Whatever Remains (15 page)

             
“Don’t go inside. I’ll be up in a minute,” he said, and disconnected.

             
He waited until the taillights of Alicia’s Subaru flicked on and she’d backed up and turned around, was heading for the road before he slid out of the Charger and started up the drive through the toss of shadow. Jade was still there, porch light pouring a halo all around her, glinting off her dark waves of hair. But she wasn’t alone. Jeremy, in jeans and some kind of librarian sweater, stood on the step in front of her, glass of wine in one hand, free arm banded loosely across his middle.

             
“What is it they call detectives?” he asked. “Dicks? Right?”

             
“I bet they do in your favorite kind of porn,” Ben said, and brushed past him.

             
“Another gay joke. Original. Your boy’s the essence of creativity, Jade.”

             
Jade lifted her chin as Ben stopped in front of her, his shadow falling across her face. “He’s not my boy.”

             
“Yeah, you like to remind me of that. Here.” He offered his arm in a mock-gallant gesture. “Take a walk with me.”

             
“I wouldn’t,” Jeremy said.

             
“Shut him up,” Ben told her, sweetly, “or I will.”

             
He’d thought she’d been the easiest thing in the world to read – a children’s book with super big print – but that had been before; before she’d put a sonogram picture in his hands and he’d torn it to pieces. Now, he watched the defiant line of her slim throat and couldn’t see her eyes in the dark and had no idea what she would say. She surprised him when she slid her arm through his with a resigned sigh.

             
“I’m fine, Remy. Go inside and see if Mom needs help.”

             
Jeremy pulled a disgusted face. “I swear, if you end up making out with him in his car –  ”

             
“I
won’t
,” she said, and Ben could feel, by the shivering tension in her body, that she meant it.

             
That was okay. He wasn’t here for that. It wasn’t as if he’d hoped that she’d tip her face up and ask him to keep her safe and tell him how empty her bed was…

             
A mental image of Asher McMahon slammed him hard, and he scowled as he towed her down the front steps and around the bend in the walk. When they passed beneath the canopy of shadows, Jade withdrew her arm from his.

             
“What?” she asked. “We couldn’t have just talked over the phone?”

             
“I’m doing you a favor telling you in person.” He heard the bite to his voice and tried to soften it; but now that the film reel was rolling in his head – Jade and her sweaty professor – he couldn’t keep his temper in check. “I’m here off the record,” he said, and thought it didn’t come out as harshly as before. He took a deep breath. “I wanted to give you a heads up before you…heard it somewhere else and jumped to conclusions.”

             
They had halted and Jade was squared off from him, arms folded. In the dark, she was just a narrow hourglass, light from the house backlighting her, slicing at her lean sides and glowing around the flare of her hips. She was beautiful even when he couldn’t make out the details.

             
She made a disapproving sound. “Conclusion-jumping is your thing.”

             
He’d assumed she was just another airhead. He’d assumed she’d tried to trap him with a pregnancy. He’d assumed she didn’t want anything but security from him. He’d assumed keeping away was the only viable option…He’d assumed he was emotionless and uninvolved in the ways that counted.

             
He jumped to lots of conclusions.

             
“It’s about Asher,” he said, voice taking on a real softness.

             
Her head bowed; he heard the soft, silken rustle as the wind caught her hair and he had a fleeting wonder if it still smelled like lavender. “You can’t tell me anything,” she said, tone a challenge. “You can’t give me case details.”

             
“No,” he agreed. “As lead detective on this case, I can’t divulge anything.” Her hair was soft, he remembered, like Clara’s. “But” -  he thought he heard her inhale - “as…” What was he to her? “Clara’s dad,” he finally said, “I can warn you that Asher has some kind of juvie record I’m trying to get into. And we found his prints on Heidi’s coin purse.”

             
He expected an argument. Instead, she released a long, shaky breath. “Are you arresting him?”

             
“I don’t have any grounds…yet. I’m bringing him in tomorrow morning to try and get a confession out of him.”

