Desolate Angel (27 page)

“What is it?” Maggie asked, hearing the alarm in his voice.

“This isn’t mine.” Bobby took out a ball of yellow fabric wadded up in one corner of his bag and began to unfold it. It was a yellow sundress. It looked familiar. I could not remember why.

“What do you mean?” Maggie asked.

“I’ve never seen this—” He stopped abruptly, as if the words had caught in his throat. “Oh, god. Oh, god.” He dropped the dress as if it were on fire.

“What is it?” Maggie asked sharply. “Bobby, you have to tell me.”

“This is Alissa’s dress,” he told Maggie. “The one she was wearing when she disappeared. I’m sure of it. She wore it the last time we went out together. This is Alissa’s dress. What is it doing in my bag?”

Maggie stared at the yellow sundress, trying to piece it all together. “The file never says they found the dress.”

“Why would anyone put it in here?” he asked her.

“Are you sure it’s her dress?” Maggie asked.

“How could I forget something like that?” He held the dress up to his face, inhaled its smell, and looked disappointed. “It’s been washed.” He looked ashamed, as if wanting to catch Alissa’s scent one more time, somehow, made him guilty of her murder after all.

But Maggie did not even notice. I knew she was thinking the same thing I was: someone had planted the dress in Bobby’s duffel bag in a clumsy attempt to make it seem as if he was Alissa’s killer after all. It was ludicrous to think someone could have kept the dress all those years, in prison yet, without detection. So there would be other planted evidence, a locker key maybe, stuck in a pocket of his bag, that led to more planted evidence elsewhere, maybe in a bus station locker or storage unit. Some place where Bobby Daniels could have stored his trophies all these years until the day he got out.

“Let me have the bag,” Maggie said. A thrill ran through me. Maggie had put it all together, too. She and I were starting to think as one.

Daniels handed her the duffel bag, and she began running her fingers around the edge of the inside bottom and checking the zippered pockets. “Got it.” She produced a small brass key.

“I don’t know what that is,” Bobby said, panicked.

“It’s okay. I believe you. Just take a deep breath.”

“How did you know it would be there?” Bobby asked.

Maggie sounded surprised. “I don’t really know. I just thought of it.”

“What’s it for?”

“I don’t know that, either.” Maggie stared at the key. “Don’t tell anyone about this, Bobby. You got it? First I’m going to find out what it’s for.”

“Are you sure?” he asked her.

“I’m sure,” she said.

She was thinking the same thing I was—that someone had tried to frame Bobby and they’d wanted the fake evidence to be found with his body after they had killed him.

It was the kind of stupid, obvious plan that only a drunk like Danny could have dreamed up and thought he would get away with. But the only one who could have had access to Alissa’s yellow sundress was her real killer. Which meant Hayes had been in on it with Danny—and that he had killed Alissa and was probably planning to kill Danny, too.

I wondered who really would have been implicated in Alissa’s death. Hayes could just as easily have been setting Danny up.

Oh, Danny,
I thought.
You are in way over your head. How could you have agreed to help Alan Hayes? Didn’t you realize what that dress meant?

“I don’t get it,” Daniels said quietly. “What did I ever do to anyone?”

Maggie started the car and pulled away from the Double Deuce. “You just got in someone’s way,” she explained quietly. “That’s all you ever did. And we need to make sure you stay out of their way from here on out.” She glanced at Bobby. “I’m going to take the dress. Tell no one about it. And I want you to lock yourself in your room tonight.”

He evaded her eyes. “I’ll be okay. I’ve learned how to take care of myself pretty good. At least when I know someone is coming for me.”

Chapter 26

It was deep into the night by the time Maggie delivered Bobby Daniels back to the halfway house and decided for herself that the supervisor knew nothing about the plan to kill Bobby Daniels. She knew him from way back, it turned out, and he was appalled at the injury to Bobby, embarrassed at being tricked, and relieved when he learned Maggie intended to keep the whole thing quiet.

All he could offer was that the caller had been a man. “I should have known better,” he said. “I’ve had people try all sorts of scams. Calling up pretending to be parole officers. You name it. But Daniels is a free man. Why would anyone pull a stunt like that?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Maggie told him. “Can you just check on him tonight, take a look at that cut in the morning, and make sure he’s delivered to his parents in one piece?”

“You bet I can. He’ll be safe with me.”

I believed him. The guy was close to six and a half feet tall and well muscled. Bobby would be safe under his care, especially now.

Maggie made a phone call as soon as she returned to her car, despite the lateness of the hour. “It’s me. I’m only a few minutes away.” She paused. “Thanks. I’ll be right over.”

So, I thought, she has a lover after all. And though sexual desire had disappeared, apparently the desire for possession had not. I felt a stab of jealousy and brooded all the way to a house on the edge of a middle-class neighborhood. I recognized the block. I had once been called out there to chronicle the death of a young boy who had been hit by an ice-cream truck.

My god, had Danny and I really joked about that one? Danny had said to me in the car afterward, “If you’re a kid, that’s the way to go. It’s like me getting hit by an Old Crow delivery truck!” And I had actually laughed.

How had I been so lost?

Maggie sat in the front seat of her car for a moment after we reached the house, collecting the odds and ends of her life that were strewn about and storing them in her backpack. Lights blinked on inside the home, the porch light revealing an overgrown lawn and neglected flower beds.

Perhaps this was not a lover’s house after all. It seemed oddly dated, as if it belonged to a simpler time when marriages were rock solid, public schools were safe, and mosquito trucks crawled down the streets at dusk, leaving clouds of insecticide in their wake for the children of the neighborhood to romp in.

