The Long and Faraway Gone (23 page)

Lacey had always been skinny. Now she was so gaunt she looked like a dead leaf, golden and brittle. Genevieve said once that Lacey looked like the caged capuchin monkey in the play area at Tammy-­Linn's, a children's-­clothing shop that used to be in Northpark Mall. Not to be cruel, just as an observation. Lacey's best feature, Genevieve always said, was her blow job.

But Lacey wasn't, at age forty-­four, unattractive. Her big eyes were the dark, pretty brown of old glass. She wore a gorgeous linen jacket.

Julianna was glad she'd never known what Genevieve said behind
her
back. Genevieve had said plenty to her face. She said Julianna, awkward at age twelve, was built like something the stoners in metal shop had welded together as a joke.

Oh, my God, Genevieve was so hilarious.

Julianna had last seen Lacey almost fifteen years ago, during the wilderness between college and nursing school. That had been Julianna's first systematic attempt to make sense of her sister's case. She begged, and finally Lacey agreed to get together for a drink. Lacey stayed for exactly five minutes, told Julianna nothing she hadn't already told the police in 1986, and was a total bitch, as usual, from beginning to end. She'd ordered a champagne cocktail, the most expensive drink on the menu, and left Julianna with the check.

“Because it needs to be a good cause
and
a fun night out, you know?” one of the women at the table was saying.

“We could do, like, a step-­and-­repeat wall, with photographers, when ­people arrive,” Lacey said. “Like at a movie premiere?”

“Lacey?” Julianna said.

Lacey glanced up at her without recognition. A smile with that familiar curl to her lip.
Who the fuck are you?

“Yes?” she said.

“Julianna. Genevieve's sister.”

Lacey stood up and opened her arms. Julianna had no choice but to hug her. It was like hugging a bag of golf clubs.

“Julianna! It's so nice to see you.” She turned to the other women. “Girls, this is a friend of mine from way back.”

“I need to talk to you,” Julianna said.

Ah. There they were: the startled eyes of a caged capuchin monkey. Lacey strained to maintain her expression of delighted surprise. The other women at the table sipped wine and appraised Julianna, appraised her Gap jeans.

“I'm in the middle of something right now, Juli,” Lacey said. “Why don't we make a date for later?”

A date for never,
in other words. And,
How the fuck, by the way, did you find me?

Julianna turned to the other women and smiled back at them.

“Lacey and my sister were best friends. They used to party like crazy. How much coke did you guys do, Lace? It's amazing you're not dead.”

A nervous titter or two. This being Oklahoma City, odds were that at least a ­couple of the women at the table were married to megachurch pastors. Julianna locked eyes with Lacey.

“Did you ever know,” Julianna said, “what Genni used to say your best feature was?”

Lacey's grip tightened around Julianna's wrist. “Let me walk you out,” she said.

“So nice to meet you,” Julianna told the women at the table.

In the lobby, a private corner tucked away from the elevators, Lacey wheeled on her. “What is your
problem
?” she said.

For an instant, Julianna felt like she was twelve years old again, with Lacey lounging lazily on Genevieve's bed and spitting venom at Julianna for sport. The flood of pure, sweet joy was so overwhelming that Julianna almost burst into tears.

She managed to hold herself together. “I need to know exactly what you saw that night.”

Lacey didn't ask which night. Julianna would have slapped her if she had.

“I already told you,” Lacey said. “I told the police. I told them like a million times. Why?”

“Just tell me,” Julianna said. “Tell me everything,
exactly.
Lacey. The last time you saw Genni, on the midway, what was she wearing?”

“What was she wearing? You know what she was wearing. What is
wrong
with you?”

Lacey turned and started to walk away. Julianna grabbed her arm. Lacey's eyes bulged.