             
A whippoorwill trilled, and somewhere out in the pasture, another answered it. Ben swore he could feel her shivering three feet away from him.

             
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

             
“I already told you.”

             
“Yeah, I know. And since when do you care how I feel about something?” She said it softly, but it stung.

             
Ben sighed. “Whether we like it or not, we’re family. I’m allowed to look out for the two of you every once in a while.”

             
She hummed a little laugh. “Every once in a while. Ain’t that the truth.”

             
“Jade –  ”

             
“Message received,” she said, turning away from him. “Don’t talk to Asher; don’t let him around Clara. I got it.”

             
“I was gonna say” – she paused, heel of her shoe clipping against the asphalt – “that I’m sorry. I know you liked the guy.”

             
She half-turned, presenting her regal profile etched in golden light from the house. “You’re always sorry, aren’t you?” she mused. “And I’m always gravitating toward toxic men.”

             
Ben stood under the trees and watched her until she was inside the house; he thought he heard the lock click into place. He watched shadows in the windows: Jade and Jeremy and Shannon, and his little Clara.

             
Family.

             
Then he went home to his empty house and the beer Trey had left behind.

11

             
J
ade dreamed of him that night. Long wet grass tangled around her legs and an indigo sky pressed low over her head. Ben’s wide shoulders moved away from her and she ran after him, the rainwater on the seed tops like ice trailing across her skin. She tried to call out to him, but he couldn’t hear, and he kept walking, tripling the distance between them. The field stretched around her in the eerie infinity of dreams. The high whining in her ears was the panic of nightmares.

             
She woke twisted up in her sheets, panting, pajamas glued to her skin. “Damn,” she whispered to herself as her eyes adjusted to the blackness of her room.

             
She lay for a long time, thinking about him, replaying memories better left forgotten. The sharp bark of his laugh. The rough stubble on his chin as he kissed her temple. The smell of his skin. His knotted shoulders beneath her hands and his hips kissing bruises against her thighs when he was inside her. She hadn’t had a chance to forget him properly. Clara had melted her heart; had arrested her affections on the man who’d given her a baby and then ripped himself out of her life. He could never be just some guy, a mistake; he would forever be in the brown eyes of her little girl and they would always have that blood tie between them. Ben was dangerous because he wasn’t expendable.  Because she had to love him, in a way, even when he was killing her.

             
At five, she dragged herself from bed. Her room felt cold and empty and the hour felt too early. She was half convinced she was still dreaming; she got to her feet and the floor tilted crazily and she thought the nightmare was still spinning around her. But the floorboards made all the right pops as she crossed the landing, went down the stairs, and the post at the foot was cool and smooth under her palm as she turned and went into Jeremy’s lair. His room smelled like cinnamon and the humidifier was making its usual chugging sounds. Normal. Not nightmarish. She didn’t realize she’d been racked with chills until she was slipping through the maroon-on-gray-on-black landscape of his master suite. He had a collection of potted ferns along the window wall and their shadows were tendril-like against the blinds, backlit by a garden light outside. The bathroom door was ajar, light pouring warm and yellow across the carpet, and Jeremy was humming to himself: “September.”

             
He was shaving, his hair wet from the shower and slicked back off his forehead, shiny and seal brown. The bathroom was roiling with steam from the shower. He didn’t skip a beat, dragging the razor down his cheek and hitting the high notes, as Jade crossed behind him and perched on the edge of the Jacuzzi tub.

             
He ignored her for a full minute – in a companionable way – before he said, “I gotta tell you – and don’t take it the wrong way – but Atlas looks better with a long face than you.”

             
She propped an elbow on her knee, cupped her chin in her hand, and twitched a smile. “He does.”

             
“So….” He rinsed his razor under the tap. “You going to make me ask the obvious?”

