“Knox?”
He turned toward Jynx, feeling dizzy and disoriented. “Yeah.”
“Where’d you go?”
He smiled and shook his head, walked back over to the bed. “Nowhere. I was just thinking you shouldn’t be moving this stuff alone. Where’s Myron?”
“Working. He’s pulling doubles till the baby comes.”
Her hands slid around to her belly, resting on the sides of it. She motioned to the nightstand, which she’d managed to pull away from the wall. Behind it, a piece of the brown carpet had been peeled back. “That’s where I found them,” she said. She waddled back to the bed and plucked an old photo envelope from the top of a box she’d already taped up. “I couldn’t lift the table up, so I was dragging it and dragging it, and it pulled the carpet right up. Otherwise, I never would have found them. Looks like she cut a flap in it to stick them under there.”
Knox’s fingers quivered as he turned the envelope over and shook out the photos. He tried not to get excited or to get his hopes up. He knew smoking guns were rare in a mythical kind of way, like unicorns and women who liked giving blow jobs. Still, his heart pounded a little. The photos were old and somewhat faded. Not near the kind of high-definition quality that society had grown used to with the advent of smart phones with built-in cameras and all things digital. Some of them had gotten moist or hot, maybe, and were hopelessly stuck together. Most of the photos were of students on Sydney’s track team; some were of Dorothy. Disappointment crept into Knox’s posture, his shoulders rounding, knees bending to meet the edge of the bed.
There was a photo of Sydney’s track coach, Cash Rigo, in his classroom, surprised by the camera but smiling. There was one of Sydney’s grandmother loading dishes into the dishwasher, bent at the waist, looking over her shoulder, her eyes blank. Then there were three of Sydney herself. In each one, she was smiling coyly but playing for the camera. She wore a black sports bra and her skimpy track shorts. She was playing the sexy grown-up woman she might have become. In one, she puckered her lips, her body turned to the side, hands over her bare belly, blowing a sly kiss to the camera. In another, she was turned with her back to the camera, bent forward slightly so the camera caught the expert curve of her rear. She looked over her shoulder with a “come hither” look as she peeled one strap of her sports bra down her shoulder. The last photo showed her reaching for the camera, arms extended beyond the scope of the lens, laughing, eyes wide and bright.
Jynx sighed. “I know, I know. There’s nothing there. I don’t even know why she hid them. I mean, I guess Lonnie took them, but everyone saw her in a sports bra—she used to run in it. Nothing scandalous there.”
“Lonnie didn’t take these,” Knox said. He had pulled the three photos in question out of the pile. They lay fanned out on his lap. “Cash Rigo did.”
Jynx’s eyes bulged. She moved her hands to the top of her belly, which was now a shelf for her ample breasts. Knox thought he could see a limb poking through her belly—an elbow or a knee. He remembered when his wife was pregnant with Bianca, how toward the end, their daughter’s movements became visible beneath Moira’s skin. Back then, it reminded him of a bad sci-fi film, but now, having witnessed the miracle of life first-hand and the horror of death, he thought it was pretty cool.
“The coach? How do you know he took them?” Jynx asked.
Knox tapped the middle photo where the corner of the painting behind Sydney peeked out. “This painting. If you get a magnifying glass, I’ll bet you’ll make out the initials F.R.”
Jynx stared at him, uncomprehending.
Knox said, “Francine Rigo. The coach’s wife.”
“The school nurse?”
“Yeah, she had just taken an art class when I visited them after Sydney’s murder. She had done this painting, and it was hanging in their downstairs hallway. It was a tree in a field but it . . . there was something strange about it.”
He remembered staring at it, wondering which one of them had made the decision to hang it up. Was it her own hubris or Cash being overly solicitous to keep her happy?
“Sydney was never over there. She was never at his house,” Jynx said.
Knox flicked a finger off the photo. “Evidently, she was there at least once.”
Jynx’s mouth turned downward. “Why would she pose like that for him? There was never anything between them.”
Knox chuckled. “Jynx, I never pegged you as being naïve.”
She bristled, straightening her spine and trying to fold her arms across her chest. “Sydney would never have done something like that. She wasn’t—she was a good kid.”
Knox kept his gaze steady on her. “Lots of good kids get into situations they shouldn’t. Rigo was older than her.”
“Sydney wouldn’t allow herself to be manipulated that way. I know you always thought he was a suspect.”
“And you’ve always dismissed that notion,” Knox countered. He sighed and dabbed his sweaty face again. A wave of dizziness came over him. He blinked his eyes, willing it away. “Everyone always has,” he added, almost to himself.
“Okay, maybe he did it. Maybe he was obsessed with her and killed her because he couldn’t have her.”
Knox laughed. “Stop watching Lifetime, for Pete’s sake. You mean to tell me that, as a teenager, you never had a crush on an older guy? Cash Rigo wasn’t that far out of college. He wasn’t even ten years older than Sydney. There could have been something. The guy was pretty broken up over her death.”
“But he was married—and white,” Jynx blurted.
Knox stared at her, an amused smile playing on his lips.
“No offense,” Jynx said, turning away from him. She busied herself patting the flap of carpet down with her sneakered foot.
“None taken.”
“I know you have your theories,” Jynx said over her shoulder. “I don’t think Coach Rigo killed Sydney. But I’m not a cop. My grandmother . . . she always thought you were right. She adored you.”
“And I adored her.”
Finally, Jynx turned and met his eyes. “She believed in you.”
The words were like a knife in his heart, and as if they had conjured pain, an ache bloomed in his chest, spreading to his arms. No one believed in him. Not his wife nor his daughter. Not his coworkers. He was an epic failure. An incompetent drunk. He ruined everything he touched. But Dorothy’s faith in him had been unnerving. The fact that he could not bring her granddaughter’s killer to justice before her own death had broken his imperfect heart.
“With these pictures, I might be able to do right by her,” he croaked. “By all of you.”
He felt Jynx’s hand on his shoulder, heard her whisper, but couldn’t make out the words. His heart seized in his chest and he had a sudden, absurd image of his heart as an angry, clenched fist. He couldn’t make it open. Then he felt light, like he was made of air, like he could float away—a balloon no one wanted.
Knox looked into Jynx’s lovely, thin face. The smooth brown skin of her forehead creased. Concern pooled in her dark eyes. Then her fingers dug into the flesh over his collarbone as the floor rushed at him. The last thing he heard was her screaming his name.