Half an hour later, Natalie met Luke at a seedy watering hole that served the best cheeseburgers on the planet. Pour Richard’s had cracked, stained linoleum tables, a low pine ceiling, and tacky floors from years of spilled beer. Don McLean’s “American Pie” was playing on the jukebox. They ordered burgers and fries.
“What about your niece?” Luke asked. “Anything helpful?”
“Not really,” Natalie said. “She denied knowing about Willow’s scarf or the poppet doll. And she seemed genuinely shocked that one of her friends might’ve stolen it. But she’s also aware that I found her bracelet in India’s possession. I think she doesn’t want to believe her friends are capable of such a betrayal. But Ellie quit the coven, and there could be animosity between them that Ellie isn’t aware of yet, or that she isn’t willing to admit to herself.”
“Do you think she’s telling the truth?” Luke asked.
Natalie put her burger down and wiped her mouth on a paper napkin. “I believe in her essential honesty, but…”
“But what?”
She looked down at her unfinished meal and pushed her plate aside. “She was being evasive. I think she knows more than she’s letting on. My hunch is that Riley dropped by Berkley’s house sometime on Wednesday and they all got stoned. Drinking is one thing, but Ellie’s never going to admit to smoking weed, not with her mother there anyway. I need to interview her without Grace being present. I’ll try to arrange it.”
Luke wiped his mouth on a napkin and said, “We’ve got a bit of good news.”
“I could use some of that right now,” she said hopefully.
“Riley’s tox screen came back positive for synthetic marijuana,” he said, “enough to do serious harm. Which supports Brandon’s claim that he didn’t use force. It’ll help with the internal investigation. Also, Lenny found a match for Riley’s prints on the receipt we found at the Mummy’s Cabin. The supermarket’s pulling the surveillance tapes for us.”
“Which places him inside the cabin on Wednesday afternoon.”
Luke nodded.
“If Riley left his house around three ten P.M.,” she said, “and drove to the cabin, he would’ve arrived around three twenty-five. According to his buddies, he was planning on visiting India after school, which means that, at some point, he left the cabin and headed across town to Berkley’s house. But we don’t know how much time he spent at the cabin.”
“Selling drugs isn’t that time-consuming,” Luke said offhandedly. “They give you a twenty, you give them a bag. It’s a cash transaction, like a pizza delivery. For argument’s sake, let’s say the transactions in the cabin took a solid hour. And that’s conservative.”
“Okay, so around four thirty,” she said, picking up the thread, “he drove over to Berkley’s house to sell the girls some weed. So maybe he left Berkley’s place at five thirty and went to talk to Daisy. That would only give him half an hour, but it’s within the TOD.”
“Right,” Luke said.
“Still, it’s a lot of unknowns.” She rubbed the back of her neck, trying to get the kinks out. “Did Lenny find anything?”
Luke shook his head. “There was a lot of unidentified trace on the poppet—hairs and fibers, but no prints. Same with the pen and paper. He’s focusing on separating and identifying the hairs and twine, but as for the rest, this thing has been underground for quite some time. Bad weather, degraded materials.”
“Does he have an estimate for how long it was underground?”
“A few months to a year. He couldn’t pin it down. But the army jacket tested positive for Bunny’s blood type,” he told her.
Natalie’s stomach roiled, her fears swamping all other thoughts.
“It could be menstrual blood, or blood from a cut,” he tried to reassure her. “At this point, anything’s possible.”
She clenched and unclenched her fists. “Now I’m really worried.”
“It’s not looking good.”
Sometimes Bunny made her face as blank as possible, as if she were recharging her batteries. Back in high school, she’d been a bright, athletic kid with a cute overbite who got along with everyone. Now she lived on the streets and could possibly be the Crow Killer’s next victim. It was grossly unfair. Natalie wished she’d done more to help her friend when she had the chance.
“Daisy’s funeral is tomorrow,” Luke told her. “Between that and the search and rescue for Bunny, we’ve got our hands full, so I’m assigning the task of extrapolating who could’ve received the B-minus from Daisy to Jacob. His caseload isn’t as heavy as yours.”
Natalie nodded and took out her phone. “I’ll send him what I’ve got so far.” She wanted a drink. A glass of wine. Craved it all of a sudden.
“We’re coordinating tomorrow’s search with the DWW. Jimmy Marconi has volunteered his time.” Luke rested his elbows on the table and said, “Didn’t you used to date him?”
“God, no.” She laughed. “Jimmy? Shudder.”
“Really? I thought you two were an item once?”
