Dru could feel her anxiety coming off her like sparks.
“Are you a relative?” the recovery-room nurse—Kelsey, according to her name tag—asked.
“Almost. He’s my fiancé.”
Kelsey’s smile was sudden and warm, an unexpected gift. “Shea, right? He couldn’t stop talking about you. Some people do that under anesthesia. They talk and talk. He described you to a tee.” She was inspecting Shea’s neck, the rose tattoo.
Dru waited to see her disapproval; instead, Kelsey said she loved it. “AJ talked about another tattoo, a lotus blossom? Here, right?” The nurse indicated an area of her abdomen between her belly button and the jut of her hip bone. “He has one, too, same place. Very pretty.”
Dru was astonished. She looked at Shea. Matching tattoos? Really? But her dismay dissolved when Shea laughed, a small, half-strangled sound, then covered her mouth. Dru took her hand.
“He’s all right, then?” Shea asked Kelsey.
“Well, you need to speak to Dr. Matthews,” the nurse said, “but between you and me, your fiancé is looking real good.” She winked, making Dru want to roll her eyes. “They got the slug out of his leg and stopped the bleeding. He’s on IVs for pain and hydration, but overall he’s hanging in there. He’s one lucky guy that his mom and granddad found him when they did.”
Shea thanked the nurse, squeezing her arm.
Dru thought Shea would hug Kelsey next, but instead she flung herself into Dru’s embrace. “Did you hear? Oh, Mom!” Pulling away, almost staggering in her happiness, Shea addressed the nurse again. “Can I see him?”
“He’ll be in recovery a bit longer, but he’s been assigned a room.” She looked at the chart she was carrying. “Third floor, room 302. He should be along within the hour. His mom and granddad are already up there, I think.”
“Thank you, thank you so much again.” Shea was trembling in her jubilance. “It’s a miracle, isn’t it? The one I was praying for.”
Dru didn’t have the heart to caution her, to say it might be too soon for celebration.
Of course room 302 was private. The Axels and the Isleys were that sort; they had that kind of money. Must be nice. That’s what Dru was thinking as she crossed the threshold. And then she felt small. What good was her envy of them? She assumed because they were rich, their lives were easy, but their wealth hadn’t protected them from fear and heartbreak, had it? Lily’s son had been shot. Kate and Becca were dead. Dru and Shea had been run off the road. The threat was real.
Ongoing.
And it wasn’t AJ.
Dru was still grappling with that fact. It was awful, but she’d been so sure—and even though she was relieved to be proven wrong on that score, she was still certain that AJ had issues. Maybe he wasn’t the monster behind the awful violence, but she would be willing to bet that it was related to him, to something he’d done. She didn’t know what, and she wouldn’t say it aloud, but neither could she shake the conviction that he was involved.
Lily was telling Shea how lucky AJ was. “The bullet did some tissue damage but missed the bones and major arteries.”
Dru glanced at Jeb. She’d noticed him, leaning against the wall opposite the door, but she hadn’t acknowledged him. They only exchanged a frosty glance now. Her greeting of Lily was similarly cool. They didn’t share an embrace the way Lily and Shea had. Dru had all but come out and accused AJ—Jeb and Lily’s boy—of heinous crimes. She could defend herself, remind them of the evidence. Say she wasn’t alone, that the police—in two different departments, no less—had believed AJ was responsible, too, that it had seemed reasonable, doubting his innocence. But it wouldn’t be the apology they were, in all likelihood, looking for. If Lily and Jeb had accused Shea in a similar fashion, that’s what Dru would want—amends, an acknowledgment of their error. She’d want them on their knees. But Dru couldn’t bring herself to go there for them.
“Folks?” An orderly appeared in the doorway. “We’re bringing in your guy. He’s still kind of out of it, so go easy on him, okay?” He grinned.
The four of them, Dru, Jeb, Shea, and Lily, moved out of the way to the far windowed wall. The sense of anticipation was electric; a loose bolt of lightning couldn’t have felt more volatile. AJ was wheeled in headfirst. Shea started toward him.
“Let us get him comfortable,” the nurse said to her.
Shea nodded; she was trembling, though, and Dru sensed her agony at having to wait yet one more minute.
