Shea stirred cream into her coffee. “I don’t think even the Dallas detectives suspect AJ anymore, but you do, don’t you?” She looked up. “You still think he’s involved.”
“Honey, you need to look rationally, and without emotion, at the evidence—”
“You need to stop looking at AJ through the warped lens of your experience with Daddy. That was, what, fifteen years ago?”
“It was twelve,” Dru said. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“In your mind, every man is a gun waiting to go off. You’ve never moved forward, never forgiven Dad.”
“So what should I have done, Shea?” Dru was tired, out of patience and angry now. “Should I have stayed, trusted your dad wouldn’t threaten me with a gun again? Maybe I was wrong, leaving him, but I had a little girl to protect, and I made the only decision that I felt would ensure her safety as well as mine. Just wait until you have a child of your own.” Dru stood up, pushed her chair under the table, balancing her hands on the top rail.
“I know it was scary, Mom. You did the right thing getting us out of there. If you hadn’t, Dad might never have gotten help.”
Dru bit her teeth together. She wasn’t the only one fighting tears.
“He was scared, too, Mom, you know?” Shea said softly.
Dru didn’t answer.
“He hasn’t threatened anyone since then.”
“He’s never been in a relationship since.”
“Because he loves you, Mom, only you.”
Dru considered it, Rob’s love, and she knew it was real, that what Shea said was true. But she couldn’t give that to Shea.
At the sound of the doorbell, she and Shea looked at each. No one came to the front door—except the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the police. Ken Carter and his partner had rung Dru’s doorbell the night before last, when she had called 911 after Leigh found the cryptic note on her car. I’m sorry for hurting you. I’m in trouble and I don’t think I can stop. Kate had still been alive when Leigh found the note, and now she wasn’t. “I’ll get it,” Dru said to Shea. “You go take your shower.”
But Shea didn’t do as instructed. She was still in the breakfast nook when Dru brought Ken Carter into the kitchen. Shea and Ken greeted each other.
“You said you had news,” Dru prompted.
“We’ve been looking at Kate’s computer, going through her e-mail, that sort of thing. She’s got a Word file she labeled ‘Journal.’ It’s like a diary of her day-to-day activity. Did you know she kept a record like that?” Ken was asking Shea.
“No, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Shea said. “She was always writing something.”
“Well, the most recent entries indicate she wanted to break off her relationship with Erik Ayala.”
“Really? Why?” Shea asked.
“We don’t have a full answer on that yet, but in her last entry, Thursday night, she wrote that she was going to confront him, possibly on Friday, on their hike. I was hoping you might know what that was about.”
“I don’t,” Shea said. “We told each other pretty much everything, or I thought we did.”
“Except for the text messages between her and Becca. She didn’t tell you about those.”
“No,” Shea said.
“Did you know Erik took Becca out one night back in March? According to Kate’s journal, she and Erik fought over his wanting to spend money on a four-wheeler.”
“Kate told me about the fight and that he got together with Becca, but there wasn’t anything to it. He apologized, practically crawled on his knees to Kate. He spent the four-wheeler money on a bracelet for her. She made him take it back. She was practical that way.”
“Did she tell you she saw Erik and Becca arguing in the parking lot of the Starbucks near the culinary school in Dallas around three weeks ago, before the semester ended?”
“No.” Shea looked at Dru, but she could only shrug. “Did Kate say what the argument was about?”
“Money. Evidently Becca had borrowed a few hundred dollars from him. When Kate asked him why he hadn’t told her about the loan, he claimed it was because he didn’t want her to be mad at Becca. But Kate suspected it was something else. She thought Erik was cheating on her with Becca, that they’d gone out more than the one time Kate knew about. Kate used the word intimate when she described the argument in her journal. She said they looked too wrapped up in each other for it to have been about money.”
“Why didn’t Katie tell me any of this?” Shea was distraught.
“Well, there’s more. She wasn’t exactly honest when she said Becca was the one asking for a meeting in those texts they exchanged. It was actually Kate who wanted to see Becca. According to the entry, Kate planned to confront her about the possibility Erik and Becca were having a—a thing, you know.”
