Flame Out (24 page)

I
RECEIVED A TEXT FROM ANNIE AT 5:30 A.M. “ARE YOU UP
yet????” and then at 5:35: “Are you always this lazy?”

I texted her back, and received a
request
to join her at her lab. I offered to pick Hale up and meet her at 7:00 so she could show us the evidence and then go home and get some sleep. On my way out the door I grabbed a cup of coffee from the kitchen. Everyone was in the backyard, my Dad sitting in a lawn chair drinking coffee, my mother doing a series of yoga poses, Lucy next to her, still in her nightgown. It usually took dynamite to get Lucy out of bed in the morning.

“Sun Salutations, Mom!” Lucy said, delighted as she tipped forward onto her hands. I watched the two of them bend and stretch before saying my good-byes.

Hale and I called Chief Donnelly on our way to give him an update. It was early, but he had said I could call at any hour so I took a chance and dialed. He answered, not only up, but in the office. And he wasn't alone.

“Batko's here, re-upping his paperwork to extend his leave, and surprise, surprise, he's doing it voluntarily. He smells like a brewery
and his eyes are bright red. But he's on leave, so I won't ding him for being drunk on the job.”

Annie was waiting for us, hands on hips. “Is it the special agent who needed the primping time?” She buzzed around the room, alighting at one table before moving to another, stopping briefly to grab one of the coffees Hale had picked up on his way. She handed the camera to a young man, instructing him to load it onto the server without screwing it up. Unlike the other young techs, this one seemed delighted to have his intelligence questioned.

“Sure thing, Annie,” he said.

“Well, come on,” Annie said, waving us over to a table. Spread across it were a series of evidence bags, each containing a separate item: the purse and a wallet, with one dollar and change bagged next to it. A one-inch mirror, broken along one corner, and a bright orangey-red lipstick. I picked up the tube, reading the label: Flame.

“This,” Annie said and thrust a bag containing a piece of paper under my nose. “The rest is unimportant.”

I held the evidence bag up to the light. I would have expected a piece of paper this old to be yellowed and faded, but having been tucked away in Natalya's basement, the writing was visible and clear.

“J,” it said, the top of the letter looping up tall and fat. “You have done very well for yourself. Too well. Give me”—and here “$5,000” was crossed out and replaced with “$25,000”—“or I will tell everyone who Lucas's real father is. You've gotten away with pawning me off on that half-wit Taras, but those days are over. You are going to pay up, and I am going to get the life I deserve.”

“Jesus,” Hale said. “Does Lucas know about this?”

“I don't think so,” I said. “Dave certainly didn't.”

“It was in the lining,” Annie said. “That mirror had cut through the fabric, and this slipped inside.”

I read the note again. J. Jake. The judge. Dan Jaleda? I could exclude Bernie. Or could I? Was J the start of some sort of pet name?

“So, blackmail,” Hale said. “Money, sex, and security. All very good reasons to kill someone.”

“Yes,” Annie said. She faded the second she was no longer in motion, jolting herself awake. “So you have that note, and I've given you a lot to do. Why don't you go do it?”

“We'll go,” I said. “But do me a favor? Pull any pictures related to the note off the server, and don't tell anyone. It could be a disaster if Dave found out.”

“Did you hear?” Annie shouted to the tech.

“I did,” the young man said. “And is that what you want me to do?”

For the first time since I knew her, Annie smiled. “Please pull the pictures.” I was marveling over her use of “please” when she added, “And if you tell anyone about the contents of that note I will find you and I will kill you.”

FEARING THAT A VISIT TO DAN JALEDA COULD TIP OFF DEIRDRE
Lawler, we decided to drive to the Medved brothers. The cars were gone at Jake's, so we started with Maxim. The judge's front door was wide and red, and the bell echoed through the house. A minute passed, and we were beginning to give up when he called to us from the side of the house.

“Hello!” he said. He was wearing a blue track suit, matching top and bottom, the three-piece suit of athletic wear. “What brings you to my humble home?”

“We hope we're not too early . . .”

“Oh, no. I garden before the sun gets too high in the sky.”

