Authors: Nadja Bernitt
Sylvie wagged her finger at Mendiola. “Why you accused her husband, I’ll never know. He didn’t murder that Mrs. Dunlap, not if he really was sweet on her like they said in the newspaper. I’m not saying I approved.” Her posture stiffened. “I never told you, Jack, but Tony and I had a long talk.”
Mendiola pressed his fingers to his forehead, as though warding off a headache. “Sylvie, don’t get into—”
“Hush. Just hush. I’ve got a bone to pick with you. Remember when Tony saw that Dunlap woman in the parking lot? He said she didn’t look happy to see whoever met her. You see what I’m saying, honey? If she were meeting her sweetheart, she’d have smiled.”
“Shit,” he uttered.
Sylvie tilted her head in surprise.
Meri Ann’s mouth fell open, as if the impact of Sylvie’s revelation had physically struck her. The witness in the parking lot had described two suspects in a pickup. Yet Meri Ann had found only one interview in the case file, someone named Mark. Of course, Mark and Tony were together, the last two people to see her mother alive.
All the information gathered on the Wheatley’s paled in light of this. She clutched the arms of her chair, pushed up onto legs of jelly. “I think that just about does it for now.” Her mouth so tight the words barely squeezed past her teeth.
Sylvie’s eyes widened, her expression astonished. “My goodness, that didn’t take long.”
Mendiola’s face turned the color of St. Luke’s brickwork. Meri Ann shot him a look of disgust. She thanked Sylvie and excused herself.
Somehow her feet led her outside. She paced near the busy entrance. A stream of visitors came and went, mere blurs to her. Her hands clenched and unclenched, wanting Mendiola’s neck.
When he came out, his face was strangely stoic. “Let me explain.”
She turned her back on him, unable to voice her outrage. Fifteen years ago this very witness might have lead them to her mother’s killer. The thought pounded in her brain. She wrung her hands, squeezed her eyes shut so hard she saw red.
“I wasn’t much more than a kid,” he said, “a rookie, a dumb fuck with good intentions.”
She glared, ready to bolt down the stairs, down the street, all the way back to Becky’s. But she knew better. Sylvie’s faux pas had opened another avenue of exploration. No matter how remote, there might be one new shred of evidence. She couldn’t walk away from that.
Her nostrils flared, and she clamped her fist against her breast. “You… you withheld key evidence, you lousy, do-nothing cop. Thank God I’m not packing because I’d be so tempted to blow you away,” she screamed at him.
“Calm down. Please calm down.”
Passersby hurried on their way, tried not to stare. She didn’t care what they thought. “Tony was the next to the last person to see my mother alive. You know what that means.”
“The last person before the killer. Maybe,” he mumbled.
“Your nephew was a kid who’d been in trouble. You didn’t want him involved, maybe implicated. What the hell were you thinking?”
He had the diminished look of someone clearly in the wrong. He glanced sideways, avoiding her stare. “My mom’s brother was recovering from cancer and pretty upset about Tony, hanging out with tough guys who’d dropped out of school. I promised to watch out for him. He’d already had one arrest for battery.”
“So you lost his name,” she spit out.
“Look, Fehr, I screwed up. I don’t like to lie, and this feels like a lie. Haven’t you ever—”
“Don’t sidetrack me. My integrity isn’t on trial here. If it were, I’d be in trouble, too, but not to this degree.”
Gray clouds rolled over the mountains, and she thought about the act of omission. It is not an untruth, just not the whole truth. It’s not a black and white lie, just a muddy gray one. In her heart she believed that, but at the moment she clung to black and white.
I
am
right.
And
you,
Mendiola,
are
wrong
.
“Just exactly what happened, Mendiola?”
“When I saw the incident report, I almost croaked. The truck was a black Toyota with over-sized tires. Tony’s friend drove one. Sure enough, Mark’s name came up when I ran the tag. Like I said, Tony’d had an arrest, and if he’d admitted to being in that parking lot, he’d be a suspect—a suspect with a record.”
“So you protected him at the expense of the case.”