“We were besties, marrying besties. It was so perfect . . .” Kate’s voice rose in Dru’s mind. Was perfect, not is perfect. Why hadn’t Dru noticed it that night when Kate had sought her out in the kitchen—her use of the past tense when she’d spoken of her and Erik’s plans? What she had noticed was that Kate had seemed discouraged and anxious. But they’d all been anxious.
Shea said, “Kate would have broken their engagement if Erik was cheating on her.”
“How do you think Ayala would have reacted if she broke it off with him?” Ken asked.
“Not good,” Shea said.
Dru remembered Erik’s elation when they’d spoken about Kate in Dru’s driveway only days ago. “It would have devastated him,” she said.
Enough to kill her? The obvious question hung in the air, unasked.
“Here’s the thing,” Ken said. “The ME says Becca’s pregnancy was about five weeks along, which means it happened in April, around the time Kate and Erik broke up.”
Shea looked stunned. “You’re saying it was his baby?”
“We can’t know for sure—”
“Did Kate suspect?” Shea talked over Ken. “But if she thought he killed Becca over that, why would she agree to meet him? Why didn’t she tell me, or the police, or somebody?”
“She didn’t have proof, like we don’t. Until we get DNA, this is all speculation. Reading Kate’s journal, the last entry, she had spoken to Erik, told him of her suspicion. She mentioned the lip liner. Evidently she did remember the two of you buying it, same brand, same shade. She told Erik about that, too. From what she wrote, she felt she could reason with him, get him to turn himself in. She said he agreed to it, that if after they talked, she thought he should go to the police, then he’d do it. I don’t think she realized the kind of mental instability she was dealing with. It doesn’t appear from her writings that it crossed her mind she might be putting herself in danger.”
Dru moved to Shea’s side. “Do you have any word on where Erik is?”
“Not yet. We’re working on getting a warrant to search his apartment, but y’all need to be extra careful, because we’re thinking—and Dallas PD agrees—Ayala is still in the area, and he’s got to be feeling pretty desperate by now. We thought he might try to beat it down to Oaxaca to his mom and her family, and we’re trying to get information one way or another on that, but we’ve had no luck so far. We haven’t been able to locate Ms. Ayala, either.”
“That’s not my heritage . . . Oaxaca isn’t my country.” Erik had said that to Dru, and he’d seemed offended now that Dru thought of it. He’d seemed to resent she would even suggest there was a connection.
“I doubt he’s gone to Oaxaca,” she said.
“You’ve cleared AJ, right?” Shea swiped at her eyes.
“That note Leigh found? We’ve been able to determine for sure it was written in lip liner, and we found a print on it, a partial, enough to rule out AJ, but he’s not off the list entirely.”
Shea started to argue.
Ken held up his hand. “It’s how the law works, Shea. You just have to roll with it, okay? Let us do our job, and we’ll get there.”
“The print
on the note, could it be Erik’s?” Dru asked.
“We’re checking now. His prints should be in the system through the military, but so far we’ve not been able to get hold of them, maybe because they cut him loose. I don’t know.”
“He was always so helpful and kind,” Dru said. “I would never have imagined—”
“It’s possible something snapped,” Ken said. “People do. They go off the deep end. I can’t stress enough how dangerous he is now. You need to keep alert. If you’ve got a gun and know how to use it, keep it loaded and handy.”
“AJ’s in more danger than we are,” Shea said. “Erik’s already tried to kill him.”
“We’ve got an officer with him, but let’s hope we get Ayala soon.”
Shea’s phone rang. She got it from her purse. “It’s AJ,” she said.
Ken and Dru waited to hear that the call was of no concern before walking to the front door. “I’d keep Shea home if you can,” Ken said.
“Trust me,” Dru said. “I’m not letting her out of my sight.”
She ought to have known better. Shea left to go back to the hospital and AJ as soon as she’d had a shower and changed her clothes.