The nurse and the orderlies stepped around, adjusting IVs, the machine that monitored AJ’s vitals. A top sheet was folded to expose his right leg, which was encased from the top of his thigh to his foot in a compression bandage. He was unshaven, and his face under the stubble was bleached of color. His cheeks were sunken. He looked gaunt, wasted, as if he’d lost weight. But he was alert. His gaze jumped around, searching the room. Until he found Shea. He teared up when he saw her, his jaw shook, and his mouth pursed in an effort to keep his composure. Dru’s heart wobbled.
Shea pressed her fingertips to her mouth, holding AJ’s gaze. The medical team left, and she glanced at Lily, ready to defer, but Lily made a little shooing motion toward her son.
She was more generous than Dru would have been. She crossed her arms, fighting an urge to grab Shea and run with her out of the room.
At AJ’s bedside, Shea was tentative, hands fluttering about his face, his shoulders. “Are you okay? Do you hurt?”
“Not now,” AJ said, and, raising his untethered arm, he grasped Shea’s hand gently, as if it were a terrified bird, and, bringing it to his lips, he kissed the back and then her palm, inhaling deeply as if he might take her very essence into himself. Lily and Dru exchanged a glance, and Dru saw that Lily was wondering the same thing: whether they should leave the room, leave these two alone, but they both, along with Jeb, seemed unable to walk away.
“I was so scared I would never see you again,” Shea said softly.
“There was no way I wasn’t coming back to you.” AJ’s voice was husky with emotion—with love.
Even Dru couldn’t deny that he loved Shea. But was he good for her? Would he be good to her? Was he really innocent?
“It doesn’t matter what we think.” Lily spoke softly at Dru’s elbow.
“No,” Dru agreed, readily enough. She watched as Shea cupped AJ’s cheek, bent to kiss him. Her jaw tightened. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Shea to be happy. She wanted that for Shea more than anything.
“AJ would never hurt Shea.”
Dru glanced at Lily. She would have sworn that was true of Rob, too, before he put a shotgun in her face.
“It could have been a lot worse,” AJ said, and he included everyone in his glance.
“That’s what Dr. Matthews told us,” Lily said, walking around the foot of the bed to the side opposite Shea. Lily touched AJ’s shoulder. She laid her hand on his brow. “How are you, honey?”
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you and Granddad, that’s for sure.” He looked from his mom to Jeb, who had joined her.
“Your granddad is the one who knew where to find you,” Lily said.
“You have one of your hunches?” AJ asked, grinning.
“Ha. Yeah. At least some part of my brain still works.”
Jeb Axel seemed abashed somehow. Dru felt her heart reaching out in sympathy, and it disconcerted her. She’d never liked the man, his arrogance, his egotism, his cowboy swagger.
“I’m sorry to barge in, folks.”
Dru looked up as Clint Mackie walked into the room.
“I need to ask AJ some questions.”
Jeb said, “No, Clint, what you need to do is get the hell out there and find whoever did this.”
“I know who it is, Granddad,” AJ said, and as happy as he had sounded before, there was misery evident in his voice now. “Help me sit up?” AJ asked Shea.
She adjusted the bed, the cushion under his leg, and when she was finished, he captured her hand a
gain.
“So, tell us, son,” Mackie said. “Who shot you?”
“Erik. Erik Ayala.”
“What?” Shea and Lily spoke together.
Dru’s breath stopped, but it was Jeb’s reaction—the way he jerked upright, looking stunned, as if he’d been sucker punched—that kept Dru’s attention. She heard AJ say he couldn’t believe it, either, then Lily and Shea were talking. Lily saying she’d seen Erik yesterday: “He fixed lunch in my kitchen.” And Shea saying Erik had called her looking for Kate: “He wanted to know if I’d heard from her when he knew, knew she was . . .”
They didn’t notice it when Jeb walked around the foot of the bed, returning to stand at the window. Perhaps he felt Dru’s gaze, though, because he looked at her, and he was gray-faced. He might have aged ten years in the space of ten seconds. She couldn’t fathom his expression; some kind of anguish, what might have been a plea for help, haunted his eyes. Dru looked away, doubting what she saw, but the sense of her foreboding was real enough, an icy finger tapping up her spine.
