All these ashes, p.18
All These Ashes, page 18
I got out of my car and patted each of my pockets. The left one contained the envelope Dameon Lynch had given me. The right one had the bleach-scented polaroid from Isiah Roust’s apartment. Hopefully, I’d only need one of them.
The thought of Mariana Pereira’s brother having any connection to the Twilight Four case, however tangential, should have excited me. It was another hook for the story I eventually hoped to write. The story that was supposed to act as a defibrillator for my journalism career, even though the vague pitch e-mails I’d sent to a few old reporter friends had yet to earn any responses.
But as I entered the apartment complex, stepping on seafoam green carpet that smelled like it had soaked up every mistake ever made in the building, I couldn’t shake the idea of what would happen if Dameon Lynch found the same picture. He’d been desperate enough for a hit piece on Mariana that he’d turned to me, and once that failed, he’d hired a random idiot to bring up the pictures in a public forum.
The Twilight Four case was a serious weakness for his boss, and Lynch knew it. He’d treat that picture of Roust and Mariana’s estranged brother like the Zapruder film if he found it. The facts wouldn’t matter at that point. Even if Roust and Angel hadn’t spoken since that picture was taken, Lynch would find a way to glue the issues together. Especially if he found out what happened down in Asbury.
Jogging up the stairs to the third floor, I froze at the door leading into the hallway. I needed to get my head right. I didn’t know shit about Angel’s connection to the Twilight Four case, if any, and that didn’t matter right now.
What I knew was that he’d had a falling out with his family. That Mariana’s ex seemed to think it had something to do with his sister’s sexual preferences. And I knew there were pictures of Mariana and another woman floating around that could have only been accessed by someone who knew one or two of her passwords. Someone close to her.
This was about Mariana. If Isiah Roust happened to be chilling on Angel’s couch, so be it. Maybe I’d call the police then. Maybe I’d set Angel’s apartment on fire and see if Roust could think as fast on his feet as we had.
But I wouldn’t get any answers unless I talked to him. And that meant getting the door knock right.
There are a lot of unglamorous parts of journalism that any honest reporter will tell you they hate. Stakeouts. Contacting a crime victim’s loved ones. Transcribing recorded interviews would have its own wing in a museum in Journalism Hell.
But the blind door knock was among the most frustrating because you could fail so quickly. In my experience, the door got slammed within fifteen seconds unless you did something that made the person on the other side incapable of exiting the conversation.
Each time I pounded on what I presumed to be Angel Pereira’s apartment door, my hand instantly traveled back to my left pocket, ready to draw what was holstered there. It took four bangs before I heard the knob start to turn.
The face that appeared behind it lacked the confidence and knowing smile I’d seen in the picture next to Roust. The Angel Pereira who answered the door had his neck hunched toward his shoulders, eyes wet and narrow, face the textbook definition of exhausted. The long hair was still there, but it was thinning, silver lines not exactly well hidden in the strands that fanned out to the sides of his head and fell toward his ears. There were little red splotches on his face, burst capillaries, the kind that form when you wretch up the events of the night before. He was wearing a polo shirt with “Delilah’s” embroidered over the left side of his chest, meaning he was either an employee or a regular of the C-list strip joint downstairs, neither a fitting fate for a member of the Ironbound’s first family.
Angel looked up at me with a face undecided between surprise and outrage.
“The fuck are you banging for?” he asked.
Words were not going to keep him from shutting the door. So, I held up two of the photos of his sister in positions that no brother outside of Joaquin Phoenix’s weird ass in Gladiator would ever want to see.
He wiped his hands down his face, tungsten rings on each middle finger pressing toward his corneas. Angel shook his head, blinked a bunch and took a long look at me, maybe trying to focus in on my face over the images of his sister no brother should want to view.. A reasonable choice.
“You recognize these?” I asked.
Angel’s eyes narrowed. He checked over his shoulder then turned back to me. I tried to lean in and see what caught his attention but his palm found my chest fast and shoved me back. I stumbled, more out of surprise than anything else. He stepped into the hallway, revealing stained cargo shorts below the Delilah’s polo and a pair of bare feet with nails so mangled they belonged in a scared straight program for podiatrists.
“You sure you want to have this conversation out here?” I asked, holding the photos up in his face again.
“Who the fuck are you and why the fuck do you have those?”
I flashed an old business card from the Signal-Intelligencer, handed it to Angel and then tried to stitch as much truth into the lie as possible.
“I’m a reporter in Newark. Some people don’t think your sister should be mayor. Same people think photos like this are why,” I said. “Same people said you might agree and might have more to say.”
“My sister is gonna be an amazing mayor and those pictures don’t mean shit,” he replied. “Can you fuck off now? Or do I have to, like, officially say no comment or something?”
“Technically the first sentence was a comment.”
“You woke me up with naked pictures of my sister,” he replied. “Getting cute isn’t gonna help your cause.”
I wasn’t sure if he was being genuinely defiant about the pictures or just covering his own ass. Either way, I had his attention now and I had to keep it.
