the Woods (2007) Read online

  She closed her eyes. "Why are you showing me this?" 1 he scar.

  Her eyes stayed closed.

  "You said Gil's scar was on the right arm. But look at this photo graph. It was on the left." She didn't speak. "Mrs. Perez?" "That man was not my son. My son was murdered by Wayne Steubens twenty years ago."

  "No."

  I reached into the envelope. Lucy leaned in. She hadn't seen this picture yet. I took out the photograph. "This is Manolo Santiago, the man from the morgue."

  Lucy startled up. "What was his name?"

  "Manolo Santiago."

  Lucy looked stunned.

  "What?" I said.

  She shook me off. I continued.

  "And this"-I plucked out the final photograph-"is a computer rendering using age-progression software. In other words, my lab guy took the old photograph of Gil and aged him twenty years. Then he matched the shaved head and facial hair of Manolo Santiago."

  I put the pictures next to one another.

  "Take a look, Mrs. Perez."

  She did. She looked for a long time. "He looks like him maybe. That's all. Or maybe you just think all Latinos look alike." "Mrs. Perez?" It was Lucy, speaking directly to Gil's mother for the first time since we entered. "Why don't you keep any pictures of Gil up there?" Lucy pointed to the fireplace mantel. Mrs. Perez did not follow the finger. She stared at Lucy. "Do you have any children, Ms. Silverstein?"

  No.

  "Then you wouldn't understand."

  "With all due respect, Mrs. Perez, that's a load of crap."

  Mrs. Perez looked like she'd just been slapped.

  "You have pictures up there from when the children were young, when Gil was still alive. But not one photograph of your son? I've counseled parents who are grieving. All of them kept a picture out. All of them. Then you lied about which arm was scarred. You didn't for get. A mother doesn't make that mistake. You can see the pictures here. They don't lie. And lastly, Paul hasn't hit you with the coup de grace."

  I had no idea what the coup de grace was. So I stayed silent. "The DNA test, Mrs. Perez." We got the results on the way over here. They're just preliminary, but it's a match. It's your son."

  Man, I thought, she's good. "DNA?" Mrs. Perez shouted. "I didn't give anyone permission to run a DNA test." "The police don't need your permission," Lucy said. "After all, according to you, Manila Santiago is not your son."

  "But'a but how did they get my DNA?"

  I took that one. "We're not at liberty to say."

  "You'a you can do that?"

  We can, yes.

  Mrs. Perez sat back. For a long time she didn't speak. We waited her out. "You're lying." "What?" "The DNA test is wrong," she said, "or you are lying. That man is not my son. My son was murdered twenty years ago. So was your sister. They died at your father's summer camp because no one watched them. You are both chasing ghosts, that's all."

  I looked over at Lucy, hoping she would have a clue here.

  Mrs. Perez rose.

  "I want you to leave now."

  "Please," I said. "My sister disappeared that night too."

  "I can't help you."

  I was going to say more, but Lucy shook me off. I decided that it might be better to regroup, see what she thought and had to say before I pressed. When we were outside the door, Mrs. Perez said, "Don't come back. Let me grieve in peace."

  "I thought your son died twenty years ago."

  "You never get over it," Mrs. Perez said.

  "No," Lucy went on. "But at some point, you don't want to be left to grieve in peace anymore."

  Lucy didn't follow up after that. I headed back to her. The door closed. After we slipped into my car, I said, "Well?" "Mrs. Perez is definitely lying."

  "Nice bluff," I said.

  "The DNA test?"

  "Yeah."

  Lucy let that go. "In there. You mentioned the name Manolo Santiago." "That was Gils alias." She was processing. I waited another moment or two and then said, "What?"

  "I visited my father yesterday. At his, uh, home. I checked the log book. He's had only one visitor other than me in the past month. A man named Manolo Santiago."

  "Whoa," I said.

  "Yes."

  I tried to let it settle. It wouldn't. "So why would Gil Perez visit your father?" "Good question." I thought about what Raya Singh had said, about Lucy and me lying. "Can you ask Ira?"

