The Last Dead Girl (25 page)

You can't, she thought.

“That's the hard part,” she said. “You have to take a chance.”

She watched a pair of lights flickering in his dark eyes—reflections of the candle flame. He touched the popsicle stick to his lower lip.

“No,” he said. “It wouldn't work. I couldn't trust you.”

He flipped the wooden stick into the grass and the light in his eyes faded. Jana's hope left her. She had led him to the brink of something, but he had stepped back.

“It's not your fault,” Luke said. “It's just the way things worked out. It might be different if we could go back and start over. Do you remember what it was like, the night we met?”

She answered him reflexively. “I remember.”

“We had something. A spark. We talked about meeting up in Binghamton. Remember?”

“Yes.”

“And when we followed you in the van, me and Eli, I told him, ‘Jana's cool. You wait and see. She'll stop. Dino's Bar on Conklin Street. She'll meet us there.' Eli didn't think so. But I believed. We followed you down I-81 and we came to the exits for Binghamton, and I was sure you'd get off—”

“I almost did.”

“I wish you had. Everything would've been different. We would've met up at Dino's. And I know I told you we were playing there, the band, and that was a lie. But it wouldn't have mattered. I would've said it was a mix-up. We would've laughed about it. And you and I would've hit it off. I know. We had a spark. But you didn't stop. You kept driving. And now it's too late.”

There was longing in Luke's voice. Jana almost missed it. She was thinking of last stands, of desperate measures. She wondered if she should run for the road, even though she would never make it. Or if she should try to attack Luke and wrestle his gun away. Mostly she was thinking about death and how it would find her, and whether she should wait for it or hurry it along.

But part of her mind was listening to Luke—and that part realized he was telling her what he wanted. It was something he could never have, not in the real world. But Luke didn't live in the real world.

“Maybe it's not too late,” she said. “To start over.”

Luke looked wistful. He shook his head. “We can't go back there.”

“We don't have to. I can stay here.”

He wanted to believe they were in this thing together. She would let him believe it. She would use the time Cathy Pruett had bought her, and buy herself some more.

“I can stay,” she said again. “But things have to change.”

He put the towel aside and stood up. Alert. Wary. “What things?”

Jana got to her feet as well. “First, no more Eli,” she said. “It has to be just you and me. You need to keep him away. Can you do that?”

“I can handle Eli. What else?”

“No more drugs,” she said. “I sleep when I want to sleep, and wake up when I want to wake up.”

He hesitated. Then said, “All right. I guess we could try that.”

“And I don't want to be down there all the time in the dark. I want light. And I want to come out here, every day.”

She saw at once that she had pushed too far. Luke set his hands on his hips. “I can't have you out here in the day,” he said. “It's too much of a risk.”

“Every night then. I need to see the sky.”

His dark eyes were on her. Searching. “How do I know you won't try to run?”

She could have lied, but he was shrewd. He would have seen through it.

“You don't,” she said. “But if I try to run, you can kill me.”

He nodded and let his arms relax at his sides. He looked up at the stars and then at her body in the candlelight. He had one last thing to say.

“If you get all that, what do I get in return?”

Jana stood in the pool and smoothed her wet hair away from her forehead. She reached behind her back and unclipped her bra. Shrugged it off, cast it away.

“I stay here,” she said. “Willingly. For as long as you want. And we can see if we still have a spark.”

N
eil Pruett let me borrow his car.

He took some convincing. We stood together on the lawn in front of his brother's house and I explained to him that I thought Frank Moretti had a secret. If I could follow him and find out what it was, it might help me prove that he had framed Gary. It might bring us one step closer to getting Gary released from prison. The problem was that Moretti would recognize my truck. I needed something that would blend into traffic.

Neil looked a little bewildered, but he let me have his keys. I left him the keys to the truck, thinking it would reassure him. He didn't really know me. He might have been wondering, in the back of his mind, if he would ever see me or his car again.

I made it to the police station in the old courthouse downtown at ten minutes after five. The fountain was running in the plaza at the bottom of the courthouse steps. I drove to the parking lot in back. Frank Moretti's black Chevy was nowhere to be seen.

I circled the block and thought about what to do. Moretti might have left just a few minutes ago. Then again, he might not have been here at all. He was a detective; he didn't spend his life behind a desk or knock off at five every day. He could be out talking to a witness right now, or at a crime scene. He could be anywhere.

I began to see the limits of my plan.

I came to the parking lot again as a cop in a patrol car was pulling out. He gave me a steely look as he rolled by. I could find a place to wait or I could keep circling. Maybe Moretti would show up here. Maybe no one would notice that I was staking out the police station.

I made one more trip around the block and then drove north, following the route Moretti had taken two days ago. The streets were full of commuters heading home. I left downtown behind and found Turin Road. I saw familiar markers: the Knights of Columbus Hall, the veterinary hospital, the canoe livery, the day care center where the young cop had pulled me over.

