Greg Iles - Turning Angel

The phone rings twice. ”And he never came on to you?“

Mia shakes her head. ”I guess he had Jenny taking care of him.“

”Mia?“ Wade Anders says in my ear.

He’s looking at his caller ID. ”No, Wade, this is Penn Cage.“

”Oh. What can I do for you, Penn?“

”I know about you and Jenny Jenkins.“

The silence on the phone makes the silence of the cemetery seem a roar.

”Wade? Are you there?“

”Yeah, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.“

”I don’t have time for lies, buddy. I don’t even care about your affair. I’m trying to solve a murder here. There are lives at stake.“

”What lies are you talking about, Penn?“

I look at Mia and shake my head. ”You’ve been having sex with Jenny Jenkins. That’s bad enough, okay? But you lied about where Marko Bakic was on the day Kate Townsend died, and that’s unacceptable.“

”I don’t know where you heard that, but it’s bullshit.“

”Wade,“ I say in a locker-room voice, ”this is me, man. It’s gone too far already. You can’t get out of it now. Don’t even try. Drew’s already been convicted of murder because of you, and he could get the death penalty.“

”Listen, goddamn it!“ Anders says, anger hardening his voice. ”I know you were helping defend Drew, and I know you guys lost today. But don’t try to blame your failure on me. That’s bullshit, what you said. Jenny Jenkins has problems at home, real problems. I’ve tried to help her out. She may have made some advances toward me, but I never touched her. Not inappropriately, anyway. And I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about with this Marko stuff. And…and that’s all I have to say about it. You want to talk to me again, call my lawyer.“

”Do you have a lawyer, Wade?“

”I guess I better get one, if you’re talking this kind of shit.“

I start to press him further, but there’s no point. I hang up and give Mia back her phone.

”He denied it?“ she asks.

”All the way, the chickenshit.“

”What are you going to do?“

”I don’t know.“ I reach into my pants pocket and take out the bottle of Oxycontin. Mia watches as I open it and dry-swallow one of the tablets.

”What’s that?“

”It helps with the withdrawal.“

”Withdrawal?“

I forgot that she has no idea what I went through during the kidnapping. ”Cyrus shot me up with heroin. It really wiped me out.“

”Once? Or the whole time?“

”The whole time.“

”Wow.“ She walks over and sits on the low wall bordering the Jewish graves. ”That’s the Turning Angel down there, huh?“

”Yes.“

”I never really saw it turn, you know? It always looked the same to me, no matter which way I came from. I figure it’s like those paintings where if some people stare long enough, they see another painting hidden inside the first one. I never saw those things either. I’m too much of a realist, I guess.“

”That’s not necessarily a bad thing.“

She shrugs and looks up at me. ”So do you want to hear my great idea?“

”What idea?“

”I think I can get Marko to tell me what happened on the day Kate died.“

”How? No one even knows where he is.“

Mia smiles wickedly. ”His girlfriend does.“

”Alicia Reynolds? The cops have been following her for days, and they haven’t seen anything suspicious.“

”Twenty-four hours a day?“

”I assume so. I don’t know.“

Mia’s eyes gleam with certainty. ”Alicia knows where he is, I’m telling you. If she didn’t, she’d be a basket case. But she’s happy as a clam.“

”You think Marko’s close by?“

She nods.

”At the rave, he told me he was leaving town.“

”I think he waited around to be sure Dr. Elliot got convicted. If he is leaving, he’s told Alicia he’s taking her with him.“

”Would she go with him?“

Mia snorts. ”What else is she going to do? Work at the Piggly Wiggly? She hasn’t even applied to college.“

”Okay, let’s say Marko is hiding in town somewhere. Why would Alicia tell you that? You’ve already bugged her for a week without results.“

”Because this time I’m going to scare her. And when she talks to Marko, he’ll be scared. And he’ll ask to see me.“

”What could possibly scare Marko at this point?“

”The truth.“

”Meaning?“

”Coach Anders recanted Marko’s alibi. That should knock Marko’s legs right out from under him, even as cocky as he is.“

”You might be right. But even if Marko’s scared, why should he risk seeing you in person? He’ll already know what the threat is.“

”No, he won’t. I’ll only tell Alicia that it has to do with Coach Anders. Marko’s paranoia will do the rest.“

Mia definitely has a career ahead of her as a lawyer, if not an FBI agent. ”Why would Marko believe you, though? All of a sudden, you come to his girlfriend out of the blue to try to save him?“

Mia looks away from me and gazes out over the cemetery. ”It’s not out of the blue.“

”What do you mean?“

”I know Marko better than you think. Better than I let you think.“

I lean down in front of her, but she won’t meet my eye.

”I slept with him, okay?“ she says. ”When he first came here. It lasted about two months. Then I figured out he was just using me.“

I sit beside her on the wall. ”Using you for sex?“

”Yes. And to get Kate.“

God. ”Can you tell me about it?“

Mia stands and turns toward the river, as though she can’t bear to look at me while she confesses this. ”When Marko first got to St. Stephen’s, everybody thought he was so cool. He had this aura about him, you know? The bad boy, ’I don’t give a shit about anything‘ aura. But he was smart, too. Anybody could see that.“

She bends and picks up a blade of new grass. ”He started paying a lot of attention to me. I was really down on myself back then. It was the start of senior year, and my boyfriend had just moved to Minnesota with his folks, because the tire plant closed down. Everyone else was so jazzed about the year, but I was just dead. Then…in walks Marko. It had more to do with Kate than anything else, even for me, probably.“ She turns to me at last, her eyes wet. ”Because everybody expected Marko to go for her, you know? Me included. But he didn’t. He wanted me -or pretended he did. And that made me feel really good. That’s probably what made me be with him, if I’m honest about it.“

”Did Marko hurt you?“

Mia nods slowly. ”Not physically. But he tore me up inside. He really convinced me that he cared about me. He told me about his childhood. He said I was the first person he’d trusted or let inside since he was a boy. And…I did stuff with him I’d never done before. I’d only been with one guy before Marko, my first boyfriend. I was so stupid. God. “ She turns away from me again. ”Look, I don’t want to talk about that part of it, okay? My point is that if I can get Marko face-to-face, I can make him tell the truth about what happened. If he killed Kate, I think he’ll brag about it to me. I’m serious. And if he does that, Dr. Elliott might go free.“

”That would only happen if you wore a wire, Mia.“

She nods. ”That’s what I’m talking about.“

”No way. You almost got killed last week. You want to put yourself into a worse situation?“

”But it’s not!“ she argues. ”Marko has no reason to fear me. Ever since I broke off our relationship, he’s been begging me to see him again. He’ll believe I want to warn him, Penn. His ego’s just that big.“

I take her by the shoulders and look hard into her eyes. ”Listen to me. We’re talking about this guy because we think he may have killed one high school girl already. There’s too much risk.“