Lucy didn't follow up after that. I headed back to her. The door closed. After we slipped into my car, I said, "Well?" "Mrs. Perez is definitely lying."
"Nice bluff," I said.
"The DNA test?"
"Yeah."
Lucy let that go. "In there. You mentioned the name Manolo Santiago." "That was Gils alias." She was processing. I waited another moment or two and then said,
"What?"
"I visited my father yesterday. At his, uh, home. I checked the log book. He's had only one visitor other than me in the past month. A man named Manolo Santiago."
"Whoa," I said.
"Yes."
I tried to let it settle. It wouldn't. "So why would Gil Perez visit your father?" "Good question." I thought about what Raya Singh had said, about Lucy and me lying. "Can you ask Ira?"
"I'll try. He's not well. His mind has a habit of wandering."
"Worth a try."
She nodded. I made a right turn, decided to change subjects.
"What makes you so sure Mrs. Perez is lying?" I asked.
"She's grieving, for one thing. That smell? It's candles. She was wearing black. You could see the red in the eyes, the slump of the shoulders.
All that. Second, the pictures."
"What about them?"
"I wasn't lying in there. It is very unusual to have pictures dating back to childhood and leaving out a dead child. On its own, it wouldn't mean much, but did you notice the funny spacing? There weren’t enough pictures for that mantel. My guess is, she took away the pictures with Gil in them. Just in case something like this happened."
"You mean if someone came by?"
"I don't know exactly. But I think Mrs. Perez was getting rid of evidence. She figured that she was the only one with pictures to use for identification. She couldn't have thought that you'd still have one from that summer."
I thought about it.
"Her reactions were all wrong, Cope. Like she was playing a role. She's lying." "So the question is, what was she lying about?" "When in doubt, go with the most obvious." "Which is?" Lucy shrugged. "Gil helped Wayne kill them. That would explain everything. People always assumed that Steubens had an accomplice- how else did he bury those bodies so fast? But maybe it was only one body."
My sisters.
"Right. Then Wayne and Gil staged it to look like Gil died too. Maybe Gil has always been helping Wayne. Who knows?" I said nothing. "If that's the case," I said, "then my sister is dead." "I know." I said nothing. "Cope?" "What?" "It's not your fault." I said nothing. "If anything," she said, "it's mine."
I stopped the car. "How do you figure that?"
"You wanted to stay there that night. You wanted to work guard duty. I'm the one who lured you into the woods." "Lured?" She said nothing. "You're kidding, right?" "No," she said. "I had a mind of my own, Lucy. You didn't make me do anything." She stayed quiet. Then she said, "You still blame yourself." I felt my grip tighten on the wheel. "No, I don't." "Yeah, Cope, you do. Come on. Despite this recent revelation, you knew that your sister had to be dead. You were hoping for a second chance. You were hoping to still find redemption." "That psychology degree of yours," I said. "Its really paying off, huh?"
"I don't mean to-"
"How about you, Luce?" My voice had more bite than I intended. "Do you blame yourself? Is that why you drink so damn much?" Silence. "I shouldn't have said that," I said. Her voice was soft. "You don't know anything about my life." "I know. I'm sorry. It's none of my business." "Those DUIs were a long time ago." I said nothing. She turned away from me and looked out the window. We drove in silence.
"You may be right," I said.
Her eyes stayed on the window.
"Here is something I've never told anyone," I said. I felt my face flush and the tears push against my eyes. "After the night in the woods, my father never looked at me the same."
She turned toward me.
"I could have been projecting. I mean, you're right. I did blame my self to some degree. What if we hadn't gone off? What if I had just stayed where I was supposed to? And maybe the look on his face was just the pure devastation of a parent losing a child. But I always thought there was something more in it. Something almost accusatory."
She put a hand on my arm. "Oh, Cope."
I kept driving. "So maybe you're on to something. Maybe I do need to make amends for the past. But what about you?" "What about me?" "Why are you delving into this? What do you hope to gain after all these years?"
"Are you kidding?"
"No. What are you after exactly?"
"The life I knew ended that night. Don't you get that?"
I said nothing.
"The families-including yours-dragged my father into court. You took away everything we had. Ira wasn't built for that kind of hit. He couldn't take the stress."
I waited for her to say more. She didn't.
"I understand that," I said. "But what are you after now? I mean, like you said, I'm trying to rescue my sister. Short of that, I'm trying to find out what really happened to her. What are you after?" She didn't reply. I drove some more. The skies were starting to darken.
"You don't know how vulnerable I feel being here," she said.
I wasn't sure how-to answer that. So I said, "I would never hurt you."
Silence.
"Part of it is," she said, "it feels like I lived two lives. The one before that night, where things were going pretty well, and the one after, where things aren't. And yeah, I know how pathetic that sounds. But some times it feels like I was pushed down a hill that night and I've been stumbling down ever since. That sometimes I sort of get my bearings but the hill is so steep that I can never really get balanced again and then
I start tumbling again. So perhaps-I don't know-but perhaps if I figure out what really happened that night, if I can make some good out of all that bad, I'll stop tumbling."
She had been so magnificent when I knew her. I wanted to remind her of that. I wanted to tell her that she was being overly melodramatic, that she was still beautiful and successful and that she still had so much going for her. But I knew that it would sound too patronizing.
So instead I said, "It's so damn good to see you again, Lucy."
She squeezed her eyes shut as though I had struck her. I thought about what she said, about not wanting to be too vulnerable. I thought about that journal, all that talk about not finding another love like that, not ever. I wanted to reach out and take her hand, but I knew for both of us right now, it was too raw, that even a move like that would be too much and not enough.
Chapter 24
DROPPED OFF LUCY BACK AT HER OFFICE.
"In the morning," she said, "I'll visit Ira and see what he can tell me about Manolo Santiago."
"Okay."
Lucy reached for the door handle. "I have a bunch of papers to correct. ((T) I'll walk you in."
"Dont."
Lucy slipped out of the car. I watched her walk toward the door. My stomach tightened. I tried to sort through what I was feeling right now, but it just felt like a rush of emotion. Hard to distinguish what was what.
My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Muse.
"How did it go with Perez's mother?" Muse asked.
"I think she's lying."
"I got something you might find interesting."
"I'm listening."
"Mr. Perez hangs at a local bar called Smith Brothers. He likes hanging out with the boys, plays some darts, that kind of thing. Moderate drinker from what I hear. But the last two nights, he got really lit up.
Started crying and picking fights."
"Grieving," I said.
At the morgue, Mrs. Perez had been the strong one. He had leaned on her. I remember that I could see the cracks there. "And either way, liquor loosens the tongue," Muse said. "True enough." "Perez is there now, by the way. At the bar. Might be a good place to take a run at him."
"On my way."
"There is one more thing."
"I'm listening."
"Wayne Steubens will see you."
I think I stopped breathing. "When?"