Rite of Wrongs (15 page)

T
HIRTY

Friday, 10:30 a.m.

Augie spent a couple of hours going through the files before leaving. Miriam didn’t even get to say good-bye. She’d been on the phone with the event coordinator responsible for Edward Lacey’s Monday alibis.

Yes, he’d signed in at registration and picked up his badge.

No, there were no security cameras to verify his attendance.

No, she could not supply the names of anyone who might have talked to him there.

Yes, she understood it was important, but releasing related records required a subpoena.

Frustrated that she couldn’t clear this one simple item, Miriam slammed down the phone, then turned to see if Augie had come up with any ideas, only to find him gone. Fine. Whatever. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a ton of work waiting.

Most pressing: locating Dorothy Lacey’s three unidentified foster children.

She took a deep breath and spun her chair to face the row of banker’s boxes—four long and three high—she’d brought back to the office last night.

After turning to the insert page she’d used yesterday for notes, she pulled a stack of folders from the first box and picked up where she’d left off. Names. Dates. Circumstances with no relevance, though things sure weren’t as peachy as she would’ve thought fifty years ago in Union Park.

The only thing she might possibly be able to use was the list of caseworkers she’d compiled. They’d been employed during the time period her victims had been in the system. If she could locate any of them, maybe someone would remember Dorothy and the foster children.

And she needed someone to remember, because she wasn’t having a stitch of luck otherwise. She knew she had the time period right. Gina, who’d been fifty-five at her death, had gone into foster care at age five, per her husband.

Dorothy had said she’d last seen Gina in 1979, Franklin in 1981. The dates were not wrong.

Edward had told her he’d lived in Union Park his whole life and that he was the same age as Franklin. Gina was older. The other three only a year or two behind. Records for the five fosters should’ve been exactly where she was searching.

Plenty of records were, just none with the names she was looking for: Gina White, Franklin Weeks, Dorothy Lacey. Autumn, Darius, the mysterious Corky, the missing husband. It was ridiculous that she’d yet to run across a single one.

If she were a conspiracy theorist—

“Is it safe?” Melvin asked, peeking around her cubicle wall before crossing the aisle to his desk. “Or do I need a gas mask? Because those boxes smell like dead people.”

“Probably because they’re full of dead people. Just not the dead people I’m looking for.”

He rolled his eyes before pulling his chair up next to hers and dropping into it. “At least three of them are presumably still alive. Would be good to keep them that way.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not holding my breath. Except I am holding my breath. The dust in these things is ridiculous,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face.

Arms crossed over his bulk, he leaned back. “You do look a little bit like you crawled out of the bottom of the pile.”

Miriam propped an elbow on her desk and rubbed at the ache in her forehead. “Nobody told me I was going to have to do math. Or how badly humanity really sucks.”

Her comment settled between them. They were both way too familiar with that particular truth. Yet seeing page after page of abuse reports was about to do her in. It was too early in the day for such a descent into hell.

“Your priest any help?” Melvin finally asked. “With either verse?”

Speaking of hell . . .
“He’s not my priest, but no. Not yet.” She closed the file she’d just finished and turned it facedown to start another. “Though I’m not holding my breath on that front, either.”

“I’ve been thinking.” Melvin reached for the next folder in her stack and flipped to the first page. “What if we’re looking at this all wrong?”

She shifted in her seat to better see him. “How so?”

He frowned as he flipped a sheet of paper. “What if we only have to worry about two of our three fosters being victims?”

A tic jumped in her jaw. “Because one of the three is our artist? Yeah. I thought about that, too.”

He shrugged. “It’s not like I want to add to the suspect list. We’ve already got the missing nurse from Dr. Gardner’s office. Dr. Gardner himself, though that feels like a stretch. Edward Lacey—”

She interrupted him with a shake of her head. “Looks like he’s in the clear. He signed in at the sales meetings, and even if he didn’t stay, timing’s really iffy, though not impossible, for him to get back to Union Park to do the murders.”

Melvin waggled a finger at her notebook. “You mark him off your to-do list, then? The bullet boxes I know you’ve got with all these names?”

She pulled her notebook close. “Not yet. I need to. I should.”

“But you haven’t because you’re still thinking he’s the one and has an accomplice?”

“No. No, no.” She clicked the end of her pen. “Do not make me add an accomplice to my list.”

Melvin laughed while she did. “We need to talk to him again. Talk to his mother. See if either of them remember long-ago friends or kids from church.”