  "I'll try. He's not well. His mind has a habit of wandering."

  "Worth a try."

  She nodded. I made a right turn, decided to change subjects.

  "What makes you so sure Mrs. Perez is lying?" I asked.

  "She's grieving, for one thing. That smell? It's candles. She was wearing black. You could see the red in the eyes, the slump of the shoulders.

  All that. Second, the pictures."

  "What about them?"

  "I wasn't lying in there. It is very unusual to have pictures dating back to childhood and leaving out a dead child. On its own, it wouldn't mean much, but did you notice the funny spacing? There weren't enough pictures for that mantel. My guess is, she took away the pictures with Gil in them. Just in case something like this happened."

  "You mean if someone came by?"

  "I don't know exactly. But I think Mrs. Perez was getting rid of evidence. She figured that she was the only one with pictures to use for identification. She couldn't have thought that you'd still have one from that summer."

  I thought about it.

  "Her reactions were all wrong, Cope. Like she was playing a role. She's lying." "So the question is, what was she lying about?" "When in doubt, go with the most obvious." "Which is?" Lucy shrugged. "Gil helped Wayne kill them. That would explain everything. People always assumed that Steubens had an accomplice- how else did he bury those bodies so fast? But maybe it was only one body."

  My sisters.

  "Right. Then Wayne and Gil staged it to look like Gil died too. Maybe Gil has always been helping Wayne. Who knows?" I said nothing. "If that's the case," I said, "then my sister is dead." "I know." I said nothing. "Cope?" "What?" "It's not your fault." I said nothing. "If anything," she said, "it's mine."

  I stopped the car. "How do you figure that?"

  "You wanted to stay there that night. You wanted to work guard duty. I'm the one who lured you into the woods." "Lured?" She said nothing. "You're kidding, right?" "No," she said. "I had a mind of my own, Lucy. You didn't make me do anything." She stayed quiet. Then she said, "You still blame yourself." I felt my grip tighten on the wheel. "No, I don't." "Yeah, Cope, you do. Come on. Despite this recent revelation, you knew that your sister had to be dead. You were hoping for a second chance. You were hoping to still find redemption." "That psychology degree of yours," I said. "Its really paying off, huh?"

  "I don't mean to-"

  "How about you, Luce?" My voice had more bite than I intended. "Do you blame yourself? Is that why you drink so damn much?" Silence. "I shouldn't have said that," I said. Her voice was soft. "You don't know anything about my life." "I know. I'm sorry. It's none of my business." "Those DUIs were a long time ago." I said nothing. She turned away from me and looked out the window. We drove in silence.

  "You may be right," I said.

  Her eyes stayed on the window.

  "Here is something I've never told anyone," I said. I felt my face flush and the tears push against my eyes. "After the night in the woods, my father never looked at me the same."

  She turned toward me.

  "I could have been projecting. I mean, you're right. I did blame my self to some degree. What if we hadn't gone off? What if I had just stayed where I was supposed to? And maybe the look on his face was just the pure devastation of a parent losing a child. But I always thought there was something more in it. Something almost accusatory."

  She put a hand on my arm. "Oh, Cope."

  I kept driving. "So maybe you're on to something. Maybe I do need to make amends for the past. But what about you?" "What about me?" "Why are you delving i
nto this? What do you hope to gain after all these years?"

  "Are you kidding?"

  "No. What are you after exactly?"

  "The life I knew ended that night. Don't you get that?"

  I said nothing.

  "The families-including yours-dragged my father into court. You took away everything we had. Ira wasn't built for that kind of hit. He couldn't take the stress."

  I waited for her to say more. She didn't.

  "I understand that," I said. "But what are you after now? I mean, like you said, I'm trying to rescue my sister. Short of that, I'm trying to find out what really happened to her. What are you after?" She didn't reply. I drove some more. The skies were starting to darken.

  "You don't know how vulnerable I feel being here," she said.

  I wasn't sure how-to answer that. So I said, "I would never hurt you."

  Silence.

