She made a harsh sound. “I want them to be alive. I want them not to be dead. I want not to have failed them. I want them not to be dead because of me.”
He dropped the photos into the briefcase, taking hold of her wrists.
“Maggie, you know that’s not true. Listen to me. Think. You didn’t convict the murderer — the person charged with the murder — in these cases. Right?”
He shook her wrists. The motion made her head bob, and he accepted that as confirmation.
“But their deaths have nothing to do with you. They were dead before you ever entered the picture.”
“Not all of them.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
“I was a witness in a case. A long time ago.” She felt distant, almost dreamy. “I was a witness against my aunt’s murderer.”
“You couldn’t have been. There was no trial.”
“How could you know—? Oh. What Roy said.”
“No. Dallas. Before the trial, he said he needed to know who the opposition was. Kept grumbling there wasn’t enough from studying your cases. Dug back more. The week before the trial, he told me about your aunt’s murder, how the murderer was killed in a shootout with police. There was no trial.”
“Not for murder.”
He looked at her a long moment. She felt it, didn’t return in.
He put it together. “The trial you were a witness in was before he murdered your aunt.”
“Yes.” Stinging tears pooled in her eyes. “He and Aunt Vivian were dating. She was head over heels. And he included us, me and my two younger cousins. You see we’d always spent summers with Aunt Vivian. She’d inherited our grandparents’ house and it was the hub for everybody. My parents traveled all the time, Ally’s broke up… That house, her, us. That was home.
“Then Glenn showed up and swept Aunt Vivian off her feet. But I could see… There was something weird about how he was with Jamie. But nobody believed me. Not even Aunt Vivian. I heard her telling a friend and the friend saying I was making up things against him so he’d go away and I’d have Aunt Vivian’s attention again. And she agreed.
“I stopped saying anything then, but I made sure he wasn’t alone with Jamie. He knew what I was doing, and sometimes, the way he looked at me… Then he said he was going on a business trip, making a big deal of saying good-bye, hugging and kissing Aunt Vivian while he kept looking at Jamie. But he was gone — gone — and it felt great. I relaxed. The next day, we rode our bikes to an ice cream shop, I was racing Ally. Jamie fell behind. The shop door was around the corner from the way we’d come. Ally and I were laughing, shouting she was a slowpoke. We started to go into the shop without her, but something… I walked back around the corner of the building to check for her.
“Jamie was on the ground, tangled up with her bike and this man in a hoodie was trying to lift her and put her in a van. She was trying to scream. I could see that, but no sound came out.
“I yelled to Ally to get help and I ran toward them. He was trying to lift bike and all by then, but she was kicking and I was yelling and then she started screaming.
“If she hadn’t gotten her foot caught in her bike… It delayed him. People started to come out of the building, responding to Ally. He dropped Jamie. Got in the van. Took off. Lots of people got a description, parts of the license plate. They tracked him down after a week. But none of the adults had a clear view of his face. They could say it was the same van, not the same man. Jamie couldn’t do it. She’d break down crying. Ally never saw him. It was up to me. I told everybody it was Glenn, but when it came to the trial…” She sucked in a breath. “I failed. I totally failed. And he walked. Twenty-three days later, he broke into the house when Vivian was alone and beat her to death. He came after me, but he found her.”
She panted, the rush of words ripping at her throat.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it. I knew him. A neighbor called police. That was the shootout. He died. Too late for Vivian. Too late. It had been too late from the moment I fell apart on cross-examination.”
“And you’ve been blaming yourself ever since. You were a kid and you weren’t certain, nobody can blame you — not even you, Maggie.”
She slowly raised her head. “I was certain. Absolutely certain. He was the man and I knew it.”
He held her gaze, and she let him. Let him see. Perhaps let him understand.
“The defense attorney,” he said.
“Yes, the defense attorney. He chewed me up and spit me out. A masterful construction of reasonable doubt. A masterful destruction of a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“So you became a prosecutor to make sure nothing like that happened again — at least in the cases you handled.”
She shook her head. A single, tight jerk.
“I became a prosecutor to keep from killing the bastards myself.”
* * * *
Her phone rang.
Not looking at J.D. or Caller ID, Maggie grabbed for it, grateful.
“Couldn’t get you last night,” Bel said by way of greeting. “I found her.”