“There’s still the dog blood on the first tarp.” When Melvin looked at her askance, she added, “But, no. There was no dog blood on the second. Though animal control
did
have several missing-dog reports from the Bend a month or so ago.”

He screwed his mouth to the side. “Is that where the Laceys lived? In the Bend?”

“I don’t know. Property records don’t have anyone named Lacey owning out there.”

“Which makes the next step learning Dorothy Lacey’s maiden name.”

She was way ahead of him. “It was Willman. And no Willman owned property, either.”

“Vital records, huh?” He nodded as if giving her props. “And the missing husband—”

“Van Edward Lacey.” She turned her notebook to show him where she’d written it down.

“And an official missing-person’s report was filed?”

“Yep,” she answered, pleased that at least one of her searches had yielded fruit. “Vanished into the night. Just like the son said happened. Now I’m trying to decide if finding him, or figuring out what happened to him, would be worth it. Or a waste of time.”

T
HIRTY
-O
NE

Saturday, 1:00 p.m.

Miriam picked up her father at his office for their every-other-weekend lunch date. He’d dropped off his Volvo for service, and a courtesy car had taken him to his office on campus. He’d spent the morning there working, while Miriam spent hers at the UPPD.

Her usual days off were Sunday and Monday, so being at the station while most people slept or played the day away was par for the course. A bigger deal was driving all the way to Rice University to fetch her dad, but the drive did give her a lot of time to think. Time she really didn’t need.

She’d been doing nothing but thinking for days.

For almost two weeks, this case had consumed her; she was dreading Monday’s arrival like she would a root canal. Especially now with her routine disrupted. She hated Judah’s insistence that she and her fellow detectives needed a consultant when they did this every day. It wasn’t as if Augie had been a better cop during his fifteen years on the force than any of them were now.

So far, the Scriptures hadn’t been particularly insightful. She had a degree in psychology. She could tell she was looking at someone conflating religious and family issues—parents, at least, though probably siblings, too, whether their own or otherwise. Hopefully this afternoon, she’d find something about the Lacey foster children in the fort of boxes surrounding her desk. She was ready to return the smelly files to the basement where they belonged.

“I’d offer you a penny for your thoughts, but that’s a cliché, and I’m already paying for lunch.”

“You’re a funny man,” she said to her father, smoothing out her napkin that matched the white tablecloth and shaking off her thoughts. They could simmer in the background in the meantime.

“Sorry to drag you all the way into town. We could’ve rescheduled, you know. Since you’ve got this case . . . the one with the kids and . . . everything. I guess that’s still going on?” he asked, pouring a cup of jasmine tea from the pot they’d ordered to share. The bird pattern etched into the porcelain was echoed in both the flocked wallpaper and the gold centerpiece statues on the tables. She nodded for him to fill her cup, too.

“It is. And don’t be sorry. I needed the change of scenery.” She could look at fifty-year-old foster-care records and crime photos only for so long. Though the restaurant’s overwhelmingly bloodred color scheme wasn’t exactly soothing. Even the fish in the huge saltwater aquarium appeared predatory, fanlike tails whipping them through the water.

Their server returned before her mind drifted even deeper into the metaphor. “May I take your order now, please?”

“Yes,” Miriam said. She hadn’t even opened her menu. She didn’t need to. “I’ll have the General Tso’s shrimp with fried rice. And can we get another pitcher of tea?”

The man bobbed his head. “Of course, yes. And for you, sir?”

Her father pushed his glasses farther up his nose. “Beef and broccoli. Steamed rice. Ice water, too, please.”

The server gave a quick bow, a lank of his hair falling over his forehead, then left them alone.

Miriam pulled her tea closer. “Cold water to go with your hot tea?”

“Gotta keep my body temperature regulated,” her dad said, lifting the small porcelain cup that was shaped like a shallow bowl in a toast. “Summer is coming.”

Like she’d said. Funny man. “I’m pretty sure summer is here.”

“Can’t tell it by the AC in my office.” He flexed his free hand. “I’m surprised I don’t have frostbite in my fingers and toes.”

She could do him one better. “Be glad you’re in that office and not running around town chasing leads. By the time the SUV cools down, it’s time to park it and let it heat up again.”

“You doing okay?” he asked, gesturing with his index finger in circles. “Looks like you’ve got some makeup under your eyes there. Unless that’s just you not getting enough sleep.”

“The latter,” she said, resisting the urge to dab a damp napkin against her skin. Actually, the idea sounded great. Though an ice pack sounded even better. “You know how I get, keeping all the details straight, and this particular case has so many.”

