Unknown Means (21 page)

“We have to explore all possibilities. Would Frances and Grace visit each other?”

“Not that I recall.” What had occurred immediately to Barbara came a bit more slowly to Markham. “She was murdered too? And you think it’s the same guy?”

“We’re going to find out.”

William Markham settled back into his chair. “Man, that would be great.”

David stared at him.

“What do you expect me to say? After all”—he beamed at his new fiancée—“honesty is our policy now.”

C H A P T E R

18

THE SWELLING’S GONE DOWN,” ROBERT TOLD EVELYN

as they stood outside Marissa’s hospital room. The young woman’s fiancé even had some color back in his face. “We’re hoping to remove the breathing tube tomorrow.”

Evelyn breathed a sigh of relief. Once the sedatives wore off and Marissa regained consciousness, maybe she could answer some questions. Evelyn doubted the girl would remember much about the attack, but perhaps she could shed some light on Mark Sargeant. Not that Evelyn would stop probing—she had no intention of waiting a whole day. “I’m glad. Robert, did she ever talk about doing an internship in pathology at Butterfly Babies and Children’s?”

The relaxation flushed out of his body. “She mentioned it once or twice.”

“What’s the matter? She didn’t like it?”

“She said the lab director was a creep. That’s all she’d say, creep, quote unquote.” The memory obviously troubled him, and he kept his voice low. Mama Gonzalez stood at the nurses’ station, fifteen feet away, letting the sympathetic women ply her with coffee and cookies. Or perhaps he didn’t want the sleeping Marissa to pick up his words.

“But you think there was more to it?”

“She didn’t say. But we don’t have secrets between us, so I’m sure she would have told me if it were important.”

“Has she been planning to donate to the hospital? Or you? Were you thinking of taking a position there?”

“The idea crosses my mind now and then, usually when my bank account seems less than healthy. They’re a great facility, but I’m happy here.”

“Okay. I’m going to go hold her hand for a minute, then I have to go. The cop has been good about standing guard? Where is he now?”

“He’s taking a bathroom break while I’m here.”

“Just don’t leave her on her own.”

The young doctor gave her a dead-tired smile. “She’ll never be on her own. But, Evelyn?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t fall asleep.”

She chewed a fingernail. “Absolutely not.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER she crossed the parking lot in a driving rain. No secrets, Robert had said.

You sweet, naive boy. Everyone has secrets.

He’d also said Marissa would not be alone. According to David, neither would Evelyn, if she chose to have him move in. She stepped back from a passing car, avoiding the splash of rainwater from its tires.

Trouble was, she kind of liked it . . . running her home the way she wanted, paying the bills she chose to create, scheduling her time off without someone else’s approval. Was this independent? Or selfish, set in her ways? Did she really want to be alone for the rest of her life, with no one but the cat and the TV set and maybe pictures of grandchildren for company?

“Didn’t your mother ever teach you to come in out of the rain?”

She turned. David stood there, getting wet.

“I figured you’d stop here on the way home from the lab. We need to talk.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “We do.”

“Mind if we do it somewhere drier?”

“That sounds like a terrific idea.” She moved up to meet him, sliding one arm around him, holding up the umbrella with the other, and they kissed as if they had not seen each other in eight weeks instead of eight hours. Rain soaked his hair, and the water made the decomp smell waft up from her lab coat. A laid-out SUV

in a handicapped parking space began to beep at them to move out of the way, and still Evelyn felt it was the most romantic moment in her life to date. She wanted to collapse into his arms and never leave.

She would have promised him anything.

“Actually,” he said when they finally moved to let the car back out, “I meant we need to compare notes on Grace and Frances. But that can wait.”

“It can, indeed.”

THEY DID NOT discuss either Grace and Frances’s killer or their future together. They did not discuss much of anything at all.

David’s dog, Harry, woke her by licking her toes. She went from pleasant slumber to sweating panic in less than two seconds.

