Yours, Mine, and Ours Page 23

  “I didn’t know one of my girlfriends was a lawyer.”

  “Yes, yes, a day of surprises.”

  “And you came right down, didn’t you?” He smiled at me, clearly delighted. “I just realized. Michaela didn’t tell you until after your super-secret briefing. But once you knew, you came straight away.” Then, in a dreadful Sally Field impersonation: “You like me! You really, really like me!”

  “I like your Meyer lemon tartlets,” I corrected. “Not you.”

  “Aw.” He stood. I stood. “Can I get a kiss from the prettiest lawyer in the room?”

  “I am the only lawyer in this room, you idiot.”

  What the hell. I kissed him. Far be it from me to deny the request of a wrongfully imprisoned millionaire baker carrying long-misplaced guilt who enjoyed clandestine visits to PetCo with Olive the Dawg.

  There was not one thing in my life that was uncomplicated. On days like this, I did not mind so much.

  chapter sixty-nine

  “Yeah? Then what? Come on, Cadence, don’t stop now.”

  “Then Shiro got him out, and Michaela got the charges dropped. And we’re all moving in together.” I was still a little bewildered by that last one. I hadn’t even known there’d been, you know, an invitation. But Shiro had agreed for all of us. (Nice of her!) It was hilarious when I thought about it. What else was I gonna do? Keep my no-dogs-allowed apartment while Shiro lived at Patrick’s? “Did I tell you I can’t have a dog in my apartment?”

  “Yeah, at least three times.”

  “Kindly drop dead, Emma Jan. So anyway, Patrick closes on his house in another few days, and then we’ll all live together. Oh my God, this house. Wait ’til you see it.”

  “How’s that gonna work?” Emma Jan was whispering in my ear as she checked the west side of the building for stragglers. “You guys haven’t had sex yet.”

  “How do you … oh.”

  “What? Shiro wanted to hit the range again. It’s not my fault if she wants to confide in me.”

  “It is! She never wants to confide in anybody.”

  “Well, she confided in me. And got her butt whupped. Told her she couldn’t beat me with my own gun. Didn’t think she’d stop bitching the whole way to dinner … wait ’til she has to tell Michaela! Also not my fault,” she added.

  I was pretty sure it was her fault. Shiro had certainly never needed anyone to confide in before this. Nor had she appeared to mind what Michaela thought … about anything! Now that Emma Jan was firmly in the Friend category, I was less tense about the two of them hanging out, but it was still new to me, Shiro having a friend who wasn’t my friend. And all this running back and forth to Michaela, bragging or bitching about range scores like she was their den mother or something? So so so so so weird.

  Emma Jan was growing on me, but I doubted I’d ever find her as fascinating as Shiro did. I had even taken the step of talking to my doctor about it.

  To my surprise, Dr. Christopher Nessman made me feel better about the whole thing.

  “Not liking someone right away isn’t a character flaw, Cadence. It’s not indicative of your mental state. It happens to everyone and it’s not explainable for the same reason love at first sight isn’t explainable … sometimes, it just happens that way. For whatever reason, Agent Thyme and Shiro clicked. And for whatever reason, you and she did not. That’s nothing to worry about. That’s normal.”

  Normal, hmph. No wonder I hadn’t recognized it. Here I was so worried Shiro would start dating Emma Jan, when she was actually making arrangements to move in with our boyfriend. Gah. Did not see that coming.

  “I have no idea how it’s gonna work.” I was checking the east side. Our fake lecture was tonight. The good doctor was, in fact, a fellow FBI agent, one not affiliated with BOFFO. He had a doctorate in American history, so he knew how to lecture, how to sound like a stuffed shirt, and how to portray befuddled amusement. He was also the local silhouette-shooting champ three years running. A handy fellow to have around.

  All the better to arrest you with, my dear.

  The audience was liberally salted with local law enforcement and more than a few feds. The trap was set. The bait was dangling. We just had to cross our fingers that the JBJ killer would show up.