The last time Julianna had seen Genevieve, she'd been wearing jeans and her favorite
BORN IN THE USA
T-­shirt. Julianna could
see
that T-­shirt. She had described it in detail for the police. But while the days in September were hot, the nights could turn chilly. That particular Saturday night was chilly. When Julianna first saw the photo of the girl by the fountain, hugging herself, the girl she'd thought for an instant was Genevieve, Julianna had remembered sitting alone on the curb in front of the rodeo arena, the wind biting. Their mother had insisted she bring a sweater, but she didn't want to look dorky—­the sweater tied around her waist all day—­so she'd left it in Genevieve's Cutlass.

“Let go of me,” Lacey hissed. She yanked her arm free and started to walk away again.

Julianna stepped in front of her. She kept her voice calm. “I will make your life a nightmare, you stupid bitch. Do you think I'm kidding? If you don't give me five minutes, right now, I'll make sure your husband and your daughter and every person you know finds out exactly what a coke-­snorting slut you were in high school.”

Lacey stared at her with a degree of loathing that Julianna wasn't sure she'd ever encountered before. “What do you want?” she said.

“When you saw Genni the last time,” Julianna said, “did she have a sweater? I can't remember if she brought a sweater. I never told the police that maybe she'd brought a sweater with her that day.”

“I guess so. Yeah.”

“Did you tell the police that?”

“She wasn't wearing it. She just had it tied around her waist.”

Because Genevieve never had to worry about looking like a dork. A sweater tied around her waist would only make her, magically, even more desirable.

She had two lightweight wool V-­necks that she'd been wearing that autumn. One was navy, the other caramel-­colored.

“You didn't tell the police she had a sweater?”

“Why would I?”

“You stupid bitch,” Julianna said. But
she
was the stupid bitch here, not Lacey. Julianna was the one who'd described Genevieve's
BORN IN THE USA
T-­shirt to the police with such precise detail. She was the one who'd told them Genevieve was wearing that T-­shirt when she vanished.

But it was already chilly by the time Genevieve had left Crowley's trailer. Which meant she would have pulled her sweater on. That was why she'd brought it with her, after all. Her navy or brown sweater, pulled on
over
the white
BO
RN IN THE USA
T-­shirt. Which meant there was no way Genevieve could have been the girl the rancher's wife from Okeene had seen on Food Alley.

Lacey stepped closer. “Now, listen to me,” she said.

Julianna shoved her away. Lacey stumbled backward and almost fell. A security guard on the other side of the lobby glanced over. Julianna walked quickly toward the exit. When she got to her car, in the garage, her hands were shaking so badly she could barely dial her phone.

DeMars didn't answer. Julianna drove to his house. She'd been there two or three times over the years. DeMars lived in a beautiful old Tudor not far from the State Capitol, the nicest neighborhood in the part of the city—­east of Lincoln, north of downtown—­that Julianna's mother had always called “Colored Town.” Everyone had, back then, unless they called it something even worse.

There were several cars in the driveway, including DeMars's forest green Subaru. Julianna relaxed, a little. He was home. She rang the bell. After a minute the door flew open. A dark-­skinned teenage girl with elaborately coiled and plaited hair stood there, tugging on the hem of her shimmering gold dress. Mayla, DeMars's daughter. Her smile, when she saw Julianna, turned quizzical.

“Hi!” she said. “Are you here for the party?”

The party. Her fourteenth birthday. Julianna remembered now that DeMars had mentioned it. When had he mentioned it? That evening seemed like a hundred years ago.

“Can I talk to your dad?” she said.

“Sure. Come on in. He's around here somewhere.”

Julianna moved through the living room, where the older partygoers were gathered. Aunts and uncles, friends of DeMars and his wife—­chatting and drinking, dressed to the nines. Most of them were black, but not all. A few ­people glanced curiously at Julianna as she passed. She ignored them. In the family room, a group of teenage girls shared a karaoke microphone and belted out a Beyoncé song that Julianna recognized but didn't know the name of.

DeMars was in the kitchen, brushing barbecue sauce onto a platter of chicken breasts. He grooved his shoulders to the faint beat of the Beyoncé song from down the hallway. He did a snappy little half spin every time he reached over to dip the brush into the bowl.