“Why? Why would Erik hurt those girls?” Lily asked.
“Why would he hurt you?” Shea looked at AJ.
“Erik hates me. I mean, he really hates me, as crazy as it sounds. I’m not sure why I’m still alive.”
“You want to start at the beginning?” Mackie wasn’t really asking.
AJ asked for water, and Shea poured it into a cup from the pitcher of ice water the orderlies had left behind. She fed it to him, holding the cup, guiding the straw, and while the gravity of the situation was apparent, there was also an intimacy in the moment; there were notes of merriment and teasing in their attention to each other. AJ didn’t need Shea’s help to drink, but it was their pleasure to pretend.
They might have been alone in the room, in the world, Dru thought.
Mackie pulled out his cell phone. “You don’t mind if I record this, do you? I’ll want to get a formal statement later, but I’d like this on the record.”
“Whatever you need,” AJ answered. “Where do you want me to start?”
“You worked your shift at Café Blue on Tuesday, right?”
“Yeah. We weren’t busy, so I left early.”
Shea said, “The detective in Dallas tried to tell me you weren’t there at all.”
“They said the same thing to me.” Lily was staring at Mackie.
“Well, I was there. You can check my time card.”
“We did that already. Initially the DPD was misinformed.” Mackie was perfunctory. “So, after you got off, what did you do?”
“I called my girl.” AJ glanced at Shea, squeezing her hand. “I think it was about ten thirty, then I drove to my apartment. I was whipped, and all I wanted was a hot shower and bed. But when I walked in, I saw Erik at the kitchen sink. The water was running. I didn’t really register at first what he was doing.” AJ spoke slowly.
He seemed bewildered, Dru thought, as if he was trying to connect the dots. He hadn’t reacted to the mention of Kate’s death. Maybe he already knew, or maybe in all the turmoil, he hadn’t registered the reference.
Mackie asked him what happened next.
“Erik was like, ‘Oh, man, I’m glad you showed up.’ He said he’d had an accident. I saw he had blood all over him and figured he’d cut himself. I was like, ‘God, what did you do?’ But then I saw his eyes. They were—I can’t even describe the look. Cold. Empty, like nothing was there.”
“Go on,” Mackie prompted.
“He told me he’d done something bad and asked me to come with him to the bedroom. When we got there, I couldn’t figure out what had happened. There was this body on the bed and blood splattered everywhere, and my knife, my Shun chef’s knife—” AJ twisted his head, hunting his mother’s glance. “The one out of the set you gave me?”
Lily nodded. “We found it, Granddad and I did, in your truck.”
“You found my truck? Where?”
Lily told him. “It was burned,” she said. “I guess Erik was trying to destroy evidence.”
The shared moment of silence was astonished, sickened.
AJ broke it. “I saw a lot in Afghanistan, but that was war—different somehow.” He thought about it. “But maybe not,” he amended quietly. “We all bleed the same.”
“Did you know the victim was Becca?” Mackie was staying on task.
“Not until he told me.”
“Did he say why he killed her?”
“Not really. He said she was yelling, and he was scared the neighbors would hear and call the cops. It was like he blamed her. He told me we had to get rid of her body, that I had to help him, that I owed him. He said he knew stuff about us, that he could blow our family to hell.”
“What did he mean?” Lily asked.
“I wish I knew,” AJ said. “I told him he was talking crazy, that I was calling 911, and that’s when he went off. He got my .45—he knew it was in the bedside table. He made me give him my phone, then he walked me out to my truck. He had me drive, and I thought I might get a chance to—I don’t know, get away or something, but he kept the pistol on me the whole time. He had me take him to Mickey D’s. We rolled through the takeout, and the son of a bitch ate two Big Macs and a double order of fries. The smell, watching him eat—I don’t know how I kept from being sick.”
“Sounds like y’all had quite a conversation, but you’re telling me in all that time he never said why he murdered Becca?” Mackie didn’t bother hiding his skepticism.
