Jack was right, of course. The last thing Mia wanted to do was help a sexual deviant get off the hook—even if that hook wasn’t one he baited.
What difference does it make if the little slime ball goes down for a murder he didn’t commit? Isn’t that karma?
But Mia knew what the difference was. Because, in the end, the case was not about saving Cook, the pedophile. She turned and looked back at the Alhambra, the sun filtering through the tall oaks that framed it.
It was about finding justice for Victoria.
Chapter 5
Would I rather he just went through the motions? Mia stepped out of the shower and saw Jack was up and, if the noises coming from the kitchen meant anything, already whipping up breakfast.
Last night had been strained. He was exhausted and went to bed early—unusual for him. Mia stayed up an hour longer to flip through cable shows she had no interest in watching in order to give him plenty of time to fall asleep. Should she have reached for him in the night? Would a midnight coupling have assuaged what two nights of tension and forced civility had created?
Or would that have just made it worse?
Mia pulled on her jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt. How can we be at this stage so soon? The stage where something’s wrong and instead of talking about it we just avoid each other? She grimaced in her bedroom mirror. She kept her hair long so she could just pull it back and not deal with it. Today it looked like she needed to deal with it.
How could the guy have just died, as Jack remembered it? And what of Mia’s image of Jack hitting the guy’s body? Could she really believe he had nothing to do with the man’s death?
Mia tossed down her hairbrush and grabbed her jacket from the chair in her room. Enough. No good is coming from endlessly rewinding the tapes on this stupid disagreement. She walked into the kitchen and saw he’d poured her a mug of coffee. It sat, the steam wafting off it, on the counter.
“I got an appointment in Lawrenceville,” she said to his turned back at the stove.
“What’s going on in Lawrenceville?”
“That’s where Victoria Baskerville is from.”
Jack turned around and made a face. “So you’re really going to do this?”
“I told you last night I was taking the case, Jack. Are you going to throw a fit every time I mention it?”
“Nope. Do what you want.”
Mia took in a breath and let it out. “You seeing your lawyer today?”
“Mia, I really don’t want to discuss it with you.”
Okay, now that is downright petulant.
“Fine. See you tonight.” Mia turned and snatched her car keys as she headed for the door. A part of her realized that maybe she was behaving a little petulantly herself.
An hour and a car full of Coldplay at top volume later, Mia drove into the modest middle-class subdivision and began looking for the house number that her GPS system assured her was where she wanted to go.
A brief conversation by phone with Peterson had given her the twins’ contact information. She’d go by the attorney’s office later to pick up her retainer and any other files he thought she should have. The closest thing to Victoria at this point, however, was the twins.
Mia parked on the street in front of an aging split-level with a carport instead of a garage. February was wet and cold in Atlanta and Mia wore a warm rain jacket against the possibility the sky would open up. It definitely looked like it was thinking about it.
The front door opened as she walked up the cracked sidewalk.
“You the detective?”
A teenage girl stood in the doorway. Mia recognized her from the photos in the file—the ones where she was romping in her undies with that sleazeball, Cook. She was blonde, thin, her hair stringy and limp, but clean. As Mia got closer, she saw the girl’s face was spotty.
Mia nodded and smiled. “That’s me,” she said. She reached out her hand as soon as she crossed the threshold. Her people-touching skills were inconclusive at best, but you never knew. The girl pumped Mia’s hand in an enthusiastic handshake. Mia felt agitation in her. But that could be because she was about to miss her favorite reality show.
Another girl, nearly identical, showed up behind the first.
“I’m Stacy,” she said. “This is Tracy. You the detective?”
“I am,” Mia said moving into the house. The air smelled sour and Mia was tempted to breathe through her mouth. But that wasn’t what real detectives did. They didn’t shy away from gross smells, but noted everything and saw where any of it might fit into the puzzle.
