“This won’t take much longer.” Faith searched through her notebook for a detail. “You were looking at Nesbitt for the attacks on Beckey Caterino and …”
“Leslie Truong,” Lena said, providing the name of the second Grant County victim. “She was a nice kid. I remember that about both of them. They were both on the honor roll. Both well-liked, but not really popular. My sister taught both of them, which wasn’t unusual. Sibyl was the low man on the department totem pole back then. Organic Chemistry was a required class. I think Leslie had a steady boyfriend. Beckey had broken up with a girlfriend a year or so before, but according to her friends, she hadn’t dated or hooked up with anybody.”
Will followed Lena’s sight line. She was staring at the photograph of her sister. Sibyl’s eyes were closed as she kissed her girlfriend. She looked very happy. The twins had shared the same Latinx features. They had been identical, down to the matching moles on the sides of their noses. Lena must have felt like she had lost a part of herself when her sister died.
Lena said, “It’s ludicrous, because the thing I remember most about that time was being mad at Sibyl. I was really worried that people would find out that she was gay. And now I think, ‘who the fuck cares?’ I mean, honestly. All I want for this baby growing inside my belly is for her to be healthy and happy.”
Faith gave her a moment before asking, “You said you were worried about Sibyl. Was she involved with Beckey?”
“Oh, hell no. Sibyl was one hundred percent committed to Nan.” Lena admitted, “The gay thing was my hang-up. You know how it is when you’re a cop. And a woman. I was still fresh, a year younger than Jared is now. Frank and Matt, they were the two senior detectives. They were old school. Very conservative unless they were cheating on their wives or bailing on their kids or drinking on the job. I was worried if they found out about Sibyl, they wouldn’t accept me. I was so young. I really needed people to accept me. Now, I’m, like, you should be worried that I don’t accept you.”
Will didn’t point out that she was closing the circle. Now that they were off the topic of her notebooks, the changeable Lena had changed back again.
She said, “One thing I remember is that Jeffrey talked to Truong’s mother a lot. He was good with people. Compassionate. Patient. He got a lot of incidental information off of her that didn’t make it into the formal reports.”
Will waited for Faith to say something pithy about this information being in Lena’s shredded notebooks, but Faith had the good sense to let her keep talking.
“Jeffrey was great at getting people to confide in him.” Lena shook her head, as if to rid herself of sadness. “Anyway, a week or so before Caterino was attacked, Leslie had called her mother in a tizzy. She thought her roommates were stealing from her. Which is possible, but stealing is what happens when you live with roommates, so who knows if it meant anything.”
Faith asked, “Was there something specific Leslie thought was stolen, or were a lot of things missing?”
“I’m not sure.”
“What about Rebecca Caterino? Was she missing anything?”
“Maybe? Maybe not?” Lena shrugged off the question. “Sorry. Eight years is a long time.”
“Right.” Faith drilled Will with a look that said, which is why you kept your notebooks.
Lena had caught the look. “Considering what we had on our hands, a sticky-fingered roommate was not a priority.”
Faith asked, “Do you remember when the Caterino case turned into an investigation?”
“Not specifically,” she admitted, another turn of events that would’ve been in her notebook. “Jeffrey kept saying from the beginning that it didn’t feel right. He was the best cop I ever worked with. When he said something wasn’t right, you listened.”
“Did you feel the same way about Caterino?”
“No. To be honest, I was too stupid about a lot of things back then. I don’t want to put it on Frank, but he was always saying crap like, ‘racial profiling happens for a reason.’ I mean, he said that to my face. My face.” Lena pointed to her brown face. “Another classic he used to throw around was, ‘I’ve never investigated a rape case where the woman was actually raped.’”
Faith looked appalled.
“Right?” Lena said. “Like, dude, statistically, how is that possible? You work in a college town with almost two thousand female students enrolled every year and you’re saying in your three decades on the job, no woman ever got raped?”
Faith nudged Lena back on track, “So, what tipped you over into believing Jeffrey was right about Caterino?”
