A Cold Day in Hell Page 14

  “This is a picture of me with Noah and Shannon at his eighth-grade graduation.” He slid the photo across the table to Lauren, who picked it up. It showed a handsome young man in a white button-down and khaki pants smiling in between who he thought were his parents. Shannon Pilski was enormous in a loud yellow dress. She had the pallor of an everyday drinker along with a protruding stomach to match. The boy was in between them, but his arm was around Steinmetz.

  “Can we keep this?” she asked.

  “Only if I can have it back.”

  Lauren slid it into the file with the rights card. “Not a problem.” She looked at his hand. “That tattoo, of the fish, it’s very unique.”

  He looked down and rubbed his other hand over it. “I got it when I was in the army stationed in Japan. I always thought it would bring me good luck.” He shook his head. “Maybe I should have gotten it removed.”

  41

  Katherine Vine’s maiden name was Curtain. Like the kind you hang from the windows, Lauren thought as she drove to the north towns after work. She’d been excited to get the statement out of Steinmetz that morning. Now if they could just get their DNA results back they’d be ready to rock on the Ortiz case. Shannon Pilski had to submit a blood sample after her third felony DWI, so they could compare the DNA without alerting the suspect.

  Until then, she still had to earn her money from Violanti. There was one Curtain listed in the phone book: Karen. Lauren was surprised to find even that. Most people just had cell phones these days. She lived out in a suburb called Getzville, only a fifteen-minute ride from downtown. When Lauren called and left a message, Karen Curtain called back almost immediately and told her to come over right away. She was anxious for someone to listen to her side of the story. Apparently, Anthony had cut her out of the entire decision-making process regarding Katherine’s funeral service and the welfare of her nephews.

  Packing up her file, Lauren drove out as soon as she was off the clock at work. Getzville was a nice, quiet village with one of those main streets lined with quaint shops and antique stores. Karen Curtain lived right off the main drag on Cedar Street. She had the proverbial little white house with the picket fence on a tree-lined street. The American dream.

  Admiring the beautifully manicured flower beds lining the walkway, Lauren made her way to the front porch. Karen opened the door before Lauren was halfway up the steps.

  “Come in, come in, Detective Riley. I’m so glad you called.” She stepped aside to let her in. Karen was a tall, graceful woman in her fifties. Her hair had grayed, but her face was smooth and unlined. She wore a simple, loose linen dress that hung down around her thin frame. A natural beauty. Karen was what Katherine would’ve become if she had lived long enough.

  “Please, let’s sit in the family room.” She led Lauren through her immaculate home, past the pastel-hued living room and through the rich reddish-browns of her dining room to a comfortable den full of mismatched furniture and flea market finds that worked so perfectly it may have been on the cover of a magazine.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?” she asked, pulling a crystal ashtray toward her on the coffee table.

  “No.” Lauren hadn’t seen a real ashtray in a house in years. She thought back to Amber Anderson’s father, ashing in an old beer can. A rock cut crystal ashtray was a rare, exotic luxury these days. What an old-fashioned, genteel way to kill yourself slowly, she thought. “You don’t look like a smoker.”

  Karen lit her cigarette with a silver lighter, probably a gift she had received for some long-ago birthday. “I wasn’t. I haven’t had a cigarette in twenty years, but this was too much for me. Katherine was my baby sister. Our mom and dad died when she was ten and I raised her with my own kids. I bought a pack of cigarettes on the way home from the funeral.”

  Pulling out her notebook, Lauren asked, “Are you her only family?”

  “Me, my husband, my four kids, all grown now.” Karen took a long drag. “And, of course, her sons and that man she married. I keep my maiden name for my real estate business. It’s easier to put on a business card than Karen Curtain-Deushle.”

  Clever, Lauren thought. Curtain, like the kind you hang in a house. Nothing like a little subliminal push.

  “You didn’t like Anthony Vine?”

  “Anthony Vine started sniffing around her when she was barely eighteen years old and lifeguarding at his country club. He seduced that child, threw his affair in his wife’s face, and then married her to cover up her pregnancy. He was abusive, controlling, and spiteful. I refuse to believe that young boy murdered Katherine. I can’t. Not when I know what Anthony is capable of.”

  “What do you think happened?”

  “I know if she was ten minutes late, he would come looking for her. And he would know exactly where she was. Even if she was just visiting me. There is no way she would sit in that car in that lot all night. No way. He would’ve come and found her.”

  “Where did he say he was that night?”

  “That’s the thing,” she said, pointing her cigarette at Lauren. “I talked to the boys and both of them said he didn’t come home until they were getting ready for summer camp at six thirty that morning. Katherine had enrolled them in a summer sports camp. Less than an hour later, the cops were at the house.”

  “Did her sons know where their dad had been?”

  “He told them he was at his office working late. He does it all the time, the boys say. I don’t believe it. Not at all. And when I asked him about it, he went off on me. That’s why I tried to file for custody. The day after I confronted him, he cut me off from the boys. I haven’t seen them since Katherine’s memorial service.”

  Lauren leafed through her file. “I want to show you some pictures of the car. Inside and out. Tell me if you see anything out of the ordinary.”

