Cornered in Conard County

by Rachel Lee

  She paused as she started to leave the living room on her way to her office. Cadell was spreading a folded blanket on the floor for his mattress. Dimly aware that despite the food she had just eaten, she was growing light-headed, she ignored that for a moment. More important things concerned her than her routine low blood pressure.

  “Cadell?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How fast could George get here?”

  He finished laying out the blanket, then straightened, standing with his hands on his narrow hips. “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Well, when a prisoner is released, he’s got nothing. And by nothing, I mean nothing. They give him a bus ticket to get back to the town where he was arrested. It’s nonrefundable. If he has any ID at all, it’s his inmate ID. They may give him the address of a halfway house, but basically...” He hesitated. “Unless a prisoner has a friend or family member on the outside, he’s going to find life pretty hard for a while. A few bucks in his pocket, maybe a place to lay his head, and no real way to get a job or help. Hell, they can’t even get temporary assistance without ID of some kind.”

  She faced him, leaning against the doorjamb. “That sounds brutal.”

  “It can be. Those who don’t have someone to turn to often wind up sleeping under bridges or at a shelter. If they’re lucky, someone will be willing to help them get all the paperwork together to get a new Social Security card, a state ID. Only then can they really start to look for work.”

  “That sounds like a great recipe for recidivism.”

  “It is, for long-term inmates. You go in for two years, you might well have access to all that stuff. But after twenty-five...it’s hard. Most of them weren’t arrested with a Social Security card to begin with. It’s gone. Driver’s license? It expires, and these days thanks to the new Homeland Security rules, to get it replaced or renewed, you need a birth certificate, proof of residence, Social Security card...you get the idea. It’s definitely not easy.”

  Part of her was seriously disturbed by that news, in a general sense, but when she thought of her brother, she was glad it wouldn’t be easy for him to get going. “So it might take George a while before he can even buy another bus ticket?”

  “Maybe. Like I said, I don’t know his resources. Maybe he made a friend or two on the inside who are willing to help him right now. Or he might find another way to get his hands on money.”

  From the way he said it, she suspected it wouldn’t be legal. And she needed to get to a chair soon. She gripped the doorjamb.

  “I’m sorry I can’t offer more reassurance,” he said after a few beats. “If he’s resourceful, he’ll manage somehow.”

  “But there’s still no reason he would want to find me.”

  She saw him hesitate visibly. “Dory?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Have you considered that half of your inheritance would have been his if he hadn’t been convicted?”

  “Of course I have,” she nearly snapped. “My godparents put it in a trust. They set aside everything but the proceeds of the house, which were used for me to go to college. They told me the rest was my retirement fund, or for help if I ever got disabled. They set me up well for the future, but I can’t touch it.”

  “But does he know that?”

  “He should. My godparents told his lawyer when they did it. I think they thought it might protect me from constant pleas for money from him. If he thinks he’ll get his hands on a dime, he’s in for a shock. Even if I die, he can’t have it.”

  “Maybe he thinks he can make you change that.”

  And that, she thought, would indeed be enough for him to hunt her down. It was her last cogent thought. Too much, too weary, too light-headed, and the last flare of anger did her in.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE CAME TO, she was lying on her bed, Cadell hovering over her. Flash had jumped up to lie right beside her. Tentatively he licked her cheek.

  “Welcome back,” Cadell remarked. “Are you eating enough? Should you see a doctor?”

  She shook her head a little. “I’ve always had low blood pressure. Good for my health, but I can pass out easily.”

  “Well, that was scary,” he said frankly. “I almost didn’t catch you in time. Pet your damn dog, please. He’s worried.”

  He sounded aggravated, but she didn’t feel it was directed at her as much as the whole situation. Cadell struck her as a protector by nature, and right now he must be feeling next to useless.

  The inheritance. She’d believed she was protected by the trust, but in an instant she realized that could be a reason for George to want to find her. What if he thought he could make her change it? To demand his share. She rolled over, wrapping her arms around Flash. “Cadell? Is there some way I could just send him money?”

  “Yeah, if anyone had any idea where on earth he’s gone. And what if it’s not enough?”

  Her mouth turned even drier and she closed her eyes, holding onto Flash for dear life. She didn’t need Cadell to spell it out, but she said it anyway. “He probably thinks he’s my legal heir.”

  “Unless you did something to change that.”

  “He isn’t. The way the trust is set up, he can never have a dime. But what if he doesn’t realize that?” Fear seized her then, running across every nerve in her body like a horde of stinging ants. She’d never know why George had killed her parents, but now she knew why he might want to kill her.

  The monster was coming for her. There was no longer any doubt in her mind.

  * * *

  ANY HOPE OF sleep had fled. Her blood pressure had returned to normal. Dory tried to push herself into working, but instead she remained on the bed, Flash stapled to her. Across Flash, on the other side of the bed, Cadell had stretched out. Flash kept himself firmly between them, as if he’d made up his mind. Cadell had even had to negotiate permission to lie down.

