Locust Lane(30)
“It helps me sleep.”
“You have trouble sleeping?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you don’t take anything for that?”
“Not drugs, no. Like I said.”
“Do you know Bill and Betsy Bondurant?”
“I think I met Bill once. At the office.”
“Have you ever been inside their house?”
“Why would I go inside their house?”
She didn’t answer his question. Patrick began to suspect that coming here was a mistake.
“So I need to get back to work…”
“Just one more thing. Do you know a young woman named Eden Perry?”
“No.”
“She’s twenty, kinda pretty, reddish hair. Medium height.”
“I know who she is. The girl who got killed. I just read about her online. That’s why I’m here.”
Gates stared at him, the sweetness and light momentarily drained from her eyes. Her question remained.
“No, I don’t know her.”
“And you didn’t see her last night?”
“No. Just the dog.”
“And the man.”
“And the man.”
“I’m going to give you my number,” she said, the charm returning. “If for some reason you think of anything more specific, I’d like you to call me right away.”
She handed him a card, then led him to the lobby, where someone else was waiting, a woman with jet-black hair. There were tattoos on her hands and neck, suggesting more beneath her off-the-rack work suit. Bright red lipstick failed to soften her locked-down mouth. The thick mascara on her eyelashes was clumped and runny. There was a beauty there, but she seemed hell-bent on masking it. Her eyes met Patrick’s with a laser focus.
“Ms. Perry,” Gates said, a bit unhappily.
Patrick kept walking. Perry. This was the mother. He glanced quickly over his shoulder but she was already speaking to the detective, her words urgent and angry. He was tempted to linger to hear what was being said, but he kept on walking, out the door and through the growing congregation of press, whose questions he once again ignored.
He walked back down Centre in a trance. He got in his car and drove. Lefts and rights, speed bumps and stop signs. Going to the police had been idiotic, especially given his history with them. He should have known what would happen. Disbelief, followed by suspicion. He should have used a lawyer. But he had seen someone. He’d seen a man. A man who did not want to be seen.
Locust was blocked off by a state police cruiser. He pulled to the side of the road. The Bondurant house was largely hidden by the trees in its front yard, though he could glimpse police vehicles and vans through them. The copse where he’d seen the man stood just beyond the property—he’d been driving in the other direction last night. Now, in the bright April glare, it didn’t look like a dark forest. It was just a patch of trees the size of a tennis court. And yet. There had been someone there. Patient, impassive, guilty of something. He was sure of it.
DANIELLE
She went straight to the station when she heard about the arrest. She probably should have called first, but calls could be ignored. And she wasn’t exactly feeling like doing things their way. The rage inside her had finally boiled over. They’d promised to notify her if there were developments. Well, arresting the person who’d killed your child certainly qualified as a development. And yet she had to find out about it from a stranger.
She was going to have to keep an eye on these cops. That was obvious. She understood this the moment they’d asked for her whereabouts last night. Yes, they needed to know for the record, she got that. But that wasn’t how it came across, as some sort of formality. They truly believed she could have hurt Eden.
It got worse when Procopio called. She was in her house—a nervous young officer had driven her from the station. But being home was a mistake. She understood that the moment she walked through the door. Her body began to shake, like at the onset of a fever. She went to the kitchen and thought, What the fuck am I doing in the kitchen? She went up to her bedroom and shed her work clothes. Finding something black to wear wasn’t hard. There were plenty of holdovers from her tatted-up bullshit biker chick days. The clothes still fit, even though the life didn’t.
She wound up standing outside Eden’s bedroom. There was a clipped magazine headline taped to the door. Eden Hazard. Whatever that meant. Danielle grasped the knob but immediately let it go. The police had instructed her to leave her daughter’s stuff alone—they might need to look through it. She didn’t really want to go inside, anyway. Instead, she put her forehead against the faded, wrinkled strip of paper and started to cry for the second time that day, doubling her total for the last twenty years. A minute passed and then it was out of her system.
She was redoing her mascara when Procopio called. Eden had been transported. That’s how he put it. Transported. Danielle would be able to see her now.
“I gotta repeat—you don’t need to do this.”
“Yes I do.”
“I’m just saying—it might be easier not to.”
“I’m not looking for this to be easier.”
“Your call,” he said in that know-it-all tone she always loved to hear from men.