“What time is it?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s almost ten—I have to go! Angel’s going to wonder where the hell I am.” She gathered her things so quickly that Harry began to bounce around, expecting a walk or at least some form of exercise. “I can’t believe I fell asleep.”

“Yeah, for two hours. You haven’t slept in over two days, Evelyn, and neither have I.”

“I know, but I still have to go home. As soon as you and Riley

run down the reports on those five rapes, can you bring them by the office? We could sit down and talk over everything we have. Now I really have to go.”

David sat up, rubbing one eye. “Okay, I’ll drive you.”

“What?”

“You left your car at the hospital, remember?”

“Crap!” She pulled her coat on, snagging a finger on the sleeve cuff. “Okay, then. Come on.”

He stood up, wearily stretching. “Geesh, Evelyn, relax. She’s seventeen years old.”

After three days without sleep, she did not have the patience to keep a frigid tone from her words. “You don’t have to tell me how old my daughter is.”

“Okay,” he grumbled. “Fine.”

EVELYN HUNG UP her coat and emptied out her lunch bag, fed the cat, and folded the laundry. All the little things that held her life together. “You didn’t have to follow me home.”

“I didn’t feel like being alone tonight,” David said, drinking a beer at her kitchen table. “And I’m betting you don’t either. So where is she?”

“She’s supposed to be home by nine-thirty. It’s a school night.

She’s usually good about it—beauty rest and all.”

From the garage she heard the cat meow, and then the door burst open. Angel and Steve came in with their arms around each other, and Evelyn instantly saw the problem.

Angel staggered more than walked, and clung to the boy for support. Steve seemed steady, though damn startled to see David there. Evelyn did not introduce them.

“Hi, Mom!” her daughter said brightly. “Shorry we’re—sorry we’re late.” She drew herself up to her full height, made direct eye contact albeit with reddened eyes, and enunciated her words with

such care that it would have been funny under other circumstances.

“I know it’s a school night.”

Not for the first time, Evelyn wondered what sort of fantasy world she had been living in when she named her daughter Angel.

“You’ve been drinking.”

“No! Um—I wasn’t. It’s just—”

Evelyn turned her attention to the young man with the baggy pants and that ridiculous nose stud. At least he had the grace to look sheepish, unless it had been planned along with the direct looks and the respectful tone. “On the way home from the library we stopped at Don McAfee’s house. He had a spur-of-the-moment party because his parents, um, weren’t around.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She did not recognize the name. Angel was making all sorts of new friends.

“He gave Angel a beer.”

A beer, as in singular. And I’m sure he simply forced it on her.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Then I figured I’d better drive her home.”

Evelyn sorted through several scenarios. One, Steve knew exactly what his buddy Don had planned for the evening. Free beer, no supervision, partly empty house . . . and had plied her daughter with alcohol, preparatory to peeling off her clothes. Angel’s clothing seemed in order, but the sober Steve would have had the presence of mind to see to that. Two, Angel, underweight and unused to drink, had gotten utterly silly on exactly one beer, and Steve had been enough of a gentleman to drive her home . . . if not enough of one to drive her home on time.

From the corner of her eye, she saw David open his mouth, so she preempted him. “It’s time for you to go home, Steve.”

Despite her cold tone, he grinned with palpable relief, and got while the getting was good.

Angel swayed slightly. “I didn’t think you’d be home.”

Evelyn deflected the guilt reflex and counterattacked. “Come off

it, Angel. I miss two meals and I’m an absentee parent? You really think that’s going to work?”

“It’s been more than two.”

“I know what you mean,” David muttered from behind them.

Evelyn turned her head toward him. “It’s time for you to go home too.”

“This is my home. At least I thought that was the plan.”

“That was your plan,” she said before she could stop herself.

Angel turned, one hand on the wall. “I’m going to bed.”

“Good idea. And by the way, you’re grounded for the next month.”

“A month! What about the spring formal?”

“Tough.”

“You can’t do that!”

“This way you’ll think before you act next time. I’m supposed to do that. It’s my job.”