  But now here the three of them were: man, woman and dog, the humans staring at the ceiling, the dog watching everything. His eyes roved restlessly, remaining on duty although there was no need.

  Dory rubbed his neck. “Sleep, Flash. No point in you staying up worrying with me.”

  Not that he seemed to understand. If he did, he didn’t care. She sighed, letting the evening sink in the rest of the way. So George did have a reason to seek her out. Given what he’d done to their parents, it didn’t require much imagination to think what he could do to her if he thought he could get money.

  “He used to love me,” Dory said quietly, little more than a murmur.

  “George?” Cadell asked.

  “Yes. He always took such good care of me. Unlike many older brothers, he never treated me like a pest. When he was out for the evening, he’d come back and sneak into my bedroom to leave some little treat on my pillow. Sometimes I’d wake and see him and he’d smile and put his finger over his lips. No noise.”

  Closing her eyes, she could see that so clearly, and the memory tore at her heart. She’d loved him so much, as much as a seven-year-old could. What had gone wrong?

  “Why no noise?” Cadell asked when she didn’t speak for a while.

  “Our parents were strict. At the time I assumed he didn’t want me to get into trouble for making noise when I was supposed to be sleeping. But maybe he was protecting himself, too. I don’t know. I wasn’t supposed to come downstairs after I was sent to bed. But that night... God, I wish I hadn’t broken the rule!”

  “Me, too,” he said. “I wish you’d never seen that.”

  She felt the bed move, and the next thing she knew he’d reached across Flash to lay one of his large hands on her upper arm.

  “This dog may be good at his job, but right now he’s an impediment,” Cadell remarked, a tremor of amusement in his voice, surprising her. “So consider this the best hug
I can give you.”

  “He’s hugging me, too,” she answered, feeling a slight lift to her spirits. A lot of hugs, something she’d been missing in her life since her godparents had died. Almost immediately, her mood sank again.

  “Do you really think he’d come after me for the inheritance? Even though his lawyer should have told him it was in trust? That when I die it goes to a charity?” she asked, figuring that, like it or not, she needed to address the possibility directly. Hiding from it wouldn’t help anything, and she’d been hiding from a lot for a long time.

  “I don’t know what he knows,” he said honestly. “It’s possible he thinks you can change the trust. Or that he’d be the heir anyway. It’s mostly still there from what you said.”

  “Even if I could access the trust I wouldn’t. Another way I’m weird, I guess. I didn’t want to...”

  “Profit from the murder of your parents. I get it.”

  She sighed. “Like I said, weird. They had insurance policies to make sure their kids were taken care of if anything happened. Would I feel the same if it had been a car accident?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “That’s a question for you, but I don’t know how you could answer it. That isn’t what happened.”

  She turned onto her side, throwing her arm across the dog, too, and her hand landed on his waist. “Flash sandwich,” she remarked. Not that the dog seemed to mind a bit. “You’re a cop,” she said a little later, her mind flea-hopping around from one item to the next. No rhyme or reason that she could determine yet.

  “It’s been rumored.”

  “You know something about people like George.”

  His answer was clearly cautious. “Something.”

  “I don’t expect you to explain what he did to our parents. I’m just wondering...what did all those years in prison do to him? Could he be worse now? More dangerous?”

  “I don’t know,” he answered frankly. “That long in prison... I can’t say. I do know that as men get older, they’re less likely to commit crimes. Less recidivism among men who are past their midthirties. On the other hand...” He just let it trail there.

  “He could have gotten angrier,” she said, feeling as if a stone were settling into her heart. “Meaner. It could have made him worse.”

  He didn’t reply.

  She spoke again after a minute. “You don’t have any idea how much time I’ve spent trying to figure that night out, to understand what made George do that. It wasn’t the George I thought I knew, but I was so little. I knew he was fighting with our parents, but my mother told me once that it was just his age, and he’d grow out of it.”

  “Often true,” he said quietly.

  “So what made him so different?” The question seemed to erupt from her very soul. Sitting up slowly, testing whether she’d get light-headed again, she found her feet and headed for her office, Flash right on her heels. Cadell wasn’t far behind.

  Then she did something she’d never done before: she shared her 3-D rendering of the murder scene that night.

  “My God,” Cadell whispered.

  “This is what I saw. The thing is, once I put all this stuff in, I can turn it around. I can see it from different angles. It doesn’t help me to understand anything, but I keep looking for answers. There aren’t any. What do I expect? That some ugly demon will suddenly appear in my rendering and I can tell myself that my brother was possessed?”

  She closed the image and swiveled the chair to look up at him. “I need to learn to let it go. I thought I had, until word came about George’s release. It’s like someone opened the floodgates on a dam. It’s all coming back as if it were yesterday.” She twisted her hands together. “The brother I used to love is gone. I need to face that. I need to face the fact that if he could do that once, he could do it again.”

  “Dory...”