The wind ruffled Mendiola’s hair. He shoved his fists deep in his pockets and cleared his throat. “Look, it isn’t like I didn’t get their testimony. I scared the shit out of them. Trust me, they came clean. Tony told me they’d raised a little hell, drunk a few beers that afternoon. He described the incident with the older lady and admitted to seeing a woman who fit your mom’s description. They tried to get her attention. It’s all on record. Every bit of it, except for Tony’s name.”
“Or what was seen from the passenger side.”
“They
told
me. The woman waved to a friend. Then Tony and Mark drove off.”
“According to your aunt, Tony was close enough to see my mom’s facial expression. I didn’t see that in the file.”
“Bullshit. I love my aunt, but she’s a romantic old maid.”
His arrogance set her off again, the way he discounted his aunt’s statement as if that let him off the hook.
“You fouled up, Mendiola, big time, and you’re taking me to Tony, wherever he is. At home or at his garage.” Steel edged her words.
# # #
Shovel in, heft, toss. Shovel in… The cold metal spade cut through the black loam with precision. He liked that, felt pride even in the most menial task. But his back ached after an hour and twenty minutes of digging. Despite the cool weather, perspiration dripped from his temples and down his cheeks. His thoughts drifted to the body’s two hundred plus myriad skeletal bones… .
He’d relished books in which physical anthropologists deciphered life stories from bones: where the person lived, their work, illnesses, history, race and of course, sex. He was no expert. But he knew the skeletal frame, animal from human, how to set bones, how to break them and how to clean them. The barmaid’s bones, though, were still clothed in flesh. And he had no interest in stripping them. Time and insects would do that.
She’d bled out in the laboratory, taken hours. While waiting, he’d watched CNN’s market rap, thinking this administration had ruined his portfolio. To ordinary people that might sound callous. But he lived in compartments. The barmaid in one. Business and everyday life in the other. Anyway, the foolish woman had served her purpose. He had sobered her up, cut her tethers. He’d locked the doors and stalked her, a practice drill to test his reaction time. He’d passed the test. Once dead, she was nothing to him but stinking fodder.
Shovel in, heft… he panted like a dog. His heart labored from the exertion, the wind cold on his sweaty face. He stopped, wiped his brow and eyeballed the depth of the hole at four feet.
A canvas duffel bag, about the size of a 30-gallon garbage bag, lay on the ground beside him. It was lumpy and packed three-quarters full of her.
He climbed out of the hole, untied the knot in the drawstring and started to pick it up. But the cumbersome duffel weighed like a sack of cannon balls. He’d been fresh when he carted it here, but that was before digging had exhausted his biceps. Not one to give up easily, he lay down on his back and used his feet, kicking and prodding till the bag’s open end fell over the graves edge. The dissected body parts plopped into the hole. The putrid, sweet stench of death wafted up.
He got to his feet and studied the mess. The ends of the long bones, the femur, radius, and ulna, extruded from the flesh, glaringly white against the dark earth, cut flat where he’d hacked at the joints. Her bare head was as round as a bowling ball, her eyes cloudy as a four-day-old dead fish. He reached down for a handful of dirt, threw it over the eyes.
The sight triggered memories of skinning his first kill, a two point buck. “You’re a man,” his father had boasted. One of the few things he had ever done to please him. Kill. And he’d done it so well.
He tossed the duffel bag aside after he’d emptied it and wiped the bitch’s blood from his hands. Then he sprinkled the mess with lye, and took up the shovel. Spade in, heft… .
It took only forty-five minutes to fill the hole. When he finished, he stood back and caught his breath. But he didn’t stop there. The forest of pine trees was thick around him and scrub brush everywhere. He gathered a fingerling pine, planted it on the mounded earth and sprinkled pine needles about until the ground appeared undisturbed.
Still, there was more to do. He scooped out a shallow pit a few feet away from the grave for the duffel bag, removed his over-clothes and added those too. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he sprinkled the nasty evidence with gasoline and lit a match to it.
The flames shot up four feet high, burning orange and issuing smoke as black as tar. It stunk of burned flesh, but that didn’t bother him. He’d always enjoyed a fire. Tired as he was, he sat on his haunches and warmed his hands over the flames when they’d died down. To prolong the fire, he threw a few branches on top. Blood, death, decay meant nothing to a hunter. A moving target, the rush of adrenaline and the kill mattered. Why he’d almost forgotten till Meri Ann had rekindled the urge in him.
