Bud Ivan had been brought in three separate times for questioning after Lily Esposito was murdered. The house he rented sat right on the creek, literally a stone’s throw from where Lily’s body had been found, and Ivan was no stranger to the police. He had a string of convictions that stretched all the way back to an assault charge when he was eighteen. At the time of Lily’s murder, he had only been in Culver Creek less than a year, and he still managed to pick up a drunk and disorderly. He was a prime suspect, with a recently repainted car.
Bud Ivan had an alibi for the time of the murder, but it was a weak one from what Sage could see. He had been drinking at a bar, a place called the Raven’s Nest, and though he had definitely been there that night, there was some discrepancy about just when he had left. The bartender placed him there later than the customers did, and Sage wondered how good the word of any of them were. From what he could see, the main reason the police eliminated Bud Ivan from the suspect list was that sketch drawn from the psychic girl’s description. Long-haired, scruffy Bud Ivan looked nothing like the clean-cut man depicted in the drawing.
The car, the rap sheet, and Ivan’s proximity to the creek made him a likely suspect in Sage’s book, but then there was what he found out when he did a little digging. Bud Ivan no longer lived in Culver Creek. His current address was inside a state penitentiary, where he had wound up after he was convicted of murdering a child. Sage was decidedly confident as he made the drive out to the state pen, sure this was going to be a clear case of game, set, match.
A haggard-looking Bud Ivan slouched in the chair across from Sage in the small interview room. Ivan narrowed his eyes in a menacing way but otherwise seemed completely apathetic.
“I’d like to ask you some questions about when you lived in Culver Creek,” Sage said.
“Culver Creek?” Ivan said. “That’s ancient history, man. I can barely remember what happened last week, let alone twenty years ago.”
“You remember that a little girl was murdered maybe fifty yards from your back door? You remember that?”
“Sounds familiar,” Ivan said, still slouching, sneering.
Sage stared at the man with disgust. What a worthless excuse for a human being.
“You followed the girls out there that night,” Sage said. “Or you saw them and waded out into the creek.”
“Nah,” Ivan said. “Check the notes. I had an al-i-bi.” He enunciated each syllable of that last word just to be extra obnoxious.
“A weak one,” Sage said. “And then you went and repainted your car.”
“It’s a crime to paint a car?” Ivan said.
Sage’s blood started to boil. Ivan’s attitude was infuriating. Some dirtbag just like this had murdered his sweet, kind, caring sister without giving it a moment’s notice, and all Sage wanted to do was wipe that smug smile off of Ivan’s face. Instead, he slammed his hands down on the table.
“Why?” he demanded. “Why did you do it?” His voice was loud in the small room. He spared a glance over his shoulder at the guard by the door, who peered in the little window to survey the situation.
“Paint my car?” Ivan asked.
“Murder Lily Esposito!” Sage roared.
This finally got Ivan to sit up. His gaze was level and calm as he looked across the table at Sage.
“Look, I may not be a saint, but I ain’t no monster who goes around murdering kids.”
“What about,” Sage paused to consult his notes, “Tammy English.”
“Tammy?” Ivan said. “Tammy weren’t no kid. Look, she told me she was twenty-two, and would a kid go and screw around behind your back with your goddamn stepbrother? Anyway, that’s who I was aiming for, that shit-weasel stepbrother of mine, but my fucking hand slipped.”
Sage cursed himself for not looking more into Ivan’s case. He got so excited when he saw that the man had been convicted for killing a child, he hadn’t looked further.
He looked over and was surprised to see mean, nasty Bud Ivan had a few tears running down his scarred and wrinkled cheeks.
“Tammy,” he said. “It’s her own fault. If she hadn’t been such a stupid slut, she wouldn’t have got herself shot.”
Sage watched Bud Ivan unravel before his eyes. His tears became sobs, and then through the crying he repeated Tammy’s name again and again. He was criminal scum to be sure, and though he might have some regrets about killing his underage girlfriend, Sage couldn’t really muster up any pity for the man. But he knew that as worthless as Bud Ivan might have been, he wasn’t the man who had murdered Lily Esposito.
The sun was low in the sky as Sage walked across the parking lot to his car. The big, ugly penitentiary building loomed behind him. He was no closer to finding Lily Esposito’s murderer, and the meeting with Bud Ivan left him with a bad taste in his mouth and the desire to take a long, hot shower.
Ivan’s tear-soaked retelling of the murder of his underage girlfriend played on repeat in Sage’s head. What if Melodie’s murder had all been some huge mistake? What if whoever shot her was aiming for someone else instead? For the longest time, this was the only thing that made any sense to Sage. Then he had discovered the web sleuth forums and had become a cop, and it quickly became apparent that just about everyone had some secret life, and he came around to the idea that whatever had gotten Melodie killed was some deep dark secret.
She hadn’t even wanted to keep it a secret, he reasoned. That weekend she came up to see him, she had tried to tell him, but he wasn’t interested in listening. He had been too busy wallowing in his own sad misery to give two shits about anyone else, even his own sister, and maybe if he had just listened to her, she would still be here.
He reached his car and slammed his fist hard into the metal panel between the back and front doors. His hand stung, and bright red spots of blood appeared on his knuckles where the skin had broken. Belatedly he looked up at the light post two spaces away and the security camera mounted there. Well, it wasn’t like he had committed a crime. They couldn’t even get him on destruction of police property. The car was fine, only his hand had suffered any damage.
He let himself into the vehicle and sat there in the parking lot with Bud Ivan’s scratchy voice still echoing in his head. Ivan had been aiming for his stepbrother. Who had Melodie’s killer been gunning for?
Bud Ivan was busy drinking himself into oblivion the night Lily Esposito was killed, and Sage would wager he had been equally drunk the fateful day he shot his girlfriend instead of his shit-weasel stepbrother. And in that way they were alike, because when his sister had needed him the most, he was drunk and useless.
Sage hadn’t needed a twelve-step program. He hadn’t touched alcohol since his sister was murdered, but even a lifetime of sobriety wouldn’t bring her back.