Thirty-five

They needed Rivera.

“That’s history, you and him?” Lewis asked while they waited for an answer to Aragon’s call. “You said the Silvas weren’t the only thing dead last time the two of you came up.”

Rivera came on. She said, “Tomas, we want to work something with you. I’d say trust me, but that word between us, it’s not what it was.” She met Lewis’s eyes, telling him, there’s your answer. “All we share now is a case. And it’s going sideways. You file charges against Thornton for killing a federal witness, you’ll be sorry you didn’t go with this.”

To Lewis she said, “Someone with him. He’ll call back.”

They had transcripts of their sessions with Montclaire on their laps, cold drinks in cups on the floor between their feet. They’d parked in a piece of shade by the Basilica of St. Francis.

“What was it that made you see?” Lewis asked.

“Everything pointed straight at Thornton. Everything. We were swept along. I wanted her to be good for killing Cassandra Baca.”

“Nailing Marcy Thornton for murder. Yeah, I was running straight at it just as hard.”

“It was Thornton. Hanging there, a foot gone, Benny floating below her, her boob bleeding from his sword. Not ‘get me out of here.’ Not even ‘help.’ What she tells me is ‘short legs.’ Then the gun. I replayed finding it.”

“The Beretta under the driver’s seat.”

“Thornton was telling me it wasn’t her who put the gun there. Not someone with short legs who pulls the seat close to reach the pedals. I had to push the seat all the way back to get to the gun.” Aragon lifted the transcript. “Working the rez, running up to the villages in the mountains for Thornton. The Durango was Lily’s ride for work. She only used the Aston to taxi Cassandra.”

“But Thornton’s prints are on the Dodge.”

“Lily would have known that. It was Thornton’s property. You’re going to say something about the prints on the gun next. Lily gave it to Thornton, watched her handle it. We were eventually going to learn how Montclaire could have got to it and planted it for us to find. Thornton gave us that one thing, the short legs. The rest she’d hit us with at trial.”

“We’d tie the roses to Thornton. More evidence piling up against her. But Lily didn’t think about the cleaning lady seeing her take the roses home.”

“The invisible woman. Nobody sees the Mexican with the vacuum cleaner.”

Lewis reached down for his drink and stirred ice with the straw. “What we don’t have is a motive for Montclaire to kill Cassandra Baca.”

“Lily already told us. She saw things going south and knew Thornton was hanging her out to dry. The way she killed her, the staging, that was about something else. She was going to plant blood evidence in Thornton’s office. But she saw how the blood had started to dry and didn’t soak into the carpet. She moved the couch over what she’d started planting, Cassandra outside in the Durango. She remembered the seesaw, something never far from her mind.”

“The bag on Cassandra’s head?”

“Maybe Lily couldn’t handle seeing her face. She did shoot her from behind, those little bullets like pressing a button and making a dead girl, as neat as you can get.”

Lewis shifted his weight in the seat, wanting to cross his legs but the steering wheel was in the way. He pushed the seat all the way back, caught what he was doing, and shook his head.

“You want to psychoanalyze,” he said, “maybe Lily was seeing herself on the seesaw, and covered Cassandra’s face to help along the fantasy. Maybe this is all about Lily’s revulsion for herself.”

“I hate wasting time on that kind of crap. Lily killed her. If it doesn’t help us nail her, I don’t care about it.”

“You think we’re ready to take a run at her?”

“We’re almost out of time when she’ll talk without a lawyer. After she’s charged, she’ll be arraigned, the judge will lean on her to get representation, assign a PD for the meantime.”

“What really creeped me … ” Lewis rolled down the window and emptied the dregs of his cup. “That portfolio front and center on the coffee table. She brings a guy home, or a woman, take a seat, I’ll fix us drinks. Hey, what’s this, they ask, and open the thing. Page one, gee you were a cute kid. Page two, Lily fourteen years old with her legs spread. And Lily calling from the kitchen, I’ve got white wine, I could open a red. There’s a beer in here somewhere.”

“I see Marcy Thornton sitting there, Lily’s book open on her lap, a glass of wine in her hand.”

Aragon’s phone rang, Rivera calling back.

She told him, “Time to bring Lily home. You know the address?”

They waited for Montclaire to punch in her security code. Rivera stood behind with her suitcase, Aragon and Lewis to the side, knowing it was a six-code number, not helping Montclaire when she got it wrong the first time.

“Numbers,” Montclaire said. “I don’t know why I have trouble.”

She got the door open and took her suitcase from Rivera. “Make yourself at home.”

Lewis followed her in, leaving Rivera and Aragon on the doorstep.

“Where’s Tucker?” Aragon asked. “You look smaller without him.”

“Contrary to popular belief, FBI agents don’t always do things in pairs. He’s at Diaz’s office, talking to her secretary about the private meetings with Thornton.”

“And you’re playing chauffeur for a washed-up model and child molester. The worst you don’t know about yet.”

“What are you up to, Denise?”

“Taking our only shot at getting this right.”

