Whatever Remains (18 page)

             
“I’m sorry about Asher,” he said before he could stop himself. He’d never had any control over his tongue when it came to her.

             
Her smile widened humorlessly. “You have no idea how sorry I am that you’re the one who found out the truth about him.”

             
“Wounds your pride?”

             
She straightened away from the truck, close enough that he could smell the gardenia of her body spray. The wind pulled at her hair and it rustled against the front of his jacket. For a moment, he thought she might –

             
“Good night, Ben,” she said, and ducked around him.

             
“Tease,” he accused as she walked around the hood of the truck.

             
She opened her door and paused, shooting him a fast, tight grin. “A girl can’t be too careful with you.” And she was gone.

12

             
T
he lab was like some poor old woman’s basement where her Trekkie adult kids lived off soda, chips, and pot. Minus the pot smoke and a cheerful old lady voice asking if anyone wanted cookies. There were no overhead lights, only worktable lamps; walls and walls of cabinets were hung over counters and counters of beakers and tubes and science gadgetry Ben felt no need to know the names of. It smelled of chemicals and damp and someone was playing grunge metal on a tinny radio. It could have been midnight or noon or any hour in between; it was always dark and things always moved slow. The Land that Time and Deodorant Forgot.

             
“I was gonna call you,” Jason said, wiping Egg McMuffin grease down the front of his shirt and rolling his stool over to the opposite counter. “As soon as I double checked the result.”

             
“Nah, that’s okay,” Ben said, “I never miss a chance to come to the lab.”

             
Jason was sorting through papers and glanced back over his shoulder. “Was that supposed to sound like sarcasm?”

             
Ben put his hands on his hips. “The print results?”

             
“Right.” Fingers were wiped again and then he pulled out a mug shot. “Scott Redding didn’t flag a match. But Detective Kaiden dug up a DUI charge for the son, Jared – he’s nineteen and already lost his license on drunk driving charges; can you believe that? – and we got a match. Jared Redding left clear thumb and index prints on Alicia Latham’s back door key.”

             
Ben dipped in his pocket for the Milky Way he’d brought along and dropped it on the desk. “You’re a peach.”

**

“What in the hell is that?”

              “Caramel macchiato,” Trey said as he swiped a finger through the caramel-drizzled whipped cream coming out the top of his Starbucks cup. “You wanna try it?”

             
“I wanna slap you for even knowing what it’s called,” Ben said as he drove. “Tell me what else we know about Jared Redding.” He’d wanted to get on the road straight off, without taking time to go over the kid’s file.

             
“Nineteen,” Trey rattled off from memory, licking cream from his finger. “He dropped outta high school as a junior; took his GED exam and didn’t pass. He’s got a juvie record. And got busted for pot last year; that’s in addition to the DUI.”

             
“Sweet guy, it sounds like.”

             
“You know,” Trey mused as they turned down Iris Lane, three early-orange fall leaves sweeping across the windshield. “This is the second guy in our suspect pool with underage offenses.”

             
Ben made a face. Asher had been put under house arrest for taking “revenge” against a group of jocks who’d stuck his head in a toilet one too many times. He’d put enough bleach in the Igloo cooler to land the whole football team of his high school in the hospital. Two had ended up with ulcerative colitis. One had required a section of his colon to be resected. It wasn’t the sexual assault Ben had expected, but it was still violent. Devious. And not at all relevant to Heidi Latham’s death, which got stuck sideways in Ben’s throat; he wanted to pin something on the bastard, for hurting Jade alone.

             
And wasn’t that a disturbing thought?

             
“That’s the thing about murder,” he said. “It’s a depth charge in the bottom of the pond: everybody’s dead fish come floating up to the surface.”

             
Trey snorted into his caramel whatever. “That’s a nice image.”

             
“
Creature From the Black Lagoon
was on last night.”

             
“You seriously need a girlfriend.”

             
Maybe he did. Maybe he should have leaned in and pushed Jade back against her truck last night; maybe he should have seen if she tasted like coffee and s’mores. Maybe a lot of things.

             
The Redding place still looked big and stone and expensive, only today, there was no Land Rover in the drive. “Jared has to be home,” Trey said. “He can’t drive anywhere.”

             
“And if he’s like any other nineteen-year-old,” Ben said, ringing the bell, “he doesn’t get up till three in the afternoon.”

             
Through the cut-glass oval in the door, the interior looked shadowy and empty. When a woman was home, there was an undercurrent of energy about a house. But there wasn’t a single light on. There were no murmurings of indeterminate appliances. Ben hit the bell again, and then again. Then he knocked hard on the door with the side of his fist, until the glass rattled.

             
“Wait,” Trey said, grabbing at his elbow.

             
And sure enough from inside, he heard: “What the fuck?”

             
“Like I said: sweet.”

             
Jared – and it had to be him – came shuffling down the staircase in plaid pajama bottoms and a gray shirt that would have been a muscle shirt on someone else. His hair, too long and dirty blonde and sticking up in greasy clumps, fell down over his eyes and he pushed it back as he peered at them through the door. He squinted like the sunshine hurt his eyes.

             
Ben unclipped his badge from his belt and pressed it up in front of the kid’s nose. “Open up, Jared. We need to talk to you.”

             
When he’d been a kid, the sight of a shiny cop badge would have sent Ben and his friends scattering, apologies forming in the event they were snagged. The police weren’t to be messed with back then. But Jared screwed up a face that looked like his father’s and scowled at them through the fractured lines of the decorative window. “Dude. I didn’t do nothin’. I dunno what Miles told you –  ”

             
“You’ve got to stop saying ‘dude,’” Ben told his partner, then rapped on the glass, startling their suspect. “This has shit-all to do with whoever Miles is. We need to ask you about a murder, Jared. So quit yanking us around like you think you’re a badass, and let us in, or I’ll kick the door in.”

