Chapter 46
Last Day
All-too-lucid dreams plague me during my restless few hours of sleep.
The boa Sophie described to me that night out in the woods pursues me, burrowing through a hole in my mattress, spooling its long, thick muscles around me. I’m paralyzed, unable to breathe or move.
Something trills in the distance. I want to shake loose and get to it, but I can’t. The snake has me pinned. The sound sharpens, closer to my head. The reptile hisses in my ear, prepares to swallow me whole. Finally, through whatever magic the chime possesses, the serpent pops free.
I look frantically around. I’m in my bedroom. The ceiling fan comes into focus. The ring occurs beside me.
“Did I wake you?” Alderson asks.
“Yes,” I say, rubbing my eyes, still thick with sleep.
My thoughts rush to wounded Zane. Andy. Just a kid. Andy Zane. I look at my hands to see if there’s still blood.
“Can you come to the station?”
I squint at the time. It’s seven. I’ve slept three hours. Still wired after coming home from the hospital, I searched online. I found the apartment where Vivian Petronis lives between Kalispell and Whitefish. My plan is to find her today. My eyes sting with exhaustion.
“Why?”
“Remember the guy we told you about who registered a ton of activity tracking you here locally?”
“Sure.”
“We looked into his followers.”
“And?”
“One guy who commented on a number of the guy’s posts has a bunch of photos of himself on social media, and he has a tattoo of an upside-down R on his forearm. His name?”
“Yeah?”
“Aaron Lasserio.”
At the county building in Kalispell, I sign my name at reception, step through the metal detector, and collect my bag on the other side. Greene greets me with her usual serious expression. She should give lessons in inscrutability to an aloof cat.
“Follow me,” she says.
She takes me to a room I know well. It’s got a table and two chairs and a small window. I take a seat. It’s a spare room, not an interrogation room per se, used for various tasks like looking through mug shots or taking complaints.
After I give her the tissue I found in the woods and tell her about the ping I thought I heard, Greene says, “We’ll check it out.
Now, I want to show you some photos. Specifically, Lasserio.
To confirm he’s the guy you’ve been surveilling.
” She sits and pulls an eight-by-ten photo out of a file. “Is that him?”
“Without question.”
I stare at his round head topped with unruly hair and protruding ears. The image of Zane slumped under my tree won’t leave my head. The awful sounds from his lungs play like an earworm in my head.
“You aware he’s got a record?”
“Yeah, arrested three years ago for aggravated assault.”
Montana law draws a distinction. Aggravated assault is serious bodily injury with a weapon. Assault is bodily injury without one.
“Beat up some poor Indigenous guy, a Blackfeet man, in a bar over in Cutbank with a pool stick,” Greene says.
Palmer Edmonds, I think.
Greene adds, “Lasserio used to work for the Crazy R Ranch, and we think he’s still got connections to your man Robbie Ridgeway in Choteau and Dupuyer.”
“What about the local guy who was posting from the library—the one whose social media accounts Lasserio was chatting up—and the others with the suspicious activity?”
“No real leads,” she says. “So far, they all check out and have alibis.”
“So now what?”
“Alderson and I are about to speak to Lasserio. If there’s anything else you haven’t told us, now would be a good time.”
She’s irritated with me for breaking into the shed, as she should be, but she’s not bringing it up this morning. Good. I know there are complications with using illegally obtained evidence in an interrogation.
“Feel free to use the video I took if it helps pressure him.”
As evidence, the video is fair game. I remind her about the flag stitched on the flap, which ties it to Clarissa. “You need to find out if he’s working for Ridgeway,” I say. “Doing his dirty work. Can I observe?”
“We knew you would ask, but no.”
“Listen, I’ve been in that room many times before,” I say. “It’s not a big deal if you let me observe. I’ll stay out of your hair and might pick up on something that’s useful.”
She leans back in her chair, her jaw tight. Her stare blades right through me. “Go grab some breakfast close by. I’ll talk to Alderson about it, and we’ll get back to you.”
I’m not hungry, but I buy a bagel and coffee at the café anyway because I’ve hardly eaten much of anything in days. I keep my head down with Jess’s hat low the whole way.
I’m worried sick about Zane.
From my car, I call the hospital to inquire on him. I’m not family, so I don’t get anywhere. Even in a small town, HIPAA is a bitch. I hang up and wait. My Americano tastes as bitter as I feel.
I look in the rearview and see my own cheekbones, now sharp as blades.