             
She studied a nick in the mahogany vanity. “What if,” she wet her lips, “what if I let a monster into this house? What if I brought him here, to our home, and he’s some kiddie porn freak spying on the neighbor girls? What if…”

             
He whirled on her, stern in an instant, face a half-and-half mask of clean skin and shaving cream foam. He brandished his razor at her. “This is
not
on you, so don’t even go there.”

             
“My poor taste in men has already been established –  ”

             
“Jade.”

             
“ – so what’s adding a pedophile to the list?”

             
Jeremy’s hands landed on his hips in an absurd imitation of her mother. “
Stop
.”

             
“But
what if
?”

             
He would have made a good schoolteacher; he had the stare-down all figured out. “First off, no one even
knows
it’s Asher; if the cops had solid proof, he’d have been arrested last night. But they didn’t do that, which means Ben is just pulling one of his usual sonovabitch stunts because he hates the thought of some other guy planting a flag where he’s already been.” She opened her mouth to protest and he lifted the razor again to forestall her. “This is classic Ben. You remember a year ago? His poor sad damaged cop-who’s-seen-too-much bit? And where did it land him?”

             
A year ago, she’d stepped out the back door to do night check and tripped over a six-three shadow slumped against the stone façade of the house. She’d walloped him twice with her long-handled flashlight before she’d recognized the voice doing the cursing. Ben had been drunk, and unusually talkative, going on about a case in fast starts and stops. From what she’d gathered, it had been a home invasion in which the homeowner, a single woman, had been gang-raped. She hadn’t understood how stone-cold Ben could have been so upset about it, but she hadn’t asked questions; he’d been in no shape to drive and his hands had been shaking. Jeremy had gone for night check, and she’d made coffee. And despite Jeremy’s not-at-all subtle warnings against it, she’d let Ben come upstairs and prop himself in Clara’s doorway so he could watch her sleep. And then, when he’d shucked his clothes and climbed into
her
bed, she hadn’t been able to turn him away.

             
Jeremy was probably right about all this. But he hadn’t seen the terrified gleam in Ben’s eyes that night a year ago in her room. And he hadn’t heard the way his voice had sounded moving over the word
family
out on the driveway earlier.

             
“I don’t think this is him being Ben,” she said, and earned a dramatic eye roll.

             
“Well let’s pretend for a second that I’m right. And I am, by the way,
right
.” He went back to shaving, expression one of complete disappointment in her. “So, if that’s true – and it is – then, two: no one picked up on a creeper vibe coming off of Asher. The guy seems shockingly normal. So if,
if
he turns out to be the one who” – he made an elegant gesture with the razor – “then we’re both at fault for not seeing what he was capable of. In fact, we’re not at fault at all. If he’s some kind of sick freak, chances are he’s pretty good at pretending he’s normal and blending into society, don’t you figure?”

             
She picked at a loose thread on her pajama bottoms. “Maybe…”

             
“Definitely. People get fooled all the time by guys like this, Jade. If he fooled us, then that doesn’t make what happened to Heidi our fault.”

             
Jade sighed and watched his reflection in the mirror, the precise flex of his wrist as he worked. “That’s a real nice little story you spun there.”

             
He shrugged. “It’s not a story.”

             
“And I may suck at picking out men for myself, but I’m not a child, Remy. If Asher killed Heidi” – a chill went skittering down her spine to think that she’d
kissed
the man – “then that’s on me.”

             
At the sink, Jeremy went still; his face softened, eyes dark and liquid. “You didn’t mean for it to happen, sweetie.”

             
“That doesn’t count for much.”

“His TA said he canceled all but his three-thirty class last Thursday.”

              “The excuse?”

             
“Doctor’s appointment.”

             
“Perfect.”

             
It was a hazy morning, patchy gray clouds scudding low overhead, wind pouring across the university campus and snatching at girls’ hair, tugging at jackets and backpacks. It was like being underwater. Ben showed his badge to the rent-a-cop working the booth at the visitor parking lot and got a wide-eyed stare in return.

             
“I doubt they see many actual crimes up here,” Trey said as they hit the sidewalk and made for the building in which Asher taught.