He looked up and saw her. “Juli,” he said. “You all right?”

“He doesn't have an alibi,” she said.

“What?”

“Crowley. He doesn't have an alibi. Abigail Goad never saw Genevieve that night.”

DeMars wiped his hands on a towel and came around to the other side of the butcher-­block island. She could tell he was measuring twice. Trying to find the words with the right fit.

“This isn't a good time, Juli,” he said. “Mayla's birthday party. You can see that.”

“Listen to me, DeMars. The girl in the photo was wearing a white T-­shirt. That's what the police thought Genni was wearing. That's who—­” Julianna stopped herself. She knew she wasn't making any sense. She had to be precise or she'd blow this. “DeMars. I told the detectives that Genni was wearing a white T-­shirt. But she'd brought a sweater with her. I forgot about the sweater. It would have been navy or brown. That night when it turned chilly, Genni would have been wearing the sweater over her T-­shirt. Do you see? She—­”

“Juli,” DeMars said. “Stop now.”

“Abigail Goad never saw Genni,” Julianna said. “So the last ­people who ever saw her alive—­it was Lacey, and the kid who sold corn dogs on the midway. They saw her
before
she went to Crowley's trailer. No one ever saw her
after
he was arrested. He doesn't have an alibi.”

“Have something to eat. Say hello to Angela. Sit down and have something to eat. We can talk about all this tomorrow.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. The gentle father. She shrugged his hand off. She didn't need the gentle father right now. Or ever. She needed the focused fucking homicide detective
.

“No! We can't. Crowley is leaving town tomorrow. You have to arrest him. Or at least hold him for questioning. I'm meeting him tonight. He admitted he was lying before, that Genni
did
come to his trailer.”

“You got in touch with him?”

“Yes.”

DeMars studied her. The warmth in his eyes was gone. “What do you think you doing, Juli?”

“Your job,” she said. “The job you should be doing.”

It was a weak shot. He didn't even flinch.

“You coming apart, Juli,” he said. “Only so many times you can do that before you don't never come back together.”

Mayla, the daughter, popped her head into the kitchen. “Daddy!” she said. “Mama says she wants to know where her about-­to-­be ex-­husband's gone and got to. She said to say those words exactly. Hi again.”

“Happy birthday,” Julianna said.

“Thank you.”

“I'll be there in two shakes, baby,” DeMars said. “Ask your mama if she divorces me, then who gonna be her body-­and-­fender man?”

“Dad-­
dy
!”

DeMars took the platter of chicken in one hand and Julianna's elbow in the other. He steered her out through the French doors, onto the big wooden deck in back. A trio of slinky teenage boys nosing around the smoky grill quickly slunk back inside.

“DeMars,” Julianna said. “Listen to me. Crowley admitted he was lying. He admitted she came to his trailer. And he doesn't have an alibi. You have to question him.”

She wished he understood that she'd come apart long ago. That this was her only chance to be made whole again.

He lifted the hood of the grill. He moved the sausage aside and loaded in the chicken breasts. He wouldn't look at her. She knew then it was hopeless.

“Where you meeting him?” DeMars said. Wanting to know so he could stop her. “What time?”

Julianna realized that this would probably be the last time she ever saw him, this man who'd been a part of her life for so long, who'd genuinely cared for her. That was his only mistake.

She started walking away, back toward the house.

“Juli!” he called.

“Thank you for everything,” she said.

 

T
hat summer, that August, it stayed hot long after the sun went down—­it stayed hot all night long. You stepped out of the air-­conditioned mall, at midnight or one o'clock in the morning, and the heat fell on you like a fat drunk in a bar.

Nobody on the crew had access to a swimming pool. So after work on the hottest of the hot nights, everyone would drive out to one of the apartment complexes on Hefner, scale a fence, and splash around until the manager or a security guard ran them off. Some nights no one ran them off. They'd have chicken fights in the deep end and then sprawl on the pebbled concrete apron of the pool, exhausted, enjoying the chlorine tingle and the buzz of cheap whiskey.