Her father frowned. “I thought you had a notebook for all of that.”

“I do. But that doesn’t keep my brain from making its own bullet points. All night long.”

He smiled, leaning an elbow on the table and sipping his tea. She was just reaching for hers when he said, “You know, your mom’s seventieth is coming up soon.”

She nodded as she swallowed. “Hard to believe.”

“Esther wants to throw her a surprise party.” Though his tone was even, the lift of his brow and the corresponding lines in his forehead gave her his opinion on that.

Typical thoughtless Esther. “Mom will hate it.”

“She will. At least until she admits that she loves it.”

He was right, of course. Which didn’t negate the sensation of claws digging into Miriam’s spine. Rome family gatherings were brutal. Erik drunk. Esther drunk. Her mother in manic overdrive trying to cover for them. Miriam ended up sneaking away every time. Plus, if she hadn’t put this case to bed by then . . .

“I love how well you know her.” It seemed a lame thing to say after what she’d been thinking.

Her father shrugged, strangely morose as their food arrived. “She hasn’t been the easiest person to live with—”

Miriam interrupted him with a snort.

“And you know that as well as I do, but there have been a lot of times I could’ve been a better husband.”

She supposed this was where she should admit to her failings, too. “I have a hard time believing that.”

“It would mean a lot if you helped plan things—”

And here we go . . .
“Dad—”

He held up a hand. “Not to Esther. And not to your mother. But to me.”

“That’s not fair,” she said, stabbing her fork at her shrimp. He knew how busy she was. How much Esther would hate having to share the glory should she pull off a success. The blame, however, for anything going wrong . . .

“I’m your father,” he said, his tone humor-filled. “Being fair’s not part of the job.”

A smirk pulled at her mouth. “And here I thought parents were all about being fair. Especially with their kids.”

“Good thing you never had any, then,” he said as he bit the floret off a piece of broccoli.

His comment stung more than it should have. “Got that right.”

“You sound okay with that. I’ve always wondered, what with Erik and Esther—”

“Breeding like bunnies?” she asked, thinking again about the Gardner children, their blue eyes and blond hair and loss.

“Well, yes,” he said with a laugh. “And I know your mother hasn’t exactly been subtle about wanting more grandkids.”

“With Esther being as old as she is, she’ll have to depend on Erik for that now,” she said. Then she thought of Gina Gardner, who’d been just about Esther’s current age when Eloise was born. “Though I guess miracles have been known to happen.”

Her father snorted. “Esther has enough miracles to feed already.”

“And Erik?” she asked, wondering for what might be the first time why her father didn’t share her mother’s the-more-grandkids-the-merrier point of view.

He picked up his fork and frowned. “He did not learn that behavior from me.”

Her brother would never be the man her father was. Or the man Augie was. It might not be the best change of subject, but since her mind had once again drifted in the priest’s direction . . . “I saw Augie earlier this week.”

“Yeah?” Her father sat back, his eyes wide and curious. “How’d that go?”

She shrugged, hoping she didn’t look as stiff as she felt. “It wasn’t personal. I had to see him for work.”

“I see.”

He sounded as doubtful as Nikki. “Judah sent me. The case. The one with the kids. He wants Augie’s input.”

“So he’s back?” he asked, frowning.

His words fell between them like a big brick wall. “Just to consult. It’s not like he’s giving up his calling.”

At that, her father huffed. “I always wondered how called he really was.”

And now she was going to have to stop for a margarita. Why was everyone in her family so critical of Augie? Unless it wasn’t Augie alone they had a problem with . . .

“He’d planned to go into the priesthood while still in school. Then the thing with his brother happened, and well . . .” She shrugged, jabbing a fork into the last of her shrimp. “Plans change. You know how it is.”

He looked down at his plate. “Plans. Life. Yeah. I know how it is.”

Now what had she said? “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” He waved off her question to ask his own, looking suddenly older than usual in his wire-rimmed bifocals and plaid sports shirt, the neckband of his white undershirt showing in the open collar. “You’ll help your sister?”

“Yes, Daddy. I’ll help my sister.”

“And you’ll come in and say hello to your mother when you drive me home?”

She didn’t even try to hide the roll of her eyes. “If I have to.”

Her father gestured at her with his fork. “She did give birth to you, you know.”

“I’ll need photographic evidence,” she said, causing him to break up with laughter.

“Spoken like the true cop I know you to be.”