What The Dead Know

rubbernecking intentions exposed when they had to turn around at the street’s end. Others had come to the store, buying small items to assuage their guilt. How those people had pained Dave, how hurt he had been. “I’m a fucking freak show,” he complained to Chet, more than once. “Take down the license plates,” Chet advised him. “Make a note of the name if they pay by check or credit card. You never know who’s driving by.” And Dave, being Dave, had done just that. Taken down license plates, recorded every hang-up phone call, shook his family’s life as if it were a snow globe, then set it back on the table and waited to see how the tableau might change. But no matter how many times he rearranged it over fourteen years, all the parts sifted back into place-with the exception of Miriam.

PART IX. SUNDAY

CHAPTER 37

“We can lie about the bones,” Infante said.

“But we don’t have any bones,” Lenhardt said. “We can’t find the bones.”

“Exactly.”

Infante, Lenhardt, Nancy, and Willoughby were in the lobby of the Sheraton, waiting to take Miriam Toles to breakfast-a breakfast where they would admit they didn’t have a clue as to the identity of the woman she hoped to meet today, the woman for whom she had traveled over two thousand miles. She could be Miriam’s daughter. Or she could be a brilliant liar who had decided to fuck with everybody’s head for a week or so. To what end? Money? Boredom? Out-and-out insanity? Or was she safeguarding her current identity because that name would pop out a criminal warrant for the person she now was? That was the only thing that made sense to Infante. He didn’t believe for a minute that she was worried about her privacy. From his observation she grooved on attention, enjoyed their every encounter. No, she had something else to hide, and she was concealing it behind Heather Bethany’s identity, using this infamous old murder to distract them.

“We’ve been obsessing over the bones because of all the things they could establish if we had them. The parents aren’t biological, but the sisters are. Right?”

Willoughby nodded. Twenty-four hours ago, according to Nancy, she had to sweet-talk him into watching the interview. Now they couldn’t pry him away and Lenhardt was humoring him, rather than risk hurting his feelings and seeing him on the nightly news. Infante still couldn’t get over how he had screwed with the case file, then all but encouraged them to bring Miriam back to Baltimore before they knew what was what, who was who. What had the guy been thinking? How could he have removed crucial information? No possibility could be ruled out, as far as Infante was concerned. One thing that Nancy had told him about cold cases-the name was always in the files.

“We already told her we didn’t find the bones,” Lenhardt said.

“We told her that we didn’t find them at the address she provided. But I’ve just come back from Georgia, right, where Tony Dunham lived? For all she knows, the son could have dug them up and taken them away before his father sold the property, to prevent their discovery.”

“That would be impressive,” Lenhardt said. “I can’t even get my son to mow the lawn.”

“Seriously-”

“No, I’m hearing you, just trying to think it through. So we tell her we have her sister’s bones. If she’s lying, she capitulates-you think-because she knows she’s going to have to submit to tests, and those will prove she’s not related. But she’s quick on her feet, this one. What if she says: ‘Well, it could be some other body. Who knows how many times Stan Dunham did this, how many girls he killed?’”

“It’s still worth a shot. I’d try anything right now to get an answer as quickly as possible out of her, to put the mother’s mind to rest without making her go through the turmoil of meeting her, talking to her. If we could get her to confess…”

“Well, we’re not going to figure out anything before breakfast,” Lenhardt said, glancing at Willoughby. “We have to tell the mother how up in the air this is. She shouldn’t have come, but I guess I should have known, as a parent, that nothing would hold her back once we called.”

Infante usually hated it when Lenhardt invoked his standing as a parent, especially now that Nancy could nod solemnly, part of the club. But in this case Lenhardt seemed to be trying to mitigate Willoughby ’s guilt, so Infante didn’t mind as much.

Nancy spoke up. “She would roll with anything we told her, somehow. That’s my observation. You ever see that show, on cable, the one with the fat guy in glasses who does improvisations?”

The three men looked at her-Lenhardt and Willoughby completely lost, Infante clued into Nancy ’s vague pop- culture shorthand from their time as partners. “That piece of shit? You couldn’t pay me to watch it. Although I did like it when the black guy, the super nice one, made fun of himself on that other show. Does Wayne Brady have to choke a bitch ? That was funny.”

Nancy flushed. “Hey, you get up with a baby in the middle of the night and see what you watch. I only bring it up because she reminds me of that. She’s quick, she thinks on her feet, and she gets what a lot of liars don’t, that it’s okay to make mistakes, because people do say the wrong stuff all the time. Like with the crickets? She didn’t miss a beat when I pointed out it was March. She knows I caught her in a lie at that moment. But she kept going. Sergeant’s right. You try that bones story on her, she won’t blink.”

The elevator opened, and Miriam Toles, after a quick look around the lobby, recognized Infante. Last night, when Infante met her at the airport, he had expected someone dressed more…well, Mexican. Not in a sombrero- he wasn’t that ignorant. But perhaps one of those tiered skirts in bright colors, or an embroidered blouse. He also assumed that she would look older than her age, which records put at sixty-eight. But Miriam Toles had that sense of style that he’d seen in New York City women when he went into the city as a kid-silver hair in a severe, chin- level bob, large silver earrings, no other jewelry. He saw Nancy glance down at her own outfit, a pink shirt worn with a khaki skirt that was meant to hang a little looser than it did, and knew she was feeling dowdy and hickish. He bet that Miriam Toles often had that effect on other women. She wasn’t truly pretty-she had probably never been pretty. But she was elegant and she had the remains of a killer figure.

Next to him he was conscious of Chet Willoughby straightening up a little, even sucking in his gut.

“Miriam,” the old detective said, his manner a little stiff. “It’s good to see you again. Although, obviously, not under these circumstances.”

“Chet,” she said, holding out a hand for a shake, and the old detective deflated. Had he been hoping for a kiss on the cheek, an embrace? It was weird, seeing this sixty-something guy all quivery with a crush. Didn’t this ever end? Shouldn’t it end? Lately, when every other commercial seemed to be about impotence-ED, as the ads called it, as if that were better-Infante had found himself thinking that it was silly to fight the body, that it must be almost a kind of relief to have your dick lie down on the job, done at last. His would never give up the ghost, of course, he knew that much about himself, and it would be a burn if you got impotence as a side effect of some medication. But he’d been counting on, even hoping for, the end of the emotional insanity, that giddy rush of caring what another person thought of you. Watching Willoughby, he realized that it ended as everything else did-with death.

MIRIAM STARED DOWN at the lackluster fruit she had plucked from the breakfast buffet, hard little pieces of things not quite in season. She didn’t want to be one of those tiresome people who was forever championing her way of life, but she already missed Mexico, the things she had come to take for granted over the last sixteen years-the fruit, the strong coffee, the lovely pastries. She was embarrassed by this paltry brunch, much as the quartet of police officers seemed to find it a treat. Even the young woman was eating lustily, although Miriam noticed her plate was all protein.