I used the day care's horseshoe drive to turn around. I went back half a mile and picked out a spot in the parking lot of the veterinary hospital where I could watch the road. It seemed like the best option I had. Moretti had come this way once, at about this time of day. Maybe he would come this way again.

I turned on the radio and settled in to wait. The station that came on was NPR, a natural choice for a schoolteacher like Neil Pruett. Snooty radio, my father would have said. I listened to
All Things Considered
and heard about unrest in Indonesia. After that, there was a report about an economic summit in England, then a retrospective on Frank Sinatra, who had passed away earlier in the week. Then a piece on bears—hibernating bears in Alaska. They were waking up early because of a mild spring.

Bears can sleep for almost half the year, the correspondent said, and yet their muscles don't waste away the way ours would.

It seemed impossible. Maybe there was a scientific explanation, but I don't remember. I tuned out when I saw Frank Moretti drive by in his black Chevy.

•   •   •

I
didn't have to follow him far, maybe four miles. He stayed on Turin Road at first—a public park and a cemetery floating by on our left. I kept him in sight, but there was always at least one car between us.

We came to Stokes Road and he turned west. Blue water stretched out on either side of us. A reservoir. Then houses and a church and a fire station. Then a low stone wall with evergreens growing behind it. Moretti slowed and turned onto a side road that passed through a gap in the wall. To the right of the gap stood a sign that read
SUMMERBROOK MANOR
.

I didn't follow him. I drove another half mile and then looped back. When I came again to the gap in the wall I thought I might find Moretti waiting for me, but he wasn't there. I made the turn and followed the side road up a gentle slope past the evergreen trees. The trees gave way to a broad swath of lawn. There were buildings, but none of them looked like a manor. They were long and narrow, single-story, institutional. There were three of them, arranged like three sides of a square, with a courtyard in the middle.

I parked at a distance from the buildings, as far away from Moretti's car as I could. Which gave me a nice short walk to the courtyard with a breeze at my back and the air smelling of pine needles. On one side of the courtyard an old woman sat in a wheelchair with a blanket over her lap. On the other side a guy with a linebacker's build and a shaved head leaned against a wall drinking a Coke. He wore jeans and a faded green smock that might have been the top of an orderly's uniform.

I gave him a friendly nod and asked, “Is this a nursing home?”

He held the Coke can under his chin and looked me over. “That's not what they call it,” he said. “They call it a continuing care facility.”

“Is that anything like a nursing home?”

“You'd have a hard time telling the difference.”

He spoke in a soft voice, as if he didn't want the old woman to overhear us.

“I might want to look around,” I said. “We're trying to find a place for my grandmother.”

I waited for him to call me out on the lie, but he didn't blink.

“There's a lady you can talk to. She handles intakes.”

“I'd rather look at the grounds first on my own,” I said. “If that's allowed.”

He shrugged. “I won't stop you,” he said. “But don't wander too far.”

I didn't need to. I left the courtyard and made my way around the building on the west side of the square. There were picnic tables and a garden, and beyond the garden the lawn ran down to a winding stream—the brook of Summerbrook Manor. There was a paved path that led down there, wide enough to accommodate two wheelchairs, and at the bottom of the path lay a wooden platform that overlooked the stream. A place where you could sit and take in the view.

Three people on the platform. One of them was Frank Moretti. Another was an African-American woman wearing the same pale green as the linebacker with the shaved head.

The third was a woman in a wheelchair. Not an old woman, not what I would have expected. She had pale skin and dark brown hair. Because of the distance I couldn't be sure of her age, but I would have guessed young. College-student young. About as young as Angela Reese.

I watched them from the top of the path: Moretti chatting with the woman in green, then crouching beside the wheelchair to talk to the brown-haired girl. The girl had a stuffed bear, and Moretti picked it up from her lap, waggled it in the air, and made it talk—the way you would to entertain a child.

After a while the woman in green left them and started up the path. She was on the heavy side and she took it slow. Moretti continued his business with the bear, and when that got old he rolled the girl's wheelchair a little closer to the stream. He pointed out something in the water. He pointed to the clouds in the sky. To a hawk gliding overhead.

When the woman in green reached the top of the path, she was breathing hard. She passed me without a word and went to sit at one of the picnic tables. I gave her a minute to herself, then walked over.

“Nice day,” I said.

She looked up, more at the weather than at me. “Supposed to be a storm later.”

“Really?”

“It's what I heard.”

I moved a step closer. “Mind if I sit?”

She looked up again, took me in this time. Her expression told me she would tolerate my company, even if she didn't welcome it. I sat down.

“I might move my grandmother here,” I said.

“It's a good place.”

“Seems nice. I've been looking around.”

“You go to the office, they'll give you a tour.”

“Maybe I will.”

