Dead Soon Enough: A Juniper Song Mystery Read online

  “What happened?”

  “You go first.”

  He raised an eyebrow, then filled me in. “All right, I’ll start with the bad news: It doesn’t look like we can get any definite IDs for these commenters. No jackpot open IP address, no traceable e-mails. Nothing you could take to a jury, nothing solid enough to get you far with police even.”

  “But the good news?”

  “Assuming this is just for you? To help you piece together your story?”

  “Yeah, that’s all I need,” I said, almost licking my lips.

  “I didn’t do anything fancy. You want to know what I did?”

  “What?”

  “I read all those disgusting comments. Every single last one.”

  “Wow,” I said. “I lost my stomach for it after a few posts’ worth.”

  “I didn’t enjoy it, either, trust me. The thought of anyone talking to my daughters like that, or Molly, or you—just makes me sick.”

  “Or you. No one should talk to anyone like that.”

  “No one calls men those filthy things.”

  “What was the payoff?”

  He smiled proudly. “You said you were interested in one stalker in particular, so that got me thinking. There were clearly multiple people attacking this girl, but a big chunk of the anonymous comments could’ve come from the same person. Now I’m no language analyst or anything like that, but certain things stand out to anyone who’s looking careful enough.”

  “Like back in the day, when people used distinctive typewriters.”

  “Exactly. In this case, there was some wonky capitalization, and a few consistent misspellings. The key here?” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “‘Dirty hore,’ without the ‘w.’”

  I heard the words in Kizil’s voice and was sure that he’d said them at his door. I could feel the case tightening around him, click by click. “You found him?”

  “That exact phrase popped up in three comments, all anonymous, posted on different days. Like I said, I can’t prove they all came from the same person. I also can’t prove that this same person has a YouTube account under the handle ‘KiZillion79,’ from which he comments on Armenian genocide documentaries and Taylor Swift videos—Taylor Swift being a ‘dirty hore’ in his opinion.”

  “A YouTube account? I assume those can be anonymous. There are too many trolls on that site for that not to be true.”

  “Yeah. But ‘KiZillion79’ is a step up from ‘Anonymous,’ and I found an Instagram account under that same handle. This one has a real name attached.”

  “Enver Kizil.”

  His head jerked back, giving him two chins and a look of surprise that relaxed into a grin. “Enver Kizil, that’s right,” he said. “Which means you found him, too. Which means we both got the right guy.”

  “I’m impressed, Chaz.”

  “You found him anyway—this was just another channel. But what the hell, I’ll savor the teaching moment. You thought I’d get here with fancy computer tricks, but the fanciest computer”—he paused to point at my head—“is your brain.”

  I laughed. “Okay, thanks for that, Sensei.”

  “All right, how about you fill me in now?”

  “Well, for starters, I think I just met someone dangerous.” I thrust out my arm. In the half hour it took to drive from Torrance, the skin had started to bruise.

  He started in his chair and gawked at my forearm. “What happened? Are you okay?”

  I told him about my trip to Torrance, from my brief interview with Kizil to my encounter at the Spearmint Rhino. He listened and pinched the flesh between his eyebrows.

  “Hold on, hold on. How did you get into Kizil’s apartment?”

  I’d held back that little detail, as well as my escape out his window. “You don’t need to know that,” I said.

  He shook his head. “Do you need a lecture?”

  “Some other time, maybe. But, to your knowledge, I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “Or illegal.”

  “Come on, that’s not what I came to you to talk about. I’m freaked out, Chaz. This man, I don’t even know his name, and he was ready to kill me.”

  “You did good to leave,” he said with a sigh. “Sometimes I think you don’t know where to stop, and I applaud you for stopping somewhere.”

  “But I got nothing from him. I went after him on what turned out to be a pretty good hunch, and I have shit to show for it.”

  He nodded and tapped at his keyboard to wake up his computer screen. “Not ‘shit,’” he said. “You saw him, didn’t you? What was the name of that genocide truther group?”