21
Lily picked up a pizza for dinner, sausage, cheese, and black olives, on the way back to the xL. She wasn’t hungry. She didn’t imagine her dad or Paul was, either, but she would provide a meal nonetheless. She expected to find both men in the kitchen, but Paul was the only one sitting at the island. He had his phone in his hand, texting, but when he saw her, he shut it off. Something about the furtive way he did it gave Lily a bad feeling.
“Where’s Dad?” She set the pizza on the counter. Redolent smells of cheese and sausage made her stomach churn.
“Gone to lie down,” Paul said.
“Is he all right?”
“Yeah. Just tired, I think.”
She was worried it was more, possibly a whole lot more. What if her dad was losing his mind? She considered sharing her concern with Paul, but when she spoke, all she said was, “I’ll make a salad.”
“Don’t go to the trouble on my account,” Paul said.
Lily held his gaze. The air between them was thick with words that needed saying. But she was as weary as her dad. And while she was beyond relieved that AJ was safe, she was heartsick over Erik—that he could have committed such violence, murdered those girls, and injured AJ was no less fathomable or acceptable than if it had been AJ who was responsible. Lily couldn’t bear thinking of Winona, of how this would affect her, the enormous devastation it would cause.
“We have to talk,” Paul said.
“I want to check on Dad first,” Lily said. “Did he go upstairs?”
“No. He’s in his office, I think.”
Lily felt Paul’s eyes tracking her as she left the kitchen. Perversely, she wished he would leave. Be gone. Poof!
Opening the door to her dad’s office, she peered in at him. It was dusk; the light was translucent, greenish, swimmy. She crossed the room noiselessly to the couch. He was sleeping, but his face was drawn, his brow furrowed as if in terrible consternation. His eyes twitched in a way Lily found disturbing. She noticed he was holding his cell phone, tightly enough that his knuckles were white.
Oh, Daddy . . .
She lowered her hand to touch his brow, letting it hover there. What was happening in his brain? To his mind? His strong, reliable, singular mind?
Lily drew the light throw from the back of the couch and covered him, phone and all, and left him, closing the door quietly. She couldn’t work out her dad’s issues now, not with Paul in the kitchen—Paul who would say there was nothing wrong with her father, that her worry was for nothing.
He was back, texting, when she returned to the kitchen, and he looked up at her. “Client,” he said as if she’d asked.
Lily retrieved plates, napkins, and silver, setting them on the island.
“I’ve got a call in to a couple of criminal attorneys in Dallas.”
“AJ’s not going to need legal representation, Paul.”
“Maybe you should be the one talking to Mackie and Bushnell.”
“What does that mean?”
Paul held her gaze.
“They still suspect AJ, is that it? And you agree with them. God, you’re incredible.” Lily turned away, turned back. “Didn’t I hear you warn Clint earlier that if anything happened to AJ he’d better fear for his job?”
“You did, and I meant it. What’s your point?”
“You truly think AJ killed those girls, don’t you?” The knot of Lily’s fury pulsed in her throat, beat a tattoo at her temples.
“I don’t see the harm in covering all the bases. He needs a lawyer; I’ll get him one. And it won’t be Edward Dana,” Paul added.
“He needs his father and his father’s faith.”
“But I don’t care if he’s guilty. He’s my son, and it’s my job to protect him either way.”
“So you’d cover for him if you knew he’d committed murder?”
“I’m not covering for him. I’m hiring legal counsel. Like I said before, I’ll do whatever I have to, to keep him out of prison, keep his name, his reputation, and his record clean the way I did last time, the way I did years ago for you.”
“But it isn’t his name and reputation, or mine, that really matters to you, is it? It’s your own. It’s the Isley name.”
“What do you suppose our lives would have been like if I’d let you or AJ drag our name into the dirt?”
“Your name.”
“Fine. Let’s play it that way. What kind of lifestyle do you think you would have had all these years if it had become public knowledge that you were an accessory to murder? If it were known that you were some thug’s girlfriend, that he robbed a store and murdered a clerk, a seventeen-year-old kid, to get money for a pair of western boots you wanted?”
