A Judgment of Whispers (6 page)

“That they needed more DNA. If Zack didn't voluntarily give it, he would get a court order and take him down to the station in handcuffs. Mary, policemen just terrify my son.”

“But Whaley didn't serve you with any papers?”

“No.”

“Well, that's good news.”

“So this isn't so bad?” Grace asked, the hope palpable in her voice. “This might just be Buck Whaley's idea of a joke?”

“No, he wouldn't come out here and ask for DNA for a joke.” Mary couldn't share what Victor had told her, but she still wondered why Whaley had jumped the gun by a full day. Maybe Cochran and Whaley knew something Victor didn't.

Tears spilled from Grace's eyes. “I don't know what to do. If all this Teresa Ewing stuff starts up again, we can kiss Hillview Haven good-bye. That's Zack's last chance—my last chance—for him to have a semi-independent life.”

Mary wondered how well someone who pummels drywall might do in a group home, but that was not her call. “I'd advise you to do nothing right now,” she told Grace. “If Whaley shows up with a warrant for DNA, call me. I'm happy to represent Zack, and I promise you nobody will bully him this time.”

“Bless you.” Grace wiped away tears, then said, “I don't have a lot of money. I teach art at the college, and occasionally sell a painting. It might take me a while to pay your bill.”

“Don't worry about it, Grace. For now let's just trade—my legal advice for all that gorgeous artwork you created for my campaign.”

“
Wahdoe
,” Grace whispered, for the first time speaking in Cherokee, the language she and Mary both understood.

Eight

Jerry Cochran stood in
front of his white board, blue marker in hand. In front of him, Rob Saunooke, Victor Galloway, and Buck Whaley sat in a semicircle, looking at him, watchful as retrievers. “Okay, gentlemen, tell me what you've learned in the past twenty-four hours.” He turned to the board. “Saunooke?”

The young patrolman stood up. “Nobody at the yard sale noticed any unusual activity. They said there were some kids playing on the dirt piles the bulldozers pushed up, but their parents yelled at them to come down. I bagged two cigarette butts people had thrown away.”

“Good,” said Cochran. “We'll run a check.” He turned to Whaley. “Buck?”

“I got the employee rosters from the construction firm,” reported Whaley. “Found some DUIs and a couple of assaults. No rapists or pedophiles, though a bunch of their workers are illegals with no records. Checked with the arborist who pruned and fed the tree back in February. He didn't notice anything buried in the roots.”

Cochran nodded. “Galloway?”

Victor unfolded himself from a chair. “According to the SBI, the underpants were made by the Carter Company around 1988. The size would have fit a girl of Teresa's height and weight. The sandwich bag was made in Illinois in 2011 and contained traces of sodium nitrate, a chemical used to preserve meats like bologna and bacon. The cigarette is American Spirit—a Native American brand.”

“Any DNA or prints?” asked Whaley.

“Prints on the bag, but they don't match anybody in the system. They're working on the underpants. The smoke was clean.”

“There go your butts, Saunooke.” Whaley laughed.

“Not necessarily,” Saunooke replied. “Somebody could have strolled through the yard sale, smoking, casual-like. Then he sneaks off to bury the underpants. Maybe something scares him off and he doesn't notice a cigarette's fallen out of his pocket.”

Cochran shrugged. “That's possible. One smoke could fall out of a baggy shirt pocket if you're bending over a hole in the ground.” He drew a question mark on the board. “So what does all this tell us, gentlemen?”

“Somebody, possibly a smoker—possibly a Native American smoker—has kept a pair of little girl's underpants for a very long time,” said Victor. “And very recently buried them in the spot where Teresa Ewing's body was found.”

“After he finished his bologna sandwich,” said Whaley.

Cochran ignored Whaley's sarcasm. “What sort of person might do that? Young? Old? Male? Female? White? Cherokee?”

“Somebody local and older,” said Whaley, now serious.

“Agreed,” said Cochran. “Someone would have to be at least in their mid-thirties to have any real memory of this case. Let's look at our old suspects.”

He listed their names on the board—Zack Collier, Devin McConnell, Lawrence Russell, Adam Shaw, Arthur Hayes, and Two Toes McCoy. Hayes is off the list—he fell off a fire escape and broke his neck while peeping into a woman's apartment.”

“I thought Two Toes was doing twenty in Craggy Prison,” said Whaley.

“He's out on parole. He now lives on the reservation, claiming to be a priest in some Native American religion.”

Whaley laughed. “Two Toes behaves pretty good in prison. It's in real life that he fucks up.”