  Knowing what I now knew about the Stinney family tragedy (which, it appeared, was ongoing), I could almost see our killer. Someone who’d lost the coin toss. Someone who had to take time out from his real life to kill a random white kid. And then teach his kids how to do the same.

  I wasn’t shocked the killer had left the parking stub in the Mickelson boy’s pocket. I was shocked someone hadn’t done it earlier. Say, three or four decades ago.

  We watched. The good doctor had more eyes on him than a goose

  (geese!)

  had feathers, and we watched and guarded and patrolled and were ready for anything. Even though he’d been asked/ordered/begged to stay away, I was sure Dr. Gallo was in the audience somewhere, too. We couldn’t legally do anything to him without tipping our hand, and Dr. Gallo excelled at getting into trouble.

  When he wasn’t wearing doctor’s whites, or his scrubs, he could look like the neighborhood degenerate in his old leather jacket. Certainly most people who saw him the first time tended to think meth dealer or cat burglar or student loan officer long, long before they thought respected physician.

  Odd, how I barely knew him and yet, knew him.

  I think that was why he’d been on my mind so much. Somewhere beneath the cool jacket and tattered scrubs, Dr. Gallo was like me. Or Emma Jan. Or even Patrick. There were things there, secret things. But it was all right. There would be time to ferret them out.

  Some other time, though. Right now there was work to do, right now we were busy with other things, and like I’d said, we were ready for anything at all.

  Except for nothing. We weren’t ready for nothing, and that’s just what we got.

  A whole lot of nothing.

  chapter seventy

  “That was regrettable.” Michaela summed up our feelings in her usual detached way. The place had been crawling with the public, feds, and locals all night, but by now almost all the chickens had gone home.

  “Fuckin’ pain in the ass is what it was,” George said. “I can’t believe we didn’t pull him in. And that fake lecture! How could that guy make the Stinney legend sound so fucking boring? I was ready to hang myself with my own intestines. I can’t believe we didn’t pull him in!”

  “We may have,” she corrected. “The doctors suggested the best way to draw JBK would be to make it about George Stinney and the crime perpetrated upon him, not the crimes that happened after. But they never said JBK would show up, wrists out, begging to be taken in. They never said forcing a confrontation would lead to a confession. This was always just another way to get closer to the heart of things. If we’re thinking like him, we can catch him. You know all this, George.”

  “In my mind, though? They did promise all those things. Also in my mind, the mayor gave me the key to the city, and the key to all the ladies’ locker rooms at all the Anytime Fitness gyms in town.” He sighed. “Look, the lecture’s been over for almost two hours, the local cowboys took all their toys and went home, I badly need booze, so why don’t we—”

  “Could you believe all that stuff about that poor kid?” I asked loudly, startling everyone. I usually used my Outside Voice when I was in the middle of setting a trap. Usually. “I mean, holy old devils, it’s just so so awful.” I took a deep breath to deepen my “you betcha!” accent. Garrison Keillor had forever tainted Minnesotan culture before the world. It wasn’t so bad when he started in the seventies, because Minnesota wasn’t thought of as an exciting holiday getaway. People took their kids to Disney World or the Grand Canyon, and honeymooners went to Cancún or Paris … like that.

  Then he started to write about Lake Wobegon. And of course he did a beautiful job. So gradually, our gorgeous, gorgeous state … was outed! And nobody checked to see if we’d wa
nted to be, least of all Keillor. If we’d been asked, we would have politely told him we liked being in the closet. We liked being in on a terrific, beautiful, unspoiled secret. We liked that just about everyone in the country thought August in Minnesota was just too darned chilly.

  And then. Then! The movie Fargo came out. Now listen: I’ve got nothing against the story, the actors, all that … it’s an amazing film. I’m not casting any aspersions on the quality of the work.

  But those accents! My God! Not everyone in this part of the country ends every single question with “you betcha!” and “then.”

  “Sure is cold out here today.” “You betcha!” No.

