“Yune told me that story, but Yune believes the killer is a natural man. So do I.”
With her face against his chest, she said, “Then why isn’t the man with the burned face in any of the footage?”
“I don’t know.”
“I care about Marcy, of course I do.” She looked up, and he saw she was crying. “And I care about her girls. I care about Terry, for that matter… and the Petersons… but I care more about you and Derek. You guys are all I have. Can’t you let this go now? Finish your leave, see the shrink, and turn the page?”
“I don’t know,” he said, when in fact he did know. He just didn’t want to say so to Jeannie while she was in her current strange state. He couldn’t turn the page.
Not yet.
4
That night he sat at the picnic table in the backyard, smoking a Tiparillo and looking up at the sky. There were no stars, but he could still make out the moon behind the clouds that were moving in. The truth was often like that, he thought—a bleary circle of light behind clouds. Sometimes it broke through; sometimes the clouds thickened, and the light disappeared completely.
One thing was sure: when night fell, the skinny, tubercular man from Yune Sablo’s fairy tale became more plausible. Not believable, Ralph could no more believe in such a creature than he could in Santa Claus, but he could picture him: a darker-skinned version of Slender Man, that bugaboo of pubescent American girls. He’d be tall and grave in his black suit, his face like a lamp, and carrying a bag big enough to hold a small child with his or her knees folded against his or her chest. According to Yune, the Mexican boogeyman prolonged his life by drinking the blood of children and rubbing their fat on his body… and while that wasn’t exactly what had happened to the Peterson boy, it was in the vicinity. Might it be possible that the killer—maybe Maitland, maybe the unsub of the blurred fingerprints—actually thought he was a vampire, or some other supernatural creature? Hadn’t Jeffrey Dahmer believed he was creating zombies when he killed all those homeless men?
None of that addresses the question of why the burned man isn’t in the news footage.
Jeannie called to him. “Come inside, Ralph. It’s going to rain. You can smoke that smelly thing in the kitchen, if you have to have it.”
That isn’t why you want me to come inside, Ralph thought. You want me to come in because part of you can’t help thinking that Yune’s sack-man is lurking out here, just beyond the reach of the yard light.
Ridiculous, of course, but he could sympathize with her unease. He felt it himself. What had Jeannie said? The more you find, the wronger it gets.
Ralph came inside, doused his Tiparillo under the sink tap, then grabbed his phone off the charging stand. When Howie answered, Ralph said, “Can you and Mr. Pelley come over here tomorrow? I have a bunch of stuff to tell you, and some of it’s pretty unbelievable. Come to lunch. I’ll go out to Rudy’s and buy some sandwiches.”
Howie agreed at once. Ralph broke the connection and saw Jeannie in the doorway, looking at him with her arms folded over her chest. “Can’t let it go?”
“No, honey. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
She sighed. “Will you be careful?”
“I’ll tread with utmost caution.”
“You better, or I’ll tread on you without caution. And no need to get sandwiches from Rudy’s. I’ll make something.”
5
Sunday was rainy, so they convened at the Andersons’ seldom-used dining room table: Ralph, Jeannie, Howie, and Alec. Yune Sablo, at home in Cap City, joined them on Howie Gold’s laptop, via Skype.
Ralph began by recapping the things all of them knew, then turned it over to Yune, who told Howie and Alec about what they had found in the Elfman barn. When he was finished, Howie said, “None of this makes sense. In fact, it’s about four time-zones from making sense.”
“This person was sleeping out there in the loft of a deserted barn?” Alec asked Yune. “Hiding out? That’s what you’re thinking?”
“It’s the working assumption,” Yune said.
“If so, it couldn’t have been Terry,” Howie said. “He was in town all day Saturday. He took the girls to the municipal pool that morning, and he was at Estelle Barga Park all that afternoon, getting the field ready—as the home field coach, doing that was his responsibility. There were plenty of witnesses in both places.”
“And from Saturday til Monday,” Alec put in, “he was jugged in county jail. As you well know, Ralph.”
“There are all kinds of witnesses to Terry’s whereabouts almost every step of the way,” Ralph agreed. “That’s always been the root of the problem, but let it go for a minute. I want to show you something. Yune’s already seen it; he reviewed the footage this morning. But I asked him something before he watched, and now I want to ask you. Did either of you notice a badly disfigured man at the courthouse? He was wearing something on his head, but I’m not going to say what it was just now. Either of you?”
Howie said he hadn’t. All his attention had been fixed on his client and his client’s wife. Alec Pelley, however, was a different matter.
“Yeah, I saw him. Looked like he got burned in a fire. And what he was wearing on his head…” He stopped, eyes widening.
“Go on,” Yune said from his living room in Cap City. “Let it out, amigo. You’ll feel better.”
Alec was rubbing his temples, as if he had a headache. “At the time I thought it was a bandanna or a kerchief. You know, because his hair got burned off in the fire and maybe couldn’t grow back because of the scarring and he wanted to keep the sun off his skull. Only it could have been a shirt. The one missing from the barn, is that what you’re thinking? The one Terry was wearing in the security footage from the train station?”
“You win the Kewpie doll,” Yune said.
Howie was frowning at Ralph. “You’re still trying to hang this on Terry?”
Jeannie spoke up for the first time. “He’s just trying to get to the truth… which I’m not sure is the world’s best idea, actually.”
“Watch this, Alec,” Ralph said. “And point out the burned man.”
Ralph ran the Channel 81 footage, then the FOX footage, and then, at Alec’s request (he was now leaning so close to Jeannie’s laptop that his nose was nearly touching the screen), the Channel 81 footage again. At last he sat back. “He’s not there. Which is impossible.”
Yune said, “He was standing next to the guy waving his cowboy hat, right?”
“I think so,” Alec said. “Next to him and higher up from the blond reporter who got bonked on the noggin with a sign. I see both the reporter and the sign-waver… but I don’t see him. How can that be?”
None of them answered.
Howie said, “Let’s go back to the fingerprints for a minute. How many different sets in the van, Yune?”
“Forensics thinks as many as half a dozen.”
Howie groaned.
“Take it easy. We’ve eliminated at least four of those: the farmer in New York who owned the van, the farmer’s oldest son who sometimes drove it, the kid who stole it, and Terry Maitland. That leaves one clear set we haven’t identified—could have been one of the farmer’s friends or one of his younger kids, playing around inside—and those blurry ones.”
“The same blurry ones you found on the belt buckle.”
“Probably, but we can’t be sure. There are a few visible lines and whorls in those, but nothing like the clear points of identity you’d need to get them admitted into evidence when a case goes to court.”