The Innocent

Kimmy nodded.

“He also mentioned a woman named Emma Lemay? Wasn’t she his partner?”

“In some things, yeah. But I don’t know the details.”

Kimmy did not cry when she first heard the news. She was beyond that. But she had come forward. She risked everything, telling that damn Darrow what she knew.

Thing is, you don’t take too many stands in this life. But Kimmy would not betray Candi, even then, even when it was too late to help. Because when Candi died, so did the best parts of Kimmy.

So she talked to the cops, especially Max Darrow. Whoever did this—and yeah, she was sure it was Clyde and Emma—could hurt her or kill her, but she wouldn’t back down.

In the end, Clyde and Emma had not confronted her. They ran instead.

That was ten years ago now.

The girl asked, “Did you know about me?”

Kimmy nodded slowly. “Your mother told me—but only once. It hurt her too much to talk about it. You have to understand. Candi was young when it happened. Fifteen, sixteen years old. They took you away the moment you popped out. She never even knew if you were a boy or girl.”

The silence hung heavy. Kimmy wished that the girl would leave.

“What do you think happened to him? Clyde Rangor, I mean.”

“Probably dead,” she said, though Kimmy didn’t believe it. Cockroaches like Clyde don’t die. They just burrow back in and cause more hurt.

“I want to find him,” the girl said.

Kimmy looked up at her.

“I want to find my mother’s killer and bring him to justice. I’m not rich, but I have some money.”

They were both quiet for a moment. The air felt heavy and sticky. Kimmy wondered how to put this.

“Can I tell you something?” she began.

“Of course.”

“Your mother tried to stand up to it all.”

“Up to what?”

Kimmy pressed on. “Most of the girls, they surrender. You see? Your mother never did. She wouldn’t bend. She dreamed. But she could never win.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Are you happy, child?”

“Yes.”

“You still in school?”

“I’m starting college.”

“College,” Kimmy said in a dreamy voice. Then: “You.”

“What about me?”

“See, you’re your mother’s win.”

The girl said nothing.

“Candi—your mother—wouldn’t want you mixed up in this. Do you understand?”

“I guess I do.”

“Hold on a second.” Kimmy opened her drawer. It was there, of course. She didn’t have it out anymore, but the photograph was right on top. She and Candi smiling out at the world. Pic and Sayers. Kimmy looked at her own image and realized that the young girl they’d called Black Magic was a stranger, that Clyde Rangor might as well have pummeled her body into oblivion too.

“Take this,” she said.

The girl held the picture as if it were porcelain.

“She was beautiful,” the girl whispered.

“Very.”

“She looks happy.”

“She wasn’t. But she would be today.”

The girl put her chin up. “I don’t know if I can stay away from this.”

Then maybe, Kimmy thought, you are more like your mother than you know.

They hugged then, made promises of staying in touch. When the girl was gone, Kimmy got dressed. She drove to the florist and asked for a dozen tulips. Tulips had been Candi’s favorite. She took the four-hour trip to the graveyard and knelt by her friend’s grave. There was no one else around. Kimmy dusted off the tiny headstone. She had paid for the plot and stone herself. No potter’s grave for Candi.

“Your daughter came by today,” she said out loud.

There was a slight breeze. Kimmy closed her eyes and listened. She thought that she could hear Candi’s voice, silenced so long, beg her to keep her daughter safe.

And there, with the hot Nevada sun pounding on her skin, Kimmy promised that she would.

Chapter 2

IRVINGTON, NEW JERSEY

JUNE 20

“A CAMERA PHONE,” Matt Hunter muttered with a shake of his head.

He looked up for divine guidance, but the only thing looking back was an enormous beer bottle.

The bottle was a familiar sight, one Matt saw every time he stepped out of his sagging two-family with the shedding paint job. With its crown 185 feet in the air, the famed bottle dominated the skyline. Pabst Blue Ribbon used to have a brewery here, but they abandoned it in 1985. Years ago, the bottle had been a glorious water tower with copper-plated steel plates, glossy enamel, and a gold stopper. At night spotlights would illuminate the bottle so that Jerseyites could see it from miles around.

But no more. Now the color looked beer-bottle brown but it was really rust red. The bottle’s label was long gone. Following its lead, the once-robust neighborhood around it had not so much fallen apart as slowly disintegrated. Nobody had worked in the brewery for twenty years. From the eroding ruins, one would think it would have been much longer.

Matt stopped on the top step of their stoop. Olivia, the love of his life, did not. The car keys jangled in her hand.

“I don’t think we should,” he said.

Olivia did not break stride. “Come on. It’ll be fun.”

“A phone should be a phone,” Matt said. “A camera should be a camera.”

“Oh, that’s deep.”

“One gizmo doing both . . . it’s a perversion.”

“Your area of expertise,” Olivia said.

“Ha, ha. You don’t see the danger?”

“Er, nope.”

“A camera and a phone in one”—Matt stopped, searching for how to continue—“it’s, I don’t know, it’s interspecies breeding when you think about it, like one of those B-movie experiments that grows out of control and destroys all in its path.”

Olivia just stared at him. “You’re so weird.”

“I’m not sure we should get camera phones, that’s all.”

She hit the remote and the car doors unlocked. She reached for the door handle. Matt hesitated.

Olivia looked at him.

“What?” he asked.

“If we both had camera phones,” Olivia said, “I could send you nudies when you’re at work.”

Matt opened the door. “Verizon or Sprint?”

Olivia gave him a smile that made his chest thrum. “I love you, you know.”