  “Soooo, we’re gonna go right back there, then.” “Yaa!” No.

  Our secret is out now, and will be for a long time. Everybody knows, now, about our gorgeous forests, the clear pure lakes and rivers, the fresh air, and the crops. The crops! Corn and sugar beets, wheat and rye, potatoes and millet, sorghum and sunflowers. We fed ourselves and still had so much left, we fed the world, too.

  And don’t forget the tolerable accents and the generally friendly population. Wikipedia insists the Minnesota Nice thing is an urban myth, but Wikipedia is stupid: it only knows what people tell it. But don’t take my admittedly biased word for it—anyone can check the state crime stats. We lag far, far behind places like New York and Miami and Los Angeles. Because we’re nice!

  Then, out of nowhere: I practically heard the crunch as something hard stabbed into my shin. And I realized with amazement that I’d been completely zoned out during a stakeout.

  I glanced up at the clock. Ah. Okay. Gone less than three minutes. Still, that’s a long time to stand there and try to get someone to engage, or at least finish her thought.

  “Sorry, I was thinking. I’m still thinking.”

  “Be careful, then. You might sprain something.”

  “Don’t put ‘then’ at the end of your sentence!” I snapped. Before George could say something nasty, or pistol-whip me, I added, “You know what? Here’s what I was thinking: I don’t think George Stinney killed those girls. And then the state killed him, the poor, poor boy. Why wasn’t anything done? Someone should tell his family, his poor, poor family. Someone should tell his family the state owes them a ginormous apology.”

  I had seen her out of the corner of my eye. Midforties, African American, nicely dressed in a J.Jill winter coat and slacks. She had stayed on the perimeter of things. She had come in very, very quietly and just looked. She was still tracking water so she hadn’t been inside for long—it was snowing out.

  I don’t know what it was about her … maybe the way she was hanging back. Yeah. The look on her face, and the way she was hanging back, I think, tipped me off. Even if I wasn’t aware of it consciously, unconsciously all my bells were ringing. This woman I had never seen … she didn’t just look interested. She looked invested.

  She looked to me the way people did when they put everything, absolutely everything they had, into a family business. A business everyone in the family made sacrifices for. A business they gave their time and money to. Time they could have spent with their children, time they could have used to have a life, time that went into the business, a business that was never, ever satisfied. A business that was always hungry. The Stinney Vengeance Farm: more stressful than running a Burger King franchise.

  The Stinney family business. It had left such a mark on her, I could almost see the stamp on her forehead.

  To make matters so much worse, we fumbled it. We’d gone to all these pains to disguise ourselves, to make it look like we were random suburbanites out for a lecture and then maybe a trip to the local Starbucks. None of us were wearing anything that said “government-issue federal agent, note the crisp black suit, please.”

  But in the way that I looked at her and knew her, she looked at us, and knew us.

  She tried a tentative smile. Later, when I found out she was thirty-six, I couldn’t believe it. Midforties, I had guessed first. When she’d tried that smile out on us, I had jacked my estimation to late forties.

  She took a step closer. I admired that. She came closer. Anybody else would be running for their lives. Their freedom. When she spoke, it was thoughtful and melodic. “So you’re … interested … in George Stinney.” A calm voice. Too calm. Maybe … a dead voice? “You think … you think he was wronged, then?”

  I had no idea what to do, other than instruct myself not to yell at her about “then.”

  Thank God Michaela was there. “We don’t think anything. We know he was wronged, ma’am. And we know what that did to your family. I’m very sorry. But you’re under arrest.” I cringed inwardly. The last time Michaela had gone into the field to get the bad guy, she’d shot him to death.

  But I guess I shouldn’t have worried. This time, the smile was real. “Now that it’s here, I’m actually relieved to hear you say the words at last. Isn’t that a fool thing? I’m relieved.”

  “Because the family business won’t gobble up your son now,” I guessed.

