Dark Road Home

by Anna Carlisle

  As it would anyone, Gin thought. Being accused by everyone you’ve ever known . . . she couldn’t imagine. She’d done the cowardly thing, not only by leaving for college mere weeks after Lily had disappeared, but by staying away for the next two decades. And now that she was back, she saw her absence for what it was: a retreat based on fear of facing the emotions she had buried deep.

  “Everything’s . . . I mean, I came home prepared, or at least telling myself I was prepared, to deal with Lily’s body being found. To get some closure after all these years.” She sighed and ran a hand through her unruly curls. “I even thought, somehow, it might be good for me to help try to figure out who killed her. But I never imagined I’d be put in a position to have to defend my dad from a murder charge. Ever since I got here, I feel like things just keep getting worse.”

  “Gin, none of that is your fault. And I know it’s hard but . . . you can’t give up now. I mean, Dad had to be close to figuring this all out. The fact that he wanted to talk to you—he must have found something. Something critical to the case.”

  “But why me? Why not just tell the county police?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that a hundred times. Dad and Lloyd worked with the county guys a lot in the past. Other than the usual intradepartmental friction, I don’t think they ever minded. Dad knew Stillman from some other case and said he admired his work.”

  “Then it had to be something he didn’t want them to know,” Gin said, the dread growing inside her. “Something personal about one of us . . . oh God, what if it really was about Dad?”

  But she just couldn’t see a way for it to be true. If Richard had ever been driven to an act of violence, he wouldn’t try to cover it up. It wasn’t a defense that could ever be used to convince a jury, but there were men in this world who were simply incapable of dissembling, and Richard was one of them.

  “Unless . . . he was protecting someone else.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud. If Dad wrote that prescription for someone else . . . not knowing what they were going to use it for, not knowing it would cost Lawrence his life. But now he feels like he can’t reveal their identity . . . oh, Jake, I don’t know, that’s probably crazy thinking.”

  “No, no, it’s okay, you’re just brainstorming. I do that myself. I’ve probably sat here and thought about every damn person in this town at one time or another, and wondered if they could have had some grudge against Lily. If they could have wanted to hurt her.”

  “I always tried to convince myself it was a stranger. Somehow . . . it was easier that way.” Gin blinked, holding back the threat of tears. “I used to feel so guilty about that. I mean, I tried so hard to keep believing she might come back . . . but every year it got harder.”

  “That must have been awful.”

  She merely nodded. “Awful” didn’t begin to describe what those years had been. Unable to confess her deepest fears to her parents, to add to their pain. She’d lost Jake, her best friend as well as her first love. She’d drifted apart from Christine and Tom and her other friends in Trumbull, and told no one in her new life about her past. Her name was common enough that people rarely connected her to the news story. When, on very rare occasions, she confided in people, they seemed to sense how painful the subject was, and didn’t bring it up again.

  “Gin . . . I know I don’t have the right to tell you what to do. But I think you need to see this through.” His hand covered hers. “Stay. Work with me on this. We don’t have to tell anyone, but you and I are closer to this case than anyone besides your parents. We’ve got the most to lose.”

  His and Richard’s reputations, and possibly their freedom. The stakes didn’t get any higher.

  “Look, I didn’t count on Stillman and Witt moving so fast on that tip,” Jake admitted. “I think it’s a sign of how desperate they are to get some closure on this. My fear is that, in their haste, they might come to the wrong conclusion.”

  “And they don’t have a lot of incentive to clear Dad,” Gin agreed. “I certainly hope Paulson’s as good as Spencer seems to think.”

  “Let him and your mom handle that. You and I can spend our time better, I think.”

  “You sound like you already have a plan,” Gin said.

  “Not really.”

  After a moment, Gin said, “Well, maybe I do. Do you remember Rose Red?”