“An item? Stop. Seriously. You’re thinking of Samuel Winston, and this was way back in college. It was a disaster. I was bored after five minutes, but the evening stretched on and on, like the Boston Marathon.”
“Heartbreak Hill?” he said.
“Exactly.”
He smirked. “I know the feeling.”
“You dated Rainie Sandhill for a while, didn’t you?”
Luke cringed. “She’s a nice person. Always checking her text messages and talking about her kundalini. And you and Hunter Rose hooked up once, if I remember correctly.”
“His Peter Pan act quickly lost its charm.” She smirked.
“With that creepy salesman’s smile of his,” Luke added. “Too many bong hits back at the ranch. Have we dissed everyone yet?”
She laughed. “Not hardly.”
“I love it when you do that,” he said.
“Do what?”
“Laugh. You have this little line on your upper lip … like a smile above your smile.” He waved his finger in the air. “Never mind. Scratch that.”
“You’re a hit-and-run flatterer.”
“Am I? Shit.” He smiled and picked up his burger.
Her face flushed as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Anyway,” he said, brushing it away, “let’s not get sidetracked. God forbid.”
“Speak for yourself. You’ve been getting sidetracked an awful lot lately.”
“I know. It’s not healthy.” He stared at her, nakedly awake.
Her heart misfired. The warmth and pleasure of his company was overwhelming. She sensed his physical body across the table from hers. It was a distraction from the important issues, but Natalie had to acknowledge that something was happening.
She hesitated before saying, “My last relationship was such a train wreck that falling in love again feels like the kind of wild abandon I can’t afford right now.”
He gave her a half shrug. “I know what you mean.”
“I’m over it. But it took a while.”
“After my wife took our daughter away, it was like she’d ripped my heart out,” he said softly. “The hardest part of my divorce was picking up the pieces. I hated that. Here I was, this tough-guy cop, struggling to control his emotions. But this job … this occupation where we’re constantly reminded about the brutality and depravity of mankind … it’s not easy being a law officer. It’s a devouring job. You immerse yourself in the town’s business. You know everybody’s secrets, their shameful truths, and you somehow manage to keep it to yourself—you’re like a priest that way.”
The dynamic, loud, Friday night atmosphere of the bar faded around them as they huddled inside their exclusive bubble of intimacy and vulnerability.
“Remember Alma’s Bar on Bearkill Road?” Luke went on. “The one with the mechanical Hawaiian lady dancing in the window? It got torn down last year. Anyway, your father used to sit in the corner by the jukebox, drinking vodka martinis and listening to Frank Sinatra. He didn’t bother anyone. Two or three drinks, and then he’d head down to the lake to skim stones. I followed him one evening. I was a rookie cop at the time, and he was retired by then, but I loved the son of a gun. Anyway, after you went away to college, he missed you so much. He worried about you. We used to play golf together. Well, not exactly golf. Remember the Zambranos’ dairy? They had a couple of black walnut trees growing on the property, and every September, the walnuts would drop off and litter the ground. Those husks are heavy and round as golf balls. Tony Zambrano hated it, because he couldn’t mow his lawn without picking up hundreds of them first. So Joey and I would take our clubs over there, and Tony would join us, and the three of us would have a competition to see who could whack the most walnuts into the woods.
“One of those times, one of those beautiful, golden late summer days … Joey asked me a question. He said, ‘What’s the most important factor to skipping stones? What stops the stones from sinking into the lake?’ And I said, ‘That’s easy. Angle, speed, and spin rate. If the stone hits the water too steeply, it’ll sink. But if the angle’s too shallow, it won’t bounce.’ He said, ‘That’s right.’ He told me the perfect angle is twenty degrees. A flat stone is best, of course. The whole thing is about a transfer of energy. When you skip a stone, you’re transferring energy from your arm into the stone. Just like when you swing a golf club, you’re transferring energy from your body into the club.” Luke shrugged. “So Joey said, ‘Okay. But what’s the most important factor?’ Well, I didn’t know. ‘Stability,’ he said. Stability is critical. Primates can’t skim stones or swing golf clubs, because they have no stability. They can’t balance on two legs. But human beings can. We can. Stability is crucial to skipping stones, playing golf, and being a cop—that was his point. Police work means lots of grueling hours and follow-up interviews. All those homicides, suicides, car accidents, rapes, drug overdoses—all the evil you can see and smell and practically touch … what you need is a stable home life to keep you grounded. That’s the secret to being a good cop, he said. Stability. That’s what it’s all about.”
She stared at the ceiling, blinking the tears out of her eyes.
“Stability, he told me,” Luke said softly. “Find it wherever you can, Natalie.”