  “Yes, he’s … yes! You do understand. I hoped you would. I thought I could explain … if I could just show you—he’s fourteen. He just turned fourteen. How could I expect him to do what … what I had to do … he’s fourteen! Like George! They make us do these things because George never got the chance to live, and they don’t see what … what a poison pill it all is! My son deserved what they wanted to take. He can have a life!” The June Boys Jobs Killer started to cry.

  That’s when I disappeared. I was gone for a long time, too, much longer than twenty-four hours. The others had to tell me what happened when I finally made my way back.

  chapter seventy-one

  It was not the JBK killer’s fault. Well, it was in the sense that all the things that flowed from her murders were her fault. But she paid for her betrayal. If it even was a betrayal. She did what she needed to do to save her son from her life. From the family business. I think she was the only Stinney family member who wasn’t a traitor.

  I had not spotted the old man. Small wonder—he had been taught by generations of assassins (for that is how they saw themselves, as opposed to the murderers of helpless children). He had taught her. And knew her well, which is why he had also come to our fake lecture. Apparently he had been sensing Luann was having a little trouble practicing the family religion: revenge. When she killed the second boy, he knew somebody was slipping off the res.

  No, I did not see the man. I spotted the gleam of light on metal when he went for his weapon. He had held off to discover just what his niece was up to. He had chosen his spot well. He had the high ground—there was a small stairwell just behind where we had all been standing. Not much of one, only six steps, but tactically advantageous. He was at the top, aiming down at his niece. His traitorous niece.

  I got moving. And if he had not been such an evil old man, he could have killed me long before I reached him. But he was entirely focused on murdering his niece. I thought of a line from Moby Dick: “If his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart’s shell upon it.”

  I have been seeing it a lot. What happened on those stairs. Particularly at night. I have declined the sleeping pills suggested by my doctor.

  I want to see it. I want to know all my mistakes, and all hers, poor woman. I want to know so the next time I can be faster, smarter, better. I want what I’ve wanted since I was old enough to understand the concept. I wanted everything.

  In my head, everything is happening exactly the way it did, except I have foreknowledge of what will happen. It is a great deal like stepping outside myself and narrating the events of my life.

  I see the muzzle flash.

  I get Cadence out of harm’s way.

  I sprint for the steps.

  The gun is still coming up.

  I run and run, but the steps slow me down.

  A flash from the Kahr-K9. An excellent little pistol.

  Then I am reaching for him, both arms outstretched. I want to ki
ll him not only for the boys, but for his niece, and for his niece’s son.

  You think you know pain, you ancient poisonous buzzard? You do not. But you will. I swear you will. I swear on

  (poor, poor boys)

  all of us.

  Another flash, and I wonder if the old man had a baseball bat I could not see.

  I wonder how he managed to hit me in the shoulder with an invisible baseball bat.

  I fall for a long time.

  chapter seventy-two

  “Awwwww, fuck! Emma Jan! Get your ass over here, I need pressure on this! Somebody find Gallo, I know that sneaky fuck is around here somewhere!”

  George. I would recognize that shrill bitching anywhere.

  I opened my eyes. I was at the bottom of those endless steps. The old man was also on the floor. He was lying very still. He was not moving his hands. He was blinking hard and not moving his hands.

  He was doing those things because Michaela was standing over him and pointing her gun at him. I could tell he thought the barrel of that gun was his world. The barrel of the gun would appear to be at least twenty meters wide and might also contain his death.

  I grinned up at George through monstrous pain. It felt like someone had laid firewood in my shoulder socket and then lit it to see it all go up.

  Well. I could not lie around like this all day.

  “No you don’t, Shiro, I know that look. Lie still. Listen, dumbass, we’ve got an ambulance on the way, so just sit still until—whoa!”

  I sat up. Emma Jan grabbed for me and I used her arms as a ladder to get to my feet. “The woman. The JBK killer. Where—”

  George jerked his head to the left. The JBK killer was in a sprawled heap not ten feet from where I was.