"When I was a kid, my grandfather caught me smoking and made me finish the whole pack," I said. "Every last one. I got so sick I never smoked again."
"Yeah? Any other a' them folk tales you got to tell?"
"No. But why don't you give it a go?"
He shrugged. "'Kay." He teased out another cigarette and held it up ceremonially before lighting it. He went after it quick and hard, the cherry lurching several millimeters a pull. He finished, lit the next off the butt.
After he'd smoked two more, I asked, "How do you feel?"
"Great."
The next three cigarettes he seemed to enjoy even more.
"How about now?"
"Million bucks."
By the ninth he'd mastered the French inhale. By the thirteenth he was blowing smoke rings. He crushed the fifteenth on the wall between his knees, paused to stretch his arms happily to the sky, then lit up another.
I climbed up on the wall, sat next to him.
"Bum one off you?" I asked.
Caroline looked me in the eye as if she were sizing up an opposing boxer. Her index finger moved from her chest to mine. "There's no chemistry here."
"It's just dinner," I said.
She crossed the shag rug and settled behind her desk, as if she felt better with a large object between us.
I peered at the photographs on the bookshelves. Group-home kids of all ethnicities lined up for the Matterhorn, like a carefully cast Disney brochure photo. A crew of counselors around a campfire, kids sprawled in the foreground and across laps. On the side of the desk, there was a picture of Caroline laughing, arm around a black kid in his early teens. She was younger, her face unmarred yet by injury, and her beauty was radiant. I pointed at the picture. "Who's that?"
She slammed the photo flat and slid it into a drawer.
I said, "I meant the boy."
She flushed. Her collar fluttered from the pivoting fan. With quiet dignity she reached back into the drawer, removed the picture, and propped it up again. "That was J.C. I had a lot of jobs before this one."
I checked my watch. "I called Kasey Broach's apartment manager this morning. If his answering machine is to be believed, he's available only from six to six-thirty. To implement the Caroline Raine home-visit rule, I've got to get moving. I'd love you to take up my invitation to dinner tonight, but your deliberation is getting unflattering, and I'm fragile."
Her lips twitched not quite a smile. "Don't invite me to dinner because you think it's doing me some favor." She stared at me evenly. "I'm just fine on my own."
"Yeah, you seem great the picture of well-adjusted, just like me. That's why I think you and I could use each other." I walked over, paused by the door. "Eight o'clock?"
She gave me a faint nod.
The counselor with the bitten-down fingernails stood just outside in the hall, pretending to tidy up the telephone table.
She looked up as I passed. "You hurt her, I'll kick your ass."
"I hurt her," I said, "I'll help you."
Chapter 29
Kasey Broach's family moved through the open doorway of Apartment 1B to a U-Haul and back again, toting lamps, trash cans, cardboard boxes. Strong family resemblance in the parents and the younger sibling, whom I recognized from the news. They moved in automated silence through the powerful beam of the truck's headlights. Now and then one would halt along the brief path from truck to door and lean against a post, bending over as if catching lost breath.
Frozen meals thawed in a translucent trash bag by the doorway. Kasey's father paused to dump in an armload of toiletries fraying toothbrush, faded razor, half carton of Q-tips while his daughter wound a telephone cord around the base unit before stuffing it into a salad bowl. The logistics of loss. The awesome minutiae.
The 110 rattled along behind a vast concrete barrier a half block away. A group of kids ran around the dark street, waving toy guns that looked real enough to get them shot by worn-down cops. Their laughter seemed to mock the somber procession of surviving Broaches.
To see the apartment, I wouldn't require the harried manager's goodwill after all. What I required was perhaps more nerve than I could muster. This was an opportunity that my trial had robbed me of having with the Bertrands. A chance to speak to the bereaved and offer what little anyone could under such circumstances. For a moment I hated who I was for how it would taint my approach here. And I hated my ulterior motive, a seamy lining to a dark cloud.
The mother, a stout, well-put-together blonde, glanced over at me a few times, and I realized I must be creeping them out, watching behind my car's tinted windows with Kasey's killer still at large.
I approached, keeping a respectful distance. "Mrs. Broach? I'm "
"Yes." She paused, a stack of dresses, still on their hangers, draped over her arm. "Andrew Danner. I recognize you."
"I'm so sorry to intrude. I know it's quite odd, my coming here and… and…" The hallway light over Kasey's door had been broken recently, judging by the bits of glass kicked to the side of the jamb. The coldness of such preparation made me shiver. That's why the Broaches were using headlights for illumination now because the killer had broken the hall light in anticipation of dragging out their daughter's unconscious body.
"Well?" her husband said from behind me. "What are you here for?"
In the distance, the street kids shouted back and forth in prepubescent sopranos. "I got you! I shot you dead!"
A small choke came out of nowhere, seizing my throat, shocking me. I pressed my lips together, trying to find composure.
Mrs. Broach dropped the dresses on the ground, stepped forward, and embraced me. She rubbed my back in vigorous circles, infinitely more effective than I'd been when Lloyd had broken down. She was soft, slightly damp with perspiration, and smelled nicely of conditioner. For a moment she blended into my own mother, April, Fran^oise Bertrand, cooing accented forgiveness.
I pulled back, blinking against the headlights, and said, "I don't even know how to begin. Except to say that I'm so sorry for what happened to Kasey. And I'm sorry this happened to you."
Kasey's sister Jennifer, if memory served stood in the doorway, chewing gum and swiveling a lanky leg on a pointed toe. The news stories had made much of the fact that she was a freshman in high school, which put almost two decades between her and her big sister. Jennifer looked as if she wanted to cry but had no more energy for it. Somehow she summoned it, pressing her hand to her top teeth and hiccupping out something between a moan and a sob.
"Come on inside," Mr. Broach said.
We went in, stepping over half-packed boxes and strewn clothes.
Mr. Broach looked around and said gruffly, to himself, "How do you know what to keep?"
They sat on a couch that had been shoved away from the wall, I on a large overturned earthenware pot. Where to start?
"I was a suspect in your daughter's murder," I said.
Mrs. Broach said, "We know. Bill told us."
Bill Kaden. Right.
"He said you still are a suspect," Mr. Broach said, "but I don't think you did it. I watched your trial. That tape you made showing you sleeping the night our Kasey was killed? Bill thinks it implicates you more. I think the opposite." He looked at his wife. "We understand how you could have gotten to the point of questioning yourself."
Here we were, just a couple of old friends dismissing the notion I'd murdered his daughter.
"I appreciate that," I said.
"I'm simply stating my opinion. We certainly don't presume to judge."
Mrs. Broach sat sideways on a hip, tilted over her daughter, one hand smoothing Jennifer's hair behind her ear. "Kasey's in a better place now. Joshua 23 says God keeps all promises. All promises. One way or another."
"I'm glad you can find some peace in this. I doubt I'd have your strength."