Canyon sighed. “Mother-”
“Canyon, I know you want to see the good in everyone but the world doesn’t work that way. The cops were the worst. Sworn officers, give me a break. They put their hands on me. I was driving home, late, after work, and they pulled me over, two cars with lights and sirens and badges that entitled them to act like animals. There were four men. They made me stand against the car and then they took turns, patting me down, patting me up, patting me every which way they wanted. And then one of them, a big man who by the light of day tipped his hat to me at the grocery store and called me ma’am, he squeezed my breast and said ‘Jew whores don’t feel any different than regular whores, do they, boys?’ and then he laughed. He laughed, Canyon, and I knew I would die before I put trust in a system that broken.”
Canyon stood and crossed the room and bending over, took his mother’s hand from her chest and replaced it in her lap. He kissed her on the forehead and whispered, “Mommy, hush now.”
Mrs. Kirshbaum stared up at her son with eyes full of horror and grief and pain.
“I couldn’t go to them, Canyon, I couldn’t. Not after that.”
Chapter Thirty-eight
We left Mrs. Kirshbaum and Canyon in the bedroom and let ourselves out. I felt dirty, like I’d watched something obscene. And in a way, I had. What kind of a woman-what kind of a mother-would hide a thing like that? For thirty years?
Finn took the car keys from my hand. “I’ll drive.”
We got in the car but then sat there, too numb to leave. I rubbed my belly and leaned my head back against the headrest.
Finn said, “There’s no way Nicky Bellington knew all of this, right? I mean, how could he? Mrs. Kirshbaum just called us. Nick’s been dead almost two weeks.”
He leaned his head back, too, and then turned and stared at me. “Right?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore, Finn.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out. My head was pounding. I opened the glove compartment, hoping for a bag of trail mix, a chocolate bar, anything. I found a dusty old bag of peanuts and I tore into it.
“I give up, this whole thing; the kids, Nicky, the circus, all of it. I don’t care anymore. I just want Brody back from Alaska, and to deliver this baby, and to forget this whole miserable thing ever happened.”
I chewed a few more of the peanuts and sucked the salty grease from my fingertips.
Finn glanced over at me. “You don’t mean that. You’re just upset.”
I threw the empty wrapper at my feet and nodded. “Damn right I’m upset. I’m furious. We should arrest that woman for conspiracy, for aiding and fucking abetting. If she had gone to the police that day with Canyon’s story, maybe she could have saved those boys.”
“You heard her, she was scared. Would you have gone to the cops, if they’d done that to you?”
I was silent. Finn started the car and pulled away from the curb.
Finn continued. “Gemma, I need you to be here, okay? Wherever you are right now, come back. We need to get to the station and get all this written up. We need to figure out how this plays into Nicky’s murder. We’ve got a motive for the McKenzie murders-the Woodsman thought they could identify him. And we know the Woodsman had a partner. Jesus, it changes everything. We’ve got to talk to Chief Chavez.”
My cell buzzed against my hip and I checked the caller ID. “Speak of the devil-”
I answered and listened to the chief for a few minutes without speaking. He finished, and I said, “We’ll be there in ten,” and hung up.
I leaned to the left and looked at the dashboard. Finn was doing thirty-six in a thirty zone.
“What?”
“Annika Bellington’s missing.”
“Ah, hell,” he said. He hit the lights and sirens and accelerated the car until we were streaking through the town in a haze of blue and red lights and shrill, ear-piercing sirens.
A dead son. A missing daughter. I didn’t know what Terry and Ellen Bellington’s breaking point was but I had a feeling we were approaching it.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Angel Chavez fumed. “What the hell is going on?”
We stared at him. The suit he’d worn to Frank Bellington’s funeral was rumpled. A coffee spill roughly the shape of Italy stained his white dress shirt. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks unshaven.
The chief asked again, “What the hell is going on?”
The small conference room was hot; there were too many of us in it. Finn, myself, Moriarty, Armstrong, Chief Chavez, two secretaries, and Mayor Bellington’s chief of staff, that somber old bird whose name I could never remember. Her navy dress was impeccable, her pearls-Pearl Gold.
That was it. That was her name. No wonder it never stuck.
She was the first to respond to the chief. “Angel, if I may?”
He nodded and took a seat and pinched the bridge of his nose.
Pearl Gold removed her eyeglasses and folded them in her right hand. As she spoke, she tapped the pair against the palm of her left hand, one tap for each sentence. Her skin was an origami artist’s practice paper; thin, delicate, full of lines and creases.
“Mayor and Mrs. Bellington believe something has happened to their daughter, Annika. They are terribly worried. She’s not responding to the countless messages they’ve left on her cell phone.”
I asked the obvious question. “When was the last time they spoke with her?”
Pearl Gold shrugged. “The last time anyone remembers seeing her was at the funeral this morning. Her car is at the house, and her clothes and personal effects seem untouched. She’s simply… gone.”
“A few hours? And we’re already worried?” Louis Moriarty asked.
Pearl nodded. “Unfortunately, we are in this case. Annika wouldn’t have missed out on her grandfather’s service this afternoon.”
Moriarty said, “Let’s think about this. The girl is what, eighteen? Nineteen? She’s young, cute. She probably found herself a boyfriend and she’s holed up somewhere with him.”
“That doesn’t sound like Annika. And she’s got a boyfriend-he’s a band guy in New Haven,” I said, remembering the first conversation I’d had with her. “Paul, or Pete. He goes to Yale, too.”
Pearl Gold cleared her throat and attempted a smile. “Erm, yes, it’s not exactly like Annika to up and run away. But she has done this before; she and Nicky, when they were quite young, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. They left a note that said they were running away from home. The mayor and his wife didn’t worry, though, you see, because the children had taken sleeping bags, tents, a loaf of bread, and two jars of peanut butter. They knew when the children got tired of peanut butter sandwiches they’d come home.”
Chief Chavez stood and paced the tiny room. “I’m guessing the Bellingtons have checked, and there’s no peanut butter missing this time?”
Pearl Gold nodded. “Correct. The only thing missing is Annika.”
“Her brother was murdered less than two weeks ago, I think we need to take this seriously, Chief,” Finn said. He didn’t bring up the Kirshbaums; we’d agreed to stay quiet on that until we knew more. There were still too many unanswered questions. We didn’t know who the Woodsman was. We didn’t know who his partner was.
Partners. That word was dancing across my mind a lot. Brody and I were partners-what kind of trust was there? Moriarty and Finn, Finn and I. Partners could be friends, too, like Bull Weston and Frank Bellington and Louis Moriarty.
Did the Woodsman have friends? Was he a regular old guy, someone who’d been a monster once and who had found a way to still those demons?
The chief stopped pacing and sat down. “I agree; we need to take this seriously. The clock starts now. She’s an adult, so we’ve got a forty-eight-hour window before this goes official. Pearl, you let the Bellingtons know we’re going to do all we can. Finn, Gemma, keep working on the Nicky case. Lou, take Armstrong and give Avondale a hand. We got shit on Sam’s hit-and-run, which means we’ve still got a would-be cop killer out there.”