I had grown up on a block just like it.

An old man in a wheelchair opened the door before Maggie could knock, greeting her with a hug that lingered—he knew what she had been through.

“The lawn needs mowing,” Maggie told him. “I can do it this weekend.”

“Don’t you worry about that,” the old man said as he made room for Maggie to enter. “Come in and tell me all about it.”

“It’s bad, Dad,” she said as they entered a small living room. Maggie threw herself down on the overstuffed couch as her father positioned himself a few feet away. It was a ritual they had performed many times, I could tell. This was Maggie’s home. He was her family.

She led him through the events of the night and he listened with the wary attention of a former cop, seldom interrupting, usually a step ahead, understanding the implications of every development.

“The daughter doesn’t know where Hayes is going when he disappears at night?” he asked when Maggie was done explaining about the search of the Hayes home and what they had found.

Maggie rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms as she shook her head. “She has no idea. It could be anywhere. And I think that’s where he took the girls he killed.” She looked up at her father. “Where he
is
taking them.”

“You’ll get him,” her father said firmly. “If anyone can get him, you will. Just don’t move too soon, my Maggie May. Make sure you have him locked down tight before you bring him in.”

“I know. I know. Patience and thoroughness. It’s worth it in the end.”

“That and ‘don’t borrow trouble.’ ”

“Yes, I know. I’ve already used that one tonight, thank you very much.”

They smiled at each other, not needing to say aloud the things that passed between them. Theirs was a lifelong bond. I could feel the tension in Maggie lifting, I could feel her faith in life being renewed. But I also felt a shared sadness between them, a painful memory they both worked to block out. The father had come to terms with it more than Maggie. He carried the sadness inside him with grace and dignity. But for her, the wound was still raw and insurmountable, so deep she could not confront it even in memory. I did not know what it was, but I knew it was part of what made Maggie so aloof when it came to other people.

She told her father about the rest of the evening and he was not surprised to hear what had happened to Bobby Daniels at the Double Deuce. But he didn’t want to believe Danny was working with Hayes.

“A lot of the guys don’t take kindly to being second-guessed,” he told Maggie. “They can do crazy things when they are. You remember what happened to Frankie Z back in ’76? They let those two rapists out of prison because of a new witness and he went to his grave swearing everyone had been suckered but him. It was all he could talk about for twenty-three more years. Maybe Bonaventura had nothing to do with the slashing. Maybe he just went too far trying to prove he was right about Daniels. And you don’t know it’s the same yellow sundress Alissa Hayes was wearing when she died. It could just be a copy. A clumsy attempt to make Daniels look guilty.”

Maggie was shaking her head. She didn’t buy it. “You know he’s dirty, Dad. He was there with Hayes. He has to be working with him.”

Her father sighed. “He may be dirty. He probably is dirty, Maggie. I always had a feeling about him. And I know some other fellows in IA looked into Bonaventura and his partner more than once.”

They had?
I had never known, or even suspected, it.

“What did they find?” Maggie asked, sounding more interested in what her father had to say.

“Nothing. They came up empty-handed.”

“So Fahey was a good cop?” she asked. It thrilled me to hear my name coming from her lips.

“I don’t know that I’d say he was a
good
cop.”

Ouch.

“I think he was a clean cop, though,” the old man conceded.

“What was he like?” Maggie asked her father. “Tell me about him.”

“What’s Fahey got to do with anything?” her father demanded. “He’s dead, Maggie. Stick to the living.”

I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about me.

“He’s got nothing to do with it,” Maggie admitted. “I can’t explain it. Peggy showed me his photo. I just felt . . . I don’t know. Connected to him. Like he would have wanted me to find out the truth.” She looked up at her father. “Kind of pathetic when you have to turn to dead guys for moral support, I guess.”

I beg your pardon,
I thought.
I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better partner than me.

“You have plenty of people who love and support you, Maggie,” her father said. “You just need to reach out to them. They’ll be there if you do.”

I was angry at him for steering the conversation away from me. I wanted to hear more about what Maggie thought of me. But her mind was back on Danny.

“If Bonaventura wasn’t working with Hayes to kill Daniels, what the hell was he doing at the Double Deuce?” she asked her father. “He could have planted that evidence on Daniels a lot more easily somewhere else.”

“If Hayes is as smart as you say, maybe he’s using Bonaventura.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe Hayes wanted people to know Bonaventura planted the evidence. Maybe that’s why he proposed such a clumsy approach. Maybe the real person Hayes planned to kill and take the fall for the murder was Bonaventura.”

Good man, I thought to myself. I could see where Maggie got her abilities as a cop. Age had only made the old man smarter.

Maggie was staring at her father intently.

“What?” he asked.

“Sometimes you scare me, Dad,” she said. She kissed him on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re one of the good guys.”

He patted his wheelchair. “No chance of switching sides now.”

“How are you doing anyway?” Maggie asked. “I didn’t get a chance to call you much this week.”

He shrugged. “You know how it is. A little of this. A little of that. I’m drowning in casseroles from that Fitzpat rick woman.”

Maggie laughed. “I’m telling you, she wants to marry you.”

Her father looked disgusted. “Your mother’s not been in her grave a year. Do you really think I want to hook up with someone new?”

“Hook up?” Maggie started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“I don’t think ‘hook up’ means what it used to mean,” Maggie patted his knee. “But whatever you decide to do, it’s okay with me.”

“I could say the same to you.” Her father chided as he wheeled to a cabinet nearby and poured them both glasses of whiskey. He handed one to Maggie and they clicked their glasses in an automatic salute.