             
It took him a while, but Jared finally decided he was serious. The latch disengaged.

             
“That was shitty,” Trey said, a smile in his voice.

             
Jared wasn’t under arrest, and he wasn’t obliged to cooperate with them, but he didn’t know that, and Ben wasn’t going to enlighten him.

             
“Yeah, well –  ”

             
Trey’s phone rang. “Rice,” he said as he pulled it out of his pocket, and stepped away.

             
“Murder?” Jared asked as he cracked the door. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

             
“Well.” Ben grabbed him around one skinny wrist – his skin was damp and tacky; he didn’t want to know why – and yanked him through the door. He staggered, catching himself against the jamb, turning loose of a fast string of f-bombs. “Usually, when someone kills someone else, we call that ‘murder.’”

             
Up close, Jared smelled like some Dorito flavor or other. He shook his head. “Dude, no! I didn’t kill anyone.”

             
“Then get some shoes on, come down to the station with us, and explain that in detail.”

             
His eyes pinged. “I –”

             
“We got a warrant,” Trey said, rejoining them. “Lab guys are heading out now.”

             
Ben glanced at Jared; he was white from floppy hairline all the way down to his gummy fingers.

             
“W-warrant? What for? I didn’t
do
anything!”

             
“Shoes,” Ben said. “Now. Or we’re going without them.”

“Hold his mane.” Clara twined her little fingers in Atlas’s thick black mane. “There ya go.” Confident she was secure on the pommel of the saddle, Jade touched her heels to the gelding and sent him off at a brisk walk. With her arms around her daughter, she flexed her fingers on the reins and Atlas complied, lifting his neck in a high arch, his mouth light against the bit, the reins almost weightless in her hands.

             
“Go, Atlas, go!” Clara encouraged, and he walked along like a gentle plow horse under his passengers.

             
“You know,” Jeremy said from the rail. He’d already worked Rosie and was in tan breeches and tall boots, reclining back against the fence like he was modeling for an Ariat ad. “It’s a crying shame you’ve been out of the show ring this long.”

             
Jade looked over Clara’s head and through the horse’s ears and frowned. She’d competed only once after Clara was born. They’d been in Conyers and the day had been one long digressing nightmare. Clara, in a stroller loaded down with towels, horse treats, test booklets, water bottles, and spare gloves, had squalled non-stop, red-faced and overheated in the summer sun. Shannon – who was supposed to be playing babysitter – had been more interested in fanning herself with programs and sipping wine out of Solo cups. Jade had been distracted, exhausted, and a disorganized wreck: hair coming undone, boots covered in sand, missing two moves in her test. Her score had been abysmal. Jeremy had found her in the ladies room (amid scandalized glances from the other ladies) crying into a scratchy brown paper towel. She hadn’t shown since.

             
“I don’t miss it.”

             
“You should. How many good years has Atlas got left? You should take advantage while you can.”

             
She made a face at him. “Do you have to keep reminding me of that?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Yeah, well you’re a…” She trailed off when she realized she couldn’t tell him anything he deserved with Clara there.

             
Jeremy grinned. “Yeah. You too.”

             
“Mommy,” Clara said. “Can we ride in the pasture?”

             
“If Remy can get the gate for us.”

             
He did, bowing them out with a flourish. “Good day, m’ladies. I’ll be shoveling stalls, if you need me.”

             
“In a stall,” Jade said sweetly. “Just where you belong.”

             
He gave her the bird when Clara wasn’t looking and headed up the hill to the barn.

             
Canterbury had two main pastures and a collection of little paddocks right around the barn for the sick/injured/isolated. A run separated the pastures, and that’s where Jade steered Atlas, intending to ride to the edge of the property and hit the gallop track that looped the west pasture. She herself rode amidst the other horses, but she didn’t want to do that with Clara balanced in front of her. The grass was long, ready for autumn bush-hogging, and it rippled and whispered against Atlas’s long sturdy legs. Jade let the reins out and he stretched his neck, blowing happily, ears swiveling. The sun overhead was a perfect gilded disc and its light was warm, the breeze light. Birds called and were answered. It had never been about the thrill of competition for her; it had been about this. Sharing them with her little girl amplified all the glorious everyday aesthetics of the farm. She didn’t miss showing. She didn’t care if Atlas lived out the last of his days toting Clara around the pastures.

             
“Mommy,” Clara said, voice contemplative.

             
“What?”

             
“Is it wrong to tell a secret?”

             
Jade stiffened and Atlas reacted, his head picking up; he snorted. “I…” Her mind went to the other night and the fast snatches of whispers coming from Clara’s room: she and Grace sitting on the floor together, swapping confidences. “I think that depends,” she said, pulse knocking at her ribs. “It depends on whether someone could get hurt if you keep the secret.”

             
Clara twisted around, peering back from the corners of her dark eyes. “Whadyou mean?”

             
Jade wet her lips and tried to choose her words carefully. She wanted Clara to be able to keep the right people’s secrets someday; but if Grace had told her something about Heidi’s death… “Think of it this way: if someone told you a good secret – like, they knew what they were getting for Christmas, or they liked a boy –  ” Clara scrunched up her nose. “Then it’s good to keep the secret. But if someone told you something scary – something that might get someone hurt – then it would be okay to tell a grown up about the secret.” She had no idea if she was getting this right. “Does that make sense?”