“Leslie Truong,” she said. “That was one of the most horrific cases I’ve ever seen. And I’m in charge of the sex crimes division in a city that’s six times the size and full of some heinously bad men.”
Faith asked, “I thought you were assigned to the drug squad?”
“I asked for a transfer.” Lena rubbed her belly. “I felt like I could give more to assault victims.”
“Yeah,” Faith said. “Pregnancy really puts you in touch with your feminine side.”
“Maybe.” Lena clearly recognized the sarcasm, but she shrugged it off. “I was raped seven years ago. And now, I’m going to have a daughter. I can’t make the world easier for my baby girl, but I can try to make it safer.”
Will saw Faith’s throat work. This was one of Lena’s gifts: she had delivered a blow without even raising her fist.
Lena said, “Anyway, you didn’t drive all this way to get my philosophy on life. You want to know if I think Nesbitt is responsible for what happened to Rebecca Caterino and Leslie Truong? Absolutely. Can I prove it? No way. Why do I think he did it? Because it stopped when Nesbitt went to prison. That’s really all I can tell you about it.”
Faith had gone quiet, so Will took over, asking, “What if there are more cases? More victims?”
Lena looked askance. “Not in Grant County. Nesbitt had a signature. We never saw it again. And before you ask, Jeffrey made me personally go back through the previous five years of cases, not just in Grant but in the surrounding counties, to make sure there wasn’t another victim that we’d missed.”
Will had to begrudgingly admit that was good policing. He told Lena, “Nesbitt pointed us in the direction of eight more cases that’ve happened since he’s been incarcerated. He thinks they’re connected.”
“Really?” She laughed. “Okay. And you’re going to believe a pedophile who tried to murder a corrections officer because …?”
Faith said, “Nesbitt was only convicted on the child porn. The Caterino and Truong cases still technically remain unsolved.”
“This isn’t about a case. This is about Nesbitt going after Jeffrey’s reputation again.” Lena studied Will. Her eyebrow was arched. He picked up on her sudden paranoia a half-second before she asked the question. “Did Sara put you up to this?”
Will cleared his throat. He wasn’t going to feed her any information about Sara. “It’s unrelated.”
“The hell it is.”
“Lena—”
“I see it now. I was a little slow before, but—” Lena’s laugh was sharp, and like that, she had turned again. “Christ, talk about playing the long game. Sara thinks she’s found a weak spot, right? You’re both here to jam me up over Nesbitt. That’s why you want my notebooks. You think I was stupid enough to write down something that will land my ass in trouble.”
Faith took back over. “We’re here because we’re investigating a string of—”
“Mitchell,” Lena said, as if they’d just now been introduced. “How long have you two been partnered?”
Faith didn’t answer.
“You’d kill for him, right?” Lena nodded to herself like she already knew the answer. “Sara thinks she understands what it’s like, but she’s not a cop. Bad guys, the bosses, the thugs and criminals and civilians and even the victims, everything they do, every breath they take, is about winding you up. And then someone hurts you, or worse, hurts your partner, and you can’t unwind yourself. You shoot off in whatever direction vengeance points you in.”
Faith said, “The trick is to not let anybody get hurt in the first place.”
“You know it’s not that easy,” Lena said. “I’m trying to give you some advice, because I watched Jeffrey jump every time Sara snapped her fingers, and it ended up getting him killed.”
Will rubbed his jaw. He could see red clouds edging into the corners of his vision.
Faith said, “I’m not sure your memory is right on that one.”
Lena ignored her, telling Will, “Come on, dude. Grow some balls. Sara’s using Nesbitt to yank your chain.”
“All right.” Faith stuck her notebook into her purse. “Time to go.”
Lena smirked. “I gotta hand it to Sara. She comes off like a tight-assed goody-two-shoes, but that nasty bitch has got a snatch like a Venus flytrap.”
Will’s fists clenched. “Watch your fucking mouth.”
“Watch your back,” Lena said. “You’re just as cumblind as Jeffrey was.”
Will stood up so fast that his chair scraped back.