A seriously obese woman materialized from the couch in the living room. At first, Mia thought the whole couch was erupting, until the flowery blouse of the woman separated from the flowered pattern of the sofa. One of the girls ran to help the woman to her feet.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, her voice gasping as if the effort to stand had exhausted her. “I don’t know how to pronounce your name. I’m Rhonda Kilpatrick.”
“Ms. Kilpatrick,” Mia said. “You don’t have to get up for me, ma’am.”
“Oh, I love your Southern manners, honey,” Rhonda wheezed, then collapsed back onto the couch. “Tracy, angel, get that tray of sweet tea in the kitchen.”
Tracy bounced off and Mia found an armchair in the living room facing the couch.
“I’m so glad you could meet with me today, Ms. Kilpatrick,” Mia said, trying to look around the room without appearing rude. From her notes, she knew Rhonda Kilpatrick was divorced, unemployed and on disability. Obviously the obesity was her disability. If the woman couldn’t easily get off the couch, she would likely have trouble doing basic things like commuting and walking up and down stairs.
Tracy brought in a tray of glasses and a pitcher of dark amber tea.
“It’s really the girls I was hoping to speak with,” Mia said, accepting a sweaty glass of tea from Tracy. “I wanted to know more about Victoria and—”
“Oh, we’ve known Vickie since we was babies, huh, Stacy?” Tracy said, collapsing on the couch with her tea. “Mama, can we get them cookies out?”
“By all means, Tracy, darlin’,” Rhonda said.
Mia was about to say none for me when it occurred to her that showing any sign of willpower might be taken as a judgment. She turned to Stacy as Tracy ran from the room again.
“She used to babysit you?”
Stacy nodded her head. “She was more like a big sister,” she said, her bottom lip quivering. “I don’t like to talk about Vickie because…of what happened.”
“Sure. Of course. Can I ask how old you are?” Mia said.
“We’re twenty-one,” Stacy said. “We look younger.”
Mia glanced at Rhonda, but the woman was looking sadly at Stacy.
So Peterson was right. They weren’t underage. Just bait.
“You and Vickie were all so close,” Mia said, prompting Stacy.
“Oh! Are you talking about Vickie?” Tracy asked as she entered the room with a box of fat-free fudge cookies. “Oh my God, we nearly died, didn’t we, Stace? When we found out?”
Stacy reached for a cookie. Rhonda reached for four.
“She would never let anyone hurt us,” Stacy said quietly. “She always sent us out of the room before things got…carried away.”
“Do you think the guy the cops have…Joshua Cook. Do you think he could have hurt Vickie?” Mia asked.
Tracy shrugged and looked at Stacy, as if waiting for her to answer first.
“He was just a perv,” Stacy said. “Giggled a lot. Didn’t act like a murderer. But what do I know?”
Mia turned back to Rhonda, who was brushing crumbs off her vast chest.
“So you knew Victoria pretty well, I guess?” Mia asked.
“Oh, my yes,” Rhonda said, her cheeks red, her eyes focused on the cookie box on the table. “She sat for my girls since they were infants. Right after the divorce I worked two jobs, you know.”
“Wow,” Mia said. “That’s a lot.
”
“Well, it’s what I had to do to keep the family together.”
The twins were now seated next to each other, their hands intertwined. Stacy was staring into space. Tracy was actively listening to Mia and her mother.
“Do you have other children?” Mia asked.
“My older boy, Derek,” Rhonda said. “He’s at work right now.”
“Did Victoria babysit him, too?”
Rhonda and Tracy burst out laughing.
“Oh, my goodness, no,” Rhonda said. “My Derek was always a handful and he’s not that much younger than Vickie.”
“Did they ever…date?”
A look of nausea came over Rhonda’s face. “Absolutely not.”
That means yes.
“I’d love to talk to Derek, too,” Mia said. “Maybe when he gets home from work?”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Tracy, put the tea back in the fridge before it drips water all over the coffee table. I’m so sorry Ms…well, I still don’t know how to pronounce your name, but we are due at church in an hour and we’ll need to get ready.”
