The Second Lie

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  He’d keep his thoughts private. And he’d be very, very careful.

  Sam didn’t like being kept up nights by questions that wouldn’t go away.

  And so on Thursday she was at work before the lights were even turned on, looking for answers.

  Answers about the upswing in drug use. Answers about Maggie. Hell, she’d be happy to find answers to questions she hadn’t yet asked.

  She had to know. Knowledge was control. Protection. For her family and her town. Maybe her father or Pappy was sending her messages. Maybe the Fates were. Maybe it was just her instincts. Whatever. But Pierce was right about one thing.

  She couldn’t let the drug thing go. She’d been talking with a man when he blew his brains out. A man who’d just killed his wife. A man who, by all accounts, had been an upstanding successful citizen, a good husband and father with a happy family.

  Chuck Sewell was at the station already. Putting in extra hours just like she was. Like her, he lived alone. And, like her, he wasn’t letting the Holmes case just go away.

  “You know, if it had been an isolated event, maybe I could get beyond it,” Sam told her colleague as they went over a list of all the local and state drug dealers they knew.

  “A more than one hundred percent increase in drug-related cases this year is a little hard to ignore,” Chuck said. “We’re going to have to get dogs out to the schools more often even if it means we have to come in off shift. And give harsher first-time sentences when we catch someone. We have to get the word out or we’re never going to be able to put up a fight.”

  “Have you talked to the sheriff about this?”

  “I plan to this morning. I’m on my way to meet him for breakfast. You want to come?”

  Samantha declined, but only because she had more work to do before her actual shift started.

  “Tell him I totally agree with you and will work whatever extra hours he needs. On my dollar.”

  Who else, if not those sworn to protect, could find answers and put a stop to the escalating rate of crime?

  “Got it,” Chuck said. “We’ll get these guys, Sam, I promise you.”

  Sam believed him.

  And then there was the challenge of Maggie.

  At least Sam had a place to look for answers. She knew the address that the teenager had visited the day before. All she had to do was look it up.

  She typed in the number on Mechanic Street.

  David Abrams. A good guy.

  She’d heard he and his family had just moved to a bigger house.

  Relieved, Sam grabbed her phone. Dialed. It was a sure bet that Maggie’s visit to the home two days before had nothing to do with either an older man or drugs.

  But maybe David could shed a little more light on the girl herself.

  Maybe.

  She had David on the line before she’d even brought up the next computer screen.

  “Is it too early?” she asked the attorney she’d hand-picked for Kyle when he was about to lose his beloved farm to his witch ex-wife. David was straight up. Smart as a whip.

  One of Chandler’s shining stars.

  And he loved his wife, Susan, who happened to be Chuck’s sister.

  “Of course not—what’s up?” David said in spite of the fact that it wasn’t yet seven. He liked to prepare before 8:30 a.m. court. Or maybe he left home early to avoid the morning chaos of four young children. He hadn’t seemed as eager as Susan to pop out babies one after the other.

  Of course, that could just be Sam’s take on it. She couldn’t imagine a woman wanting to do that to herself.

  “How’s Susan feeling?” Pierce had told Sam the news of the Abrams’ impending fifth child the day before at lunch.

  “Good. No morning sickness so far this time.”

  “And how about you? You ready to do it all again?”

  “Susan does most of the work,” he reminded her. “And if she’s happy, I’m happy.”

  Not quite a glowing testimony to fatherhood.

  “I’m just being nosy here, but I was wondering what you know about Maggie Winston.”

  “Maggie Winston? I don’t know the name. Who is she?”

  “A fourteen-year-old kid. She was apparently at your house the other morning.” She told him when.

  “Oh. That was probably Glenna’s friend. She’s the only person I know of who stopped by. Susan never mentioned the girl’s name.”

  “Glenna?”

  “Glenna Reynolds. She’s been helping Susan out all summer and wanted to bring a friend of hers who’s willing to pinch-hit whenever Glenna can’t make it. It’s her senior year and her mom’s sick so she’ll have a lot on her plate. But she doesn’t want us to find another nanny. She needs the money so she’s trying to find a backup instead.”

  Babysitting. A normal teenage activity.

  Sam had been wriggling around on her belly like a worm doing surveillance on a potential babysitter. Not the victim of a pedophile.

  “Did the meeting go well?”

  “It was brief. Susan had already done some checking and didn’t like the girl’s background. She started to tell me about her, but Devon’s been sick all week and we just never got back to it. Why, is the girl in trouble? I can ask Susan for more details if you need them.”

  “No. No. Don’t do that. There’s no problem. She’s a good kid. A friend of mine just mentioned something….”

  “Well, now that I know she’s just fourteen, she wouldn’t have worked for us, anyway. Susan and I need a sitter with a driver’s license. That way we can leave our van behind when we go out and know that all the kids would have a safe means of transportation in case of emergency.”

  Leave it to David to think of everything.

  Chandler, Ohio

  Thursday, September 2, 2010

  I was facing a full day. Starting in about ten minutes. Back-to-back clients all morning, the soup kitchen at lunch, followed by the forty-minute drive to the airport and a flight to Denver, where I’d be assessing a young woman believed by the defense attorney who’d hired me to have inflicted physical abuse on herself and then blamed his client—her husband. Not the best domestic-abuse defense, but possibly the truth. I suspected the young woman could be suffering from a form of Munchausen syndrome.