We spent a quiet moment together. I thought she might leave; she had recovered from her walk up the path. But she stayed and watched me with her hands folded on the table. She had beautiful hands, the nails shaped and painted. A lot of care had gone into those hands. And into her hair as well: it was done up in tightly woven braids. Her face looked as heavy as the rest of her, but there were strong bones underneath. I could see intelligence in her eyes, along with caution and reserve.

“We have a mutual acquaintance,” I said. “Frank Moretti.”

“Is that right?”

“Have you known him long?”

“He's a regular.”

“I was surprised to see him today. I didn't know he came here. That girl he's visiting, she's young.”

“She surely is.”

“Is she his daughter? I didn't know he had a daughter.”

The woman in green didn't answer. Her eyes were steady, her mouth a long neutral line.

“I'd ask him myself, but it might be awkward,” I said. “I don't want to give him the impression that I'm prying into his private life.”

“That
would
be awkward,” she said, “to give him that
impression
.”

“Right.”

“Of course, you could just not pry at all.”

“That's true.”

“Leave everybody with a better
impression
.”

She had smile lines around her eyes, but by then it was clear that she wouldn't be smiling for me. It didn't matter. She didn't have to like me. I brought my wallet out.

“I need to know about the girl,” I said. “Maybe we could help each other.”

I got a smile after all. A weak one. “What's your name?” she said.

“Napoleon Washburn.”

“That's a hell of a name.”

“Some people call me Poe.”

“What are you offering me, Poe?”

I opened my wallet. Laid two twenties and a ten on the table.

The smile went away. Her expression turned stony.

“That's not so much. You know who that man is—Mr. Moretti?”

“I know,” I said, adding another twenty to the pile.

She made no move to take the money. “You ever gamble, Poe?”

“Sure.”

“You know what gamblers do?”

“Tell me.”

“When they're serious, they go all in. You willing to go all in?”

I pulled the rest of the bills from my wallet, showed her there was nothing left.

“All in,” I said.

She unfolded her beautiful hands and stacked the bills in front of her. She didn't count them. She didn't put them away.

“What do you want to know?” she said.

“What's the girl's name? How old is she?”

“Her name is Erin. She's twenty-one.” She took a bill from the top of the stack, tore it in half. “Ask me something else.”

I watched her toss the pieces over her shoulder. They landed in the grass. No change in her stony expression.

We were playing a different game now, not the one I'd counted on. But I needed to see how it ended.

“Is she his daughter?” I said.

“I never saw her birth certificate,” said the woman in green. “I know she calls him Daddy. I know he comes here almost every day. I know she draws him pictures. The pictures are in crayon. They look like the work of a talented three-year-old. Because that's what she is now.”

She tore another bill and tossed it in the grass. “Ask me something else.”

“What happened to her?”

“Car accident. She was seventeen. Happened after midnight on the highway. Car she was riding in crossed over the median, hit a big truck just about head-on. She was in the passenger seat. She was paralyzed from the waist down, suffered a brain injury. Two weeks in a coma.” She tore another bill. “Ask me who was driving.”

“Who was driving?”

“One of her teachers. Ask me why he was cruising around after midnight with a seventeen-year-old girl.”

Her voice had been carefully controlled all along, but now I could hear the anger in it.

“I don't need to,” I said.

“I guess not,” she said. “He died instantly. She's the way she is. She doesn't remember him, most days. She always remembers Mr. Moretti. She misses him when he's not here. Cries every time he leaves.”

“Where's her mother?”

The woman in green gathered the rest of the bills. “She used to come here too, the first year or so. Then it sank in that her daughter wouldn't get any better. Girl was three and would always be three. That's hard. Too hard for Erin's mother. She ran herself a bath and opened up her wrists.”

The woman tore through the bills once, twice. The pieces went over her shoulder and littered the grass.

She said, “Does that answer your questions, Mr. Malone?”

No emphasis on my name. She used it casually.

“Yes, it does,” I said.

“Good. Because that's as much as Mr. Moretti wants you to know. Anything more, you'd have to ask him yourself. And I know he doesn't want to talk to you. You're not his friend.”

“No.”

She looked around at the garden. Nothing blooming yet but a few crocuses. “I believe I'm his friend,” she said. “He treats me that way.” She looked back at me and her voice fell—a way to make me pay attention. “He's the gentlest man I've ever met, but I don't like to think what might happen if you came here again, if you tried to approach Erin or speak to her.”

“I won't,” I said.

“Or if you did anything at all that might disturb her life here, or expose her to unwanted attention.”

“I understand.”

“Good. You can go now.”

She glanced over my shoulder and beckoned to someone there. I turned to see the guy with the shaved head walking toward us. The linebacker.

“This is Karl,” said the woman in green. “Karl, this is David Malone. His visit is over. He's leaving.”

She didn't rise. A breeze came up and drifted the torn bills over the lawn. Down on the platform by the stream, Frank Moretti was reprising his routine with the toy bear. I went with Karl. He had four inches on me and about thirty pounds. He didn't take me by the arm, but I knew he was there.