  28

  “Sorry, sorry, just throw that on the floor,” Rose “Red” Applegate said an hour later, pushing papers and fast-food bags off one of the extra chairs in her tiny office while Gin cleared the other. Then Red served them the fresh coffee she’d brewed in the ancient Mr. Coffee that sat on top of a filing cabinet.

  “Love what you’ve done with the place, Red,” Jake said drily, causing the sixty-something woman to throw back her head and laugh. “You really ought to invite House Beautiful in here for a photo shoot.”

  “Gotta love you Crosbys,” she said. “Your dad was one of the only guys in town to stick up for me back when I first got this job. Hell of a guy, and the world’s a sorrier place without him.” She raised her mug solemnly and the three of them shared a silent toast.

  Red’s appointment to the medical center’s security staff a decade earlier had been controversial, not just because she was publicly out as a gay woman long before small-town America was comfortable with it, but also because she was a recovering alcoholic. But Lawrence had given her his unflagging support, eventually convincing others to evaluate her on the basis of her performance, rather than the local gossip. And he’d called her “Rose Red” with affection rather than derision, taking the power out of the snub—her partner, Linda White, even named her business Snow White Interiors. Without Lawrence’s support, the couple might never have been accepted into the social fabric of the town.

  “You look good, Red,” Gin said. The woman was lean and fit in her uniform, the drab gray shirt a sharp contrast to the vibrant, close-cropped red hair whose color probably came from a bottle now. “Thank you so much for agreeing to talk to us.”

  “You know this is off the record,” she said. “I don’t need folks thinking I’m trying to insinuate myself into this case. And if the county cops come around, I’m going to have to tell them everything I tell you.”

  “Understood.”

  “Okay. Well, I went over the tapes for the other night after you called me, and I was right. There’s no way your dad was here, unless he’s got the ability to move through walls. Every entrance to this place is on camera.”

  “Oh,” Gin said, feeling a huge sense of relief—along with guilt over their own efforts to beat the security system.

  “But,” Red held up a finger for emphasis. “Someone else was. That kind of surprised me. Spencer Parker was here at a little before two AM.”

  “Spencer?” Gin echoed. “You’re sure?”

  “I wasn’t, at first. Here, let me show you.”

  She swiveled her computer monitor around so they could all see, a difficult feat on a desk covered with photos of her and Linda’s many nieces and nephews as well as an impressive collection of paper cups from the area’s restaurants.

  “Okay, look here,” Red said, pressing play on the recording as a man entered the back side of the building, looking down at his watch as he came through the door.

  “But the video quality is terrible,” Gin said. “It could be Spencer, but it could also be a hundred other men.”

  “Uh huh,” Red said, replaying the feed slowly. Each frame revealed a man in poor resolution with his face away from the camera, deftly turning as he entered the building so that it was never fully in view. Even his clothes, a nondescript dark polo shirt and plain khaki pants, could belong to anyone. “Right. No way you could make out an ID on him, almost like he was purposely avoiding the cameras. Except . . .”

  She tapped at the keys, and the view switched from the building entrance to a view of the overflow parking lot. The quality of the picture was e
ven worse, since the lot was lit from two tall lights that cast pools on part of the lot while leaving the edges mostly dark, but they saw a car enter in slow motion, head for the far corner, and park. The man who got out of the car did indeed look like Spencer. And the Mercedes emblem on the back of the sedan was recognizable.

  As were the characters on the license plate.

  “Most folks don’t know we got a camera on that lot,” Red said. “It only just went in last month, after we had some vandalism on the signage.”

  “Wait, wait.” Thoughts chased each other through Gin’s mind. “Spencer came here in the middle of the night, and tried to enter the building undetected—but he’s the practice management director! Wouldn’t he have known about the camera? Wouldn’t he have been the one to approve it?”

