She gave me a weak smile, one that said she knew this was not something a trip to Boston’s Copley Place, one of Rose’s favorite shopping venues, could fix.
“Is Frank going to take care of Jake’s body?”
Rose nodded. “Frank will prepare it for delivery to Texas. MC knows to keep away from the prep room.”
I heard Berger climb the steps to the porch and headed him off, opening the door before he could ring the bell and wake Matt up. I wasn’t really ready for an interview with a teenager. My brain felt crowded with information I hadn’t had time to process. It seemed every time I was ready to put two and two together, I was jerked away by another crisis. Stalkers, one murder after another, Matt’s illness, Jean’s hostility.
I knew that there were still more clues to be followed in MC’s email, in Lorna’s records, in Jake Powers’s bute reference, in the HPD transcript, maybe even in Wayne Gallen’s ramblings. Suddenly I felt as tired as Matt and wanted to sleep more than anything.
“Are you ready?” Berger asked.
“You bet,” I said.
Jacqueline Peters lived on the left side of a duplex with its unkempt front on Hutchins Street. The pale blue paint was chipped, the garden tools rusted, the chain-link fence lopsided and full of holes. George Berger and I climbed shaky steps to a tiny porch and rang the tiny metal doorbell, what I would have called “original equipment” in lab talk, meaning it had come with the house, probably built in the 1940s. I smiled as Berger pointed silently to drooping strings of Christmas lights around the edge of the Peters side of the porch—either two months early, or ten months overdue for dismantling.
“Mrs. Peters?” Berger asked, holding his badge against a dirty storm door, in the face of a wiry young woman.
“I’m Jacqueline’s mother. Mrs. Ramos,” she said in a voice so constricted I wondered if she had something to hide. Then I remembered how intimidating a police officer could be to someone who didn’t live with one.
Mrs. Ramos, in stocking feet and tight, black Capri pants, formerly known as pedal pushers, led us through an uncarpeted living room and dining room to a large kitchen area that smelled of unhealthy breakfast meat. We passed two small children and two television sets on the way. I had the feeling Mrs. Ramos had been watching at least one of the shows, neither of which was Sunday morning political commentary.
“Someone go get Jacqueline,” Mrs. Ramos yelled. Her loud voice caught me off guard, and I jumped. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. They never hear me over the TVs. Jacqueline’s upstairs. Don’t keep her too long, okay? This thing’s got her upset.”
Berger and I gave reassuring nods. “We have just a few questions,” he said. “This is Dr. Gloria Lamerino, our consultant. She’s very good with young people; she’s had a lot of experience with this kind of thing.”
Making me sound like a child psychologist, something Matt would never do. Berger had prepared me to take the lead, however, pleading incompetence with teenagers. “Besides there’s the woman thing, you know,” he’d said, making curly motions with his index finger in the air next to his head.
I sighed. This partnership is temporary, I told myself, and Berger’s doing his best.
Jacqueline Peters, chubby enough to remind me of myself in high school, came down the stairs. She was a large-framed girl and I figured Timmy Peters, wherever he was, had contributed the body-shape gene, since the now–Mrs. Ramos was filament-wire thin. Jacqueline joined Berger and me at the Formica kitchen table while her mother, arms crossed in front of her, leaned against a stove piled high with sticky saucepans and a skillet.
“Am I supposed to leave?” Mrs. Ramos asked, tapping her foot on the linoleum.
Berger shrugged. “Sometimes when parents are around, kids tend to—”
“It would probably go much quicker if you were to wait in the other room,” I said with a smile.
“Right,” Berger said.
Mrs. Ramos pushed herself off the stove, went into the living room, and pulled an accordion door many shades of brown behind her, closing us in with Jacqueline and the heavy, greasy odor, but letting through the sounds of daytime television.
“Do you remember when I came to your classroom?” I asked Jacqueline. A blank look. “I brought some materials and we made a geodesic dome.” I pushed aside the reminder of the little Styrofoam balls rolling into the watery gutter, of Wayne Gallen in my car.
Jacqueline shrugged. “I guess.” Not flattering to a would-be teacher, or someone as good with children as Berger claimed I was, but then I didn’t especially remember her being there that day, either. Maybe she was absent, I thought, consoling myself.