved through the house with exaggerated care, one slow step at a time, holding the broom handle in front of him like a talisman. He checked the kitchen and the utility room on the ground floor. No Washburn. He climbed the stairs. Saw the open door of a bathroom. Saw Washburn’s boots kicked off and abandoned in the hall.

  Two bedrooms. The one at the back of the house was full of boxes and old clothes. K moved to the one at the front, eased the door open. Napoleon Washburn lay snoring on a mattress on the floor, just the way K had pictured him.

  The room had a single window with long curtains. There was a lamp with a weak bulb on the floor between the mattress and the window. The lamplight fell on a scattering of girlie magazines. Beside the magazines lay a heap of tissues and a used condom—the remains of Washburn’s tryst with the woman in the tight sweater. Washburn had gotten dressed again after, in the same T-shirt and jeans he’d gone out in. He hadn’t bothered to zip up or to buckle his belt.

  A cigarette still smoldered in a ceramic ashtray beneath the lamp. K watched the smoke rise, a strand of gray thread. He stood over Washburn with the broom handle held like a spear. He aimed the broken point of it at Washburn’s heart.