Hale put his hand out, checking for rain. “Even in weather like this?”

“You ignore a garden, even for a day, and you end up losing the battle with weeds and bugs. I get out here, walk around a bit, try to keep my joints loose and get some roses to bloom.”

We followed him around to the back. He, like Natalya, had quite
a bit of land, but it was taken up by a large in-ground pool. The garden lay off to the side, curving around Jake's property next door, a fence of flowers.

“I spoke to Bernie. Elda signed over his house to him, the factory, too. Said he was going to rent space for a new clothing factory. I asked him when he was flying to China to find workers.” He laughed, and Hale gave him a polite smile.

I didn't. “We have a few more questions about Vera Batko.”

“About the night she disappeared? I told you about the party at Bernie's house, and I'm not going to say another word. Bernie's been through enough grief.”

“It's Vera's wedding we were interested in,” Hale said. “We saw the pictures. Vera, Taras, Natalya, and you were the only people there.”

“Oh, that was a happy day. Vera and Taras were a love match despite the . . .” the judge skimmed his own broad belly, mimicking a baby bump. “Jake was unable to attend the wedding that day and I offered to attend in his place. Someone needed to stand up for Vera. My brother took a special interest in her.”

I looked closely at the judge, ruddy cheeked and smiling. His comment could be innocent, but he'd been on the bench for twenty-five years and knew plenty of cops and how they thought.

Hale took the bait. “When you say special interest . . . ?”

“Oh, nothing like that.” He chuckled as if Hale had made a very funny joke. “He was thirty and she was a girl of fourteen. Her family let her run wild, and she needed a steadying influence in her life. That was Jake.” I doubted that anyone, up to and including Jake, would describe him as a steadying influence.

The judge continued. “My brother would have been very displeased if I'd allowed Vera to remain an unwed mother.” He paused, his face pink from exertion. “Do either of you young people mind getting a little dirty? I want to tie up my wife's rose bushes. They can get heavy with the weight of the buds. Sonya and I didn't have children, so caring for her plants is a way to remember her.”

Hale's suit had probably cost in the four figures, so I volunteered. The judge handed me some string and gardening shears. He knelt in the mud and encircled the bush in his broad arms. Bald patches showed through his slicked-back hair, and age spots dotted his hairline.

“You have so many people you cared for like a father,” I said. “Jake, Bernie, Deirdre, Brian, and Lucas . . . the list could go on. You never thought of having children of your own?”

“Sonya and I were desperate for them, even researching a Ukrainian adoption. But adopted children are never the same as flesh and blood. I had mumps as a child, and, well, children were not possible for us. Perhaps it was for the best. Sonya had her gardening and her volunteer work, and I had my civic responsibilities.” He tightened his grip on the bush, and I wondered how he could stand the thorns. “Could you pull tighter? I want to keep the flowers exposed to the sun.”

I took the string and wrapped it around the bushes, and Hale made a tight knot, cutting off the end. Hale offered his hand, and the judge pulled himself up.

“Thank you, young man. Gravity is having its way with me these days.” He removed his gardening gloves. “Would you like to come in for coffee? I usually get to the office around ten these days. Now that I'm no longer on the bench hearing cases, well, time has no meaning. I can come and go as I please.”

With the judge unable to have children, no way was he Lucas's father. Our time could be better spent with someone who might be, and we declined.

Hale and I walked around the house to the car. The grass in Jake's yard was longer than that in the judge's, and it was easy to make out the property line. Jake's property was boxed in on three sides by flowers.

Hale climbed in the car. “Jaleda or Jake next?”

“Let's visit the bar and talk to Jake,” I said. “Since he had a ‘special interest in Vera.'”

“Plus, the man liked a lead pipe to the skull,” Hale said.

We were almost at the bar when my phone rang.

“Dave,” Hale said. I didn't want to give Dave a report when we were so close to solving his mother's case, and I let it go to voicemail.

Hale's phone rang.

“He's going to swap back and forth until he gets one of us,” Hale said and, putting his phone on speaker, he answered.