“Church?” Tracy blurted before Stacy kicked her into silence.
Mia stood. “Would it be okay if I called again?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” Rhonda said, brushing lint off her blouse and not looking at Mia. “We’ve already cooperated with the police and we would just like to put this whole unfortunate situation behind us. Thank you for respecting our privacy.”
“Of course.” Mia smiled at the twins but only Tracy returned her smile. She went to the door and was about to thank them again for seeing her when she spotted a young man on the street walking around her car.
Could this be Derek?
She hurried down the sidewalk toward him. She noticed he was dressed in a dirty T-shirt and ripped jeans. So clearly his job wasn’t bagging at the local Kroger.
“This your car?” he asked as she approached. He was blond like his sisters and mother, but scrawny and ill-looking. She could see his bad teeth from twenty feet away. Meth teeth. In his hand, he carried a short metal pipe.
“I was just visiting your sisters and mother,” Mia said breathlessly. The man reeked of menace.
“Derek!” Stacy called from the porch. “Mama said you to come in right this minute!”
“That pervert’s lawyer done sent you, didn’t he?” Derek said, addressing her car more than Mia.
She worried the whole drive over that the family might not want to talk with her when they found out her purpose—to find proof of the prime suspect’s innocence in killing their beloved Vickie. It hadn’t occurred to her they might want to bash her head in with a metal pipe.
“I am just leaving,” Mia said. But she didn’t move. Derek stood between her and the car.
“And you ain’t never coming back, right?” Derek said, turning on her.
Mia took an involuntary step backward just as he swung the pipe full force into the windshield of her car. She stumbled and fell on the sidewalk, the sound of the pipe falling to the cement and the twins’ screams behind her, ringing in her ears.
*****
Jack kept one eye on the kitchen timer. The pear chutney would be just as good cold as warm but the pork chops wouldn’t. He probably should have held off putting them in the hot skillet until after calling his attorney.
Something about maybe going to jail that screws with your timing.
“Okay, Jack, there’s a civil suit now,” Paul Murray said.
Jack sat heavily on the stool at the kitchen counter, his phone in his hand. Mia wasn’t home yet. His shoulders slumped.
“Yeah, well. One thing at a time,” he said glancing at the oven clock. The pork chops were spitting and hissing in the pan. “When’s the preliminary hearing?”
“Next week. Tuesday.”
Jack let out a long sigh.
“I wish you’d let me cut a deal, Jack. This could get messy. It doesn’t have to go down like this.”
“And I wish you’d just do your job.”
“Keeping you out of prison is my job.”
“No deals. I didn’t murder the son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, okay, Jack. Let me get back to you.”
Jack hung up and went to the stove in time to turn the chops. He stared at them sizzling in the pan, trying to enjoy the moment he always got when he was cooking—the flow that helped him transcend mortal concerns and pains.
Not today.
He removed the chops to a dish and slid it into the warm oven, then scraped the chutney into the still-hot pan.
Can this really be happening? The thought of doing jail time—let alone prison time—was literally something that wouldn’t compute in his brain. And for what? For attempting to restrain someone from cutting Mia’s throat? Isn’t that all he did?
Jack looked up from the pan and tried to remember for the thousandth time what had happened that night. He remembered the riotous, overwhelming fear when he saw Mia in that bastard’s hands, the knife glinting in the harsh security light overhead—the knife that pressed into her beautiful throat. Yes, he remembered the fury that coursed through him. It took everything he had not to lunge at the man right then, which almost certainly would have ended with Mia dead.
Instead, he focused on the guy’s eyes to get that telltale moment that would alert Jack to what the guy was about to do. It was usually no more than a blink or a shift in gaze, but if you were looking for it, it was unmistakable. And when he saw it, when he saw the guy momentarily distracted by something out of the corner of his eye, Jack moved. Two steps and he had the knife hand solidly in his own. Then a twist to the wrist, and he’d forced him to drop the knife.
