River of Glass Page 6

  I tore my gaze away from the floor show. “Just ask Lupita. I promise I’ll keep her name out of it.”

  “You can do that?”

  “You have my word. I keep her out of it unless she gives me permission not to. We just want to find Tuyet.”

  She gave her curls an absent pat. “Suppose I agree. What’s in it for us?”

  “I’ll pay. Your regular rate. Just to talk to her.”

  “I don’t think so. It could be dangerous. For the girl, and possibly for me. Inconvenient, at the least.”

  “Double the rate, then.”

  “Double. And a favor.”

  “What favor?”

  “I don’t know just yet, but one day, I’ll ask you for one, and you’ll say yes.”

  “I’m not killing anybody.”

  She smiled. “Good. I can’t think of anybody I want killed.”

  I glanced at Khanh, saw the tension around her eyes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Within reason.”

  Ms. Ina hunched a bony shoulder. “I suppose that will do. But if she says no . . .”

  “We’re no worse off than we are now.”

  “Except for the favor. You owe that, either way.” She gave a curt nod and pulled her cell phone from her purse. “I’ll be right back.”

  While she was in the next room, I watched Bridget dance. Every few moves, she’d catch my eye and give me a practiced, enigmatic smile. Her real smile was better. She was just finishing her routine when Ms. Ina came back, cell phone in hand.

  “She’ll meet with you,” she said. “An hour from now at the Dairy Diner near Briley and McGavock Pike. You know where it is?”

  I nodded.

  “If you screw us over . . .”

  “I won’t.”

  Bridget put her right foot in her right hand and lifted it over her head. Laughed as I sputtered a good-bye. As the door closed behind us, Khanh nudged me in the ribs. “She like you.”

  “She’s too young for me. Besides, she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at my wallet.”

  “You handsome man,” she said, exaggerating her accent. “For round-eye American.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. She ducked her head, but not before I saw her faint smirk.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’re burning daylight.”

  “My mother say all time,” Khanh said, her voice tinged with wonder. “Burn daylight. Not Vietnam words. You father say?”

  “My brother always said it. It’s a pretty common phrase around here, but I guess he could have gotten it from Dad.”

  “Early bed, early rise,” she said. “Not count chicken still in egg.”

  “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,” I said.

  Half a world away, my mother had said those same words to my brother and me. A big world, Malone had said. And yet, sometimes, so very small.

  8

  I pulled out my cell phone and called Eric, Jay’s lover and my sometime sketch artist. After I’d filled him in, he agreed to meet us at the Dairy Diner. Thirty minutes later, we settled into the parking lot, Khanh and me in the Silverado, Eric idling in his Beamer, head tipped back against the headrest, fingers tapping on the steering wheel in time to some lively music we couldn’t hear. The lot was about half full, not bad for the middle of the afternoon.

  Khanh and I sat in uncomfortable silence. I fidgeted with the radio. Poked my bobble-head Batman. Drummed on the steering wheel with considerably more vigor than Eric. Khanh sat perfectly still, eyes forward, jaw clenched. A muscle pulsed in her cheek, but her breathing was even. In for a count of four, out for a count of four. Calming breaths.

  At three fifteen, a rusty pickup splashed through a puddle and pulled into the lot. In the bed of the truck were six swarthy, wiry men in painter’s pants and wife-beater T-shirts spackled with paint. The passenger door of the truck swung open, and Lupita climbed out wearing an orange and yellow Dairy Diner uniform. She looked younger in the uniform, no makeup, with her hair pulled back in a ponytail. A paper hat with interlocking Ds on it was clipped to her hair.

  “Wait here,” I said to Khanh and got out of the truck. I glanced toward the BMW and caught Eric’s eye. He’d wait for a sign from me before he did anything.

  The driver said something that made Lupita grimace and wave him on. Behind me, the door of the Silverado slammed. Obviously, someone needed to teach my half-sister the meaning of wait here.

