J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“No,” she says. “You’re wrong.”

“I’m not wrong. I saw it.”

“You were just a kid, Roland. You don’t know what you saw. He didn’t go with those boys. Daddy already warned him off them. That gun was to protect himself. He was afraid of the Candy Man, and that’s where he was heading when you saw him. He was on his new bike and the bike disappeared-”

“It didn’t disappear,” I say. “I took it.”

She shrinks back. “What? ”

“They never found the bike because I took it. I hid it in the space between two of the storage buildings. Moody said I could have it, but I was afraid your dad wouldn’t let me. So I kept it there. When I went back to ride it later, somebody had stolen it. That’s why the bike was gone. Simple as that.”

Her face drains. “You never told me.”

“It’s hard to talk when you’re being smothered,” I say. “I told your dad. Later. Once the search was over. Moody told me to wait so he couldn’t be found.”

“Daddy never said anything like this to me.”

“That’s between you and him. I told him, and I assume he did some checking, but your brother was long gone. A few years later, when I was working with him in the shop, he told me not to worry about it.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I guess he’d given up and moved on.”

She rests her hand against the front table, clinking two of the hand-painted cottages into each other. “Why?”

“Why what?”

“ Why would he run away? ” she sobs, her throat raw with emotion.

“I don’t know, Tammy,” I say, moving my hand to the doorknob. “I was eleven years old. To be honest, I always assumed it was because of you.”

I regret the words the moment they’re out. I regret them more when she slumps against the wall, pulling the cotton ground out from under the nearest cottage, sending it crashing to the floor. I could spare a fellow cop like Lauterbach the indignity of a stab in the back, deserving as he is, but for my half sister, for the daughter of the people who raised me, there is no such mercy.

The air outside is thick. There’s even a hint of the accustomed Houston warmth. I walk to the car, my ripped sleeve drooping with every step. At the car door I start to pull the jacket off, then change my mind and leave it. I strap myself in, turn the key in the ignition, and back into the cul-de-sac, narrowly missing a red-framed bike lying on the pavement.

I pause. I shift into park. I undo my seat belt. The door pops open and I stand.

Tammy stands in the open doorway, bracing herself against the frame. Her shirt twinkles, forlorn in the gray light. I strip Lyndon Pellier’s torn jacket off, first one arm and then the other, balling the fabric and tossing it onto the backseat. My gun exposed. My cuffs and badge. My true and only nature revealed.

I glare at my cousin and she glares back.

I get in the car and I drive.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17 — 6:28 P.M.

I am stumped. I am confused. I am staring at a computer screen on the sixth floor of police headquarters. I am in my cubicle. I am clicking through the records. I am trying to make up my mind whether David Bayard Jr. is a victimizer or a victim. I am wondering whether this is a useful distinction anymore.

When I debriefed Aguilar on the results of my interview with Tammy, he studied his shoes a little while and went, “Huh.” Now he’s on his way across town, running late for his daughter’s Christmas recital. “It’ll keep,” he said. It’ll have to. The lawyer representing both of the Bayards has the right idea. For her clients, anyway. Not for me. They won’t be making statements to the police at this time. They won’t be cooperating with the investigation.

There’s not much in the system about David. No adult record, and if there was any record of juvenile offenses, it’s been expunged. Which is why I’m cold-calling after normal business hours, hoping to get lucky with past associates.

The College Station landlord says he never had a problem with the man personally-the rent was always on time-but David hasn’t lived there for over a year, and when he left, there was a charge assessed for damages to the property.

“Cleanup mainly,” he says, “and the cost of repainting. He’d written all over the walls. Taped and tacked stuff up everywhere. It was like some kind of psycho pad. I like ’em quiet, but there’s such a thing as too quiet, you know?”

“You never had an issue with him,” I say. “But did anyone else?”

He pauses.

“This is important, sir.”

“There’s a tenant of mine you should talk to,” he says. “She lived right across the hall from him. I’m not saying anything one way or another, ’cause how do I know? But talk to Kristie and see what she has to say.”

Kristie turns out to be a sweet-voiced economics major with one semester to go before graduation. She confirms that David lived across the hall from her until last year, but says as long as she knew him, he’d never been enrolled as a student. She assumed he dropped out. If he had a job, she wasn’t aware of it. People assumed he was living off his parents.

“He can get really intense. Really. . obsessive. People kind of stayed clear of him, you know? And that’s just not my way. When I see somebody ostracized like that, I always try to reach out. Not everybody knows how to make friends, but they still want to have friends, right?”

“Were you and David friends?”

A pause. “I thought so.”

“But something happened.”

She takes a deep breath. Lets it out. “Something did happen. We were talking in the hallway one time, and he had something he wanted to show me in his apartment. I’d never been inside and I was kind of curious, so I went in. He shut the door behind us, and this little voice in my head was going, Something’s not right .”

“What did the apartment look like? The landlord called it a ‘psycho pad.’ ”

“Pretty much.” She takes another breath. “There were pictures he’d taken. The bedroom window overlooked the pool, and when we’d lay out in the summer, people would say they could see him watching from the window. I thought they were just being mean, but there were a lot of pictures. All the girls in the building, all the ones who laid out. He had pictures of me, too.”

“How did he explain that?”

“The pictures are what he wanted to show me. He wanted to know if I thought they were good. I said I didn’t think so, that it was illegal, but he said if you’re displaying yourself in public, then it’s not. That’s what he called it: displaying yourself .” She gives a nervous laugh. “I mean, I’m standing there looking at these pictures of myself, and I’m trying to be polite, but I just want to get out of there, you know? And he’s not letting me. He put his hand on me-he has something wrong with his hand-he’d put it on me and then he’d push. Not hard. Just this little push. Backing me up a step or two. I told him to stop, and he acted like it was a game. He kept doing it. He’d touch me and I’d push his hand away. But he was backing me into the bedroom.

“I told him to let me go. He ignored me. Then I heard people passing in the hallway and I started calling out to them. That’s what spooked him. He started laughing again and saying he was just joking with me. I got out of there and I never talked to him again. I had extra locks put on the door. Even then, I think he’d watch me through the peephole, keeping track of my coming and going.”

“Did you report this to the police?” I ask, hoping there might be a paper trail.

“I should have,” she says. “I did tell some of the guys in the building, and they had a ‘talk’ with David, which I think was more than a talk.”