  “EARTH. European and American something or other, Truth in History.” I stood up and walked behind him so I could see his computer screen.

  EARTH had a rudimentary Web site, in English and Turkish, showing banners of vaguely patriotic propagandistic nature scenery against a parchment-colored background. There was a mission statement full of horrible lies and bald self-pity, lamenting the maligned reputation of the Ottoman Empire, a particular concern for preservation of national pride. A few linked pages offered further details about the organization. Chaz clicked on the personnel page, and my heart beat hard until the page loaded with neither pictures nor names.

  “Not a single contact?” I said, annoyed.

  “Maybe on some level, they recognize this is shameful.”

  “They probably recognize other people might think it’s shameful. They probably feel pretty persecuted.”

  He snorted and clicked onto another page. “Well how about this?”

  I scanned the page. It relayed information for an event Friday at seven, at a community center in Glendale—a discussion and strategy meeting regarding the erection of the genocide memorial. It was open to “all people interested in discussing the nuances of our history.” Snacks and soft drinks would be provided.

  “You think I should go to this?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I’d be happy if you never saw that man again, but if you want to get more information out of him, you can and should do it safely, when he doesn’t see you coming. This seems low risk, and if you want, you can take a buddy. I just so happen to be free Friday evening.”

  “Thanks, Chaz. I think I can handle it on my own, but I’ll let you know if I get nervous.” I smiled. “I thought you might try to lock me in a tower and protect me from the world.”

  He reached an arm behind him to pat my shoulder. “You’re all grown up now, Songbird. You just let me know if you need back-up.”

  Ten

  I left the valley after Molly fed me dinner—reheated penne, at her insistence—while Ruby and Opal braided my hair. I missed the 134 Interchange and was almost at Echo Park when I realized I had to trek back to Glendale. It was strange going home to someone else’s house.

  As I drove up the hill, I noticed a pair of headlights following me through every turn, a path that grew more and more specific as I neared the Gasparian house. When I pulled over and pretended to park, the car passed me and I let go of my fear—it was Van, going home.

  I got to the house right behind him, and he kept the garage door open when he saw me come up the driveway.

  “Late night at work?” I asked.

  “It’s how it goes,” he responded, sounding tired.

  I caught a whiff of a familiar scent. “Korean barbecue?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “What?”

  “You must have had kalbi for dinner. I’d know that smell anywhere.”

  He pulled his sweater to his nose and gave me a wry smile. “I guess I’ll have to wash this.”

  I smiled back at him and was about to go in the house when he stopped me with a touch to the elbow. I turned. “Are you coming in?”

  “Can I buy you a beer?” he asked.

  I looked at him curiously. There was nothing suggestive about his demeanor, or even his touch—only the casual friendliness of a bored coworker. Still, I wondered if it was appropriate to go out drinking with my client’s
husband.

  He caught my hesitation. “Ruby asked me to talk to you, by the way. I was going to wait until tomorrow, but why not now?”

  I thought about my night, about how much I deserved a nightcap. “I could use a beer,” I said, knowing there was none in the house.

  He drove us downhill to a dive bar in a strip mall with painted mermaids peeling quietly on the walls. College football played on an old TV, but there weren’t many patrons getting into the game. Two grizzled men played pool at a well-worn table, and two more sat several stools apart at the bar. We grabbed a Guinness and a club soda with lime, then sat in one of the many empty booths.

  “I thought you wanted a beer,” I said, taking a sip of mine.

  “I said I wanted to buy you a beer. It was a social proposal.” He lifted his glass to meet mine. “I thought it’d be appropriate to get to know you, seeing as you live in my house. I just don’t happen to drink.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “Are you wondering why?”

  “It’s not because Rubina forbids it?”

  “Not exactly.” He chuckled. “It’s that I’m an alcoholic.”

  “Recovered?”

  “Never recovered. In remission.”

  “How long?”

