Funny how one's perceptions change. Now that she knew the story, she saw the photos differently. Clay was trying to hide his emotions, while Emmie didn't care if the world knew what she felt. Neither one of them had changed.
But how to explain Gus, with his sad eyes and haunted expression? What was he seeing? What was it that kept his eyes riveted on Emmie? Tess studied the Polaroid, the only image she had seen of Lollie alive. It was taken less than two weeks before the murders, according to the date stamped on the bottom. The five smiled, innocent of their destiny. Lollie sat in the center, the two couples on either side of her. Lollie, Gus and Ida, Frank and Marianna. Two were going to die, two were going to divorce, one was going to be widowed. The three women looked in the camera. The two men looked at Lollie.
The two men looked at Lollie.
Tess thought of the three bodies in Espejo Verde. Two had been killed hastily, quickly. One had been tortured, his death drawn out, his suffering the point of the exercise. Everyone does everything for money and sex, Rick had said, mocking the old robbery detective, Marty Diamond. But Diamond might have been closer to the truth than they realized. Sex and money, money and sex. And love. Some people killed for love, or thought they did.
The three women looked in the camera. The two men looked at Lollie. And a little girl had grown up, studying this photo, memorizing it, decoding it, until she finally recognized in her cousin's eyes a kinship only they could share. You had to be crazy to die for love. You had to be crazy to kill for love.
Emmie Sterne was crazy enough to do both.
Chapter 28
Thank God for make-up sex-Rick and Kristina were still at Rick's house when Tess called from her cell phone, their voices as soft and rumpled as the sheets beneath them. But once Rick understood why she was calling, he asked almost no questions, just took down the directions and promised to get up there as soon as possible. He didn't even press for an explanation when Tess told him she needed a change of clothes for the ride into town.
They were there within an hour, both of them, and Tess couldn't help wondering if Kristina had decided Rick shouldn't make a solo house call to a naked Tess. She had brought Tess clothes, however-a pair of jeans that couldn't fasten over Tess's hips, and a baggy T-shirt. Fashion Puta, She'll Do Anything for Clothes, the legend read. No, Kristina wasn't taking anything for granted.
"This time, I'm calling the cops," Rick said, once they were back on the highway, heading toward San Antonio at a steady seventy miles per hour, a speed that would get them into town within thirty minutes, but wouldn't cause the Texas cops to look at them twice. "If you know where Crow is, and you tell me, I've got to call them, or face the consequences."
"But I don't know. All I'm sure of is that he's gone to find Emmie somewhere along the parade route."
"You're making a big leap, Tess, from suicide to murder. Remember, less than forty-eight hours ago, you were just as sure that Gus Sterne had killed Darden and Weeks. Now you think it's Emmie."
"It has to be Emmie."
"I gotta call the cops," Rick repeated.
"If I end up in an interrogation room for the rest of the day, nobody wins. Even the cops, with all their manpower, aren't guaranteed to find Emmie in time. But Crow knows where she is, and there's only one way to make sure she doesn't hurt him."
"How's that?" Kristina asked, looking back over the front seat at Tess, her eyes bright with excitement.
"We have to stop the parade."
Between the parade and the usual Saturday traffic, it took them twenty minutes to inch through Brackenridge Park once they left the freeway. Finally they reached La Casita, where Tess grabbed her running shoes and some jeans that fit, then checked on her all-but-abandoned child. Mrs. Nguyen and Esskay were watching the preparade coverage on one of the local stations and sharing a can of Pringles.
"Mrs. Nguyen-please, no more junk food. It's really not good for her."
"Oh, I only gave her one. Maybe two. We have a pizza coming." Esskay smirked at Tess.
She glanced out the windows. Broadway was bumper to bumper, and there was no place to park. "Can my friend leave his car in your lot-we probably can't get much closer to the parade route than we are here, and I don't need my space today."
"Sure thing, sure thing," she said, waving a vague hand, eyes still fixed on the empty street in front of the Alamo. "Chris Marrou said there are ten thousand people already downtown."
It was more than a mile up Broadway to the parade staging area and the sidewalks and streets were clogged with people, making it impossible to move quickly. By the time they found the staging ground and a parade worker showed them to the shaded underpass where Gus Sterne's silver Lincoln idled, it was twelve-thirty. Half an hour until the first marching band started down the street. Tess motioned to Kris and Rick to hang back-she didn't want Gus Sterne to know she had confided her suspicions in anyone-and walked over to the car.
Clay was in the backseat, reading a book. His father was nearby, in a knot of men who all looked like him, with their gray hair, florid faces, and navy blazers.
"What'd you do, pay God off?" one asked. "The weather couldn't be better, you son of a bitch."
"You son of a bitch," the others echoed, slapping hands and passing around a silver flask. Gus Sterne declined it with a shake of his head. He looked distracted and uneasy to Tess. It probably would make a man nervous, knowing two of his accomplices had been murdered in the past month.
Tess placed her hand over the pages of Clay's open book, to get his attention. "You have to stop this."
He looked up. "I couldn't stop this parade with Sam Houston at my side. Besides, what's the big deal? I know it's just one big ego trip for my dad, but no one ever died from a little self-aggrandizement."
"Emmie is out there somewhere along the route. When the car goes by, she's going to kill your father, then kill herself. Can you live with that?"
He stared at her as if she had spoken in another language, and he hadn't caught every word. "Emmie? But where-"
"We don't know. That's why our only hope is to stop the parade."
They had spoken in low tones, but Gus Sterne suddenly moved toward the car and grabbed Tess by the elbow. "What is this nonsense? Stop the parade, because Emmie has made another one of her silly threats? I won't have it. That girl has exacted her last measure of insanity on this family."
"It's not a silly threat, and you know it. Otherwise, why would you step up security at Sterne Foods, and meet with police about the route? Darden and Weeks have already died for their part in the Espejo Verde murders. Now it's your turn."
Tess didn't know what emotion filled Gus Sterne's face then, she only knew she had never seen anything like it. It was ugly, it was evil, and yet it was also weak and pathetic, the look of a man who was almost relieved to hear his terrible secret spoken aloud.
His voice, however, betrayed nothing. "Get away from me, and get away from my son, or I'll have you arrested," he said softly, so no one else could overhear. "You are interfering with a legal parade, for which there is a permit, and you are making demonstrably false, slanderous statements. Those who wish to protest this event have been given a small space at the corner of Broadway and Grayson. Join them if you like, but you're no longer welcome here. Javier-"
Javier, the gabby security guard who was to pilot the silver Lincoln through the parade, seized her by the arm.
"She'll kill herself, right in front of you," Tess called over her shoulder to Clay as Javier led her away. "But first she'll kill your father. It's awful to watch someone die. I know, I've seen it. To watch someone die and to know it's your fault, that you might have prevented it-I can't imagine living with that."