  "Part of it is," she said, "it feels like I lived two lives. The one before that night, where things were going pretty well, and the one after, where things aren't. And yeah, I know how pathetic that sounds. But some times it feels like I was pushed down a hill that night and I've been stumbling down ever since. That sometimes I sort of get my bearings but the hill is so steep that I can never really get balanced again and then I start tumbling again. So perhaps-I don't know-but perhaps if I figure out what really happened that night, if I can make some good out of all that bad, I'll stop tumbling."

  She had been so magnificent when I knew her. I wanted to remind her of that. I wanted to tell her that she was being overly melodramatic, that she was still beautiful and successful and that she still had so much going for her. But I knew that it would sound too patronizing.

  So instead I said, "It's so damn good to see you again, Lucy."

  She squeezed her eyes shut as though I had struck her. I thought about what she said, about not wanting to be too vulnerable. I thought about that journal, all that talk about not finding another love like that, not ever. I wanted to reach out and take her hand, but I knew for both of us right now, it was too raw, that even a move like that would be too much and not enough.

  Chapter 24

  DROPPED OFF LUCY BACK AT HEROFFICE.

  "In the morning," she said, "I'll visit Ira and see what he can tell me about Manolo Santiago.""Okay."

  Lucy reached for the door handle. "I have a bunch of papers to correct. ((T) I'll walk you in."

  "Dont."

  Lucy slipped out of the car. I watched her walk toward the door. My stomach tightened. I tried to sort through what I was feeling right now, but it just felt like a rush of emotion. Hard to distinguish what was what.

  My cell phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and saw it was Muse.

  "How did it go with Perez's mother?" Muse asked.

  "I think she's lying."

  "I got something you might find interesting."

  "I'm listening."

  "Mr. Perez hangs at a local bar called Smith Brothers. He likes hanging out with the boys, plays some darts, that kind of thing. Moderate drinker from what I hear. But the last two nights, he got really lit up.

  Started crying and picking fights."

  "Grieving," I said.

  At the morgue, Mrs. Perez had been the strong one. He had leaned on her. I remember that I could see the cracks there. "And either way, liquor loosens the tongue," Muse said. "True enough." "Perez is there now, by the way. At the bar. Might be a good place to take a run at him."

  "On my way."

  "There is one more thing."

  "I'm listening."

  "Wayne Steubens will see you."

  I think I stopped breathing. "When?"

  "Tomorrow. He's serving his time at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia. I also hooked you up to meet with Geoff Bedford at the FBI office afterward. He was the special agent in charge of Steubenss case."

  "Can't. We have court."

  "Can. One of your associates can handle it for a day. I have you booked on the morning flight."

  I don't know what I expected the bar to be. Something tougher, I guessed. The place could have been a chain restaurant like T. G. I. Fri day's or Bennigan's, something like that. The bar was bigger than in most of those places, the dining area obviously smaller. They had wood paneling and free-popcorn machines and loud music from the eighties. Right now Tears for Fears was singing "Head Over Heels."

  In my day, they would have called this a yuppie bar. There were young men in loosened ties and women trying hard to look business-y. The men drank beer out of bottles, trying hard to look like they were having a good time with their buddies while checking out the ladies. The ladies drank wine or faux martinis and eyed the guys more surreptitiously. I shook my head. The Discovery Channel should film a mating special in here.

  This didn't look like a hangout for a guy like Jorge Perez, but I found him toward the back. He sat at the bar with four or five comrades in arms, men who knew how-to drink, men who hulked over their alcohol as though it were a baby chick in need of protection. They watched the twenty-first-century yuppies milling about them with hooded eyes.

  I came up behind Mr. Perez and put a hand on his shoulder. He turned toward me slowly. So did his comrades. His eyes were red and runny. I decided to try a direct route.

  "My condolences," I said.

  He seemed puzzled. The other guys with him, all Latino men in their late fifties, looked at me as though I'd been ogling their daughters. They wore work clothes. Mr. Perez had on a Polo shirt and khaki pants. I wondered if that meant anything, but I couldn't imagine what.

  "What do you want?" he asked me.

  "To talk."

  "How did you find me?"