  “Two years. Ruby didn’t tell you about this, huh?”

  “Why would she have?”

  “Because it’s why we couldn’t conceive,” he said. “One of the reasons, anyway.”

  I sat back, struck by his sudden display of vulnerability. “I didn’t know alcohol prevented pregnancy, Doctor,” I said, keeping my tone light. “That’s a useful thing to know.”

  “An indirect reason, I should say. I wasn’t one of those movie alcoholics. I didn’t beat my wife, or lose my job, or brawl with strangers in bars. But in ways that were both subtle and not, alcohol was the central force in my life, and I felt like the other stuff was out of my control. It was all I could do to go to work and be home once in a while. I couldn’t start a family the way I was, and I refused to try, even when Ruby begged me. By the time I was ready, IVF was the only way to go.” He spoke calmly, without any intimations of self-pity or regret.

  “Out of curiosity, why are you telling me this?”

  He squeezed the wedge of lime into his glass. “I want you to sympathize with Ruby,” he said. “Everyone is always hard on her, but she’s been through a lot.”

  “She is my client,” I said. “I’m paid to sympathize with her. You don’t have to worry.”

  “I understand you and Lusig are getting along.”

  “Thank God we are, given the circumstances.”

  “Of course, and that’s fine. Lusig is a charismatic girl, and I understand that Ruby, in contrast, can come off as somewhat unreasonable. I just want to remind you that you’re not paid to sympathize with Lusig.”

  I nodded, caught off guard, and took a sip of beer. “Okay.”

  He smiled. “Don’t get stiff on me. I just want you to like my wife. We all have our burdens. Ruby only ever does the very best she can.”

  *

  Rubina was gone when I woke up the next day, and I decided I was glad to have missed her. I didn’t like that she’d sent her husband to talk to me, but I knew there was no reason to confront her. I also couldn’t blame her too much—despite their love for each other, Rubina and Lusig were positioned as antagonists, and I was more Team Lusig by temperament.

  In my defense, though, the housing arrangement also threw us together. We were spending all our time getting to know each other, working toward a shared obsession. If we were partners in a cop novel, we would have been sleeping together by now. Rubina, meanwhile, showed a general lack of interest in anything but Lusig’s pregnancy. I updated her on Nora as a courtesy, but she wasn’t concerned about the details.

  Lusig, on the other hand, listened in rapt fascination as I told her about my adventures of the previous night. I was taking her through Chaz’s work, following the links that pinned down Kizil, when an ad popped up on the side of my screen.

  “What the fuck?” I said, turning it to her.

  The ad showed a woman’s T-shirt with the words FIND NORA written in block letters across the front. I could buy it for $14.99.

  Lusig laughed. “Oh, this is your first time seeing that?”

  “What is it?”

  “A fan must’ve made it when her disappearance was in the news more often. It’s through one of those custom T-shirt places. There are bumper stickers and posters, too.”

  I remembered the sticker on the subway car window. “I’ve seen them around.”

  “Creepy, isn’t it?”

  By disappearing, Nora had filled the city. She was nowhere, and so she was everywhere, her remnants blown apart like a handful of ashes scattered in sympathetic winds. Her face was on streetlamps; she wedged herself between pages of books. Her name sprawled across the face of the Internet, its letters black, dead, unmistakable.

  “She’d be happy to see all this,” said Lusig. “I hope she comes back and gets to enjoy it. She always fantasized about being remembered when she was gone.”

  “Don’t we all do that? I mean we all know we’re going to die one day, and I think dreaming of our legacy goes with that territory.”

  “You know what I’ve been thinking?” Lusig asked.

  “What?”

  “After I have the baby and we find Nora, I think we should find out what happened to your eggs.”

  I laughed uncomfortably. I’d flirted with the same idea, but was unprepared to commit to it. “I’ll think about it.”

  “We have to,” she said.

  “What’s this ‘we’?”

  “I’ll help you, like you’re helping me. It’s not like I’ll have anything better to do.”

