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“You have no standing in this case,” Tantleff says, “so I’m asking you, with all due respect, to butt out.”
“You butt out,” Holly says. “Let her talk.”
Tantleff huffs but doesn’t protest. Barbara goes on.
“Mr. Martin has been convinced all along that Mr. Castro was murdered. He says Castro had relatives in Dayton, in Nogales, El Paso, and Mexico City. He’s never gotten in touch with any of them and Martin says he would have.”
“He was their first,” Holly says. “I’m sure of it. But speaking of relatives, what about those of the others?” She thinks Ellen Craslow’s Georgia kin won’t care much one way or the other, but Imani at the trailer park will want to know. Bonnie’s father will want to know as well as her mother. But it’s Vera Steinman she thinks of mostly, a woman who now has every excuse to drink and pill herself to death.
“No one’s been informed,” George Washburn says. “Not yet.” He nods at Tantleff. “It’s his case, in tandem with the Chief of Police.”
Tantleff heaves a longsuffering sigh. “We’ll give the investigation teams as much time as we can, but we can’t count on keeping this contained for very long. Someone will talk. There’s a press conference in my near future that I don’t look forward to.”
“But you’ll tell next-of-kin first,” Holly says. Almost insists.
Izzy answers before Tantleff can. “Of course. Starting with Penny Dahl.”
Jerome speaks up, and Holly thinks he may also be thinking of Peter Steinman’s mother. “Can you at least keep the cannibalism part out of it?”
Izzy Jaynes puts her hands to her temples, as if trying to suppress a headache. “No. There’ll be a private grand jury, but this will come out anyway. It’s too explosive to be kept secret. The relatives need to know before they see it in Inside fucking View.”
The meeting ends shortly thereafter. Holly is exhausted. She goes back to her rare-as-hen’s-teeth private room, closes the door, gets into bed, and cries herself to sleep. She dreams of Emily Harris putting the barrel of Bill’s pistol to her forehead and saying, “I loaded the last chamber, you nosy bitch. The joke’s on you.”
2
A nurse—not the one who gave her the Valium—wakes her at quarter past two that afternoon and says, “Detective Jaynes called the nurses’ station. She says she needs you.” She hands Holly a cell phone and a disinfecting wipe.
“I’m in the hospital chapel,” Izzy says. “Can you come down?”
Holly wheelchairs to the elevator. On the second floor she follows the signs to Kiner’s nondenominational chapel. It’s empty except for Izzy, who is sitting in a front row pew. Held loosely in one hand is a set of rosary beads.
Holly stops next to her. “You told Penny?”
“Roger that.” Izzy’s eyes are red and puffy.
“I’m guessing it didn’t go so well?”
Izzy turns and gives Holly a look of such unhappiness that Holly can barely stand to look back. But she does. She has to, because Izzy did the dirty job Holly should have done herself. “How the fuck do you think it went?”
Holly says nothing, and after a few seconds Izzy takes Holly’s hand. “This case has taught me a lesson, Gibney. Just when you think you’ve seen the worst human beings have to offer, you find out you’re wrong. There’s no end to evil. I took Stella Randolph with me. I knew I needed help with this one, and she’s the department’s mental health counselor. She talks to cops after officer-involved shootings. Other stuff, too.”
“You told Penny that Bonnie was dead, and—?”
“And then I told her why Bonnie was dead. What they did to her. I tried to be euphemistic… I think that’s the word… but she knew what I was talking about. Or what I was trying not to talk about. She just sat there for a moment with her hands clasped in her lap, looking at me. Like a woman attending a really interesting lecture. Then she started screaming. Stella tried to hug her and Dahl pushed her away so hard that Stella tripped over a hassock and fell on the floor. Dahl started to claw at her face. Didn’t break the skin—she would’ve if her nails had been longer—but left big red marks all down her cheeks. I wrapped her up in a bearhug to stop her doing that, but she went on screaming. At last she calmed down a little, or maybe she was just exhausted, but I’ll remember that screaming for the rest of my life. It’s one thing to bring somebody news of a death, I must have done it two dozen times, but the rest of it… Holly, do you think they were conscious when they were killed?”
“I don’t know.” And don’t want to. “Did she say anything about… me?”
“Yes. That she never wants to see you again.”
3
There’s a double row of houses that look deserted in the blaring afternoon sun. No one is moving on the cracked sidewalks. Jerome thinks Sycamore Street (where there are no sycamores) looks like a movie set that’s been used but not struck yet. Vera Steinman’s old Chevy is in the same place as when he last visited, with its bumper sticker reading WHAT WOULD SCOOBY DO? Jerome wishes he knew what to do, or what to say.
Maybe, he thinks, she won’t be home. The car suggests she is, but for all he knows, the car no longer runs and Peter Steinman’s deep-dish drunk of a mother may have no license to drive.
I should get out of here, he thinks. Just get away while I still have a chance.
He knocks on the door instead. He’s sure of one thing: assuming she doesn’t just slam the door on him, he must look her straight in the face and tell the best, most sincere lie of his life.
