Leaving Time(63)

Virgil’s cell phone starts to ring. He answers it, hunching forward so that he can hear the call. He nods and walks a few feet away.

Jenna looks up. “But that still doesn’t explain where my mom went or why she didn’t try to come for me.”

Out of the blue, I think: She’s stuck.

I still don’t know if Alice Metcalf is dead, but she is certainly acting the way an earthbound spirit would—like a ghost who’s afraid of being judged for her behavior while living.

I’m saved from answering Jenna by the return of Virgil. “My parents were happily married,” Jenna tells him.

“You don’t call the love of your life a f*cking bitch,” Virgil says frankly. “That was Tallulah at the lab. The mitochondrial DNA from your cheek swab was a match to the hair from the evidence bag. Your mother was the redhead in close proximity to Nevvie Ruehl before she died.”

To my surprise, Jenna seems annoyed by this information, rather than upset. “Look, could you make up your mind? Is it my mother who’s the crazed killer, or is it my father? Because I’m getting whiplash bouncing back and forth between your theories.”

Virgil looks at Jenna’s injured eye. “Maybe Thomas went after Alice, and she ran into the enclosure to escape. Nevvie was there doing whatever she was supposed to be doing that night for her job. She got in the way, and was killed in the process by Thomas. Feeling guilty about a murder is a pretty good trigger to lose your grasp on reality and wind up in an institution …”

“Yeah,” Jenna says sarcastically. “And then he cued the elephant to come walk back and forth on top of Nevvie so it would look like she was trampled. Because, you know, they’re trained to do that.”

“It was dark. The elephant could have stepped on the body accidentally—”

“Twenty or thirty times? I read the autopsy report, too. Plus, you don’t have any evidence of my father being inside those enclosures.”

“Yet,” Virgil says.

If Thomas Metcalf’s room made me queasy, then being between these two makes me feel like my head is going to explode. “Too bad Nevvie’s gone,” I say cheerfully. “She’d be a great resource.”

Jenna takes a step toward Virgil. “You know what I think?”

“Does it matter? Because you and I both know you’re going to tell me anyway …”

“I think that you’re so busy accusing everyone else that night so you don’t have to admit that you’re the one to blame for a crappy investigation.”

“And I think you’re a spoiled little shit who isn’t actually brave enough to open Pandora’s box and see what’s inside.”

“You know what?” Jenna yells. “You’re fired.”

“You know what?” Virgil shouts back. “I quit.”

“Good.”

“Fine.”

She turns on her heel and starts running.

“What am I supposed to do?” he asks me. “I said I’d find her mom. I didn’t say she’d like the results. God, that kid drives me up a freaking wall.”

“I know.”

“Her mother probably stayed away because she’s such a pain in the ass.” He grimaces. “I don’t mean that. Jenna’s right. If I’d trusted my instincts ten years ago, we’d never be here.”

“The question is, would Alice Metcalf?”

We both think about that for a moment. Then he glances at me. “One of us should go after her. And by one of us, I mean you.”

I take my keys out of my purse and unlock the car. “You know, I used to filter the information I got from spirits. If I thought it was going to be painful to my client, or upsetting, I’d leave the message out of my reading. Just pretend I never heard it. But eventually I realized it wasn’t my business to judge the information I was getting. It was just my job to relay it.”

Virgil squints. “I can’t tell if you’re agreeing with me.”

I slide into the driver’s seat, turn on the ignition, and roll down my window. “I’m just saying that you don’t have to be the ventriloquist. You’re the dummy.”

“You just wanted to be able to say that to my face.”

“A little bit,” I confess. “But I’m trying to tell you to stop being invested in where this is leading, and stop trying to steer it. Just follow where it goes.”

Virgil shades his eyes in the direction Jenna went. “I don’t know if Alice is a victim who ran to save her life, or a perp who took someone else’s life. But the night we were called to the sanctuary, Thomas was upset about Alice stealing his research. Kind of like he was today.”

“You think that’s why he tried to kill her?”

“No,” Virgil says. “I think that was because she was having an affair.”





ALICE




I have never seen a better mother than an elephant.

I suppose that if humans were pregnant for two years, the investment might be enough to make us all better mothers. A baby elephant can do no wrong. He can be naughty, he can steal food from his mother’s mouth, he can move too slowly or get stuck in mud, and still, his mother is patient beyond belief. Babies are the most precious things in an elephant’s life.