“She seems to think it was the experiment that kicked off his problems.”
“That’s because she was too high to notice,” Kara said. “He’s always been like that. Not dangerous. Just...” She bit her lip. “Himself.”
“Does he have — did he have, at some point, before or after his release — someone monitoring him? Social worker? Anyone like that?”
That earned me an eye-roll. For an instant she looked just like her mother.
I asked where Julian had gotten his meds.
“Clinic, I think.”
Staff might have a bead on him. But I doubted they’d speak to me: confidentiality.
“What about old friends?” I said. “Can you give me some names?”
She shook her head despondently. She said, “All the other kids did was tease him.”
Her voice had fallen.
“They called him Grimace. Like the McDonald’s character. The purple one? Big, dumb Julian. Ma — Edwina, she wanted him to play football. She saw a meal ticket. When he got into high school, she made him go out for the team. But he couldn’t follow instructions, he’d wander around in circles. He didn’t like to get hit, or to hit anybody else. He never could hurt another person, no matter what they did to him. Never.”
She was sticking up for him, and I felt for her, more deeply than she could imagine.
Kara stirred the remains of the napkin with a long, lacquered fingernail. “So what do you think he’s done this time?”
“Nothing. As I told your mother, I need to talk to him to make sure he’s okay.”
“So you can arrest him.”
“I have no cause to do that.”
“That didn’t stop you all before.”
We’d been circling this point, and as much as I dreaded it, it was almost a relief to have arrived. “With respect, I read the file. There’s no shortage of evidence.”
“With respect to you,” she said, “that’s wrong, because I know he didn’t do it.”
I said, “I’m listening.”
“I was with him,” she said. “At home. That whole night.”
“The night of the murder.”
She nodded.
“You and Julian were together.”
“It was a Sunday. We were both in the house all day, watching TV.”
“He might’ve left the house after you were asleep.”
“He wasn’t supposed to do that,” she said.
That didn’t mean he hadn’t. But she’d never concede. I said, “You’re sure it was that same night?”
A withering smile. “I’m sure, Deputy.”
“How old were you?”
“Seven.”
“Okay, well, I’m thirty-four,” I said, “and most of the time I couldn’t tell you the date off the top of my head. I’d have to check my phone.”
“I’m sure,” she said. “It was Halloween. People kept knocking on the door. I had to send them away because we didn’t have any candy.”
“Where was your mother during this?”
Kara shrugged. “Wherever she would go. Out.”
“Can I ask why you didn’t tell this to the police?”
She chuffed. “You don’t think I tried? I went to the station myself. Nobody believed me.”
By now I’d read the complete file, some parts multiple times.
There was no mention of Kara’s statement, anywhere.
I said, “You are aware that they had Julian’s fingerprint on the knife.”
“I am.”
“Can you explain that?”
“I can’t. But I know what I know.” She sat up straight and tall. “My brother was sick. He needed help. But he wasn’t evil, and he wasn’t violent. He never killed that girl.”
There were lots of reasons to discount what Kara had told me, almost none to believe her, and as I relayed our conversation to Ken Bascombe, I tried to convey my own skepticism. All the same, I could sense his impatience growing, until finally he cut me off:
“What are we talking about. She was five?”
“Seven.”
“How many seven-year-olds can tell time?”
“That’s what I told her.”
“You said you needed to find the guy for some other thing. Why’re you messing with my case?”
“No messing,” I said. “She’s his sister, I thought she’d know where he is.”
“Yeah. And? What’s that got to do with any of this other shit?”
“Nothing. It came up. I wanted to run it by you.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. “It came up, or she brought it up?”
“She did.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That’s why I checked the file. To verify her credibility.”
“And you didn’t find it because she has none. I never spoke to her. Ever. Okay?”
“Is it possible somebody else did, though?”
“Is it possible? Sure. But they never told me. Listen, Thomas Edison, I don’t have the file in front of me. I don’t have it memorized. If you say it’s not in there, there’s a reason why not. And — and, let’s pretend for a second I did speak to her, or someone did. It doesn’t change a thing. Okay? I’m not about to rearrange reality to fit to some unsubstantiated thing, coming from a child, who by the way also happens to be an interested party. You said it yourself. She’s his sister. Whatever bullshit she’s spinning out does nothing to change the fact that we have physical evidence, an eyewitness, and a confession.”
“Her brother’s been out for years,” I said. “Why lie to me about it now?”
Bascombe laughed. “I think even you can figure that out.”
“To rehabilitate his reputation.”
“Or to get you off his trail. Or just to yank your chain. You think she gives a shit?”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“Cause it’s sensible,” he said. Another of his barking laughs. A seal after swallowing a sardine. “Look. What you do, it’s gotta be a drag. I know it must feel exciting, the detective thing. Take it from me. It dead-ends. Like everything.”
Chapter 23
By Friday I knew that Freeway John Doe had died of liver failure. I still hadn’t made much progress on identifying him. His height and weight didn’t match any missing persons at our local PDs. The skin on his hands had degraded, making prints a nonstarter.
The best lead was a partial tattoo on his chest, the letters IVOR and numbers that could be a date. I worked the databases for surrounding counties, seeking persons named Ivor or Ivory or any variant thereof; executing public record searches for births and deaths.
From across the squad room came a mild commotion.
Sully said, “Look what the cat dragged in.”
I followed her gaze toward the far door. An Asian man in jeans and a camouflage-patterned windbreaker had entered and was moving along an impromptu receiving line, fielding greetings, fist bumps, and hugs.
Shupfer scooted her chair back and went over to join the welcoming committee.
Marlborough Ming was a wiry five-eight, with a close-cropped goatee and thinning crew cut, TOUGH MUDDER printed along his jacket sleeves. Pushing sixty, he looked fit enough to outrun any one of us.
“Wassup people,” he said, adjusting rimless glasses after Moffett released him from a bear hug. Reaching into his backpack, he began distributing little cellophane bundles cinched with ribbon, each containing a couple dozen coin-sized cookies in various colors and flavors.
“Ooohhh,” Botero said.
“White chocolate matcha,” Ming said, “sea salt caramel, dark chocolate raspberry, lemon crème.”
Ming’s wife ran a bakery.
“Everybody loves tiny cookies,” he declared. “They pay twice as much.”
I hadn’t yet opened mine before I saw Moffett shaking crumbs into his mouth. “Dude, these are the nuclear bomb.”
“You want more?”