  People with Munchausen—named in 1951 after a German cavalry officer in 1700 who was a teller of tall tales—had a severe need for attention and invented illnesses or injuries to get it. To them, doctors and hospitals were like a bar to an alcoholic.

  It was a tough one. You had a young woman with severe bruising over sixty percent of her body, a swollen face and a broken arm—which would certainly elicit jury sympathy. And a young man who stood to have his life irrevocably changed for the worse when he’d possibly done nothing more than fall in love with a sick woman.

  Or…you had a moneyed and privileged young man who could afford an imaginative defense attorney—and could afford to fly in an expert witness from Ohio—who’d come up with a way to beat his wife and get away with it.

  I could be morally responsible if my testimony set a wife beater free and he eventually killed the woman.

  But the thing that got me was that the woman didn’t have a single injury on her back—a place she couldn’t reach. If she were being attacked, wouldn’t she have turned her back on her assailant? Just to deflect the blows?

  I—

  “Boss?” My ancient intercom system buzzed.

  “Yeah?”

  “That WT woman’s on line one.”

  WT? What was with Deb lately? “Excuse me?” I knew what the acronym stood for—white trash. You couldn’t grow up in a redneck county without hearing the terminology. But that didn’t mean it was or had ever been acceptable. And certainly not in my office.

  “Lori Winston.”

  Maggie’s mom.

  “Okay, I’ll take it… And…Deb?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I don’t ever want to hear WT again. Ever.”

  “Sorry.
”

  I should have hung up. But, come on, this was me. And my receptionist had just acted out of character.

  “Is everything okay with you?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You want to talk about it?”

  “Maybe. Not today.”

  “I’m here, you know that. Any time of the day or night…”

  “I know. Now get the phone before that woman hangs up and comes down here and I have to tell her that you’re with a client.”

  I picked up the phone.

  Lori Winston was—how had Maggie put it—cranky. It was the way she got when she didn’t understand things, her daughter had explained.

  I was leaning more toward the idea that fear prompted Ms. Winston’s raised voice.

  “Calm down,” I said softly. “I want to help.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. I’ll calm down when I’m good and ready.”

  “Okay.” I could live with that.

  “I want to know why there’s a different condom in my daughter’s purse.”

  I didn’t ask why she’d been in her daughter’s purse. Or if Maggie knew. The answer to both questions was pretty obvious. Lori Winston was a mother worried about her only child.

  And no, Maggie didn’t know. Otherwise, she would have been on the receiving end of this tirade instead of me.

  “Maggie went for her high school orientation this week, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a new school year. Maybe they give the girls an opportunity to pick up a condom to protect themselves. Just in case.”

  I knew they did. Though I didn’t agree with the practice. But that was another issue. One I didn’t have time for today.

  The outer bell sounded. My nine o’clock was here.

  “I just want to know what you know.” I didn’t appreciate Lori’s tone, but recognized the panic underlying it. The woman was a single working mom who was afraid she was losing control of her teenager.

  I could hear Deb speaking with Marc Snyder. A young man who’d done two tours in Iraq and was having trouble finding a place for himself back home in Chandler. Chances were, he wouldn’t wait long. Marc couldn’t stand to be anywhere for very long right now.

  “What I know is that Maggie’s a good kid,” I assured Ms. Winston. She’d called me to speak about her child. She was Maggie’s legal guardian. I could, ethically, tell her anything I knew. “Like you, I worry about her, not because of Maggie, but because of her age and society….” And her home life, which was the best Lori Winston could make it, but still not great. “Just to be safe, I had a friend of mine check up on her and—”

  “A friend? Who?”

  “A female deputy with the county who—”

  “You had the cops watching Maggie?” I had to hold the phone away from my ear. Even at arm’s length, I could make out every word. “I didn’t say you could do that. You put watchdogs on my house? How could you?”

  “That’s not what I said.” I had no idea if Sam had checked out Maggie’s trailer park, but I suspected she had. Sam was thorough.

  “Just call them off, you hear?” the woman screamed. “Great. This is just great. Next thing you know, somethin’s gonna go wrong out here, or somewhere, and Maggie’ll be blamed. I can’t believe you did this.”

  “Ms. Winston, I assure you, I didn’t do anything.” I got firm, something I didn’t often do, but could if I had to. “Maggie’s not on any list. No one but my friend knows about this. It wasn’t an official thing. I just wanted to make certain Maggie was safe. And so far, she is. I thought you’d be glad to hear that. The most Maggie has done besides her paper route is look for a babysitting job.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As sure as I can be. This is a small town. If Maggie were in trouble, I think we’d know. But she’s at a vulnerable age. I can’t promise that trouble won’t come. I’d really like it if you could talk her into coming back to see me….”

  I rang off just as the bell attached to the front door sounded again. I hadn’t been quick enough. My client had left. I had to chase Marc a block to get him to come back for his appointment.

