“What’s that?” Paul asked as he hovered over her, dirty coffee mug in hand.
“Nothing,” she said.
“It doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Paul, this is personal.”
“You’ve been doing something personal a lot lately.”
She wanted to tell him, but it felt foolish. They were in the middle of a major investigation. She had Emma, Kelsey, and Lisa to think about. And while their cases were at the forefront, she had that need to find out who had killed her sister.
“I’m leaving for a meeting.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
It was time to go see Peggy Howell. Peggy had lived with her mother in Ruston, in the heart of the smelter’s toxic zone. The arsenic in Tricia’s bones had come from the smelter.
She looked up Peggy’s address. Of course, she’d moved. She had to move.
So did the bones.
A second later, Grace was out the door.
CHAPTER 45
In January 1989 the air in Tacoma was heavy with the stench of the Simpson paper mill, an acrid odor to which residents of Washington’s toughest city, Grit City, had somehow become immune. The air had been especially chilly after temperatures dropped following a green Christmas. Ice pricked at the edges of lawns and vapors melted into frozen masses where the O’Hares’ dryer duct fed moist air outside. And yet as cold as it had become outside, the scene on the TV set in the O’Hare family living room was beyond chilly. Sissy, Conner, and their little girl watched the spectacle coming from Florida.
Burn, Ted, burn!
Conner held Sissy’s hand and leaned closer to her. He spoke in a whisper so that Grace couldn’t hear.
“His time has run out,” he said.
“He’ll get another stay,” Sissy said, her face knotted with worry.
“No, he’s out of time. I’m telling you, he’ll die tonight.”
She shook her head. “Not so sure about that,” she said. “He always manages to find a way to survive.”
Conner looked at his daughter.
“The man who killed your sister is going to finally be punished.”
Grace didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what she could say that would matter. She looked at the TV, but kept most of her attention on her parents. They carried such a strange mixture of fear, hate, and hope. They seemed both elated and miserable at the same.
“He didn’t answer my last letter,” Sissy said.
“He’s been busy,” Conner said, and a grim smile came over his face.
When Jeremy Howell looked into his mother’s eyes it was with fear and respect, rather than love. Peggy had told her son over and over that he was special and that his specialness had to be fulfilled. If he was to be what he was born to be, to follow in his father’s bloody footprints, then he had to do more than seize the moment. He had to create it. He had to be wily, crafty, smart. He had to be ruthless. When Jeremy looked into his mother’s eyes it was with the kind of respect and fear that came with hate.
And yet he loved her. He knew her struggles. She’d told him repeatedly that loving Ted had been the hardest part of her hard-fought life.
“My own family disowned me,” she said one time when they sat in the car parked in front of his grandmother’s house. “And when they disowned me, they disowned you. I hate them. I know you don’t know them and you never will, but, honey, trust me.”
It was always about trust. Jeremy had never talked to his father, of course. By the time Peggy had told her son about his important father, Old Sparky had zapped Ted into oblivion.
“They killed him. No one would kill a lion for doing what he does naturally, exquisitely. No one thinks anything of a killer whale eating a seal, for God’s sake. It is what they do. Your father was like that. You’re like that.”
“Like that?” he asked.
His mother’s face tightened. “Don’t be stupid. What don’t you understand here?”
He thought a moment, wondering if he’d had the ability to say what he was really thinking.
“What if I don’t want to be like that?” he finally asked.
She looked at him, with those cold eyes. She took a moment, too. Conversations between mother and son were always like that. Long gaps between utterances, rather than quick exchanges fueled by any real connection.
Her eyes narrowed once more and she shrugged. He was a bug. A gnat. His questions were annoyances. “You will struggle for the rest of your life. You will die being a nothing. Nothing is worse than a promise or birthright unfulfilled.”
The words didn’t track and Peggy Howell could see that.
“Being your mother isn’t easy,” she said. “What I did for you just doesn’t seem to matter.”
She turned away and looked out at the house that she grew up in.
“I hate my parents and you’ll probably hate me, too.”
“I could never hate you, Mom,” he said, lying.
“I could hate you,” she said.
“You couldn’t.”
“Don’t mess with your birthright,” she said. “If you do, you’ll be alone forever.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
She lit a cigarette and cracked the window.
“Except for Ted, I’ve been alone my entire life,” she said.
“What about my sister? My stepdad?”
“He’s dead and your sister Cecilia might as well be.” She pushed smoke out of her nostrils, reminding Jeremy of a dragon. “Are you going to let me down, too?”
“I guess not,” he said, still unsure of what she wanted.
“When Ted was only a little older than you he killed a girl.”
Jeremy felt his pulse quicken. “I don’t want to kill anyone.”
Peggy turned away. “Then you’re nothing. You’re dead to me. And you know what? I’ll be kind of relieved. Nothing I loathe more than a loser. Especially a loser who’s been handed greatness on a silver platter. Be nothing. Fine with me.”
Jeremy remembered going to his bedroom after that encounter with his mother in the car, his sister playing in the room next door. He’d cried a little, but the tears were oddly forced. He went to Cecilia, who was playing with her Barbie, and he took his belt and slipped it around her neck. Cecilia started to scream and Peggy came in, yanked the belt from her daughter’s neck, and slapped Jeremy as hard as she could.
“Dogs don’t poop in their kennel,” she said.
He touched his face where the stinging pain came. “Huh?”
Peggy’s eyes bulged. “You heard me. Now get out of here!”
“But, Mom.”
“Don’t ‘but’ me, or I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
“I was doing what-”
Later that same night, Cecilia came into Jeremy’s bedroom, her neck still pink from the belt that had he’d twined around it. Her saucer eyes absorbed her brother.
“Jeremy, why did you hurt me?” she asked. Her tone was plaintive, but she didn’t cry.
“I don’t know,” he said, now barely looking at her.