There was something beautiful and mysterious about a pool at night—­the only light in the darkness, a glowing green jewel.

Wyatt lay in his hotel bed, almost fully awake but not quite yet, and remembered the night after he and Theresa first had sex. Everybody at the pool, the stars above. This was an apartment complex they'd been chased from before, so Grubb's boom box was turned low—­Run–D.M.C.'s
Raising Hell,
which O'Malley had picked up at Rainbow Records in exchange for a movie pass.

Melody wanted to hear some Prince. Karlene complained that her skin always smelled like popcorn. She said that when she finally got to Hawaii, she was never going to go near popcorn again. Theresa did a handstand underwater. Her long hair billowed around her head like dark liquid. O'Malley suggested that they could torment Mr. Bingham by unscrewing the peephole in the office door and reversing it. They would be able, O'Malley said, to watch Mr. Bingham like he was a fish in an aquarium. An ugly fish, Karlene said. A stupid fish, Grubb said. Janella said Mr. Bingham might be stupid, but even he would eventually figure out that the peephole had been reversed. O'Malley agreed but said it would be fun while it lasted.

Wyatt didn't know which side of grief was worse. The feeling that these ­people had always been in his life and were now gone or the feeling that they'd never really been there at all.

Theresa had climbed out of the swimming pool, sleek and glittering. Janella handed her the bottle of whiskey. Theresa took a sip and carried the bottle over to Wyatt. When she sat down next to him, when she rested her head against his shoulder, everyone stared. Grubb almost fell off the diving board. Wyatt tried to be cool. He took a long drink and counted the stars.

He knew that O'Malley was watching him. Wyatt took another drink and glanced over. O'Malley arched an eyebrow and gave Wyatt a nod of approval.

“Well done, Heinz,” O'Malley told Wyatt later, when the sky was turning gray in the east and they were all straggling back to the cars. “I can always say I knew you when.”

That had been, possibly, the best moment of Wyatt's life. The best moment of the best night of the best year of his life. The only year, he sometimes felt, of his life.

Now his alarm went off. He knocked back a ­couple of painkillers—­his knee looked like an exotic overripe fruit you'd buy at an Asian market—­and called Dixon, Lyle Finn's manager.

“Oh, man,” Dixon said when he answered, “you really scared the shit out of Lyle last night.”

“I need the names of all the groupies who hang out at the warehouse.”

“He won't tell me what happened. What happened? He said it was the worst Halloween since he was twelve and his mother told him he was too old to go trick-­or-­treating anymore. I'm not making that up.”

“Can you get me their names?”

Silence. “I don't need to call a lawyer, do I?”

“No,” Wyatt said. “I think you were right about Lyle. I don't think he's got anything to do with it. But I need the names. First and last. I need to run background checks on everyone.”

“Okay. Sure. It could take me a day or two. They kind of come and go.”

“That's fine. Thanks.”

Wyatt hung up and dialed his contact at the
Daily Oklahoman.

“What?” Bill Haskell said.

“Bill,” Wyatt said, “this is your old friend Wyatt Rivers, the private investigator.”

“What do you want now?”

“Nothing. I'm taking the morning off and want to pay my debts. How about I buy you breakfast?”

Haskell grunted skeptically, but he was a newspaperman—­a free meal was a free meal.

“Cattlemen's,” he said. “Twenty minutes. It's down in Stockyards City. You need the address?”

“I'll find it,” Wyatt said, and waited for Haskell to grunt skeptically again. He did.

Wyatt got dressed and jumped on the Lake Hefner Parkway. He hadn't been down to the stockyards since he was nine or ten years old, a school field trip. Stockyards City drew a few tourists, but it was also a working livestock market, gritty and authentic in the way Bricktown, with all its frat-­rat bars, wasn't. Down here you could buy a wide-­brim straw Stetson at Shorty's Caboy Hattery or, on auction days, a few hundred head of Angus.