“Hale, you with Lyons?” Dave sounded shaky. This was one of the few times when I was hoping for a hangover.

“He is,” I called out. “How are you doing this morning?”

“June, we have a problem. A big, big problem. Lucas found out about the purse.”

At Dave's announcement I swerved to the right, almost hitting a parked car, before pulling to the curb.

“How is that possible?” I said. I thought of the young tech. He seemed like a nice enough young man. Too bad Annie was going to kill him.

“I saw the pictures in the electronic case file,” he said. “On the server.”

“You're lying. You're cut off from the remote server, and even if you weren't, those pictures aren't loaded. I made sure of it.”

“At the station, this morning. The photos popped up, then disappeared.”

“God dammit, Dave,” I said. “You say you want this case solved, but everything you do undermines our efforts. And to tell Lucas!”

Hale leaned in close to the mouthpiece. “I get that you were emotional, Dave”—he mouthed “you, too” to me before continuing—“but did it occur to you that telling Lucas would be a misstep?”

“I didn't mean to tell him,” Dave said. “He overheard.”

“Then who were you telling?” I pictured Dave at Jake's bar, drunk and reciting the note's message.

“Natalya. I came home and . . . June, how could she hide the purse for so long? If she'd come forward immediately when Mom got
murdered . . . Bernie got away with it . . . But to lie to the police, and me, and Lucas? How could she?”

Dave jumped from topic to topic, making little sense. I had to stop him.

“So you confronted her at the house, Dave?”

“Yeah . . . out in her garden. Lucas was asleep, and I was trying to keep him from finding out, but I got loud. Yelled.” His voice was starting to rise. “I mean, June, she owed me! And Lucas, this must be ripping him up—”

“Are you positive he overheard, Dave? Maybe he just went out.”

“He was gone, June . . . just gone. And he's not answering his phone—” I started up the car again and began to drive quickly toward the bar to try to intercept Lucas. But was there a chance Lucas was after Bernie? Or Dan?

“Dave, you need to tell me exactly. What did Lucas overhear?”

“I can't say for sure. But I had told my aunt how if she had given it to the police the day they found it, it would have made the case and now the purse was as good as inadmissible. Then she started to cry, so I stopped yelling, but June . . . that note. It could have given us our killer
decades
ago.”

I drove toward Ontario Street, a byway to both Jake's Social Club and the bridge off the Island.

“Where do you think Lucas went, Dave?”

I could hear Dave breathing, short and rapid. “He's had it in for Bernie from day one. Bernie hired Lucas to do that basement job. And Dan. Lucas seemed even more mad at Dan, blaming him for making Lucas brick in Mom. My money's on one of them.”

Hale and I whipped a U-turn, racing toward Colonie, where Bernie was living with Dan.

“Go home, Dave,” I said. “Go to your Aunt Natalya's and stay there until I call you.”

“I can't even look at her.”

“Do as I say, Dave. You've screwed this up enough. From here forward, you need to stay out of this. I mean it.”

I waited for his acknowledgment. Instead, he hung up.

“Shit,” I said. “Call him back while I radio the Colonie police.”

I listened to Dave's phone go to voicemail even as I explained to the Colonie police the nature of the threat and requested their assistance.

The dispatcher patched me through to a patrol car, who was hesitant to go to Deirdre and Dan Jaleda's house. “That lawyer told us if we harassed her brother, she would take us all to court for human rights violations. She told us not to set foot on the property.”

“Then sit out front. And if you see a guy forty to fifty with light brown/grayish hair try to get in, detain him. Trust me, the lawyer will thank you.”

I called the chief and filled him in, in case we needed to worry about jurisdictional issues. I briefly told him where we were going and why.

“Christ on a bike,” he said. “I should have known when Dave showed up this morning. I may go and arrest him myself.”

“Save it for later,” I said. The chief, Hale, and I coordinated protection at the locations, Hale offering extra manpower for the judge's house and Jake's. The chief was extremely grateful.

“We don't need another death,” he said.

When we pulled up in front of Dan and Deirdre's house, the two officers were guarding the ends of the front gate, covering the perimeter without setting foot on the property.