  “There are literally a billion things that are better to do than tracking down children from closed donations. For example, we could do nothing.”

  “Well, the offer’s on the table.” She winked. “Sorry for egging you on.”

  *

  I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to focus on my actual case, scouring the Internet for additional appearances by Kizil, looking for any signs of confederates. I found no trace of the man at the Spearmint Rhino, but it felt good to immerse myself in the case. When Rubina came home, I left to meet Veronica Sanchez for dinner, at a Korean restaurant on Olympic.

  Veronica had a thing for Korean food, and she liked having a Korean around to tell her what she was really eating. It was to her credit that she never joked about dog meat, but then again she was a Mexican-American lesbian so maybe she knew a thing or two about not being a jackass, of that kind, anyway.

  We weren’t friends exactly, but we met up now and then for a beer or a meal. I could tell that she liked me in her begrudging, sarcastic way, and I had a fair amount of respect for her. It was also endlessly useful to know an active policewoman, and she knew she might see me when I grew greedy for information. I’d stored up some goodwill over the last year by using my access sparingly, and I was about to cash all of it in.

  She was waiting for me outside the restaurant, wearing a polo shirt and khaki chinos, her casual weekend gear. She was a tall, thickset woman with short spiked hair and a broad face that was friendly in spite of frequent efforts at scowling toughness. She looked up as I approached her and shook my hand.

  We made small talk and ordered a large spread of food, and within minutes our table was covered in dishes of varying size.

  “So, who’s this girlfriend?” I asked.

  She twisted her lips to limit the brilliant stretch of a beaming smile. “Who wants to know?”

  “Oh, now you’re all coy?” I smiled back at her. “You don’t have to tell me. I’m just being friendly.”

  “Not jealous?”

  “Would it break your heart if I said no?”

  “Her name’s Mary. She teaches special-needs kids, a real sweetheart. Plus she’s beautiful. Filipina, brown like me, yellow like you.”
<
br />   “Sounds like a catch. No wonder you look so damn happy.”

  She waved away the compliment. “How come you’re such a bachelor, Juniper Song?”

  I shrugged. “Takes a lot of work not to be, and I guess it’s not my top priority.”

  “It isn’t weak to like the company of others, J.S.”

  “I know, V.S.” I grinned. “Good grief, you’ve had a girlfriend for five minutes and now you’re a guru.”

  She laughed. “Not a guru, but I think we have a few things in common. We’re both stubborn women who value our independence. We’re nearly unlovable.”

  “That’s some regressive shit, lady.”

  “Oh, can it. It’s not because independence is unlovable. Just no one wants a closed-off partner.”

  “I have an ooey gooey center. Everyone knows that.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, it’s practically oozing out of you.”

  “I did meet someone I could get to like recently,” I said. “Nothing’s happened but I have a good feeling, for once.”

  “Good for you. Who is he?”

  I let her quiz me about Rob, and I asked more about Mary in turn. I was happy Veronica found my personal life interesting—discussing crushes and significant others felt like a sign of friendship, as much as it had in middle school. It was also a trade of confidence I hoped would repeat itself when I needed more serious dirt.

  “So, do you think you’ll marry your Mary?”

  “We’re lesbians, not fucking morons. So too soon to say, but I do like her.”

  “Do you want kids?”

  “If I can have them without being pregnant, sure.”

  “Hard to do as a woman, though there are ways.” I thought about my conversation with Lusig, then recognized a good segue to the business at hand. “Did I tell you about my clients?”

  “The missing girl’s friends.”

  “Yeah, more specifically though, it’s a tag team of expecting moms. Two cousins. The biological mom and the surrogate. Surrogate’s so full of baby you can practically see the thing swimming.”

  “I did talk to some people for you,” she said with a yielding sigh.

  I showed her my teeth in an eager mock grin. “So what do you have for me? Full copy of the case file?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I’d like to believe you have a little respect for me.”