Repressed Page 6

  “Walk me through the day it happened.”

  She did, her eyes filling and overflowing. It had been a typical morning. They’d eaten breakfast and headed to the school like every other day. She’d even been working with Zach’s homeroom teacher, putting together folders and supervising a class project on Abraham Lincoln.

  “Do most parents volunteer like that?” Morrison asked, and Reynolds’s eyes widened as if she’d forgotten he was there.

  She recovered quickly and shook her head. “Not usually that much. Maybe an hour or two every quarter.”

  Morrison tapped the notepad with his pen, stopping when she frowned. “But you’d been there that whole week.”

  “Zach had just gotten out of the hospital and I wanted to make sure he was … okay.” She shuddered. “Leukemia. We almost lost him. And even now … I mean, the risk is there.” She was trembling. “And he just keeps tempting fate.”

  Morrison made a note on his pad—Acting out?—while she grabbed a tissue and wiped her eyes like it was the fault of the Kleenex that her son’s health had been shitty. He understood. Sometimes there was no one to blame.

  “So after the homeroom project …” Petrosky said.

  “I went to the office to make copies. The printer is right in front of the window that looks out to the playground. I never should have taken my eyes off him.”

  “Why did you?” Petrosky asked.

  “This wasn’t my fault!”

  But she’d remember it every day for the rest of her life, that one moment of looking away from her child. And tomorrow, Evie would be gone for a week, away from his own watchful gaze. Morrison’s gut clenched.

  “Absolutely not your fault, ma’am,” Petrosky said. “But the report said that someone asked you a question?”

  Her shoulders relaxed. She nodded.

  “Someone who worked there?”

  “No. It was … just a guy. Came into the office.” She furrowed her brows. “He asked whether there was school on President’s Day, which I thought was weird because it was over a month away, but it wasn’t really that strange of a question, I guess.”

  Same answer she’d given to the police five years ago—Morrison had looked through the witness statements. But he had yet to scour the atrociously-written and horribly-sorted police notes to see if the cops had actually located the question asker. They’d get on that next.

  She glanced from Petrosky to Morrison and his pen and back again. “You think it was on purpose? That this guy asked me something just to get me to look away?”

  “Probably not, ma’am. Just covering the bases.”

  “Then did someone distract this new boy’s teacher while they lured him off the playground?”

  “Not that we know of.”

  “But you think he did it to … wait, was there more than one guy? With this new boy? Is that why you’re asking about someone in the office?”

  She was quick. Petrosky met her gaze and said nothing, but Morrison could see the wheels working behind her eyes. Petrosky inhaled to speak again but she beat him to it.

  “He was blond. Probably younger than I was then, but not by much. A few wrinkles around the eyes, you know.”

  “Eye color?”

  She considered, then shook her head. “I used to think that every detail of that morning would be imprinted on my brain forever. But this …”

  She hadn’t known back when Zachary had been attacked—either Petrosky hadn’t read the case file or he was trying to catch her in a lie.

  “Short or long hair?”

  “Long. Ponytail, actually. I remember thinking that he looked like a hippie. The police must have interviewed him—they interviewed everyone in the school. But this guy was so … different looking. Definitely wasn’t the one who attacked Zach—he looked nothing like the guy from the police sketch they did afterwards.”

  “Any distinguishing marks? Scars?”

  “No, I don’t think.” She swallowed hard. “I can’t really remember. But like I said, I’m sure they talked to him. They talked to everyone.”

  “Is there anything else you recall from that day, anything you neglected to tell the officers?”

  “I called every week for over a year. Everything I knew, they knew. Now it's been so long...I'm starting to forget details, I guess.” Her eyes remained drawn but there was a hopeful edge to her voice beneath the regret. It had to be rather promising that one could forget even small pieces of a day so awful. Perhaps one day the other memories would fade as the good in life oozed in to crowd out the tragedy. Though the horror never fully disappeared.

  “Does the number one mean anything to you? Even the symbol, the pound sign followed by the numeral?”