  Lupita pushed back her bangs and watched me approach, weight shifted onto the balls of her feet as if in preparation for flight. “I have only a few minutes,” she said in heavily accented English. “I have to make biscuits and red-eye gravy.”

  I gestured toward Khanh, who had padded over and stood just behind my left shoulder. “This is Khanh. Her daughter might have been taken by the man you saw kill the girl at our office.”

  The girl hugged herself. “I . . . hear about . . . what he did. He is a very bad man.”

  “You knocked over the neighbor’s garbage can around the time of the murder. We need to know what you saw.”

  “No, I . . .” She tilted her head, tugged at her ponytail. “Señor Freeman make a mistake.”

  “I didn’t say it was Mr. Freeman.” At her uneasy glance toward the diner, I added, “We’re not here to make trouble for you. We just need to know what you saw. Did you see his face?”

  “This is a mistake. I tell Señora Ina I don’t want to talk to you. I should not have agreed.”

  She started toward the building and I stepped in front of her, barring the way. “Look, I get it. You’re illegal, and you’re scared.”

  Her cheeks flushed. “I’m Mexican, so I must be illegal?”

  “Why else wouldn’t you go to the police?”

  She lowered her head. “You saw what he did.”

  “Yeah, I did. Did you? Because I’d think you’d want to get this son of a bitch off the streets. Especially if he knows you saw him. Does he?”

  She tugged at her ponytail again, the blood leeching from her face, and choked, “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “If you could talk to the police—”

  “No! No policía!” She sidled away, and I held up a hand to stop her.

  Khanh came around me and touched Lupita’s shoulder. “No police,” Khanh said. “Only you, me, us. You help me find daughter. Please.”

  Lupita bit her lower lip. She looked young and frightened, and I knew she was thinking about green cards, deportation, and a limp, bruised body in a dumpster.

  I pointed toward the BMW. “You see the man in the red car? He’s an artist. You tell him what you saw, he’ll draw it. We take it to the police. We keep you out of it.”

  “My family,” she said. “I don’t want trouble.”

  “No trouble. You just tell him what you saw.”

  “You policía?”

  “No policía. That missing girl I told you about? She might be my niece.”

  “Might be?”

  “Long story. Or maybe just an old one.” I pulled a note pad and a pen from my jacket pocket. “Could we start at the beginning? What were you doing at the office at that hour?”

  “I have a . . . date. He needs to get home, so I have him drop me off on West End and think, I’m so close, I walk to the studio and practice my dance routine before I go to work at the diner. I do that sometimes.”

  “You have a key?”

  “How can I practice if I have no key?”

  “So you got there, and it was dark.”

  “Pretty dark. Not much moon. But there is light from the front porch.”

  “Did you go in?”

  “No. I’m almost there, and I see a car. There is a man driving, but I can’t see him so good. It pulls up to the curb, and a woman gets out. She is wearing a . . .” She frowned, searching for the word. “Like a dress, but underwear.”

  “A slip.”

  “Sí.”

  “Did you recognize her?”

 
“I never see her before. She looks Chinese.” She glanced at Khanh. “Like you.”

  I said, “Asian, anyway. Go on.”

  “She walks like her feet hurt, no shoes. I think maybe somebody beat her.”

  “The man in the car?”

  “Maybe. He lets her out, and she goes to the front door, but she can’t get in. The door is locked.”

  I thought of the new security system, suddenly sick. If she’d gotten in, could she have barricaded herself? Kept her killer out?

  I swallowed bile and said, “And then?”

  “The car drives away.”

  “Did you see the license number?”

  “A little.” She rattled off a string of letters and numbers, which I jotted on the note pad.

  “And the car?”

  “Silver, I think. In the dark, is very hard to tell the color.”

  “Two-door or four-door?”

  “Two, I think.”

  “Anything else you can remember about the car?”

  “A sticker on the back. ‘Be nice to nerds. Some day you will be working for one.’ Or something like that. Big letters, shiny in the light. And that’s all.”

  “Then he pulled away?”