“No, Clint, he never did. He just kept shoving the burger in his mouth. He was calm by then, so I kind of pushed him some more about going to the cops. I said we could say it was an accident. I’d back him up. You know, Becca fell on the knife or something.” AJ’s laugh was wry, harsh. “I was grabbing at straws, trying anything. I still don’t know why he didn’t kill me.”
“Thank God he didn’t,” Shea whispered.
“He couldn’t,” Jeb said softly.
“Why not?” AJ asked.
Jeb looked up, startled, as if he hadn’t expected to be heard.
“You mean because he lost his nerve?” Lily gathered them all in her glance. “Dad said earlier that sometimes people can’t bring themselves to pull the trigger.”
“Yes,” Jeb said. “That’s what I meant.”
But looking at him, Dru sensed there was more to it.
Captain Mackie directed AJ back to the night of Becca’s murder, and AJ related how Erik had made him drive around Dallas, eventually ordering him to head south on I-35 to Wyatt. There had been little conversation. When they got into town, they’d driven around as aimlessly as they had in Dallas.
“We went by your mom’s house,” AJ said, looking at Shea.
The thought of how close Erik and AJ had been to Shea, to her home, startled Dru. A couple of madmen, she thought—because how did she know AJ wasn’t part of it, involved some way? Jeb Axel, too. He was acting so odd. Dru had a bad feeling. It kept growing. She didn’t know whether to trust it. Or even whom to trust.
AJ said it was after that when Erik started talking about the fort. How he wanted to see it again, how he and AJ could camp out the way they used to in the old days. “I was so tired by then,” AJ said. “It was getting light outside. I just wanted to stop driving.”
“He was with us,” Shea said in a voice soft with disbelief. “Erik was with us when we rode out that way, looking for you.”
“It couldn’t have been more than a few hours since he’d left you there,” Jeb said. “If I’d only known, if I’d gone on, I would have found you then.”
Jeb’s bleak astonishment seemed genuine. But he would do anything for AJ, Dru thought. She didn’t doubt Jeb Axel would lie for his grandson. She thought of the missing contents of the safe at the xL. Suppose Jeb was pretending senility in order to put the blame for that on himself to cover for AJ?
“You guys were close, I thought.” Mackie was puzzled.
“Yeah, like brothers, but when I said that, Erik said I bett
er think again, and then he shot me. I wasn’t sure what happened until my leg buckled. I heard him leave, but after that, I passed out for a while. When I came to, it was full daylight; my mouth was as dry as dirt, and I knew I’d lost a lot of blood, that I had to get help. I used my shirt to tourniquet my leg, then crawled to the ladder, thinking I could get myself down. It didn’t work out too well.” AJ looked toward his ankle. “After I fell, I passed out again, and when I woke up it was night. I thought I saw coyotes. Scared me enough to get me back up the ladder.”
“Erik said you were going to be his best man.” Lily’s voice was faint with disbelief.
“He said he loved Kate, too,” Shea said, “but then he killed her.”
“What?” AJ turned to stare at Shea. “What are you saying?”
“Oh no—” Shea was mortified. “I didn’t think. Of course you don’t know—”
When Shea didn’t seem able, Lily explained what had happened to Kate.
Shea touched the hollow at the base of AJ’s throat. “He took your necklace—”
“Yeah, I don’t know why.”
“After he pushed Kate off the ridge—”
“Allegedly.”
Shea shot Mackie a look of disgust. “Erik left the charm there to make you look guilty.” She addressed AJ.
“He’s trying to frame me?”
“Maybe,” Mackie said. “But why? Why would he do that?”
Dru got the sense that, like her, the police captain was weighing the odds that AJ was telling the truth.
Again, AJ said he didn’t know. “Erik’s got it in for me, for whatever reason.”
“You have any idea where he is?” Mackie asked.
“Have you checked his apartment?”
“First place we went, but if he’s there, he’s not answering his door. He’s not at work, either.”
“I think AJ should rest,” Lily said.
“Just a couple more questions.” Mackie looked back at AJ. “How do you think Erik talked Becca into coming to your apartment? How did they get in?”
“There’s a spare key. Becca knew—several people knew I kept one in the gaslight out front.”
The Truth We Bury: A Novel Page 21