  She shook her head, but the door interrupted her, a hearty slam punctuated by the throbbing beat of heavy soles approaching the doorway.

  Zachary Reynolds had a dog collar around his neck and silver rings through his septum and eyebrow. He glared at Morrison and Petrosky, then at his mother. “I told you I didn’t want to do this.”

  “It will just take a moment, honey and—”

  “Fuck this.” He pointed to Petrosky. “And fuck them.”

  “He did it to someone else.” Petrosky stood abruptly, his eyes on the boy’s boots. “Nice kicks. Where’d you get them?”

  Kicks? Looked like someone had swapped the old man for a newer, hipper version. Morrison resisted the urge to tell Petrosky that the word might not mean what he thought it did.

  The kid glared.

  “I gave him the boots,” Mrs. Reynolds said from the couch.

  “You have more of ’em?” Petrosky asked, though why it mattered was beyond Morrison. It wasn’t like Zachary Reynolds had teamed up with his rapist to attack and murder another child. And the boots didn’t appear to have treads like those at the Acosta scene—too flat, and no sign of anything that would puncture the skin.

  Zach squinted and his mother answered again. “Just the one pair. For his birthday. Why are you—”

  “I said I didn’t want to do this,” Zach repeated.

  Petrosky stepped forward. “You may not give a fuck about this other kid—”

  Mrs. Reynolds stood too, her eyes wide. “Detective—”

  “It’s my job to try to find this asshole,” he said to Zach. “I’d like to fry the ever-loving shit out of the guy who hurt you. And if it’s the same fellow, all the better when I hook his nipples to a car battery.”

  Mrs. Reynolds’s mouth dropped in shock. “Maybe if you leave your questions, I can ask him later or …”

  Zach appraised his mother, lips tight, then returned to Petrosky. “Let’s talk outside.”

  Mrs. Reynolds reached out to touch the boy’s arm, but he pulled away and stalked back out the front door. Petrosky followed, Mrs. Reynolds gasping objections behind them. Her cheeks flamed.

  Morrison touched her elbow, expecting her to shove him off, but she stopped in the foyer and turned back slowly, her mouth drawn in acquiescence.

  “Detective Petrosky might seem a little rough around the edges, but he knows what he’s doing,” he said quietly.

  Her foot was tapping—like she was trying to decide whether to go tearing off after them. But from what he’d just witnessed, her presence would be enough to make the boy stop speaking altogether.

  “Do we still have your consent, ma’am? To speak to your son?”

  Her yes was barely audible through her heavy sigh.

  Zachary Reynolds and Petrosky were already halfway down the street, twin trails of smoke wafting toward the sky above them. Mommy would love that. From down the block Morrison heard a string of curse words erupt from the teen’s mouth. She’ll love that too.

  Morrison caught up with them in time to hear Petrosky say: “—tone of voice? How about anything specific that he said?”

  “No, he was kinda quiet. Smiled though, and he seemed so … nice. Gave me candy. Fucking cliché. I know it was stupid, following him, but …” Reynolds looked down. “He d
id look familiar, but I don’t know where we’d met before. I tried for years to figure that out.” He shook his head and pulled on the cigarette.

  “You don’t recall anyone else out there? Even just standing around?”

  “Nope, no one.”

  “I read the report, Zach. Frizzy brownish hair. Scraggly, right?”

  Slow nod.

  “The report said you weren’t sure on the eye color. Remember anything afterwards? Not just on the eyes but on his appearance?”

  Scars, facial hair, or acne could help them identify a suspect, but even recent eyewitness reports were often inaccurate. Five years ago? Petrosky was really reaching now.

  Reynolds shook his head. “Seriously, I don’t know. He was shorter than most adults I guess, but he was old. Like … thirty something. And he was strong and I couldn’t … stop him.”

  Huh. It sounded like the pedophile who’d raped Reynolds five years ago had committed a crime of opportunity—if Reynolds had been groomed, he’d know where he’d met the guy. Would the rapist have stuck to that pattern? Had the killer known Dylan Acosta?

