Cincinnati and Covington detectives went through the laborious task of sifting through Kristen’s cop life. Her record was better than clean, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t made enemies. Five years before, she had been the first officer on the scene in Sayler Park, where a couple was arrested for starving their baby daughter to death. The crime had shocked the city. Although the ten-week-old was barely alive when officers arrived, it weighed half what a normal infant its age should. At his sentencing, the father, a young white-trash hood, had threatened to rape and kill Kristen when he got out of prison. Such threats weren’t uncommon, but this one, so specific, would have to be checked out. At the same time, they were going through her emails for threats: so far, nothing was panning out.
The false-confession nuts were unchained by the crime. Most were well known to the police and regularly owned up to crimes they didn’t commit. That this was the murder of an attractive woman seen on national television only ramped up the lunatics. Their stories could be easily shot down by the information they couldn’t provide. But it all required detective time, and Will knew his colleagues resented it.
Kristen. She had lovers, many acquaintances, but no close friends, no real boyfriend, as far as he could tell. Work was her life, with sex and her boat to relieve the tension.
Kristen’s timeline also had unfortunate gaps. She had withdrawn a hundred dollars from an ATM downtown on Saturday. She made no calls that day. No one saw her leave the marina. So far, no one had seen her on the river that day or night.
Now he drove Cheryl Beth back home and they fell into silence. But it was a comfortable one. At the little house in Clifton, he pulled into the driveway, opened her car door, and walked her to the porch.
“Thank you for a nice evening.” He held out his hand.
“Oh, Will, come here.” She raised her head and they kissed. It lasted longer than five seconds and less than five minutes, then he held her close to him with one arm as he balanced on his cane, feeling every part of her against him.
He felt normal.
“May I see you again?”
“I’m counting on it,” she said. “Good night.”
Back in the car, he turned on his cell. One message: he listened to his ex-wife. He was way past her, but hearing Cindy’s voice, and the intonations and emotions behind the words he knew so well, battered his tranquility. Why would she be calling? He thought about ignoring it. Then the phone rang.
“Hello, Cindy.”
“Will, I’m sorry to bother you, but I need to talk. It’s about our son.”
Our son. As their marriage had fallen apart, piece by piece like a cursed dwelling, she would refer to John as her son. Tonight it was our son.
He sighed. “Give me the new address.” He wrote it down and backed out of Cheryl Beth’s driveway.
Cindy was now Cynthia Morrison, or Mrs. J. Bradford Morrison. She had remarried quickly and moved to her new husband’s house in Hyde Park. This somewhat surprised Will. Cindy disliked the city. Her insistence several years ago that they move to a new house out in Deerfield Township, such a long commute up I-71, was one more crack in their marriage. But, then, he couldn’t give her a home in the city’s most exclusive, leafiest, old-money neighborhood. Still, on the drive over he was smiling from his time with Cheryl Beth. He was past being hurt by Cindy. It was merely interesting now.
The address went with a massive Tudor behind a sweeping, immaculate lawn, and basking in ornamental lighting. An alarm company sign was prominently stuck into the grass. This was what J. Bradford Morrison had been able to buy as a stockbroker. He and Cindy at least had something in common to talk about: money.
Three steps up. No railing, of course. Will pulled down his lats, and carefully mounted each step, then up the walk to the wide front door.
“Thank you for coming.” She was already waiting. “Brad is out of town.”
Cindy had gone blond, an expensive color job and cut parted on one side and swept over her head. She was about as far as she could get from the twenty-year-old brunette bank teller he had met as a young patrolman. There had been a bank robbery. He impulsively asked her out. She had a baby son, had been abandoned by his father. Will and Cindy married too young. They weren’t the people they would become, and they became those people largely apart. He helped her finish her B.A., then later an M.B.A., as she rose in the bank. Sometimes she slept with her bosses. But she didn’t have to. She was smart as hell.
She led him past the expansive entry hall with its dark, hardwood floor, and into a living room that appeared as if no ordinary humans had ever been inside it, only interior designers. It was flawless. It was larger than his entire townhouse.
He sat in a broad cushioned chair, keeping his Lazarus tasselled loafers off the vast Persian rug, and she settled across from him on a cream-colored sofa, draping one aerobicized leg over the other. She had become a stick person with breasts.
“About our son,” Will prompted, moving quickly past the uncomfortable small talk.
“Something’s wrong with him,” she said, sitting upright with her hands carefully folded in her lap, as if she were talking to a client.
“He’s a young man,” Will said. “I’ve always thought you should lock up the young men until they were thirty. The young women you can let out at twenty.”
Not even a smile.
“He’s so aimless,” she went on. “He wanted to go to Portland State, for god’s sake. So, okay. He ended up dropping almost every class so he wouldn’t get a failing grade.”
Will was tempted to say something about Cindy continuing to give him money, letting him live at home. He held the head of his cane tighter.
“He was out all Saturday night,” she went on. “Dragged himself in at eight the next morning. Thought I wouldn’t even notice! Wouldn’t say where he was. But I knew. I got a call around midnight from Heather Bridges’ mother. She had a date with him. We talked later, on Sunday, after Heather came home. Her mother said they were out on the river all night with some other kids from Summit.”
Atomic particles in Will’s brain wished he didn’t know this information. But hundreds of young people were on the river this time of year.
He said, “What does he do with his time?”
“He still reads all the time. He rides his bike.”
“Does he have a job?”
She shook her head.
“I had to work my way through college.”
“Kids are different now,” Cindy said. “They take longer to grow up. You can read it anywhere. Anyway, he doesn’t need money.”
“That’s part of the problem.”
Her voice rose. “You have no right to judge!”
“Okay.”
“Will, I’m afraid he’s into drugs again.” She leaned forward. “I want you to talk to him.”
“He came to see me the other night,” Will said.
“Did he say anything?”
Will shook his head. “We only had a beer and watched the city. If he had something to tell me, he kept it to himself.”
“William!” It was that familiar voice, harsh and frustrated.
“What do you want me to do, Cindy?” Everything was transactional with her. He felt the old toxic feelings returning. “Why haven’t you talked to him? Have Brad talk to him. What about his real father?”
She stood. “You are so…so much the same.”
He stood and left without another word. The walkway was slanted down. He was extra aware of it and wished he hadn’t enjoyed that second beer with Cheryl Beth. Next came the steps. Those would be more dangerous: Not even a shrub to hold onto. He did all the things he had been taught to steady himself and made the first step down.