Justin managed to keep his voice calm and quiet. "Ronald knew Evan Harmon?"
"Sure," Harry said, "from Rockworth."
"Did they do business together?"
"Some."
"Recently?"
"Pretty regularly," Ellen said. "Particularly since we expanded the business."
"Was Ascension one of your clients?"
"One of our biggest," Stan said. "Maybe the biggest."
"Do you know the specifics of what they were doing together?"
"We did a lot of research for Ascension. Evan and Ronald talked a lot," Harry said.
Ellen indicated the folder. "Whatever I have is on that list. I tried to make it as thorough as I could."
The conversation went on for another twenty minutes or so. But Justin had run out of questions. He was staying because it was easier to sit there and talk with the three younger people than it was to get up and move. But he could tell that they were becoming fidgety and impatient, and it was Saturday night after all. He thought about taking them to dinner, having a few drinks with them. It would be nice. But he realized it would be nice only for him. They didn't want to spend their big night of the week drinking with a melancholy cop immersed in a murder case. They wanted to go home to their spouses or lovers or even their pets and TV sets. Dining with him would be way down on their list of desirable things to do. Maybe number 101 out of a hundred. So he thanked them one last time, and told them to go and try to enjoy themselves. They said that they'd do their best.
His parents had waited to have dinner and Justin appreciated the gesture. He was starving and bone tired and it was nice to relinquish control, even if for only a couple of hours. He made himself a perfect vodka martini with three olives, exactly the way his father liked his drink fixed, and his father joined him. Then Jonathan opened a superb bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape and they sat at the table and Justin did his best to fill them in on his day. He left out details he knew they wouldn't want to know-what had happened at Dolce, his encounter with the FBI agent on the steps of the police station-but he gave an in-depth accounting of the time he spent at Victoria's house. As he spoke, he could hear his words tinged with disappointment, even anger.
"Her grief is very raw right now. And even if weren't, people deal with grief in different ways," Jonathan said. "Some people are afraid of it."
"And some people wallow in it," Lizbeth added. "It took you a long time to get over yours."
Justin looked up from his wineglass. "Do you think I'm over it, Mother?"
She smiled softly. "What I think is that when we suffer loss and pain, it makes us a different person. It's like a physical wound. When you break your leg, you're not the same afterward-you're left with a scar or a limp or an ache whenever it rains. At some point it heals-the scar is barely seen, the limp is hardly noticeable-but your body is still different. Altered. Not necessarily worse, I suppose, but still different. And at some point you accept the fact that this is your new body; you realize you can still run, just maybe not as fast or as long; and you move on. It's the same when we grieve, except no one can see the scar, not when it's raw and not when it heals. But it changes you just as much, and the change is permanent. And at some point you accept the change and realize this is the new you. Emotionally battered and bruised and maybe even forever heartsick, but you move on."
"I'm not as sure as you are that I've moved on."
"It doesn't mean you've forgotten. And it doesn't mean you're not still sad. Of course you are. The scar is permanent. But I've seen enough of you now… you've become a different person. And I think you've accepted this new you. I'm very glad about that."
It was the longest speech he'd ever heard his mother utter, and he loved her for it. He started to thank her, to tell her he hoped she was right, to say he thought she just might be right, but his downtime had ended. He hadn't gotten two hours; he'd barely gotten a full sixty minutes. He hadn't even finished the salad that Louise had made. Didn't matter. His cell phone was ringing, and when he pulled the phone out of his pocket and glanced at the caller ID, he knew he had to answer the call.
"Can I call you back?" Justin said. "I'm in the middle of dinner."
He got the answer he was expecting.
"I think your dinner's over," Billy DiPezio said. "Wrap the rest of it up to go."
"What's going on?"
"I'll pick you up in fifteen minutes. I'll tell you on the way."
"On the way where?" Justin asked.
"Drogin's lot," Billy said.
19
Billy DiPezio pulled his new Mercedes inside the wire mesh fence that surrounded the several acres of overgrown property known as Drogin's lot. As they stepped out of the car, Justin noticed that the night sky was particularly dark. There were few stars and the moon was hidden by fast-moving clouds. He was surprised to find that it was nearly nine-thirty. The slivers of moonlight that reached the ground gave the property an ominous feel. Not just the property, Justin thought. The world.
They were met by an FBI agent who didn't bother to introduce himself but led them toward two other agents. One of those agents was Norman Korkes, the agent whose jaw Justin had dislocated earlier that day. Agent Korkes nodded curtly at Justin but didn't speak. It was the other agent who spoke, after Billy introduced him as having just flown in from Washington, D.C.
"It's not a nice sight," Special Agent Zach Fletcher said.
Justin nodded but said nothing. Then he was led over to where Wanda Chinkle's body lay. She was unclothed and her skin was covered with severe bruises. Her chest and stomach were covered in swirls of blood, as were her right hand and her left shoulder. Justin inhaled quickly and deeply. His exhale was slow and uneven.
"You saw her earlier today," Agent Fletcher said.
Justin nodded again. He still wasn't quite ready or able to talk.
"What were you meeting about?"
"Do we have to have this conversation right here?" Justin finally said, looking down at Wanda's still form.
"Unfortunately we do," Agent Fletcher said. "At least for the moment. Look at the markings on her body."
The unnamed agent flicked on a flashlight and fixed the beam on Wanda. Justin let his eyes focus on her now. He had never seen Wanda naked when she was alive, and it seemed particularly obscene to have her exposed this way in death. He forced himself to survey her entire body until it began to seem less a real person than an inanimate object-the same mental exercise he used every time he covered a homicide. He was able to study her with a slightly clinical eye now, and Justin saw that what, at first glance, he'd taken to be smears of blood on her breasts, stomach, and one arm were, in fact, words. The writing was difficult to make out-the letters were not very clear, the blood had dripped and coagulated and mixed with dirt, and the writing was anything but smooth-but he could finally make out what it said. And when he had, he looked up at Agent Fletcher in disbelief.
"How do you read that?" Fletcher asked.
"Who wrote this?" Justin asked.
"We think she did. Look by her hand."
The flashlight beam moved several inches over and Justin saw a jagged piece of broken glass in the ground by Wanda's right hand.
"There're plenty of broken bottles and cans scattered throughout the whole lot. It looks as if, right before she died, she used that piece of glass to cut herself and do the best she could to write this message on the only canvas she had available."
"Her own body. Using her own blood."
Fletcher nodded. "Must have been pretty important to her." Then he said again, "Tell me what you read."
"It looks like 'JW,'" Justin said. "Then it looks like the word 'payback.'" "Payback" had been written in a combination of capital and small letters. Wanda had left out the c. "The next word looks like 'Hades.' Then 'Ali.'" "Hades" was also spelled using a combination of capital and small letters. "Ali" was straightforward. The A was capitalized. The l was just a straight line. The i was also a straight line, but smaller. It tailed off from the first two letters. It looked as if it was the last thing Wanda had managed to write. Justin repeated the whole thing aloud: "JW, Payback, Hades, Ali."