“Listen, man, your sister is on her way to running the biggest city in the state. It’s my job to vet people like that. I know what these pictures are and I know what kind of scandal they might entail,” I said. “What I don’t understand is why I keep hearing you’re the reason they’re floating around. Or why you’re living above a strip club you look like you got thrown out of last night when your family runs two of the most successful restaurants in Newark.”
Angel’s eyes wandered up to the ceiling and the muscles around his jaw tensed up.
“Those aren’t the same story,” he said.
“I can write both.”
“My family’s drama counts as news now?”
I took a step closer to him.
“Your sister wins that race, and your family is news. Period. Anything and everything in your history becomes fair game,” I replied, making sure to strain the last sentence. Just in case that other picture in my pocket meant anything.
Angel’s face didn’t change, but his reply didn’t come as quick as the earlier ones had. He looked like he was thinking before talking for a brief second, a habit I might do well to pick up one day.
“What makes you think I put those pictures out there?” he asked. “What makes you think I’d betray my sister like that?”
“’Cause you haven’t denied it,” I said, then decided to pile on before he could push back on that. “And because the guy who gave them to me said you might have more to offer. For the right price.”
I almost winced, throwing out a lie that huge, but it was a worthwhile gambit. Dameon Lynch had used bribes to kill my stories before. It stood to reason he’d do the same to gin up controversy against a political opponent.
“He tell you how much?” Angel asked, an embarrassed, almost resigned look blooming across his face as he did.
I wanted to judge him for selling out his sister like that. But a small part of me wondered how many missed rent checks I was above his rung on the ladder.
I stayed quiet and simply shook my head no.
“Well, ask him. Then come back here with double that if you want the rest of the pictures,” Angel replied.
“Double?” I asked.
“The price went up because I love my sister, and I’m pretty sure you’re an asshole,” he said. “But I’ll make you a deal. You want to know why I’m living out here? Then I’ll talk to you about my scumbag father all day. Free of charge.”
##
I sat in the lobby of University Hospital the next afternoon waiting to see four different people, wondering which one was going to be the angriest with me when the day was over.
Up in his hospital room, Abel Musa was waiting too, probably counting down the final few minutes before a face-to-face he’d hoped for every day since his arrest.
Musa wanted a reunion, a reckoning, maybe both. I doubted he’d get either.
I’d done what he asked and convinced Cynthia Bell to speak with a man she believed murdered her younger sisters.
But Musa didn’t know how I’d pulled that off. When he learned she was there for a confession instead of a conversation, there was a good chance he would try to have me thrown out of the hospital like he did the first time.
That might be the only thing Cynthia and Musa would agree on once they figured out I’d arranged the meeting under false pretenses. Henniman had inspired the lie, and Key had passed it on in exchange for my help with her Dameon Lynch problem, but ultimately, I was the one who had moved the pieces around the board. When Cynthia understandably started screaming, they would point her in my direction.
Maybe Key would join in. She’d helped arrange this powder keg thinking my trip to QXT would end with me fixing her client’s problems. Instead, my visit to the goth club had only exacerbated them. I fingered the photo of Angel Pereira in my pocket, thinking about how my last conversation with him was probably going to make my next conversation with Key deeply unpleasant.
I was relieved when Henniman walked through the building’s automatic doors first. At least the lieutenant’s baseline annoyance with me was something I was used to managing.
Bill was sporting a bandage over the right side of his forehead that partially covered his eyelid, drawing attention to the splotches of purple bruising on that side of his face, battle scars from our visit to Asbury Park.
He looked steady on his feet, but the lights of the waiting room were still forcing him to squint. I reached for my shoulder, which was raw from Obie smashing the burned flesh there against a wall and a car the night before.
“You look better,” I said.
“I look like shit,” he replied.
I waited for Henniman to sit down, but he motioned toward the elevator.
“Uh, shouldn’t we wait for the guest of honor?” I asked.
“Russell, I haven’t seen Abel Musa since I watched a jury convict him of a crime he thinks I framed him for,” he said. “We want him and Cynthia focused on each other, right? Then he’s probably got some things to hash out with me first.”
I checked my phone. Key had sent a text that she was on the way, but I had no idea from where.
“They’ll be here soon,” I said.
“Then we should hurry,” he replied.
Henniman marched to the elevator, leaving me little else to do but follow.
Bill remained quiet until we got to Musa’s room. He wasn’t the kind of guy who engaged in small talk, but even his breathing seemed to slow as we got closer to the door. He stopped right at the entrance, closing his eyes, lightly bowing his head and mouthing something. His right fist clenched and unclenched several times. I couldn’t tell if he was mumbling a prayer or a mantra, but the message seemed to be the same. Gimme strength. Or sympathy.
As we turned the corner, I noticed the hospital bed in Musa’s room was empty. He was standing on the right side of the room, both hands wrapped around his IV pole for support, a practiced smile clinging to his face, quivering like the muscles there were straining to keep it in place.
He’d gotten hold of a black suit jacket and pants that hung loosely from his withered frame, the sleeves slack at his wrists like a priest’s cloak. The pants were draped over his ankles, nearly obscuring the loafers on his feet. Musa’s entire form was shaking, from either nerves or the strength it was taking to remain upright. It only made the whole getup look sadder, the suit moving like there was wind blowing through it. His hospital gown peeked out from under the breast of the blazer. Whichever one of the nurses brought him the suit had failed to find a matching dress shirt.