What then? The knife was on the ground. And the sound of it hitting the ground was also the sound of the self-defense plea falling off the table with a resounding thud.
Jack remembered pushing Mia away so he could deal with the guy without her between them.
Wasn’t he still furious? Did he even really remember what happened next? Isn’t it true that all he remembered was the frenzy that seemed to swallow up his whole world? Had he wanted to hit the guy? Pummel him senseless?
Beat the life out of him?
Jack turned off the skillet, no longer hungry. Mia said she saw Jack whaling away on the guy’s lifeless form. The partial frame the security cameras caught hinted at a similar telling of events.
Is that what happened? It was certainly what Jack had wanted to happen. The guy was definitely dead. Can you will someone dead?
He went to the fridge and pulled out a cold beer. Mia only liked domestics, and Jack had been unsuccessful so far in getting her to try any imported ales. He cracked open the beer and went to the living room. Usually Daisy was right at his feet when Jack cooked, hoping for a dropped tidbit. Tonight she lay curled up on the couch like she could sense his mood.
“Did I kill him?” Jack asked out loud. The dog cocked her head at the sound of his voice. He took a long pull on his beer. “I wanted to,” he whispered.
He glanced at his hands, one holding the bottle, and felt a sickening feeling begin to radiate through his chest. Tonight, all he could remember with any certainty was his anger—the uncontrolled, holy fury of his anger.
In the end, maybe that’s all there was. That and a dead guy who’d threatened to hurt the one person I love most in the world.
*****
Tad had left his lunch behind on the counter again. Mindy looked at it from where she sat at the kitchen table. This wasn’t the first time he’d forgotten it. Was it intentional? Was he really so clueless he couldn’t remember the lunch she’d packed for him?
Mindy fought the urge to grab the paper bag and shred it over her husband’s bed pillow.
Think he’d remember to bring it next time if he had to sleep in tuna salad and wilted lettuce leaves tonight?
She forced herself not to look at the lunch bag. But when she looked away from it, she came back to the issue at hand. Specifical
ly, a notecard with matching envelope that came in the mail that morning. The card itself was embossed with a large loopy letter K. In contrast, the handwriting on the card was spare and minimalistic, as if trying to make up for the ornate watermark.
“Dear Mindy, Thank you so much for calling the other day. I hope we find an opportunity soon to get together. I’m looking forward to getting to know you, and your mother, too. Meanwhile, know that you’re in my thoughts. Best wishes and love, Jess Kazmaroff.”
Mindy took the notecard and propped it against the saltshaker on the kitchen table as she opened up her laptop. In the hour since the mail had come, she had to admit she’d gone from feeling extremely upset—is the woman mocking me?—to feeling as if she’d been unknowingly waiting for this opportunity all along. She opened her browser and cracked her knuckles. Tad made fun of her when she sat down to a computer, as well he might. The man was a total ignoramus when it came to technology. He never updated his smartphone software unless she nagged him to, and half the time complained that he then had to relearn how to use it.
When Mindy opened her laptop she felt what she imagined master chess players or progeny pianists felt when they sat down to play. It was that moment when a feeling of peace and fulfillment, combined with a sense of order and rightness, settled on her like gently falling confetti.
It was hard not to know exactly when her life had changed. The first time she knew she had a gift for computers was right about the time she started doing poorly in school. It was also hard not to remember the look of horror and disappointment from her father during that time—a time of discovery and enlightenment for her that collided painfully with the first steps of estrangement from him.
I wonder if it’s always like that? When you find the thing that makes you come alive, does it kill all those other things in your life you thought you needed?
What followed her revelations in middle school and high school was a series of problems—and two arrests—that for Mindy were as impossible to avoid as breathing. But still her father couldn’t see that. Didn’t he think she’d stop if she could? Didn’t he know how she wanted to please him? Why couldn’t he understand?
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