  “Sí. And I’m about to go over to the Chinese lady, see what she wants, maybe let her in. Only a man comes out of the shadow, from behind the building.”

  Khanh sucked in a sharp breath, pressed her hand to her mouth.

  I asked Lupita, “Did you see his face?”

  She wiped away tears with the heels of her hands. “Sí. He came into the light.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “I was in the shadow. Behind Señor Freeman’s garage.”

  “What happened then?”

  “She sees him and tries to run, but her feet are too hurt. He catches her so easy, and he puts his arm around her. Here.” She touched her throat with her fingertips. “I want to say something, but my voice is frozen. She makes a sound like she can’t breathe and he lifts her off the ground. Her feet are kicking and kicking, and he says something. I can’t hear it all. Something about taking his time, making an example for women who run.” She shook her head, all the color drained from her face. “I make a sound, and he looks up. Right at me. I don’t think he can see my face because of the shadows and the darkness, but he knows I’m there. His face is so cold. He gives her neck a hard squeeze, and I hear a snap and she goes limp. I know I should help her, but I am so afraid. I just run.” She covered her face with her hands. “If I had not run . . .”

  “You might be dead too. No use second-guessing yourself. Do you remember what he looked like?”

  She nodded.

  “Could you describe him to my friend? It won’t bring the dead girl back, but it might help us save Tuyet.”

  “No policía?” she asked again.

  “No policía.”

  “Okay. I will talk to your friend.”

  With Khanh at our heels, I led Lupita around to Eric’s BMW and opened the passenger door for her.

  She hesitated.

  I said, “You’ve known me, what? A couple months, right? Seen me in the hall? I’m one of the good guys.”

  She squeezed her lower lip between a thumb and forefinger. After a moment, she let out a sigh and sank into Eric’s passenger seat. I closed the door behind her, and Khanh and I climbed into the back.

  Eric sat in the driver’s seat, sketchbook propped against the wheel. He gave the girl a reassuring smile, pencil poised above the paper, and said, “Yo sé que estás asustado. Pero mi amigo se encargará de ustedes.”

  I said, “Since when do you speak Spanish?”

  “I learned it in college. Spent two summers with a beautiful boy I met backpacking in Paraguay, hardly spoke a word of English. Not that he needed to.” He turned back to the girl. “Qué usted ve la noche que murió la niña?”

  He drew her out with questions and reassurances delivered in a sonorous tone. I didn’t understand most of the words, but I knew he was leading her through it, focusing her memories on the killer’s features. I’d seen him do it before, coaxing out information in a way that was almost like hypnotism. Her answers were hesitant at first. Then, as she watched the features come to life on the page, she grew more animated, pointing to a curve of the chin or the slope of an eyelid.

  “Sí!” She tapped a finger on the finished picture. “This is the man I saw.”

  The man in the picture had dark hair and heavy eyebrows that met in a “v” at the bridge of a bulbous nose. Unkempt mustache. Broad jaw. Thick neck dark with stubble. Heavy eyelids over hooded eyes. Eric shaded in the irises lightly. It had been too dark for her to see the color.

  A tattooed manticore framed the right side of the man’s face, one claw arcing across his eyebrows, its scorpion tail curling along the edge of his jaw.

  He’d come out of the shadows, Lupita had said. On foot. He must have parked some distance away and chosen the dumpster on impulse, because if he’d had a car behind the building, it would have been easier to stash the girl in the trunk and dispose of her more efficiently later.

  He’d mentioned taking his time, which meant the crash of Pat Freeman’s garbage can had sealed the girl’s fate. The crash meant a witness, which meant no time for fun. But the scars and bruises said he’d already had plenty of fun before she ran.

  “You catch this man?” she asked, a quiver in her voice.

  “We’ll catch him.” Or the police would, once I gave them Eric’s drawing, but given her obvious fear of the police, I kept that part to myself. “Could I get a phone number? In case I need to talk to you again?”

  “You don’t need to talk to me again.”