  And was glad I did. The soldier had a bottle of pills in his pocket that he’d been tempted to take. He left them with me.

  7

  Sam was at her desk early again Friday morning. Sharing doughnuts and coffee with Chuck.

  “You make the best damned coffee of anyone I’ve ever known,” Chuck said. “I swear, Sam, you should open a shop. They’d be lined up out the door.”

  She’d brought two thermoses into work with her and, as usual, shared them with Chuck.

  He was looking at his computer screen and Sam at hers, trying to find some common connection between recent drug busts. Area. Method. Packaging. Bills used. Age of dealers. Time of day.

  Any pattern at all.

  Sam chuckled. “Right. If I opened a coffee shop, I’d be crazy with boredom in a day. And bouncing off the ceiling with a caffeine high from drinking too much product.”

  “Would be kinda like an alcoholic opening a bar, huh?”

  “Kinda.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Chuck sat back, staring. He started jotting notes on the pad in front of him.

  “What?” Sam wheeled her chair close enough to see his screen. He was looking at a profile from a recent arrest. “Sherry Mahon? You know her?”

  Sam read the screen. Thirty-five. The dishwater blonde looked ten years older. She was divorced. Had a couple of priors for solicitation. And was currently a guest of the county for possession of enough methamphetamine to keep an average-size client base high for a week.

  “Yeah, I know her.”

  “She from around here?” Sam had never seen her before.

  “Trotwood.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Kyle didn’t tell you?”

  Sam froze, coffee cup halfway to her lips. “Kyle? My Kyle?”

  “Yes, Deputy, your Kyle,” Chuck said. “Though I still don’t know why you won’t just admit that you guys are in a rut and get over him and give me a chance.”

  “You’re getting your chance, buster,” Sam said, handling the comment as she always did—like Chuck didn’t mean it. The man’s heart belonged to the wife who’d left him for a man who worked a desk job. Everyone at the station knew that. “Tell me what Kyle has to do with this woman.”

  Chuck closed the screen. Moved on to another.

  “Chuck.”

  Sitting up straighter, he turned his back to her.

  “It has nothing to do with this,” he said.

  “Tell me, Sewell, or you’ve had your last cup of my coffee. Ever.”

  He turned, the compassionate look in his eyes scaring her.

  “Tell me,” she repeated.

  “I never would have said anything if I’d thought for one second that you didn’t know.”

  “Know what, dammit?” He was trying her patience. And after another mostly sleepless night, she didn’t have a lot to spare.

  “It was a long time ago, Sam.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Fifteen years.”

  “And?”

  “You’d just given Kyle his walking papers.”

  “Which time?”

  Chuck’s grin was only half-convincing. “Yeah, well, at the time, Kyle really thought it was over.”

  Sam thought back. She’d been eighteen. “It was right after I’d told him I was joining the academy,” she guessed. She’d given him her ring back. And come begging for it two days later, knowing she couldn’t live without him. He’d said the same about her and the next few weeks had been perfect. But looking back, she was able to see that that first break had been the beginning of the end. They’d broken up a few times over the next two years while Sam had been training to be a cop—until the final time when they were twenty.

  “That was the time,” Chuck said. “A bunch of us took pity on
him and hauled him out on the town. Our goal—get him so drunk he couldn’t feel the pain.”

  “I’m guessing you didn’t have to work real hard to get him to cooperate.”

  Kyle had always loved his beer. And in their younger days, he hadn’t had the maturity to drink in moderation.

  But then, neither had she.

  But this wasn’t about alcohol consumption. “Where does this Mahon woman come in?”

  “She and a friend of hers were all over us. All night. We blew them off to the point of being rude, but a couple of days later Kyle came to me, telling me he’d slept with her. He was a little worried he’d caught something. But mostly, he was petrified that you’d find out. Especially after the two of you patched things up.”

  “He never told me.”

  “It wasn’t something he was proud of.”

  “I can’t believe he didn’t tell me.”

  “I thought he would have, Sam. I guess he didn’t want to risk losing you all over again. You guys were already on thin ground. I heard she came after him later, claiming she was pregnant, or some such thing, but he never said anything to me about it. And even if she was, there was no way to pin that on Kyle. The woman was a professional. Who knew how many men she’d been with?”

  Coffee had never made her feel sick to her stomach before.

  Sam sat there, afraid if she moved she’d throw up. Kyle. Her Kyle. The fact that he’d slept with another woman and not told her hurt. A lot. But she could understand. Sort of. While she’d been home after their breakup, devastated, unable to go on, an emotional mess, he’d been out fucking another woman.

  He might have a child out there somewhere….

  And he’d never told her.

  She told Kyle everything. He claimed that he did the same with her.

  But he hadn’t.

  “Hey, Sam, like I said, it was a long time ago.”

  “I know, Chuck.” Gingerly pushing her chair back to her computer she added, “It’s no big deal. I’m just surprised.”

  Shocked. She felt as if she’d just lost her best friend. All this time, she’d thought Kyle was her soul mate, when she didn’t know him at all.

  He’d screwed a woman who’d grown up to become a prostitute and a possible meth dealer. Sam had never figured she’d find a lover of Kyle’s on the Fort County inmate list.