  Karen stubbed her cigarette out and took the stack of pictures. “This is her white Mercedes. Anthony had four other cars, but this one was the only one she was allowed to drive.” She tapped a photo. “That’s the dent she put in the back bumper two months ago. Anthony told her he’d take it to his guy, but he never got around to it.” She flipped through a couple more. They were all pictures taken after the body had been removed. “I don’t know why she would have her credit card up on the dashboard. That was her only means of paying for anything. Anthony never gave her cash.”

  She pulled the last picture closer to her face. “That white scarf. On the seat. That was a present Anthony gave her when they first met. It’s a vintage Hermes scarf. He used to love it when she wore it tied up in her hair.”

  “Did she wear it a lot?”

  Her eyebrows knit together. “No. As far as I know, it was a one of a kind. When she was eighteen, he whisked her off to Italy. He bought it for her in Milan. He was still married at the time, but she was madly in love with him. I guess it reminded her of when they were happy. She only wore it on special occasions.”

  “Do you have any pictures of her wearing it?”

  “I’m sure I do, somewhere. I’ll look tonight.”

  Trying to phrase the next question as tactfully as she could, Lauren asked, “Did you know your sister to cheat on Anthony Vine?”

  “No. Absolutely not. That’s why I think Anthony killed her, or had her killed. I think she wanted to be caught. I think she wanted him to find her in the arms of someone else for revenge. And knowing Anthony, the way he was with her, he’d do it.”

  “You think Anthony Vine is capable of murder?”

  “There is no question in my mind. I went and talked to that investigator, Detective Wheeler? He didn’t want to hear a word I had to say. He made up his mind as soon as he had an easy suspect.”

  “Can you think of anything else that could help me with this investigation?”

  She snorted. “Besides the fact he was having an affair with that tennis player? Or that he used to knock her around? Or that he
had my sister so medicated she was numb? He counted her pills to make sure she was taking them. The last two weeks, she started flushing them after he went to work. She told me she was trying to decide what to do. I told her to come live with me. I told her … ” Now the tears fell down her cheeks and she reached for the cigarette pack on the coffee table. Lighting another smoke, she inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself. “Just be careful if you ever run into that bastard.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He loves beautiful blondes. To death.”

  Lauren spent two hours taking notes on Katherine Vine. Two cups of tea and three cigarettes later, she felt like she finally knew the victim. Karen had pulled out photo albums, letters, and yearbooks. Everything Joe Wheeler had dismissed, Lauren collected. When she left, Karen Curtain hugged her.

  “Thank you for listening to me. I hope you find enough to get that little boy out of jail. Anthony manages to destroy everything good he comes in contact with.”

  “I’m going to try,” she assured Karen.

  She wiped her eyes as tears welled up again. “I know you will. I can tell what kind of person you are. You remind me of Katherine a little. Before she met Anthony.”

  It was dark outside when Lauren left. The long days were starting to wear on her. She glanced at her cell phone before she drove home. Mark had left a message. The days may have been long, but the nights were too short now that she was back with Mark. She hadn’t expected to stay at Karen Curtain’s house as long as she had. She wondered if Mark had let himself in. If he was making a drink or relaxing on her sofa, watching baseball. She wondered if he had brought Chinese takeout over and if he would give her his fortune cookie because he said they tasted like cardboard.

  Her stomach sank when she pulled in and his car wasn’t there. No baseball, no Chinese, no fortune cookies. When she got inside, she checked her voice mail. “I got caught up in something. I won’t be able to come over tonight. I’m sorry to have to cancel on short notice. I’ll call you tomorrow. Love you.”

  Lauren stared down at the screen. She got the same messages from him when they were married and he was knocking up his secretary. I deserve this, she thought. I know what happens when you do things like this. I didn’t care and I did it anyway.

  Knowing that didn’t make her feel any better.

  What made her feel worse was that she still wanted Mark. She wanted him in her house with her and not with his family. She wanted what Amanda had stolen from her. “I can’t do this,” she whispered walking up the stairs to her empty bedroom. “I can’t.”

  But she would.

  42

  The situation with Mark was still lurking in the back of her mind the next day when she went to work. Lauren found herself mulling over her life in general and especially her role in the Cold Case squad. By mid-morning she found herself studying Reese, watching how his leg bounced up and down as he concentrated on his paperwork. He was wearing the shiny black shoes his mother had given to him last Christmas. Lauren liked to tease him when he wore them and call them his tap dance shoes. But she wasn’t in the mood for teasing him today. Today she was agitated and maybe even a little hostile. He pretended not to notice her staring at him.

  “Remind me again. Why do we do this?”

  Reese didn’t look up from the old homicide report he was highlighting with a yellow marker. They still hadn’t gotten the DNA results from Vinita Ortiz’s murder, effectively putting that case on hold. They both wanted those results before they went after the suspect, Shannon Pilski. “Do what?”

  Lauren motioned around their cramped office, with its overstuffed file cabinets and overflowing in baskets. “This. Cold cases. Why do we bang our heads against the wall every day, fishing in the same buckets?”

  He kept on highlighting. “Because we speak for the dead.”