“You’re job is working with dead people,” Angel wailed. “And I’m not dead!”

“And I want you to stay that way. Don’t you get that?”

“By locking me up?” Angel’s wavering gaze swiveled around to David. “Isn’t a month ridiculous? It’s not like I’m freebasing crack.”

“She’s got a point,” he said to Evelyn. “We did the same thing at her age.”

She looked at him, feeling as though she’d never seen him before. “How would you know what I did at her age? And you,” she added to her daughter, “go to bed.”

Angel crossed her arms, wavering. “You are not grounding me.”

“Want to bet?”

For a moment, Evelyn thought her daughter might walk out. She could; she had money, friends, and a father to go to. Evelyn would not have been able to stop it. Beads of cold sweat pricked her skin.

But weariness and perhaps an attack of self-reproach won out,

and Angel whirled so fast she lost her balance and thudded up the stairs. Evelyn listened to the squeak of the bedsprings as Angel’s dead weight collapsed across them. Only then did she turn to David.

“Don’t ever side with my daughter against me.”

David slid his empty bottle to the center of the table, gently but pointedly. “We all tried beer in high school. They’re drinking it in grade school these days.”

“And what happened? We got in trouble. That’s what happens when parents give a crap. I know you want to get in good with my daughter before moving in, but this is not the way to do it.”

He stood, scraping the chair legs along the tile. “This isn’t some power play, Evelyn. I just happen to think you’re wrong. Kids respond better if you’re truthful with them.”

“You don’t even have kids, David. What the hell do you know about raising them?”

He let that sink in on the way to the door. “Thanks. It’s nice to feel valued.”

“This has nothing to do with value. You can’t expect to have an equal say in raising my child, David. You simply can’t.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, you’re a little past the raising stage.

She’s almost a woman. And you can’t expect me to become part of this family and then sit quietly and keep my thoughts to myself.

That’s not going to happen.”

But that was what she wanted, she realized. She wanted David close to her, inside her household, without disturbing one iota of its dynamics, and that would not be possible. In frustration she countered: “No one’s holding a gun to your head.”

“Hell.” He pulled the door open. “No one’s even leaving a light on.”

The wall shook as the door slammed. Evelyn locked it and turned out the kitchen light, wishing she could disappear into the darkness like a wisp of fog. She had gone through a difficult divorce

to get her autonomy back and could not share it with anyone. But without David she had nothing to look forward to but an ordered, dedicated existence with a pool of loneliness at its core.

Abruptly she realized her feet were cold and she needed to get an empty wastebasket to put beside Angel’s bed in case of a nighttime emergency. Perhaps she could garner a few more details at the same time. The testimony of a person under the influence might be inad-missible according to the rules of law, but it wasn’t according to the rules of parenting.

Upstairs, she found Angel gazing at the ceiling, the light still on, as if expecting her. Without turning her head she said, “David’s moving in?”

C H A P T E R

19

YOU’RE IN EARLY,” MRS. ANDERSON SNAPPED AT

her. “I haven’t even had my first coffee yet and you’re prancing through the lobby like a human alarm clock.”

“I couldn’t sleep.” Evelyn slid her buff-colored time card into the slot to receive its stamp, feeling the thump vibrate through the piece of heavy paper. “I wound up talking to my daughter for half the night and staring into the darkness for the other half. I got an hour or two, so I should feel better.”

“Should being the operative word?”

“I think my brain has stripped a gear—it keeps turning and turning without doing anything.”

“It just needs oil,” the older woman said. “I recommend South-ern Comfort.”

Evelyn walked up the three squat floors to the lab, turned on the lights, and started the coffee. Then she filled up the FTIR with liquid nitrogen and pulled out the four sets of crayons she had bought on her way to the hospital yesterday afternoon. Crayola dominated the market, but she had found other brands: Rose Art, Creative Crayons, and Bic, as in Bic pens.

These crayons consisted mostly of paraffin wax and pigment.

She ignored the pigments, since such a range of colors existed, and