“What are you talking about?” Lily asked. “I had no idea what Jesse was going to do, and you know it.”
“Ah, but I don’t, you see. According to Jesse, it was your idea. You wanted those boots. They were handmade of crocodile skin. You remember, don’t you? A vendor on the side of the highway had them for sale. Six hundred for the pair. Jesse didn’t have that kind of cash, but when he pulled off the highway at the convenience store, you said all he had to do was ask the clerk for it, and he’d hand it over. Jesse told me you laughed when you explained it.”
“Because I was joking.” Lily’s heart was beating so erratically it was difficult to breathe. “How do you know this?”
“I paid Jesse a visit before he was sent to prison. I wanted to know the real truth of what went down that day, not the legal truth. He was happy to tell me in exchange for—I don’t remember—like a couple hundred in cash? Cigarette money, he called it.”
“You believed him when he said I encouraged him.” Lily wasn’t asking. “You really think I’m capable of that.”
“You do like to dress well.”
Lily dropped her gaze, unable to look at Paul or speak for the shame that was thick in her throat, bitter on her tongue. She had admired the boots. She had teased Jesse about asking the store clerk for the cash. She’d said once they had it, they could ride back up the highway and buy the boots. She’d been a foolish, thoughtless, irresponsible eighteen-year-old girl, a feckless runaway who thought she knew everything. And a boy was dead because of her. But she’d truly never imagined Jesse would take her joke literally. She hadn’t known when he went into the store that he was armed and intent on robbing the place. She’d believed the gun was in the saddlebag, where he kept it.
“You were hell-bent on destroying yourself, Lily. If it hadn’t been Jesse, you would have chosen some other loser. AJ’s like you in that respect. He’s got no sense when it comes to the company he keeps.”
“You’re our savior, then, is that it?” Lily raked her hair behind her ears.
“You were going nowhere except prison. It was the same with AJ. At least you can pack
a boy off to the military. I guess your dad could have done the same for you—”
“Or he could give me away in marriage. The military, even prison, would have been easier. At least it would be over by now.”
Paul laughed, a short, bitter sound.
“Did you ever love me?” Lily flattened her palm to her chest. “Not your idea of me. Not the woman you have tried for years to mold me into—”
“You were beautiful, Lily, and for all your wildness, you were so innocent. Fragile and vulnerable.”
“It’s always been about control with you, hasn’t it?” she said after a moment. “I didn’t want to see it, but I played into it; I went along. It’s what I always do.” She was talking more to herself than to Paul. Turning from him, she went to lean stiff-armed against the counter. It was full dark now, and the kitchen window over the sink was black. There was nothing to see but her own ghostly reflection. “I’ve been so blind, following you, even Dad—I don’t know myself who I am.”
“Well, I think that might be a bit of an overstatement,” Paul said, and she hated it, the condescending note in his voice, the way he patronized her.
“I think you need to go,” she said, turning to him, speaking quietly.
“Now?”
“There’s a Motel 6 in Wyatt if you don’t want to drive back to Dallas tonight.”
He nudged the plates she’d brought to the island, toyed with the forks. “I was going to wait until this business with AJ was settled, but maybe I’ll just get it out of the way now.”
Somehow Lily knew what he was going to say, but she wasn’t going to let on. She wasn’t going to help him.
“I think we should separate.”
“You make it sound as if you think we have a chance. Do you?”
“Truth?” He met her glance.
She waited.
“I’m seeing someone. I’m in love with her. I didn’t mean for it to happen, but matters of the heart—”
“Please stop.”
His mouth closed. A fed-up sort of impatience fished through his eyes. He wanted to be done with her, with their marriage. He was done. The old Groucho Marx joke ran through her mind: “Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?” If that was true, Paul had turned off the lights and left the building. Closed the door on twenty-seven years of wedded bliss without warning. Or, she guessed the warnings had been there; she’d chosen to ignore them.
The Truth We Bury: A Novel Page 23