  “Now that’s a good question. Also leads to the one you haven’t asked—why I haven’t shown this to the police already. Like I said, if they come and ask, I’ve got no plans to hold back. Thing is, though—I mean, Spencer’s more than just my boss.” Red’s characteristically tough demeanor slipped a little, and she blinked rapidly. “Yes, ordinarily he’d have to green-light a purchase of that size. Cost almost four thousand dollars, not counting installation. But for the last year or two, Spencer’s been more interested in the big picture, hasn’t wanted to know the details as long as the support departments stay within their numbers. Between me and Rex—he’s head of buildings and grounds—we kind of work out the fine print between us and just give Spencer the highlights.”

  “But Spencer’s always micromanaged everything,” Gin said, remembering the discussions he and her father always ended up having even on evenings that were supposed to be purely social. It would have been difficult to find two men more devoted to their jobs. “I can’t imagine him letting go of the reins like that.”

  “Me either. Except . . .” Red hesitated. “Listen. It takes an addict to know one sometimes. And I’ve had my eye on Tom Parker. I think he’s a high-speed train wreck waiting to happen, and I think his dad’s just about desperate to do anything he can to stop it.”

  “You’re saying that Spencer’s been less attentive than usual because Tom’s been screwing up?”

  Red shrugged. “Hey, I may not be management, but you’d be surprised the kind of stuff I see . . . people tend not to notice someone in a uniform after a while, we just blend into the background. Now I got nothing against Tom, he’s always been decent to me. But he’s really been struggling lately. Leaving early, stumbling in after two- and three-hour lunches, sleeping at his desk—I see it all.”

  Gin and Jake exchanged a look.

  “Is there any way to see what Spencer did while he was inside?” Jake asked. “Maybe he was here trying to cover up something Tom did. Maybe Tom was on the verge of getting fired.”

  Red was already shaking her head. “It’s impossible to say, we don’t have cameras in the office wing other than in the reception area.” She shrugged. “Not the way I would have designed it.”

  Gin blew out a frustrated breath. “So we have no idea what he did once he was here.”

  “Well, at least I can tell you with ninety-nine percent certainty that your dad wasn’t here,” Red said. “So whatever happened that night, either Spencer was responsible, or someone else entirely.”

  “Thanks, Red,” Gin said. “Just one other question—who else has keys to Dad’s office?”

  “No one. Not even the IT guys. Spencer has always insisted, since we have a lot of the old records in hard copy. He even has the physicians’ offices cleaned during the day—some of the docs complain about that, but it’s the only way to ensure that the custodial staff doesn’t have access to the keys.”

  Gin and Jake stood, carefully sidestepping Red’s clutter. “Listen, it’s nice to see you back here. If only it were under different circumstances,” Red said. “You ever think of moving back for good?”

  “I’m pretty settled in Chicago,” Gin said, her automatic response whenever anyone asked if she missed her hometown.

  But it wasn’t really true, was it? Guiltily she realized that Clay hadn’t been in touch since their last, stilted conversation—and that she had barely noticed. And besides Clay, there were no neighbors, pets, not even a houseplant to miss her while she was away.

  Trumbull had become, for her, a repository of secrets, a landscape of grief. Her parents had become practically strangers to her. And Jake—until this week, Gin had thought that if she never saw him again, it would still be too soon.

  “Well, I know we can’t compete with the big city,” Red said, giving her a lopsided grin. “But this place has its moments.”

  As they said their good-byes, Gin could feel Jake’s eyes on her, and she wondered what he was thinking.

  ***

  “We need to tell the cops,” Gin said. “This should at least cast some doubt on whether my dad wrote that prescription.”

  “And throw suspicion directly on Spencer,” Jake said. “You heard Red, he’s been focused on Tom. So far everyone’s been jumping to conclusions, myself included. Maybe what we need to do is take a step back and think before we give the police anything that will lead them to go after another innocent person.”