  “Probably not. But if I do . . .”

  She grimaced. “You know where I work. Here and Señora Ina’s. Where else am I going to go?”

  She climbed out of the BMW. Khanh followed, and together they walked to the door of the diner, speaking quietly, heads close together.

  Eric watched them leave, then flipped the sketchbook closed and handed it to me. “You think she’ll be okay? Lupita, I mean.”

  “Are you talking about trauma, or about the guy maybe seeing her?”

  “The guy.”

  “Hard to say. Unless he got a good look at her and can figure out who she is, she’s probably fine.”

  “What are the odds of that?”

  “Fifty-fifty. Either way, I think it would be riskier to come after her than to let it lie. But that only matters if he isn’t crazy.”

  “He murdered a woman and threw her in a dumpster. Of course he’s crazy.”

  “If he’s crazy, he’ll screw up. The police will catch him pretty quick, with or without this picture. But this guy . . . He may be twisted, but I don’t think he’s crazy.”

  “I’m not seeing the difference.”

  “Crazy, he’s out of his head. Maybe hallucinating, maybe hearing voices. He might’ve thought she was possessed or trying to kill him with her mind, or like that guy in California back in the seventies who thought his blood was turning into powder and the only way to save himself was to drink other people’s blood. Killed a bunch of people, and they caught him wandering around drenched in gore. Horrific stuff, but in his mind, it was self-preservation.”

  “My God.”

  “It’s the guys who aren’t crazy that get away with it for a long time. BTK. Bundy. Those guys who do it for fun—or the ones who do it because it’s just a job. Twisted, maybe. Evil for sure. But they know what they’re doing.”

  “Then he’ll do it again?”

  “If he’s a serial killer, yeah. If he’s something else . . . probably. Guys like this . . . they always do it again.”

  “Tuyet?”

  “Sooner or later, if he hasn’t already. If he’s the guy, he’s had her a long time.”

  “Does Khanh know?”

  “Here,” I said, touching my finger to my temple. Then, palm over my heart. “Not here.”

  9

  The kid
at the front desk of the West Precinct was a guy I’d seen before. Red hair, bored expression, dog-eared paperback propped in his left hand, frosted Pop-Tart in his right. Crumbs dotted the front of his shirt.

  “Malone,” I said. “Tell her it’s Jared McKean.”

  He picked up the phone and punched in a number. Told the person on the other end we were there, then grunted and punched the button that unlocked the door to the detectives’ offices. I waved a thanks and headed that way, Khanh following in my wake.

  Malone was behind her desk, pecking at her computer keyboard and scowling at the screen. She didn’t look up when Khanh and I came in, but gave a quick nod toward the chair across from her. I gestured to Khanh, and after a brief hesitation, she reluctantly sat.

  I said to Malone, “I found something.”

  A few more taps, and she punched Enter with a flourish. Looked up with a smile that couldn’t hide her impatience. “That was quick.”

  I handed her a copy of Eric’s composite.

  “Who’s this?”

  “The guy who strangled your Jane Doe.”

  She stared at the picture. “Where did you get this?”

  “There was a witness. Don’t ask me who she is. I can’t tell you.”

  The skin around her eyes tightened, and she swung around, tipped back in her chair. “Can’t?”

  “She only talked to me because I promised her no cops.”

  “You promised.” She looked from me to Khanh, then back again. “You don’t get to decide that.”

  “Talk to Pat Freeman, the next-door neighbor. I didn’t promise him anything.”

  “I’m not Frank, McKean. You can’t pull that cowboy shit on me.”

  “What cowboy shit? You knew I was going to investigate this. I’m bringing you what I found.”

  “I need the witness.”

  “I’m not giving you the witness. I’m giving you this.” I gestured toward the drawing.

  She blew out an exasperated breath. Looked at the picture again. “Tough guy. Pretty distinctive tat.”

  “There’s something else too. Partial plate.” I gave her the numbers and a description of the car.

  “Your phantom witness saw all this but didn’t come forward?”