She took a long swallow, stared at her food, shook her head. “Exactly. She had to know. The enabler.”
“Her mother.”
“Ms. Rooney,” she said. “Some piece of work she was, always playing the I’m-stupid game. I can’t prove she knew but of course she did. She wasn’t educated but she was wily. Though I imagine the last thing she figured was Davis blowing her head off.”
She took two long sips before I said, “What were the younger boy’s problems?”
“Rooney? Yes, the same as her last name so you have to figure for all her servile bullshit she had clout in the family. What were his problems? Poor impulse control, temper control, disruptive behavior at school, bad grades. Horrid grades so obviously, I suspected some sort of learning disability but I never tested him, my job was finding all three of them refuge. You could try asking for records at the place they sent him to but I doubt you’ll get them due to confidentiality issues.”
Milo said, “Remember the name?”
“I don’t. Just that it was privately contracted and got federal funds.”
“Scam or the real deal?”
Kathy Bookbinder said, “As far as I know, the real deal. At least I never heard about any scandals there. But right after I placed the kids, I left clinical work. Tired of being dipped day after day into the toilet of life. I came out here, got my doctorate, and switched to teaching. Got married and had two of my own and thank God, they’re great.”
She sliced a small wedge of chile relleno, passed it between her lips, chewed slowly as if it took effort. “Now that I’ve told you about Rooney, do you suspect him? ’Cause I do.”
Milo said, “What motive would he have?”
Kathy Bookbinder sat back. “He was close to his father. Super-close, clearly the favorite. And he got treated differently, you could see it in the way the kids were dressed. Peri and Barlett wore what looked like hand-me-downs but little Rooney was always spiffed up. Bizarrely, actually. The family’s living in a double-wide and he’s got designer jeans and Ralph Lauren polo shirts.”
She turned to me. “What is it about some twisted families, Alex? That pathological inequity? Why do they target one kid and deify another?”
I said, “Wish I knew.”
She smiled broadly. “At least you’re honest. Better than what passes for wisdom nowadays, all those papier-mâché prophets.”
She drank some more. “I’d better get more solid stuff in my stomach. If I come home without eating my husband will press pastries on me, he’s a chef.”
Milo said, “Sounds like a good deal.”
“It can be,” said Kathy Bookbinder. “Duane takes super-good care of me when I let him. A few years back, cancer had the nerve to impose itself on my body. Nothing really scary, totally taken care of. But you learn to practice what you’ve preached to patients: live each day. Duane helps me do that.”
Her lips folded and unfolded again. Her chin quivered and she tugged at her hair. “I hope poor Peri had a bunch of good days.”
Chapter 44
We sat with Kathy Bookbinder through a first-rate meal. Drifting away from the murders into shop talk. Letting her set the pace and the subject matter, hoping that would elicit new information, but it didn’t.
When the check came, she reached for it but lost out to a quicker, larger hand.
“It’s really not necessary, Milo.”
“It really is, Kathy.”
She grinned. “My problem. Relinquishing control. But you know, this has been good. Getting in touch with the bad old days and confirming that I did the right thing by escaping.”
We walked her to her car, a small, white Mercedes sedan.
She said, “I do hope you find whoever did it. And tell me once you have. Please.”
“Scout’s honor,” said Milo.
“Duane was an Eagle Scout, that’s where he started cooking. I did Brownies but we moved around so much that I dropped it.”
I said, “Military dad?”
“And mom. Two colonels. You can imagine why I like control.”
We smiled, thanked her, watched her drive off.
Milo said, “She was right. Rooney sounds like a pretty good bet. What do you think?”
“The same thing. If he was that attached to his father, he could’ve doubted Meagin’s accusations and blamed her for his parents’ deaths. For the dissolution of his family.”
We stood there, breathing in cool, California night-air. The restaurant’s door opened periodically, disgorging human movement and happy talk. People for whom dinner was just that.
“Okay,” he finally said. “Let’s do the big no-no.”
“What’s that?”
“You piloting so I can play database poker.”
Allowing a civilian to take the wheel of a police vehicle is a serious infraction. Over the years, Milo’s risked it a few times, but always on short hops.
He said, “What, the iced tea was spiked? Just point the damn car north and don’t hit anything.”
I like to drive, having regarded it since the age of sixteen as a conduit to freedom. And the hard truth is — one never uttered — I’m a far better driver than Milo, who tends to express frustration with the leaden foot.
I adjusted the Impala’s seat, turned the key, cruised out of the lot and headed back to the 405. Milo lit up his phone, hunched over the screen and began clicking away.
Traffic had eased and I was able to sail north at sixty-five mph or close to it. There were stretches when I could’ve gone faster but the last thing I needed was a highway patrol encounter.
It took less than three miles for Milo to say, “Look at this. Not literally. Rooney Luther Gilmore — age thirty-two, so it’s gotta be the right guy... though I’m not seeing any family resemblance — anyway, he’s got a fourteen-page sheet. Starting when he was eighteen but no doubt there are sealed juvey arrests.”
“Where’d he offend?”
“So far I’m just looking at Florida. All over the state... okay, here’s his first move, he shows up seven years ago in Louisiana. A place called Empire, then Baton Rouge, then New Orleans, gets busted in all three places. Assault in Empire — he knifed someone, claimed self-defense — then shoplifting and battery in Baton Rouge, then... aggravated assault pled down to battery in Nawlins.”
I said, “Was he still in New Orleans five years ago?”
“Let’s see... as a matter of fact, he was, another assault, pled down to misdemeanor battery, four days of jail time. Why? Oh. The bartender.”
“Nicole Fontenot.”
Twisting and stretching, he reached back and retrieved the March/Aggiunta murder book from the rear seat, found what he was looking for, and switched back to the phone.
“Dates match. He beat up a guy in a bar two weeks before Fontenot got shot in the heart. Not the same bar she worked at but on the same street, looks like... two doors away.”
He sat back. “The favorite child grew up to be a not-nice person.”
Back in his office, he pulled up the same files he’d viewed on a tiny screen and printed.
As each page entered the bin, I picked it up and read.
Rooney Gilmore’s first mugshot, taken in Gainesville, Florida, at age eighteen, showed a chubby, pasty-faced, long-haired adolescent sporting a minimal sprig of sandy fuzz on a less-than-assertive chin.
Sullen expression, flat eyes. Subsequent photos revealed the evolution you often see with career criminals: premature aging and a steady accumulation of crude tattoos. Rooney’s expression remained uniform: barely suppressed rage coexisting with theatrical nonchalance.
Like his sister, he’d moved around the country with no apparent geographic order. Staying for a while, as Kathy Bookbinder had recalled, in Florida, then shifting to Louisiana for a twenty-six-month stay. After that the pace picked up and the sojourns were shorter.