Musa looked like he’d gotten a last-minute invite to the prom, only to be stood up anyway. His pained smile gave out as he locked eyes with Henniman.
“What the hell is this?” Musa asked, his voice a throaty growl.
“Cynthia’s coming. She’s coming, I promise,” I said. “Any minute. But Bill wanted to talk to you first.”
“Who says I want to talk to him? I barely wanted to talk to you,” he replied. “I want to talk to her. That’s what you promised. That was the deal. This is…”
The excitement was too much for what little his body had left to give. Musa lurched forward, hands slipping from the IV pole. He was going to collapse. But as he crashed toward the ground, Henniman cut across the room with more speed than I thought the beat-down cop possessed, dropping to one knee and getting his body under Musa’s falling frame.
Musa hooked an arm across Henniman’s shoulders, using the lieutenant to prop himself back up, slowly regaining control of his failing body. It took a minute, and his breathing was labored, but Henniman eventually helped Musa return to the proud stance he’d wanted to present when Cynthia Bell arrived.
“Need to keep this sharp for when she gets here,” Henniman said, trying to flatten any creases in the blazer as Musa stood upright.
“Last time I was in a suit around you, things didn’t end so well for me,” Musa spat back. “Don’t touch me.”
Henniman backpedaled, looking at me for a lifeline. I had entirely too much practice apologizing, but this was a whole different stratosphere of fuck up from anything I’d experienced.
“I’m sorry,” Bill said.
“You’re sorry?” Musa said. “Sorry for…for what exactly? For ruining my life? Putting me in a hole with killers? Making me out to be a monster?”
“I’m sorry for—”
Musa held up a hand.
“Don’t. Don’t come here thinking we’re gonna talk after all this time. I’m gonna talk. You’re gonna listen,” he said. “I’m dying. I’m dying and I’m happy about it. Do you have any idea what that’s like?”
Bill shook his head no.
“Every day I wake up, I’m not Abel. Not to anyone outside my own head. I’m the Twilight Four killer,” he said. “I’m some…shadow that massacred children. Children. I’m a bogeyman. That will never end. I have to die and hope I go somewhere where they know the truth.”
Tears came from Musa’s eyes, and they looked like the furious kind, the ones that felt so hot they might evaporate once they found skin.
“But that’s what you did to me. Left me somewhere that dying is all I got for hope. That’s on you,” he said. “My clock is running out. All I got left is to try to explain this to Cynthia, to hope maybe I die innocent in her mind. That’s why I got up this morning. Not for whatever you’re here for. You’re sorry now? You want forgiveness? Well, fuck you. This isn’t about you.”
Henniman just stood there, hands folded, head dipping almost imperceptibly in agreement. A year earlier, the man had stood next to me at a memorial for a kid killed as a result of his police department’s desperation to protect itself, and he’d been almost unable to comprehend the role he played in that nightmare.
That version of Bill seemed to have gone missing, at least for the moment.
“I don’t want your forgiveness, Abel. I don’t think I’m ever going to be able to earn that,” Henniman said. “All I know is I took this job to protect people like Cynthia. That’s what I was trying to do when we first crossed paths. And I failed. You, and her. That’s what I’m trying to make right. That’s why I wanted to talk to you before she gets here. That’s what today is about.”
Musa looked over Henniman’s shoulder at me.
“We had this conversation,” he hissed. “You want to find the real killer, fine. But don’t put it on me to help. It’s too damn late for me and it ain’t on me to fix.”
“It’s not too late for her though,” Bill replied. “Cynthia deserves the answer, right? You told Russell you didn’t want her thinking of you as a monster. Solving this thing, for real, is the only way to change that. Do you know how we got her to come today?”
Musa’s eyes wandered toward me, widened and fearful.
“She thinks you’re going to confess,” I said. “I had to lie just to get her through the door, just so you could tell her your side.”
Slowly, Musa unclasped one of his hands from the pole. His fingers shook and fluttered, almost tapping out a rhythm as he placed them across his chest. I watched something break in his expression, his righteous fury at Henniman melting away as he looked toward me. I thought he’d lash out or curse, but whatever was wound up in his chest stayed there. Barricaded in by the return of the smile he’d worn when we first showed up.
I turned around to find Cynthia Bell standing in the doorway. She was wearing a yellow Sunday dress that fit her broad form well, the bright color accentuating the shine from the earrings and choker she’d chosen. She looked elegant, except for her lips, which appeared to be curling into a scream.
“What did you just say?” she asked, staring right at me.
For every ounce of longing in Musa’s eyes, there was an equal amount of hatred in Cynthia’s. I’d wanted a confrontation in the hopes it would shake something loose from the last two living links to a decades-old crime. I’d engineered this. But it was still awful to see.
Cynthia turned to Key, briefly made eye contact with Musa, then looked away in disgust as Henniman came across the room to her now, clasping her hand.
“Detective,” she said. “Bill. What’s happening here? What’s he saying?”
