The Bone Fire: A Mystery (42 page)

The boy nodded vigorously and said, “They would think, like, it was gross about me and Ashley, you know.” Justin would have been twelve years old when Brianna was born, while Ashley was seventeen.

“It must have been hard for you when Brianna disappeared.” Gil purposely didn’t say “murdered” or “killed.”

“Yeah, it was,” the boy said. “I couldn’t even tell people she was my daughter.”

“When did Laura find out?” Gil asked. This was a guess on his part, but he decided to throw it out there to see what happened.

“I don’t know. She seemed to kind of just know one day.”

“And Laura was okay with it?”

“I tried to be a gentleman about it. I, like, didn’t throw it in her face or anything,” Justin said.

“What about Ashley? What did she think of Laura?”

“Ashley knew that Laura and I . . . that it was no big deal,” Justin said. Gil had to keep himself from reacting to that. There is no such thing as “no big deal” when it comes to how girls feel about boys. That was one thing he had learned from his own preteen daughters.

“Did Laura and Ashley get along?”

“I dunno. I guess.”

Gil felt the boy starting to close up, so he started at the beginning. The newest new beginning—the baby.

“Do you have any names picked out?” Gil asked, smiling, patting the boy on the shoulder like he would a proud father.

“Ashley wants to name him Tristan, but I think he’ll get beat up a lot.”

Gil laughed. “I have to say, I agree with you on that. What about a family name?”

“Maybe Levi for my grandfather,” Justin said.

“What about Justin Junior?” Gil said. The boy smiled proudly.

“I guess you won’t name him after Ashley’s dad,” Gil said in an understanding, understated tone.

“That’s for sure.”

“So you don’t like him?” Gil asked.

“Nah. He’s a jerk.”

“I guess it was good he wasn’t around much anymore, especially the day Brianna disappeared,” Gil said. Justin nodded. Gil was finally back to where he wanted to be—the day Brianna disappeared. This was where he would get his answers.

“It must have been weird being in the backyard that day with just Laura and Ashley. I mean, two girls like that . . .” Gil said.

“Tell me about it.”

“And everybody was probably drinking . . .”

“Yeah.”

“Then the rain starts up. Did you all just run inside?”

“Yeah, but I had to carry Ashley into the bedroom, she was so wasted.”

“And you guys were probably soaking wet . . .”

“Totally . . .”

“What’d you do?”

“I tried to get Ashley out of her wet clothes . . .”

“I bet one thing led to another . . .” Gil put in seamlessly.

“Yeah . . .”

“Where was Laura?” Gil asked.

“She was knocking on the bedroom door like crazy, but I’d locked it . . .”

“That was good thinking . . .”

“I told her Ashley was sick and throwing up.”

“And she didn’t suspect anything?” Gil asked.

“Yeah. Can you believe it?” Justin said, shaking his head at his good luck and smiling.

“When you and Ashley were done, what did you do?”

“We got up and went to get some food. Laura was in the kitchen. That’s when we all noticed that Brianna was missing.”

Ashley wished Justin would hurry up with the police officer. She wanted to show him what the baby had done; he had blown the cutest little bubble of spit. Then the bubble popped, and the baby closed his eyes again.

The baby looked like Justin, just as Brianna had. They both had his eyes.

Justin had been a pretty child. So sweet. So alone. His own mother, her aunt, had two jobs and a boyfriend. So, ever since Justin was little, he’d been coming over to Ashley’s house every day so she could watch him after school and on weekends. He would sleep over most nights. They had fun together, playing and being silly. She felt so free with him. She had never had any brothers or sisters to play with, so she felt like a child for the first time.

He was like an angel with his blond hair, but he also was so mature for his age. They would talk about the meaning of life and sneak drinks off her mother’s vodka bottles. Ashley often thought that he was the only man who had never used her.

One night, when her father was drunk, Ashley snuck into Justin’s bed so her dad couldn’t find her. They cuddled together in the night, protecting each other. They had slept together like that for many nights since. They would wake up together and tease each other, both laughing at the same things.

Ashley knew that people would think it was wrong. They would think that she had somehow hurt Justin, as if she ever could. He wanted the togetherness as much as she did. Even though she was twelve and he was seven on that first night they were together, the difference in their ages was only five years.

In a few years, when she was twenty-three and he was eighteen, those five years would mean nothing.

Gil and Joe sat in the police station. It was quiet. Fiesta was over, so all the overtime officers had gone home. They were looking at the photos of the Rodriguezes’ backyard taken just after Brianna disappeared. Everything was a muddy mess because of the rain that day. In the background of the photos, the arroyo was almost overflowing as water rushed through it with violence. It was so different from the quiet arroyo that Gil saw behind the Rodriguezes’ house when he first visited them.

Gil and Joe were looking over the pictures to try to spot the knife that might have been used to stab Brianna. Chances were it had been thrown into the river, washed downstream until the water petered out, and left on some sandy bank. Just like Brianna.

They didn’t need the knife. It would have been a nice additional piece of information, but they had something that would work just as well—the last person who saw Brianna alive. Laura Gutierrez sat in the interview room, waiting for them. They were making her wait on purpose. To keep her off balance. Her parents had given them permission to interview her without them being present and declined to come down to the station, even after Gil explained the situation briefly.

As Gil looked absentmindedly at the photos, he thought about the Rodriguez family. They had all lied from the beginning about where they were the day Brianna disappeared. Each one thought
that telling the truth of where they really were would be worse than the lie. Alex Stevens was drinking and driving. Mrs. Rodriguez was passed out. Ashley and Justin were intertwined in bed. Laura was alone with Brianna. In the end, they cared more about their lies than about that little girl.