  “Of course you couldn’t stop him, Zach. No one doubts that. Right now I’m just trying to find something we can use for identification. Stains on his jeans: paint or grease? Some other sign of where he worked? A name tag? The exact pattern on his T-shirt, an extra logo maybe?”

  “He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt. It was a button-down kinda thing, like a short-sleeved dress shirt. There wasn't anything on it, I don't think.”

  Petrosky stopped walking. “In the initial report, you told the officers he was wearing a clown shirt.”

  Reynolds’s eyes narrowed as if he were trying to protect them from the smoke wafting from his nostrils. “Clown shirt?”

  “That’s what was in the file. A picture of a clown on his—”

  “It wasn't on his shirt. It was on his stomach.”

  The pen in Morrison’s hand jittered over the page more than he wanted it to. He pressed the tip harder against the paper before Petrosky could notice.

  “A tattoo?” Petrosky said it slowly, as if worried he’d heard the boy incorrectly.

  “I mean, maybe I said it weird. I was tired and scared and … confused. Or I might not have known the name for a tattoo back then.” He fingered his eyebrow ring and the metal glinted in the sun. “Maybe I told them he was wearing a picture? I was all fucked up in the head. I really can’t remember what I said, but I know the picture was on his fucking gut and I only saw it once I tore the buttons off his shirt, trying to get away. It moved when he—” Reynolds’s lip quivered and he covered it by jamming the cigarette between his teeth.

  “Sounds like you remember it pretty well.”

  The kid’s face disappeared behind an acrid cloud.

  “Can you describe it?”

  “Well … a clown, like I said. On a horse. But it was creepy, had fangs and stuff.”

  “Could you draw it?” Petrosky asked, his voice even. “Doesn’t have to be perfect, just what you remember.”

  Reynolds took the notepad and sketched, his cigarette dangling from his lips. Ash dropped onto his boot and he paused to shake it off before completing the sketch.

  Morrison and Petrosky peered at the drawing: a vampire clown, carrying a rifle and riding a vampire horse, the animal’s mouth full of foam and blood.

  “You’re a good artist,” Morrison said.

  Reynolds dragged at the smoke. “For all the good it’ll do me.” He turned to Petrosky. “You think he killed that other kid? My mom told me about it.”

  “Not sure yet.”

  “He probably should have killed me too,” Reynolds whispered, his eyes on his boots as he toed the dirt. Silent. Probably waiting for them to challenge such a notion.

  Petrosky shrugged. “Maybe he should have.” Morrison balked but Petrosky wasn’t done. “Because if we get him based on what you said, he’s going to be sorry as fuck that he left you alive.” He inhaled sharply on the cigarette. “You know what they do to pedophiles in prison, Zach?”

  The kid met Petrosky’s eyes.

  Smoke curled toward the pewter sky. “Use your imagination, before your mother files charges against me for corrupting you. But let’s just say he’ll wish he was dead every goddamn day. And he’ll never look at a broom the same way again.”

  Reynolds tossed his cigarette butt on the sidewalk, blew smoke at his shoes, and smiled.

  “But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good,

  so in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.”

  ~Edgar Allan Poe, Berenice

  10

  The world whipped by the passenger window, but Morrison barely noticed. A search for scary-ass clowns had given him more results than he would have thought. On his smartphone screen, two men in clown costumes—more Stephen King’s It than Bozo—screamed about slicing up their girlfriends and impaling them on fence posts outside a circus tent, all over the twang of a banjo. Clown Alley Freaks, a local band that appeared to be a combination of gangster rap and backwoods hillbilly. Who listens to this stuff? But he already knew the answer—he wished he knew less about all the sickness in the—

  Morrison stopped scrolling through album covers on his cell and tapped one to enlarge.