Cattlemen's was an old steak house on the main drag, a ­couple of blocks from the maze of holding pens. At eight in the morning, only the diner side of the restaurant was open. Paneled walls, blood-­colored leather booths, the rush of bacon grease and black coffee when you stepped inside—­a time-­traveling cattle buyer from 1950, from 1930, would feel right at home.

Wyatt had no trouble recognizing Bill Haskell. He was the heavyset guy at the counter, suspenders and a breast pocket full of pens, a tight, tiny mouth like the beak of a snapping turtle. Only the absence of an old-­school felt fedora disappointed Wyatt.

Haskell glanced over when Wyatt sat down, an action that took more shifting and squinting and beak snapping than Wyatt would have thought possible. Haskell was a little younger than Wyatt had expected—­mid-­sixties.

“You're late,” Haskell said.

The waitress filled Wyatt's coffee mug. He glanced at the plastic menu.

“Biscuits and gravy,” he said. “Two eggs over easy and a side of bacon. No, make that sausage patties. No, make it bacon and sausage both. And a paramedic standing by.”

Haskell gave a curt nod. Wyatt had passed the test.

“A place like this,” Haskell said, “you don't order granola and yogurt.”

Wyatt's phone rang. Chip. Wyatt put the phone back in his pocket. He took a sip of coffee and looked around. “So what's the story with this place?”

He knew the story but suspected that Haskell would relish the telling of it.

“Opened 1910, three years after statehood,” Haskell said. “In 1945 the owner, Hank Frey, got in a dice game at the old Biltmore Hotel downtown with a rancher named Gene Wade. Frey bet his restaurant against Wade's life savings that Wade wouldn't roll a hard six. A pair of threes. Wade rolled them and won himself a restaurant.”

“Now, that's a story,” Wyatt said.

“Oklahoma has a fascinating history. Bloodthirsty Comanche war parties. Ruthless outlaws who fled to the Indian Territory to escape the long arm of the law. Wildcatters and gamblers, boomers and sooners. You might be surprised to learn that Oklahoma City is the final resting place of the man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.”

Wyatt hadn't really been listening until then. He glanced up from his coffee.

“The man who killed the who?”

“That's exactly how the headstone reads.
Sic erat scriptum.
‘The man who killed the man who killed Jesse James.' Edward O'Kelley. He's buried in Fairlawn Cemetery on Western Avenue.
Jesse
is spelled incorrectly, with an ‘i.' ”

The waitress brought their food. Haskell had ordered a bowl of granola and yogurt.

“My daughter wants me to live long enough to play with my grandchildren,” he said. “So she claims. I come here for the memories.”

“And the smell.”

“And the smell.”

Haskell measured out exactly half a teaspoon of sugar and tipped it into his coffee.

“Tell me something, Bill,” Wyatt said. “Do you remember those killings that happened at the movie theater way back when?”

“Of course I do. The old Pheasant Run Twin in the old Pheasant Run Mall. My wife and I went on one of our very first dates at that theater, right after it first opened.
Logan's Run.
The theater closed immediately after the crime, the mall shortly thereafter.”

“Were you on the story?”

“I wasn't one of the lead reporters. No. But it was all hands on deck. I covered the OSBI press conferences. I spent more time sleeping on the sofa at OSBI headquarters than I did in my own bed.”

“The police, the OSBI, they decided the killers got into the theater because an employee neglected to lock one of the back exit doors. Correct?”

“One of the theater ushers. Correct. If memory serves, he left the door ajar when he took the garbage out.”

Haskell had finished his granola and yogurt. He studied his empty bowl. He looked hungrier now than when he'd started eating.

“And the killers snuck in,” Wyatt said. “That was the only possible explanation. There were no signs of forced entry. The front doors were locked.”

“If memory serves. Yes. You know, one of the killers used a gun loaded with bullets called wadcutters. That's always stuck with me. It's odd, the details one remembers.”