Cochran went on. “The rest of the suspects were all neighborhood kids. Four males, between eight and twelve, except for Zack Collier, an autistic boy who was fifteen at the time. From the old interviews I read last night, they were about to get into some sex games.”

“At that age?” asked Galloway.

“Shannon Cooper and Janie Griffin were two female witnesses. They claimed that on that last afternoon the boys dared the girls to play Bottom Up, a version of strip poker where you start betting your shoes and work your way up. They refused and went home. Teresa said she didn't want to play either, but the last time the girls saw her, she was still under the tree, talking to the boys.”

“What did the boys say?”

“They all denied that anybody played anything.”

“Same old shit.” Whaley laughed. “He said, she said.”

“Do those kids still live here?” asked Galloway

“Devin McConnell, Butch Russell, and Zack Collier do. Adam Shaw's father sent him to live with relatives in New York shortly after they found Teresa's body. Shannon Cooper and Janie Griffin moved away years ago.”

“Have they stayed clean all these years?”

Cochran checked his tablet. “McConnell and Russell have a number of DUIs. Shaw and the girls are clean, and the Collier boy lives with his mother. He's not capable of living alone.” He squinted at the screen. “Get this—Lawrence Russell, aka Butch, works campus security at the college.”

Whaley snorted. “Hope they vetted his application for possible murder suspect.”

Saunooke asked, “So where do we go from here?”

Cochran studied the board. “For once, let's get ahead of the curve here. Whaley, I want you to check in with the Salola Street boys. Saunooke, you take Two Toes. Just say we're updating our files and want to check their addresses. Do not be threatening, but pay attention if anybody starts to sweat. Galloway, see what DNA you can pull off Saunooke's cigarette butts. I'm going to talk to Jack Wilkins. He's the expert on this case and he was right there at that tree yesterday.”

Galloway sat up straighter. “You think he might be involved?”

“No way.” Whaley defended his former partner. “This case might be a monkey on his back, but he's no crazier than any other old guy out to pasture.”

“I'll keep that in mind, Whaley,” said Cochran. “Remember, gentlemen, to walk softly. If the press gets wind of this, they'll light it off like a rocket. Guess whose asses will be on the line then?”

“Jesus.” Whaley shook his head. “The rumor mill worked double-
time back in '89 with just the newspaper. Now we've got Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and God knows what other social media shit.”

“That's why we need to proceed quietly,” said Cochran. “It's a brand-new world of misinformation out there.”

The meeting broke up, each man heading off in a different direction. Whaley drove toward Salola Street, thinking of the four kids who'd once been their prime suspects. He'd kept up with them over the years. Devin McConnell had been a tough little Irish mick, the eldest of his parents' endless litter of children. He now ran his father's used car lot and had racked up a couple of domestic assault charges. Butch Russell, a pudgy redhead, had delighted in blowing up chipmunk holes with olive jars stuffed with gunpowder. He'd tried to join the police force but washed out of the academy. That he was now a campus cop did not surprise Whaley at all. Collier, of course, was an idiot, but had strangely been friends with Adam Shaw, the smallest and smartest of the lot. He and Jack had interviewed all of them, several times. Butch Russell, Devin McConnell, and Adam Shaw had admitted, under intense questioning, that they'd asked the girls to play strip poker, but all of them had refused. Scared and stinking of little-boy sweat, the three had sworn that Teresa had gone home about five minutes after the other girls. All Zack Collier had done was cry for his mother.

With a heavy sigh, Whaley turned on to Salola and pulled up in front of the Shaw house. Empty tables were still set up across the front lawn, remnants of yesterday's yard sale. As he parked his car he thought of the Shaws. Richard had been the hard-nosed chairman of some department at the college. His wife, Leslie, was a pretty woman who scuttled around after her husband like an acolyte with a priest. The son in question, Adam, reminded him of the cocky little shits from his own school days—the cool, funny ones who snapped towels at his butt in the locker room. Any of those assholes could have offed a little girl and just talked their way out of it. And so could Adam Shaw.

He walked to the front porch and rang the bell. A small woman with bloodshot eyes pulled the door open. Though her dark hair was now gray and feathery age lines sprouted from her lips, he recognized her immediately. Leslie Shaw. Mother of Adam, wife of Richard. He looked behind her to see packing boxes lining the foyer of the house, along with huge, waist-high roles of Bubble Wrap. The hold-out Shaws were finally leaving too.

“Yes?” She squinted at his badge, as if the light was too bright. If she recognized him, she did not show it.

Whaley drew up his great bulk. “I'm looking for Adam Shaw.”

“Adam … doesn't live here anymore.”

“Do you know his whereabouts?”

“No.”