             
“Acres and acres of dumbass college kids with emotional issues and stress disorders? They see more than you think.”

             
Asher taught freshman level American history in a new, eight story brick building just past the library. It had a café on the ground floor that billowed clouds of cinnamon-smelling steam out into the hall and it was bustling, footsteps and sneaker squeaks echoing off the block walls. Ben hadn’t gone the college route – he’d enrolled in the academy after the Marines – so the crowding hordes catapulted him back to high school, skinny arms, sack lunches, pimples and all.

             
“Did you ever do this?” he asked, and gestured to the streaming lines of kids in front of them as they shouldered their way to the elevator.

             
Trey shook his head. “About four weeks. I quit before my first paper was due.”

             
Ben had to smile.

             
They rode up to the fourth floor in the elevator with three guys in beanies who spoke entirely in “dudes,” “yeahs,” “uh-huhs,” and “I know, rights.” Ben shot Trey a look to say
see how stupid you sound?
And Trey pretended to scratch his nose and gave him the finger.

             
Asher was in room 405, with an audience of about forty bored-looking kids playing with their phones; the door was open and his voice floated out into the hall: unobtrusive and a little nasal like a professor in a cliché coming of age movie. Ben paused a moment, taking one last chance to view the man in his natural environment before the defenses were raised. He was in baggy khakis and blue oxford with a navy sweater over it; he wasn’t overweight, but he wasn’t fit. His hairline was beginning a slow retreat and he had a soft teenager face that didn’t look like it needed shaving. Ben couldn’t fit Jade beside the man in his mind; maybe because they were a mismatch, and maybe because…he was jealous. If sweetness was all that mattered to her, then he’d never stood a chance from the beginning. Asher wasn’t an asshole. He wasn’t intimidating. He was perfectly harmless.

             
And that was what made him the most dangerous kind of criminal.

             
“How are we…” Trey started to ask, and Ben stepped into the classroom wearing his most obnoxious cop face.

             
About half the kids glanced up from their phones, slack-jawed, gum stuck to the insides of their cheeks. Asher noticed. “And about this time,” he said, as he turned to the door, “the settlers were…” His eyes went goldfish-big; impotent fury flashed in them, the kind a cornered animal would display with bared fangs. But he was polite when he said, “Detectives? Is something wrong?”

             
“Dismiss your class, professor. You need to come with us.”

“When you get ready to do your Christmas shopping, I like Scotch,” Captain Rice said,
and slapped a file folder down under Ben’s nose.

             
Ben caught the name “McMahon” at the top and set down his coffee untasted. “The juvie file? How’d you manage to get this?”

             
“Judge Wilson owed me a favor or two,” Rice said with a shrug. “You been in with him yet?” He nodded down the hall toward the interrogation room where Asher was fretting circles around the table.

             
“No. He’s already nervous; I wanted to see if we could crank that up to eleven.”

             
“You can with that.” He rapped the edge of the desk and pushed away.

             
For a moment that didn’t last, Ben felt guilt fluttering in his stomach. Rice was more than fair, as far as supervisors went. If he knew that Ben was connected to this case, and that he’d hidden it…

             
He shoved the thought away and got to his feet. Trey was in the break room adding flavored creamer to his coffee and he whistled to him as he passed; Trey came stumbling out after him like a sleepy puppy.

             
“We got the juvie record.”

             
“We…what? How?”

             
“Rice. What can you tell me about the Reddings?”

             
“The lab won’t know anything about the blood we found for a while, but the print results should be in this afternoon, if they find a match. After this, I’m gonna see if I can dig up a record on Scott, so that’ll speed things along.”

             
“Good boy.”

             
Asher’s head snatched around as the interrogation room door opened. He had his hands in his sweater pockets and his neck was doubled over the collar of his shirt. His color was shit-tastic under the fluorescents and Ben was shocked to discover that he could continue to be disgusted by Jade’s new favorite flavor of man. His revulsion wasn’t static; it kept gaining new dimensions.