  “I know that. That’s the standard answer. I taught you that answer, Reese. But why do we speak for the dead? Do they have a lot more to say after twenty years? Are they more chatty when their case gets cold?”

  Now he put his marker down and looked at her. “Actually, I misspoke. We speak for the living. For the people left behind with no closure. We say that their loved ones aren’t forgotten and that they do matter, even after twenty years.”

  Lauren paused to consider that for a moment. “That’s very profound. You should write that down.”

  He picked his marker back up. “You taught me that too, dummy. You’re just too full of yourself to know it.”

  “I’m not full of myself.”

  “Please. If your head were a hot air balloon, I could fly to Paris.”

  “Wow.” She folded her arms across her chest and sat back in her chair. “Now it’s coming out how you really feel about me.”

  He sighed. She was sucking him into her mood. “No. I’m just stating the obvious. It doesn’t take a detective to see that you’re attractive, and smart, and have a huge chip on your shoulder. You wish you were one or the other. Then things would be easier for you. You’d be too dumb to know men were only interested in your looks or smart enough to attract a good, decent man. As it is, you got the whole package and nothing to show for it.”

  “As opposed to you, Reese.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Nice house, nobody home.”

  Grinning as he pulled the bright yellow pen across the page, not looking up, he said, “Stop it. You’re gonna make me blush.”

  “Just stating the obvious.”

  “That’s the way the chicks want guys nowadays—hot and dumb.”

  “You think so?” Lauren fished a mint out of her top drawer and popped it into her mouth.

  “It’s worked for me so far.”

  She shook her head. Reese kept working on the report. She knew she was just feeling frustrated at her whole situation and trying to prod Reese into an argument. He was ignoring her now, with that stupid grin plastered to his pie hole, making her even more irritated.

  Lauren looked at the file cabinets that spanned the entire back wall of their office, each representing a different decade of unsolved murders. Add those to the hundreds back in the file room waiting to be reopened and you had an unclimbable mountain of murder. For every one they solved, another one cycled in. Hundreds and hundreds of families whose lives were unwhole, set off balance by a loved one stolen from them. Ripped from them. That’s how they felt. She’d heard it so many times from the grieving mothers. Their child had been ripped from their lives and there was no way to patch the hole that was left. And the fact that the murder was unsolved just kept the wound fresh and open to fester every day. And when they heard the Cold Case squad was looking at their baby’s homicide, it gave them a burst of hope that crashed as often as not. There was always a reason a case went unsolved and most of the time, they stayed that way. But the families hope against all odds that their situation will be one of the ones that hit the magical lottery of prosecution. And when it doesn’t, the detectives are left telling the weeping families that there just isn’t enough evidence, not yet. Maybe someday. For most of the families, that someday never comes.

  Lauren’s eyes swept across the open cases on her desk, skipping over one tragedy to the next.

  “Stop brooding,” Reese said, slipping the report back into one of the thick expandable manila files they used to hold their cases. “You love this job. It’s your life.”

  “It’s not my life,” she snapped, sitting up straight, defensive now. Maybe she’d get her wish. Maybe they would argue.

  “Easy, Lauren. It’s my life too. That’s why we’re both still single. Well, one of the reasons you’re still single.”

  “You’re such an asshole.”

  “And that’s one of the reasons I’m still single.” He tossed the heavy folder sideways into an old metal bookshelf behind his desk, effectively filing it away under his foolproof system. Before she could say a
nything, he spit his pink chewing gum across her desk into the trash can to the left of it and smiled at his hole in one.

  “I got news for you, Reese,” Lauren replied, disgusted. “Those aren’t the only reasons you’re still single.”

  He just kept grinning, put his feet up on his desk, and leaned back in his chair. Lauren turned around to her computer. She could feel his cool green eyes, probably twinkling with evil delight, on her from behind. She didn’t want to even look at him anymore.

  It was exhausting, not arguing with him.

  43

  Later that night, Mark was at her house, right on time, Chinese takeout in hand. Lauren found herself in a very forgiving mood because he was so happy. Amanda had told him that she thought they were becoming distant and wanted counseling.

  “What does that mean?” Lauren asked, scooping out some more sweet and sour chicken.

  “I think it means she knows our marriage is on the way out. I think if we go to counseling and we really talk about it and agree, it’s done. It’ll make a split easier on our son.”

  “Or she’ll convince you to stay because of your son.”

  “We’ve been living separate lives for a long time now. She does her thing, I do mine. It’s comfortable and civil and my son is happy. But maybe she’s not happy.”

  “Does she suspect you’re having an affair?”

  “That’s the sad part. If she does, she never lets on. You’d think because I’m a proven cheat, she’d be hounding me. But she doesn’t. She knows how much money she’ll get, so it’s almost like she doesn’t care.”

  “She cares. She likes being Mrs. Mark Hathaway.” So did I, Lauren thought wistfully.

  “As long as my son is happy, I’ll do whatever she wants to keep things amicable.”

  Lauren smirked. “You have that much money to throw away now?”

  “Yeah.” He touched his glass of iced tea to hers and winked at her. “I do.”