The Killing Game(96)

Raquel was shaking her head, gray ponytail sliding across her shoulders. “We looked for him. Called all his friends, the hospitals, the police . . . anyone we could think of. He didn’t have a cell phone back then, but we had a family computer, such as it was.”

“Hand-me-down clunker from my brother,” Maury interjected.

“But,” Raquel went on, “nothing . . . not a word. Ever.”

“Do you know if he went by a nickname?” September asked.

Raquel shot her a look. “A nickname? No? Maury, here, called him ‘Son,’ but that was about it.”

“What about Laser?” September asked as a breeze kicked up, touching the back of her neck.

Maury shook his head but said, “That crowd he ran around with had all sorts of names, or handles, or whatever you want to call it, for each other. Some not so nice, if you know what I mean.”

“Would you happen to have anything of his that might help me either to ID the body or eliminate Lance as the victim?”

Raquel shuddered at the idea.

“You mean like for a sample of his DNA?” Maury asked. “Like they do in all those cop shows? What, a toothbrush or a hairbrush?”

September nodded. “Or a lock of his hair, maybe a first tooth from when he lost them?”

Raquel threw her husband a dark glance. “We’ve got nothing of Lance’s.”

“I thought it best when we moved here to start clean,” Maury said. “We’re retired and this is a new phase of our lives, so . . .”

“So we threw away everything. Gave what we could to charity, then tossed the rest.” Raquel slipped her hand away from her husband’s as a goat bleated. “His idea.”

“I already admitted that,” he said flatly. Obviously this was not the first time they’d had this discussion, a sore point in their marriage.

“What about the name of your dentist, in case I need to compare his records to the victim?”

Raquel said, “Dr. Emerson saw him. He had a practice on Main Street back then . . . but I think maybe Lance’s last appointment was before he got his permanent teeth. We, um, we didn’t have a lot of extra money back then, y’know, before I inherited this place.” She rubbed her hands together between her knees. “I’m sorry.”

“She blames me for that, too,” Maury said.

September changed the course of the conversation, asking about Lance’s relationship with Tommy Burkey and/or Davinia Singleton, but neither of them had much to say on either subject. She asked more about his drug use and they reluctantly talked about it a little but were clearly uncomfortable.

“I understand you had horses on Aurora Lane,” September said, purposely changing to a more neutral topic.

“A horse. Lance rode him some,” Maury said. “Now we have room for a few more.”

They looked up at her expectantly, waiting for the next question, but September was about finished. “Did you know any of the other people who rented the house before or after you?” she asked.

“The Kirkendalls lived there before us,” Raquel said. “Kim and . . . oh, what was her husband’s name? He was a real piece of work.”

“Leland,” Maury supplied. “Son of a bitch parked his RV on the front lawn. Made horrible ruts. Remember?”

Raquel said, “’Course I do. Couldn’t plant anything there for years.”

“And you think that loser Mamet would fix it? Hell no. Even though he evicted them for not paying their rent on time.”

“Well, they had a reason,” Raquel said and Maury nodded, as if the Kirkendalls’ troubles were common knowledge.

“And that was?”

Raquel said, “Their daughter of course.”

“What happened?” September asked.

“She died. That’s the real reason we got the place,” she said. “Their lives fell apart. They stopped paying rent. They stopped doing anything, as I heard it. The mother, Kim, couldn’t stand living there after Wendy was gone.”

“She was killed,” Maury said bluntly. “Drowned . . .”

“No, strangled,” Raquel said. “And dropped in the lake. Happened right before we moved in.”

September felt her skin break out in gooseflesh. Something niggled at the edge of her consciousness. Almost a memory. “I think I recall her death.”

“Yeah, it was all over the news,” Maury said. “Anything else we can help you with? We’ll look for anything of Lance’s that might help, though there’s not much here.”

Raquel said to September, “But if you do find out those—bones—are my son . . .”

“You’ll be the first to know,” September assured her.

She drove back to the office, ignoring the speed limit. The discussion of Wendy Kirkendall had built an urgency inside her. She went straight to her desk, glad George was engrossed in his computer and Gretchen, though September saw her jacket on the back of her chair, was away from her desk. She sat down and accessed her computer terminal. One quick search and Wendy Kirkendall’s name popped up. Now September remembered. It had been on the news when September was in high school herself. Wendy’s body had been found floating in Schultz Lake, but she’d died of asphyxiation, the result of a willow branch tied around her young neck.