Page 9 of Making His Bones

Elektra

Gray wasn’t kidding. His rental house was a dream come true.

The infinity pool dropped off before a view of the red rock state park. The layers of various hues of sandstone and limestone gave the formations the look of cake, reminding me I hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The top layer of white icing was the Mogollon Rim, an escarpment extending two hundred miles. For a moment, I almost wanted to try out the tunnel slide that would drop you off into the warm pool. There was an outdoor shower, I guess to wash the chlorine off.

Turning slowly, I inhaled, as though I could breathe the essence of the desert. This truly was a panoramic view. The red rocks were reflected in the two-story windows behind me. At this time in July, it’d be dark before I got to Seeker, but my old friend Janet Treasure was expecting me. As much as I wanted to sit in one of the cushioned outdoor chairs of fake wicker and unwind with a lemonade, I had to split.

The refrigerator revealed that Gray drank Red Stripe beer from Jamaica. I opened the freezer. Hm. A bottle of cold vodka. I loathed men who drank. My ex-husband Brandon drank even more after Delilah died. It made him insane. I truly believe he could’ve gotten through it a lot better without booze. For him, it was a coping mechanism, and he turned into someone I didn’t even know. Didn’t even want to know. He snorted heroin, too. He was consumed with grief, as was I, but I had a different way of dealing with it.

So I hated alcohol. It didn’t bother me so much when women got together and had a drink, but every time I saw a man heft a beer, something came boiling up in me. Why do I care whether Gray drinks? I’m not going to sleep with him! Shaking my head to rid it of the strange dreams, I took an entire package of Pepperidge Farm cookies from a cupboard and got into my rental car. Sugar was a much better coping mechanism.

As I headed east, the red rocks vanished, turned back into pine-encrusted ancient cinder cones and lava flows. It was certainly not as dramatic as the landscape of Pure and Easy. High mesas and buttes hid deep pocket canyons. Seeker had been built by miners looking for copper, so the valley was a bit wider and sunnier than some of them, but it was still pretty dark when I pulled into town limits. I was shocked when I realized I’d munched the last cookie, even though Janet and I were having dinner together at her casino.

I have to admit, my heart was wrenched going down the main drag. Brandon, Delilah, and I had lived in a mobile home park on the way into town. Brandon flipped houses here and in Pure and Easy during the real estate boom, so I stayed at home with Delilah, occasionally going with Brandon to clean up a filthy house. When Delilah had died and Brandon had wigged out, I’d been determined to sally forth, to get a master’s degree in Forensic Science and prevent that from ever happening again to any child—or at least find the culprit once the deed was done.

Just the buildings wrenched my heart. The lumber yard where Brandon got, well, lumber. The hardware store where he picked up hardware. The Beautiful and Immaculate church where I’d never gone, being somewhat of an atheist.

The realty, the country club, and at last the Scarlet Dome where we were about to eat horribly overcooked pasta. I was glad it was too dark to see my old house. I’d really loved Brandon. I probably still did, but his behavior had driven me from him. Shell-shocked for years, I had pondered endlessly how real, true love cannot overcome all. Or maybe you needed two people to love deeply for it to work. Maybe Brandon fell more in love with booze and heroin. He’d made his decision. Those things comforted him more than I did.

Janet and I hugged and she led me to a table. I hated casinos with the noise and smoke, sort of the opposite of my antiseptic lab, as quiet as a lullaby. Janet knew this, but she had to get right back to work serving drinks once I left. Janet was an adorable, friendly gal who I’d just bonded with at first sight. She knew all about my former family grief.

We caught up a bit with town gossip, and then of course she wanted to know why I was in Pure and Easy. She knew my crusade was to catch criminals and assumed correctly that was the reason for my visit. I gave her the bare bones summary of Kneecap’s arrest, but she wanted to know every detail about Gray Whaley.

“Was he built, like he worked out? Lifted weights? That sort of built?”

I nodded. “I’d say he was buff like he lifted weights. Definitely. I mean, coming from LA, pretty much every guy has to lift weights, I imagine.”

“I’ll bet. I used to live in New York, but in those days being buff wasn’t so important.” Janet was ten years older than me, maybe fifty-two, and she’d had a wild life up until now. She hung out with people like David Bowie and the Talking Heads. She was drinking a G&T, and that on her lunch break! In a way, I envied her freewheeling life.

I said, “Yes, he told me about the stress and the competition. He finally cracked and came to Pure and Easy to unwind a bit.”

“So you did archery with him?” Janet’s eyes gleamed, as though “archery” were a metaphor for “fucking.”

“Yes, and it was fun for a few minutes. Took my mind off work, until another guy came in and asked for his help busting some kiddie porn site.”

“What? Kiddie porn in P and E?

“No, on the internet. I guess he had some hacker guy waiting in the back of his tattoo parlor. They thought Gray had some experience in kiddie porn.”

Janet rolled her eyes. “Yeah, unfortunately too common. Lots of kids who don’t have the right parents, the right role models, or parents who just ignore and neglect them, turn to kiddie porn to make a living. They grow up quick, have their own income, and of course get into drugs.”

Kiddie porn had never entered my wheelhouse. I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it, not in Seeker. “How do you know so much about it? New York?”

“No, right here! I swear there’s some kind of operation going on in back of the Vinyl Resting Place. You remember that? Well, I go down Hawk Street you know, to get to Main Street, and I swear there are kids under the age of ten hanging out at the back door. Why else would they be? Unless they’re selling their parents’ record collections.”

We giggled at that. Janet and I liked to laugh together. I’d forgotten what it was like to have a friend! I didn’t have many in Illinois—a couple of former schoolmates from George Washington U, that was it.

“Well, who owns it?” I asked. “It used to be owned by that David Schweitzer guy, and I completely can’t picture him doing anything twisted.”

“No, David sold it to Pitchfork.”

“The pastor of Beautiful and Immaculate? Huh.” Pitchfork had been an old guy back when I lived in Seeker, so he must be ancient now. My Delilah had been videoed leaving the church about an hour before she was killed, but Pitchfork had been exonerated by DNA. She had just been playing games with the other kids in their afternoon play-care. “Well, I’ll slide by there on my way out of here. See what’s up.”

“Just let me finish this cig, then I have to go,” said Janet. She exhaled in my direction as though it didn’t bother me. She looked at me for a long time. “So. You gonna try and match that ten year old DNA with someone still living in Seeker? Ten years ago you got the entire town.”

“Back then we couldn’t match with public databases. And now CODIS has a fresh database. Well, we can rule out anyone who moved here after the murder.”

“And anyone under the age of, say, seven at the time. Or maybe even ten. No one that young could have inflicted that . . . You know, been strong enough to . . . “