Whaley felt a flash of impatience. Leslie Shaw wasn't stupid. Did she not realize you couldn't stonewall a cop anymore? Back in '89 maybe, but not today. These days the police were far too well connected.

“Do you know how I can get in touch with him?”

“No.”

He gave her one of his cards. “Ma'am, we're updating our files. I'd like to ask Adam a few questions.”

She straightened her shoulders, as if summoning all her strength. “You'll have to talk to our attorney, Robert Meyers. We no longer entertain questions from the police.”

“You no longer
entertain
questions?” Whaley stared at her, anger warming his neck. “I didn't know you could
entertain
a question.”

“Robert Meyers.” The woman repeated the attorney's name as she lurched forward to close the door.

Whaley took a step forward and stuck one of his size-thirteen brogans into the doorway. “Let me tell you how this works, ma'am. I don't need your or your husband's or your attorney's permission to talk to your boy. And I can find him, probably in about ten minutes. I was just checking to see if he might be here. A courtesy call, if you will.”

“Robert Meyers,” the woman repeated for the third time.

“I'll remember that name,” said Whaley. “Also this conversation, when we have your boy by the short hairs again.”

The woman paused in her closing of the door. “What did you say?”

“I mean, you cooperate with us, we go a little easier. If you don't, we don't. Goes to respect for the law.”

She thought a moment, then said, “Wait—let me see if my husband … ”

“Sorry.” Whaley withdrew his foot from the doorway. “You had your chance. It's too late now.”

He turned and left her standing at the door, talking to his back as he headed to the house across the street.

Unlike Leslie Shaw, Janet Russell recognized Whaley the moment he rang her bell. Opening the door wearing a gaudy, tie-dyed robe, she had tattoos crawling up both arms, eight rings on the fingers of both hands, and three different kinds of crosses resting between her copious breasts. If Leslie Shaw was a meek little acolyte in the First Church of Richard the First, Janet Russell was the high priestess in a faith of her own making.

“Detective Whaley. How nice to see you again.” The woman's hair was white and wiry, her eyes chips of bright blue. She put her hands together in front of her chest and said, “Peace unto you.”

“Peace to you, too,” Whaley replied, uncomfortably. “Uh, we are updating our files, ma'am. I need to ask Lawrence a few question.”

“What about?”

“It's police business.”

“Then it must be about Teresa.”

Whaley sighed. These women weren't stupid. They knew what was up when he knocked on their doors.

Janet Russell shook her head. “But you've asked him so many questions. He always answers them, but you never believe him.” She fingered her jeweled cross. “You know, you once had Butch so scared he started wetting his pants. For years he slept at the foot of my bed, shivering like a dog.”

“Murder investigations can be hard on everybody.” Whaley took a deep sniff. The house smelled of some musky herb. Not weed—he would recognize that—but something akin to it.

“But he was just a little boy.” Sighing, she walked back into her living room. It held the same kind of chaos as the Shaw house—half-filled packing boxes, Bubble Wrap, some carved decorative tree branches she was trying to fit into a too-small box. She turned to him. “May I show you something, detective?”

“Sure.” He followed her through a maze of boxes as she weaved her way down a long hall lined with photographs. Pictures of her, Butch, Jesus, the Dalai Lama, and a group of people in white robes gathered around a wigwam. He stopped as one figure in that photo caught his eye. A Native American with long Apache hair, a silver disk the size of a poker chip embedded in one ear lobe. Whaley recognized him from his mug shot. It was Two Toes McCoy.

“Come tell me if this looks like the bedroom of a normal thirty-seven-year-old man,” Janet Russell called, standing at the doorway at the far end of the hall.

Whaley hurried to catch up. As he did, she opened the door and stepped aside, as if revealing some grisly but compelling scar. Whaley looked into the room and saw a twin bed with a plaid bedspread, made up with military precision. In one corner was a barbell with a set of weights and a police scanner. On the walls hung posters for X-Men movies and a sad little diploma from a security guard training course. The only photograph was of Butch himself, red-haired as his mother had once been, standing serious and sober in his campus cop uniform. Over his bed was a gun rack, filled with semiautomatic weapons. Whaley took a deep breath, trying to catch the odor of cigarettes, but he smelled only the sharp aroma of gun oil and dirty sheets.

“I'm not even allowed in here,” said Janet Russell. “If I was, it would smell far better than this. Bad odors invite bad karma.”

“And you think Butch invites bad karma?” Whaley felt silly asking the question. He wasn't even sure what karma was.

“This is the room of someone profoundly afraid,” she replied. “Someone shut off from the possibilities of the universe.”