Gil looked at Laura Gutierrez as he and Joe entered the interview room. She sat with one leg crossed over the other, leaning back. She didn’t look nervous. She was smiling slightly. Gil, who was holding the usual manila folder with Laura’s name on it, kept standing and started the usual speech. “Laura, do you know why you are here today?” He was tired. He thought about all the people in the case who were sexual abusers—Ashley, her father, Judge Otero. Gil wondered how many of them would ever be charged. That was a decision for the sexual offender division and the DA. Gil would be happy to be left out of it.

“The hell if I know,” Laura said, still smiling, bringing him back to the interrogation.

Gil just looked at her, not reacting to her disdain. Because that was what she wanted. Instead, he rattled off the introductory statement. “It’s recently come to our attention that we have been misled regarding some things about Brianna’s disappearance. I can guarantee you, Laura, that our investigation will uncover the truth. In light of that, if you know anything about it, you should tell me now.”

She looked at Gil flatly and said nothing. For the first time, Gil actually wished Joe would say something. He wasn’t sure he had the energy for this. For her. Because she was going to take a lot of energy to interrogate. Nevertheless, she wouldn’t be hard to get a confession out of, because her motive to kill was so primal—jealousy. That was usually a hard emotion to cover up.

“How long have you been dating Justin?” Gil asked, sitting down. Joe pulled up a chair next to him.

“Three years, two months,” she said. “We hooked up when we started middle school.”

“What did you think about his relationship with Ashley?” Gil asked.

“It wasn’t a relationship,” she said scornfully. “She was just using him.”

“How so?” Joe asked. Gil felt grateful to him for jumping in.

“She would just have him when Alex wasn’t around,” she said. “It was disgusting for a woman her age to be doing that.”

“That made you angry?” Gil asked. He actually wanted her angry. It would make the confession easier.

“It made me pissed,” she said, as if pissed were a different emotion than anger. As if the word “anger” didn’t describe the height of her emotion to the right degree.

“Were you pissed at Justin?” Joe asked.

“No. It wasn’t his fault. She was abusing him. Sexually abusing him,” she said, deliberately enunciating every word, as if it would come as a surprise to them.

“Did you talk to Ashley about it?” Joe asked.

“That bitch? She just laughed at me.”

There was nothing new to this story. He had heard it many times. The woman, scorned by her lover, with nowhere to turn, takes her anger out on something else. Sometimes she might shred his clothes. Or run over his golf clubs. Or crash his car. Or kill his daughter.

“We know you were alone that night with Brianna,” Gil said. He was rushing to the end because he was tired of playing games with this child. She had no remorse. She somehow believed in her mind that killing Brianna was necessary to get back at Ashley.

“So?” she said.

“You were the only person alone with her that day,” Gil said.

“So?” she said again.

Gil almost rolled his eyes at her. “We know you killed her.” It was too blunt, but he wanted to shake the attitude out of her.

She finally looked nervous but was trying to hide it. Gil knew he should tell her that he understood why she killed Brianna, that it was the only way to make sure Justin didn’t leave her for Ashley, but he just didn’t have the energy. He was thankful Joe spoke up.

“My guess is that you didn’t even think before you did it,” Joe said. She was finally listening a little and seemed less concerned with keeping up her bravado. “It was just such a quick response, and you
were just so angry. Then before you knew it, there you were, and there she was, and you had to do something . . .”

“It wasn’t like that at all,” she said.

“Well, then, what was it like?” Joe asked.

“Yeah, I was pissed,” she said, “but all I did was make a phone call.”

“To who?” Gil asked.

She didn’t answer.

“To who?” Gil asked again, too loudly.

Joe said, “I can go on my computer and get your phone records in just a few minutes, but it would be better if you told us yourself.”

“Fine. Whatever,” she said, all attitude again. “I called Tony.”

“Tony who?” Gil asked without thinking.

“Tony Herrera.”

An hour after her meditation class, Lucy found herself standing on the labyrinth in front of the cathedral, still dressed in her comfy sweatpants. She took the first step of the cobbled maze and started to follow its twisting path. She had left the class feeling energetic but pensive, so she drove to the cathedral and started on the labyrinth without really knowing why. The meditation class had been interesting, but the teacher had talked in a monotone voice incessantly about “following your breath,” which was an instruction that Lucy didn’t understand. The teacher did say one thing that made Lucy listen a little more carefully—she had said, “Quiet your mind.” That wasn’t something Lucy did too often. In fact, she usually did the opposite. She numbed her mind, distracted it and inundated it.

She wondered why she avoided the quiet so much. Was it because it seemed so boring as she ran toward the chaos?

The teacher had said something else. “Rid yourself of anything that disturbs the quiet of your mind.” The teacher had been talking about stray thoughts and images that came up during the meditation, but all Lucy could think of was the guilt. The old distraction that she kept going back to.

She took one of the twists of the path and thought about Del. Why hadn’t she told him what she’d really written on her note in
Zozobra? Why should she care if he teased her? She
did
care—the guilt had somehow become important to her, and she didn’t want him mocking it. It took her a moment to realize that she was angry at him. Furious, in fact. She listened to all of his incessant blather, and he made fun of her for having real emotions? Lucy started to walk faster as she cursed Del in her head. She felt guilty about the dead woman because she was responsible. She was to blame. In truth, though, Lucy had done nothing wrong. Nothing at all. She had only done the best that she could. Just like she had done nothing to make Del break up with her. Nothing at all. Lucy stopped short as the final thought hit her. It was the first time she realized that she blamed herself for the collapse of their relationship. She only absently saw that she had reached the center of the labyrinth. Her mind was suddenly quiet.