  The cover was purple and yellow, with a torn circus tent as the backdrop. In the foreground, a grisly clown atop a horse sneered at him over the top of a hunting rifle, blood dripping from its mouth, a severed leg in one hand like a club. A single arm was clamped between the horse’s teeth, useless tendons stringing toward the ground like ghastly spaghetti. Sick. And these people were out there, walking around like normal folks, grocery shopping and hanging out at the park. With his wife. With his daughter. His stomach soured.

  “Has to have something to do with these guys,” he said, glancing up as Petrosky maneuvered into the precinct parking lot.

  Petrosky put the car in park. “Fucking hell. Kid’s got a good memory.”

  “Guess some things you never forget.” Morrison pocketed the phone. “Should we start with the east side tattoo parlors? I can pull up a list—”

  “Go home.”

  “But we just got a break—”

  “It’s Tuesday night. They’re not open now, California.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You’re worried.”

  Morrison balked. “What?”

  “About Shannon. I can smell it on you.” Petrosky chewed on the butt of the cigarette. “She’s okay. A few scary post-pregnancy thoughts a few months back, but she’s okay now. If thinking about suicide a few times made it happen, we’d all be dead.”

  “I don’t think she’s … unstable.” Though anyone else she came across might be.

  “Of course you don’t. But I know you’re thinking about how she was with Evie those first few weeks—how she struggled. And it’s the first time she’s been alone all day since then.”

  “Well, in just a few days she’ll be with Alex and Abby.” But Petrosky was right. The nagging in Morrison’s gut wasn’t about how many crazy assholes Shannon might encounter on her way to Atlanta.

  “If you’re not home for dinner, Shannon is going to have your ass. And mine.”

  She’d still be up in a couple hours. “Nah, she’ll—”

  “This isn’t a trial run where you get to check how she reacts when you stand her up.” Petrosky yanked the keys from the ignition and pushed open the car door. “Catch you in the morning, California. And if I see you inside, I’m the one you’ll need to worry about, not Shannon.”

  Morrison nodded, relieved, and pulled his car keys from his pocket. “Got it, Boss.”

  “I’ve called Natalie Bell three times, but I can’t get through.” Shannon speared a bite of salad and frowned at the fork. “Maybe she already took another job.”

  Morrison glanced at Evie, who was nursing at Shannon’s breast, dressing from Shannon’s salad in her hair. He waited for a twinge of disappointment over the fact that they still hadn’t hir
ed a nanny, but felt no such irritation. Maybe he really wasn’t ready to have a stranger caring for his daughter. “She got another position that fast?”

  “I told you the good ones get snapped up quick.”

  “It’s been a day.”

  “But a week from the first interview I did.” She shoved a handful of blond hair off her face. Her curls fell right back down in a messy tangle.

  Morrison suppressed a grin. “Maybe she just had something to do today. I’ll try her after dinner.”

  “Oh, because you can make a phone call better than I can?”

  “They call me The Master Dialer.”

  Shannon laughed and put her free hand up in mock surrender. Evie wiggled on her lap, only the top of her head visible under the table and one tiny, fleshy fist punching at Shannon’s clothing as if Evie was personally oppressed by her mother’s shirt. “Call away.”

  Movement at Morrison's ankle made him jump. The cat mewed at him, its dark fur glassy as an oil slick. “We need to get another dog.”

  “You love Slash.”

  “He hates me. Wakes me up at least four times a week to go outside.” Already the cat had moved on to Shannon’s side of the table, where his wife was dropping bits of salmon onto the tile floor.

  “Install a cat door. And he doesn’t hate you.” Her eyes were on the animal. Evie’s fist swung up again and almost connected with Shannon’s chin.

  “You tell her, Evie. Tell her Slash is a buttface.”

  “He’s just an outside cat, Morrison. They’re a little more … particular.”

  “He’s a jerk.”

  “So’s Petrosky, and we keep him around.”

  Morrison peered under the table and glowered at the cat, and Slash mewed back. Damn if he wasn’t adorable. Morrison pursed his lips. “Don’t look at me like that, you little furball.”

  “What’s wrong?” Shannon sat the baby up and wiped salmon from Evie’s forehead. Evie babbled in protest and scrunched up her face.