  She shook her head. “My brother is a murderer. I have no reason to think he’s not the same person who stabbed our parents. Who cut my mother’s throat. And you’re right, if he thinks I still have some of that inheritance, he’ll want his share. Because if there’s one other thing I remember clearly about him, it’s how frequently he snuck into Mom’s purse or Dad’s wallet and took money. Probably for drugs, I don’t know. But he was never above stealing. I didn’t like to think about it then, and I guess I lost that in the detritus of what came later. He was a thief. Never to be trusted to begin with.”

  She shook her head as if trying to wake herself up. “I’ve been trying to connect two pieces of a different puzzle. Trying to fit parts together that never fit to begin with. I don’t know why he was often so kind to me when I was little, but that was only a piece of him.”

  Cadell cleared his throat. “Would you have tattled about his thievery if you hadn’t liked him so much?”

  She drew a sharp, long breath that seemed to carry ice all the way to her soul. “Maybe. I knew it was wrong.”

  He didn’t say any more, but he didn’t need to. Suddenly those pieces snapped into place, and it was painful. Those cherished memories of the before time, as she thought of it, turned black and drifted away like dead leaves.

  In an instant it all became painfully clear. She did have a reason to be afraid. Her brother was capable of using her and God knew what else if he didn’t get what he wanted.

  Her breathing broke, and scalding tears filled her eyes, trickling down her cheeks. “Years ago,” she said brokenly, “my therapist tried to tell me that he was a manipulative psychopath. I refused to believe it. I should have. I should have!”

  When Cadell’s arms closed around her, she grabbed his shirt with her hands and hung on for dear life. Adrift in a sea of ugly discovery, she needed an anchor in the storm.

  * * *

  CADELL HELD DORY for a long time. While he’d been suspicious that she might have valid reasons to be afraid, he hadn’t expected anything like this to emerge. For her to suddenly see her childhood in a very different light had to be wrenching in the extreme. He’d heard the love in her voice when she’d spoken of how George had treated her before the murders. That had just blown up in her face.

  How much can one woman take? he wondered. He also wondered if she needed a lot more help than he could provide. Maybe he should call Betty in the morning, get Dory to talk to her.

  Damn, Dory was isolated. He understood it was by choice. She was a self-proclaimed hermit. But it remained there were times in life when you needed someone else, someone to lean on and talk to. He had buddies he could share almost anything with, but this woman had no one except Betty. Maybe that was enough, but after tonight he wasn’t at all sure.

  She had warned him she didn’t trust, but she had trusted him with an amazing amount of information about herself and her brother. Because he was a cop and might understand?

  Being a cop didn’t make the horrors understandable. All it did was build necessary walls of self-protection.

  But another question seriously troubled him, and when her tears quieted and began to dry, he kept his arms tight around her, as if he expected her to try to escape. Maybe he did. But he had to ask.

  “Why’d you make that graphic of the murder scene?”

  At once she stiffened against him. As he’d suspected, she pressed a hand against his chest, trying to push him away.

  “Do you think I’m sick?” she asked, her voice raw. “Is that what you think?”

  “I just want to understand.” Not exactly true. He’d heard her say she studied it trying to find some answer, but it was frankly macabre, and he needed to know the reason behind it. It would tell him so much about Dory.

  She breathed rapidly but stopped pushing against him. “Why? Because my psychologist taught me to do it.”

  “What?” He was startled.

  “You heard me.” Her thickened voice managed t
o grow angry and a bit sharp. “I couldn’t talk, remember? So she had me draw pictures. Any kind of pictures. I drew that night over and over again. It seemed to help. So she encouraged me to keep doing it as long as I felt a need.”

  “Apparently you’re still feeling a need.”

  He felt her shudder, and her hand, flattened against his chest from pushing at him, fisted and grabbed his shirt. “It’s a different kind of need now. And I don’t keep redrawing it. I finished that rendering over five years ago. It’s a snapshot of what’s stamped in my mind forever. When I was a kid, it was a way to express. You have no idea how many sheets of drawing paper got torn by crayons as I expressed my feelings from anger to terror to sorrow. It was a violent expression for a while.”

  He rocked a little, wishing she weren’t still in her chair. The floor was hard beneath his knees, and this certainly wasn’t the world’s most comfortable hug. He wasn’t ready to let go yet, though. Something was happening tonight. Something inside Dory had opened up. He damn well wasn’t going to make any move that might shut her down.

  “Police wish they had such good renderings of what a person saw at a crime scene,” he remarked after a while.

  “It’s what I saw. What I think I saw.” She relaxed a bit against him, tension easing out of her. “Who knows how accurate it is. I don’t. Even though I think I couldn’t possibly have forgotten or changed a single detail, I probably did. Memory is a funny thing.”

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. Five witnesses could tell five different stories and believe them, even when disputed.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “until recently I hardly ever looked at it anymore. Then there I was beating my head on the question that didn’t have an answer. Looking into my memory for some clue by looking at the image. I don’t think I need it anymore.”

  “Really?” That startled him, and inadvertently he loosened his grip on her. At once she pivoted away from him, facing the computer where just a few minutes ago bloody horror had been displayed. She brought up a list that looked like file names, highlighted a few then hit a key. Another key, confirming the deletion, and they were gone.