My sleep-hungry eyes are dark, round coins.
Haunted. My hair is a tangly mess. I want to either laugh maniacally at or cry for the fool who thought she would never pay a price for joining the messed-up funny farm of police who protect their own.
At any cost. How do you take an oath that you will discharge your duties as a cop “with fidelity, honesty, with commitment to serve and protect . . . I do solemnly swear” and turn your back on that promise the second it benefits your personal agenda?
Wallace called me twice while I was meeting with Greene, wanting to know what I’m going to do.
I’m too preoccupied to call him back. Wallace ends his last message with a tinge of irritation: Okay.
If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, but I will see you soon.
I can’t tell if it sounds like a threat or an olive branch.
I will see you soon. Is the soon loaded? A chill shoots up my spine. Then it makes me grind my teeth.
Jeremy? Wallace? My head spins with all the lack of trust.
But what am I going to do now that this Ridgeway thing has some legs? I had decided I was going to confess, but that will lead to a waterfall of shame and consequences.
And if this is a copycat situation, I won’t have to face the nation, face all the consequences. I can keep chugging along, trying to grow my business. Do my best to make things right with my sister. Keep it between me and Jess, where it belongs.
The thought brings a huge dose of relief.
That it could all be okay after all. A thrill shoots through me at the notion that, poof, it could all just go away.
That perhaps the real CA has decided to no longer strike, and that Greene and Alderson will nail Clarissa’s murderer, this copycat, all in one swoop.
Something murky and toxic roils inside me. If I survive this, how long can I live this way? With these corrosive secrets? Is it enough for only Jess to know them? Can I go back to life as it was?
And still, even as I feel this churn—like I’m filling up with candies that have too much saccharin and leave you feeling gross and unsatisfied—I still want to get out of confessing desperately.
For me. For Jess. Coming clean, like Mooney said, involves doing it thoroughly, with all the reasons and rationalizations, good, bad, and otherwise.
And Jess doesn’t want her personal life out there.
It’s the very reason she didn’t report the rape.
It’s been twenty-five minutes, which is nothing in cop-interrogation time. It takes longer than you’d expect to get someone in a room, settled and chatting.
I’m impatient. I hop out and walk to the front entrance, coffee in hand. I pace by the door, thinking it over, feeling like a kid shut out of an adult dinner party. I want to talk my way into the wing where the observation room is located, but my lack of a security badge means I’m nobody.
I spot Ewing walking up the sidewalk. Ugh. Besides the killer coming up behind me with an axe, Ewing’s the last person on earth I want to see right now.
He hoists a stiff, fakey-fake smile into place. “Mitchell.”
“Ewing.”
“What brings you in here? Are you okay?”
He almost looks concerned. I want to laugh. “I’m fine.”
“Everything okay with the, uh”—he clears his throat—“situation you’re in?”
“Everything’s fine.”
“I hear some guy involved in one of your PI gigs is getting questioned.” He motions toward the glass doors.
I know word travels fast but remind myself to talk to Alderson and Greene about running a tighter ship.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I’ve got some other business to take care of,” he says. “But you know we always offer to help the FBI out. Teamwork. Right?”
I don’t answer. More like spying.
“Guess you weren’t big on the whole teamwork thing, though,” Ewing says.
“Excuse me?”
I heard him clearly. But I’m surprised he’s gone there. Then again, not: He never had a problem saying what was on his mind, even if it made him a rude jackass.
He stares at me. Studies me. “Have you been eating?”
“Yeah,” I say, and think of the uneaten bagel sitting in the car.
His lips pull together softly and his head lists to the side, as if something in him shifts. His hard gaze relaxes.
Is it pity? I dislike it more than his judging stare.
“Look,” he says. “I’m sorry. I’m sure this is a bitch of a week for you. I was sorry to see you get identified in the media.”
Again, I don’t answer. Why is it I can never think of any decent comebacks around this man?
And because I don’t answer, he continues.
“I am sorry.” He looks at his watch, which must have the date on it.
His fingers tick up in order, one to five.
“Your last day, right? And you haven’t confessed anything.
Are you going to?” His eyes drill into mine.
Is it curiosity or is there that same old warning in them? I can’t tell.
“Not sure.” I take another sip of my coffee. “Probably not.” I haven’t fully come to a decision on this, but it’s not for Ewing to know what I’m thinking. I’d rather have him think I have nothing specific on my mind to confess.