  I ignored the question. "I saw your face at the morgue. Why are you lying about Gil?" His eyes narrowed. "Who you calling a liar?" The other men stared at me a little harder. "Maybe we could talk in private." He shook his head. "No." "You know that my sister disappeared that night, right?" He turned away from me and grabbed his beer. His back was to me when he said, "Yeah, I know."

  "That was your son in the morgue."

  He still kept his back to me.

  "Mr. Perez?"

  "Get out of here."

  "I'm not going anywhere."

  The other men, tough men, men who had spent their lives working outdoors and with their hands, glared at me. One slid off his bar stool.

  "Sit down," I said to him.

  He didn't move. I met his eyes and held it. Another man stood and folded his arms at me.

  "Do you know who I am?" I said.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out my prosecutor badge. Yes, I have one. The truth is, I am the top law-enforcement officer for Essex County. I didn't like being threatened. Bullies piss me off. You know the old yarn about standing up to a bully? It was only true if you could back it up. I could.

  "You all better be legal," I said. "Your family better be legal, your friends better be legal. People you accidentally bump into on the streets-they all better be legal."

  The narrow eyes opened a little wider.

  "Let me see some ID," I said. "All of you."

  The one who had stood first put up his hands. "Hey, we don't want no trouble."

  "Then get lost."

  They threw down some bills and left. They didn't run, didn't hurry, but they didn't want to stick around either. I would normally feel bad about making idle threats, quasi-abusing my power like that, but they had more or less asked for it.

  Perez turned to me, clearly unhappy.

  "Hey," I said, "what's the point of carrying a badge if I don't use it?"

  "Haven't you done enough?" he asked me.

  The bar stool next to him was open. I took it. I signaled for the bar tender and ordered a draft of "whatever he's having," pointing to Jorge Perez's mug.

  "That was your son in the morgue," I said. "I could show you the proof, but we both know it."

  He drained his beer and signaled for another. It arrived with mine. I picked up my mug as though t
o offer a toast. He just looked at me and kept his beer on the bar. I took a deep sip. The first sip of beer on a hot day is like that first finger-dip when you open a new jar of peanut butter. I enjoyed what could only be called God's nectar.

  "There are two ways to play it," I went on. "You keep pretending it's not him. I've already ordered a DNA test. You know about those, don't you, Mr. Perez?"

  He looked out over the crowd. "Who doesn't anymore?" "Right, I know. CSI, all those cop shows on TV. So you know it won't be a problem for us to prove that Manolo Santiago was Gil." Perez took another sip. His hand shook. His face had fault lines now. I pressed on.

  "So the question is, once we prove it's your son, what happens? My guess is, you and your wife will try to peddle some 'gasp!-we had no idea crap. But that won't hold. You start off looking like liars. Then my people start investigating for real. We check all the phone records, all the bank records, we knock on doors, we ask your friends and neighbors about you, we ask about your children-"

  "Leave my children out of it."

  "No way," I said.

  "That's not right."

  "What's not right is you lying about your son."

  He shook his head. "You don't understand."

  "Like hell I don't. My sister was in those woods that night too."

  Tears filled his eyes.

  "I'll go after you, your wife, your children. I will dig and dig and trust me, I will find something."

  He stared at his beer. The tears escaped and trickled down his face.

  He didn't wipe them away. "Damn," he said.

  "What happened, Mr. Perez?"

  "Nothing."

  He lowered his head. I moved so that my face was close to his.

  "Did your son kill my sister?"

  He looked up. His eyes searched my face as if desperately seeking some kind of solace that would never be there. I held my ground. "I'm not talking to you anymore," Perez said. "Did he? Is that what you're trying to cover up?" "We're not covering up anything." "I'm not making idle threats here, Mr. Perez. I'll go after you. I'll go after your children."

  His hand moved so fast I didn't have time to react. He grabbed my lapels with both hands and pulled me close. He had a good twenty years on me, but I could feel his strength. I got my bearings quickly enough and, remembering one of the few martial arts moves I learned when I was a kid, slashed down on his forearms.