The setting sun peeked through the pine boughs and civilization seemed light years away. Yet Bogus Basin lay a mere fifteen miles northeast and Idaho City, ten to the west. Even Boise was only thirty-two miles away. He knew the terrain as well as he knew the flora and fauna; prided himself on having addressed every detail. With his sense of timing, logistics and method as well as his talent for precision, his mother always said, he’d make a great engineer.
A twig snapped behind him. He swiveled around, eyes wide. The tangle of trees, thick scrub and the waning light made it hard to see. He waited, listened. Slowly he moved to his truck and the safety of his 12-gauge. He sat in the cab with his door open and the loaded shotgun on his lap.
He saw the doe twenty yards to his left. Her brown eyes bulged as she nibbled the lichen on a fallen log. The shot was his if he wanted it. He lifted the shotgun, aimed. Then he lowered it. If someone were out there, they’d hear the shot.
He crooked the gun over his arm and returned to the fire. He squatted in front of it, warming his hands. The surge of excitement still tingled in his muscles, heightened his awareness. And there was so much to think about. His brain scrolled through a detailed punch list with computer speed.
He’d be back in time to scrub every crevice in the truck, the shovel, his boots. Finally he would soak his weary body in the bathtub. The expectation, the planning—somehow it reminded him of throwing a party. Tomorrow he’d shop for the various and sundry restraints. He would pick up the 120 size film for his Hasselblad square camera.
Everything must be perfect for her.
T
he scent of fireplace smoke accompanied the chill afternoon wind. Meri Ann wrapped the camel hair coat tight around her shoulders and strode ahead of Mendiola across the oil-stained driveway of Tony’s garage.
Soulful western music blared from a tinny sounding radio in his open bay. “Hey, Tony,” Mendiola called over the noise.
His nephew stepped from around the open hood of a mint condition early-model, metallic-blue Mustang. He held a wrench. His slender face tilted to the side suspiciously. “What? My first payment’s not due for a month, is it?”
Mendiola’s boot found a stone and kicked it. She knew he was upset with himself, his aunt, Tony and her.
“I’m not here about money” he said. “We need to talk.”
Tony licked his lips, glanced briefly at her, then fixed his gaze on Mendiola. “Something wrong?”
“Nothing that affects you, exactly.” Mendiola released a heavy sigh and under his breath said, “Not yet, anyway.”
“Go on in the office.” Tony motioned with the wrench.
She and Mendiola entered a grimy room to the side of the open bay. It smelled like the oily dirt outside only more so. Even the two upholstered club chairs, and indeed everything else were layered in a film of Pennzoil or Quaker State or whatever Tony used in his restored dream machines.
Mendiola caught her disapproval. “You probably don’t want to sit.”
“It’s not my coat,” she said, “but even if it was… No thanks.”
“The guy works on cars.” Mendiola brushed off one of the seat cushions with his hand. He fell into the chair like a heavy sack, then stretched out his legs. He leaned back, locking his fingers behind his neck like someone ready for a night of television.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Fehr.” He rubbed a shadow of afternoon stubble on his cheek. “It’s been a long time and I don’t know what you think you’re gonna find out, but trust me, ain’t no gold at the end of this rainbow. The trail is cold.”
She shot a fast angry look at her partner. Partner. That was a laugh. “Thank you, Mendiola.”
“Seriously, what’s Tony going to remember from fifteen years ago.”
“Whatever got under his skin, like I remember what got under mine. The night Mom disappeared, I waited outside Boise High’s gym. I wore a pair of three-month old Nike court shoes, white with navy trim, gray sweats and my dad’s windbreaker. I remember my coach asking me if I wanted a ride home and how I felt when she got in her car and drove away. She only had one brake light. A strange thing to remember. But the details stuck. A lot of details stayed with me.”
Mendiola unclasped his hands from behind his head and slapped them on the wide arms of the chair. “That’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because your mom disappeared that night.”
“Trauma locked it in my brain, sure. I rehashed every minute detail over and over. And maybe Tony did too. He was scared and he had to answer questions. He and his buddy probably fine-tuned their story before you got to them. And I’m hoping that somewhere in Tony’s gray cells, the original version survived.”
The Mustang’s hood slammed shut and the radio clicked off.