Wyatt took a ­couple of bites of his biscuits and gravy and then pushed the food around on his plate. He tried to look at the evidence with clear eyes, a skeptical head. There was the possibility that Grubb, when he came back inside after dumping the trash, had failed to pull the exit door all the way shut. But really that
wasn't
a possibility. The exit doors were designed to swing shut and lock on their own—­that's why you had to prop them open. And anyway, the doormen always yanked the doors shut behind them, always, as hard as they could, because the boom annoyed the shit out of Mr. Bingham. It was a central pleasure of the job.

The only other entrance to the theater was the glass front doors that led from the theater to the rest of the mall. And Mr. Bingham was a fanatic about locking those as soon as the last customer was gone. Wyatt had watched him do it a million times. Two different keys on the ring, one for the top dead bolt, one for the bottom.
Snap. Snap.

The locks were security double dead bolts. The front doors were
glass.
So even if the killers had tried to pick the locks, they would have been completely exposed the entire time. The only way the killers came through those doors was if they had their own set of keys. But if they had their own set of keys, how did they get them? Was it possible the killers had an accomplice the police knew nothing about, someone who worked at the movie theater but hadn't been there when the robbery went down?

An inside man.

Haskell eyed Wyatt's plate. Wyatt nudged it toward him. Haskell selected a strip of bacon.

“If you insist,” Haskell said.

“I have a favor to ask, Bill,” Wyatt said.

“Gambling in Casablanca? I'm shocked.” But Haskell helped himself to another strip of Wyatt's bacon. He removed, from his back pocket, a spiral reporter's notebook almost identical to the one Wyatt carried. “What now?”

“Do you know any of the investigators who were on the movie-­theater case?” Wyatt said. “OSBI or OCPD. Someone I could get more information from.”

Haskell glanced up. Surprised. “What's this have to do with your Land Run case?”

“I'm just curious,” Wyatt said. He had the lie all lined up and ready to go. “I think there might be a book in it.”

Haskell grunted. “Just what the world needs.”

“Another writer.”

“If you have a day or two, I can share my own bitter experiences with the publishing industry.”

“Don't make me beg, Bill.”

Haskell helped himself to Wyatt's last strip of bacon.

“Carl Friendly was killed in the Murrah bombing,” he said. “He was the lead investigator on the OSBI side. Jack Siddell with the OCPD died a few years ago. His heart. A surprise to all who knew him, that he had one. Randy Plunkett. No. Let me think.”

Wyatt didn't remember Carl Friendly or Randy Plunkett. The only detective from that time he remembered with any clarity was Jack Siddell. The acne scars, the cold, hoarse voice. Jack Siddell, who'd demanded to know why Wyatt thought he was still there and all the others gone. But who also, once near the end of the investigation, after Wyatt had been unable to identify the three dead killers, hesitated at the door on his way out. Maybe Jack Siddell didn't have a heart, but he'd met Wyatt's father, he'd met Wyatt's mother. He'd been there to see Wyatt painted with the blood and brains of his friends.

“You can't think about it, son,” he said. “It won't do you any good.”

Why am I still here and all the others gone?

“Think hard, Bill,” Wyatt said. “Who can give me the inside skinny on the investigation?”

How late was too late to move on with your life? What if, after all these years, there was someone—­
an inside man
—­who might be able to answer the question Wyatt had been buried beneath for the past twenty-­six years?

“I suppose Brett Williams might be willing talk to you,” Haskell said finally.

“Can you set it up for me? Pave the way?”

You would have thought, from how Haskell grunted and sighed and tightened the beak of his mouth, that Wyatt had asked him to hoist both Sisyphus and boulder upon his back and carry them up the hill.

“I suppose,” he said.

W
YATT PICKED THE
public library on Villa—­the Belle Isle branch, just a few miles from the Pheasant Run Mall, on the opposite side of the neighborhood where he had grown up.

A librarian showed him to the dusty old microfiche readers. Wyatt sat down and loaded the first reel of film. The librarian lingered.