She stepped inside. Montclaire was opening shades, the level of light coming up with each uncovered window. They watched her move around the furniture, then get her suitcase and head for the bedroom.

Lewis took up a blocking position at the front door. In a second Montclaire was at the sink pouring herself a glass of water.

Rivera looked from Aragon to Lewis, got nothing, then nodded at the bookshelves lined with photographs from Montclaire’s past. “Lily, you were something to look at.” He stepped to a photo apart from the rest.

“I caught your use of the past tense,” Montclaire said, the edge of the glass at her lips. “I was sixteen in that one. I’d already seen Tokyo, Jamaica. A week in Paris being taken everywhere except restaurants.”

“Was this before or after your shoot for Cosmo?” Aragon moved toward the coffee table.

“I did Cosmo when I was nineteen. This one”—Montclaire took a framed photo off the shelf—“I was fourteen. My first job, for a photographer in New York. He said I had a glow about me, innocence under a knowing smile.”

“What’s this?” Aragon sat on the low couch and pulled the portfolio toward her.

“That’s private. I’d rather you don’t look.”

Aragon already had it open. She turned straight to the nude black-and-whites.

“The guy who got you started, nice of him to let you have some of the shots he took. Fourteen years old, innocence under a knowing smile. Even when you’re grabbing your ankles.”

Rivera was behind the couch in five steps.

Aragon turned pages. “Ah, here you are with clothes. I like it, all the light on your face. Man, the long neck.”

“It was one of my strong features.” Montclaire put her glass down and stood with hands on her hips. “That’s enough. You can stop.”

Aragon looked up, studied her neck, and said, “We all get that sag, Lily.” Back to the photos. “Here’s another nice one. You had the legs going on. Two miles long. Me, I’ve got short legs. Like Marcy Thornton. I get in a car someone else drove, I’m always sliding the seat up so I can reach the gas. Tomas, wasn’t Lily beautiful?”

She angled the portfolio so he could see the page she’d turned to: the first of the dead Lilys, a pale corpse on a bed of roses.

Montclaire had edged closer, but still couldn’t see what photograph they were looking at.

While Aragon turned the page to show Rivera more of Dead Lily she said, “You look great in pants. You had it, the way you’d lean against something. Like you were dancing with whatever was there, a chair, a doorframe, a car.”

Now it was obvious they were at the end of the book. Montclaire started backing away when Aragon flipped to the last page, the dead girl on the seesaw.

“I’m going to unpack,” Montclaire said, “and freshen up. I could use a shower. Please close the door when you leave.”

She left them.

“These pictures from Cosmo,” Aragon called out, getting to her feet and dropping the book on the coffee table. Rivera was ahead of her, following Montclaire. “They’re the ones you told us about, when I promised if you weren’t telling the truth about anything, our deal was off.”

Now they were in the hallway, a light on in the first room. Rivera entered first, Aragon right behind. Montclaire had her suitcase open on the bed. She was moving underwear and bras to the second drawer of her dresser, folding them, laying them in neatly.

“I went looking for those shots you bragged about.” She and Lewis hadn’t got this far into the house before. She looked around as she spoke, Montclaire not always in her line of sight, sometimes Rivera in the way. “The one of you on the bicycle, the one of you on the seesaw. I found that Cosmo issue. Lily, you weren’t ever in Cosmo. Those photos in your portfolio, the very last entries, they were rejected. You were rejected.”

Montclaire shook out a camisole, refolded it, placed it in the open drawer.

“They couldn’t use me.”

“You did the dead girl thing,” Aragon said, “and never came back to life.” Rivera slid closer to Montclaire. Aragon wished she hadn’t laughed off Lewis’s crack about digging through Montclaire’s underwear. She didn’t like not seeing her hands when they went in the drawer.

“I was ahead of my time,” Montclaire said. “Female corpses are back. There’s nothing more beautiful than a dead girl.”

“How much did you hate Andrea for being young and pretty?” The question made Montclaire stop, a bra strap dangling loose from her hand. “As much as you hated Marcy Thornton? Or was it all just a calculated play when you saw the cards going against you?”

Montclaire balled up the bra and tossed it in the drawer, no longer careful to fold everything.

“You broke into my house when you were holding me.” Montclaire tried a fierce look but failed. “You saw my portfolio before. All this time, me thinking I was helping you, you were after me. You can never use that, anything you saw in here. I know about fruit of the poisoned tree, how an illegal search taints everything. You thought you were so smart. But you screwed yourself.”

“Lily, I never saw your photos before. You let us in, just now. The portfolio was in plain sight. You explicitly said, ‘Make yourself at home.’”

“I heard it,” Rivera said.

Aragon might tell him one day that’s why they wanted him along, to witness Montclaire inviting them in so they could use what they already knew was inside. An FBI agent backing up two detectives, hard to beat.

Lily reached into her suitcase—how much underwear did this woman have? She held up a red negligee, shook it loose, drawing Rivera’ eyes as she tossed it on the bed. Aragon was wondering why she would have packed something like that for a stay at the police station when Lily’s hand came out of the drawer.

A little gun pointed at Rivera’s face. Montclaire fired.