  “But Jake—” Gin’s words caught in her throat. “Dad is in jail. I mean, everyone thinks of him as, I don’t know, stoic . . . strong and silent. Which he is . . . but I just can’t bear to think—he’s probably in there with drug dealers and domestic abusers and, and, whatever he is, he isn’t—”

  “It’s going to be all right.” Jake interrupted her increasing distress by settling a hand on her shoulder. His palm warmed her through the thin cotton of her shirt. “Gin, listen, you can’t focus on that right now. It won’t help him.”

  “But . . .” She took a deep breath. What she was about to say couldn’t be taken back. “What if Spencer really was there to get the prescription pad that night? What if he forged Dad’s signature and dated it and left the copy so that there wouldn’t be a gap when the auditors went through the records at the end of the year?”

  Jake frowned. “But the office was secure,” he said. “You heard Red. No one can get into the physicians’ offices.”

  Gin was already shaking her head. “Dad and Spencer probably had each other’s keys. Back when they were still getting the surgery center off the ground, they were like one person in two bodies. And since Spencer made the rules, he would have been able to make an exception, too—I’m sure he convinced Dad it was a good idea.”

  “But that was years ago. They grew apart,” Jake said. “Even I could see that, after I started hanging around with you guys. And Lily said . . .”

  But he stopped, shaking his head.

  “Lily said what?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  They had been walking toward Jake’s truck, but Gin stopped and grabbed his arm.

  “Don’t do that, Jake,” she snapped. “There is no ‘never mind’ anymore. Whatever you know, whatever you’re thinking, I deserve to know. At least when it comes to Lily.”

  He regarded her for a long moment and then pulled his arm back—not angrily, but firmly. “You have no idea what it’s been like for me,” he said quietly. “It’s too late to talk about what I deserve, but you’ll have to understand that I’ve got a long history of my words being twisted and thrown back at me.”

  The interviews, the interrogations. The dirty looks and unvoiced suspicions. All those people who wouldn’t hire Jake when he started his company, who shunned him even when his father was ill.

  “You’re right. I can’t understand what you went through. And—and I see now that I was a part of it. Turning on you.” Gin drew a shuddering breath, those terrible lonely undergraduate years now looking completely different in her memory as she considered what Jake had been going through. “I owe you a lot more than an apology, Jake, and maybe someday I’ll find a way to make it right. But for now, I just need to know what happened to my sister. And you’re the only person I can c
ount on to help me. So please, tell me what she told you, even if you don’t think it matters.”

  Finally, Jake nodded. “Okay. A couple of weeks before she disappeared, Lily called me and asked if we could talk. I thought maybe it had something to do with you—that she wanted to surprise you with a party for your graduation or something. The first time, I met her outside the gym after school and we walked the track, talking about nothing, about everything. And it seemed like she was leading up to something important, some big secret that was weighing on her mind—only she never got there. It started to get dark and she said she’d better get home, and that was that.

  “Only, a couple of days later, she wanted to talk again. Same thing: walking, talking about this and that, but she seemed preoccupied, sad . . . even a little scared, but at the time I couldn’t think of a reason why, because it clearly wasn’t about you.”

  “She must have found out she was pregnant,” Gin mused. “But why you? Why would she pick you of all people to confide in?”

  She had let go of his arm, but Jake put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “Gin. Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” she demanded, barely able to stop herself from wrenching free of his grip. There was some dangerous current between them, something bigger even than their disagreement.

  “Don’t blame yourself. You’re way too good at it, but it’s got to stop. I think Lily picked me, in a way, because of you. I was like a big brother to her, and that would never have happened unless you and I were . . . close.”

  It made a kind of sense, but Gin was still too raw from learning that her sister had chosen someone else to confide in, to forgive her. “If she had just told me. I could have helped her consider her alternatives, I could have listened . . .”

  “‘Could have’ is almost never the right road to take,” Jake cautioned. “All we’ve got is now. The moment in front of us.”

  He hooked her chin with a finger and forced her to look up at him. His expression was serious, his eyes narrowed, his mouth tightened. But as the moment lengthened, he seemed to relax, the frustration giving way to something else.