“Found—? Oh. Right. The woman who reported a similar incident in Lynchburg, then disappeared.”
“That’s her. She didn’t want to talk last night on the phone. I’m outside her place now.”
“She’s willing to talk to you in person?”
“Don’t know yet. Have to wait until she comes back.”
“She didn’t know you were coming,” she guessed.
“No sense giving her a chance to say no. I’ll wait. See if my honest face persuades her to talk. One thing I did get out of her last night, she’d consulted a divorce lawyer in Lynchburg—”
“Henry Zales,” they finished together.
J.D. looked up at the name.
“Same as your two victims, right?” Belichek asked.
“Yes. That’s good work, Bel. How long will you stay there?”
“Long as it takes.”
“I appreciate it, but—”
“No buts. Be careful, Mags.”
“You, too.”
“Me? In this area the worst danger is a soccer ball denting my car.”
With his chuckle, they ended the call.
“Maggie—”
“No. I’m going to finish getting ready. We’ll go to the office. We’ll tell Dallas. We’ll figure this out.”
The words that had gushed out of her could not be taken back, but no more would follow.
They would not discuss her past. They would not discuss the photos she kept with her day in and day out.
* * * *
At the sight of Sheriff Gardner on the sofa in Dallas’ office, Maggie stopped short.
J.D. took hold of both her arms to keep from plowing into her. Still, his front pressed against her, the touch and friction popping off explosions in nerve endings that remembered and wanted more.
“Ah, Maggie, J.D., the sheriff here came by to hear more about what we saw in Laurel’s phone records. I’ve filled him in. He’s leaving us Rick’s records, and he’s updated me on what they know about Rick’s death.”
Maggie moved out of J.D.’s hold, took her usual chair, turning it to face the sheriff, avoiding the speculative glint in Dallas’ eyes. J.D. sat beside the sheriff.
Gardner grunted. “What we know about Rick’s death… which is pretty much nothing. Once again, no forensic leads. Nothing helpful from the witnesses. We got his phone records right away, but nothing there, either.”
“Anything useful from Barry?”
“Useful? No. He has an alibi — working at Shenny’s. Seen by a load of people, some of them passably sober. He’s covered for the whole time, not just the narrower window.”
“Narrower window? What do you mean?”
Gardner snorted. “That was a screw-up. Time on the gas station’s video was wrong. Time didn’t change automatically with Daylight Savings a couple weeks back like it should’ve. The manager had his kid change it, only the kid got the
time change backward. He made it later, instead of earlier.
“When we thought Rick was pumping gas there at nine-forty-five, it was actually seven-forty-five. We filled in the first half hour — Rick got something at a drive-through, but still, it more than doubles the window when he could have been killed. Autopsy might narrow that some, based on digestion, but still. Why the hell Abner didn’t notice the difference in the light — But he didn’t. And we wasted time…”
Gardner’s words went on, but Maggie didn’t hear.
Seven-forty-five.
Doubles the window.
J.D. could have gone there, killed Rick, and still be back at his place in time.
Could he have also been the person she smacked with the garbage? Maybe not, but what did that matter?
He didn’t have an alibi for Rick Wade’s murder.
He could have done that murder.
And the others.
Every word he’d said, every gesture, every look. Every kiss. Every slide of his body against her. In her.
Shifting, spinning.
You’re a fool. You’ll get sucked in by him just like all the rest.
That’s what Rick Wade had said to her and now he was dead.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
“Excuse me.”
Maggie made it to the hallway, but felt J.D.’s presence behind her.
“I have to—”
“No.” He took her arm, led her to his office.
She might have been able to pull away, she didn’t try. She didn’t feel anything, didn’t think anything. She was a blank. A sinking, dark blank.
“Maggie, you went absolute white. Are you sick?”
He closed the door.
That stirred something in her.
He stopped dead, seeing her face. Slowly, his head drew back, his hands dropped to his sides. A soldier’s stance.
“I see.”
Did he? That fast? How could he if he wasn’t guilty?
“In the absence of certain proof, you go to certain disbelief. I should have expected … I built too much on the fact that you wondered four and a half years ago if I was innocent.”
She jumped into familiar territory. “Once I reviewed the evidence, I was sure—”
“You wondered.”
“I don’t know what you could possibly base—”
“The hell you don’t, Maggie.”
His voice was low. He didn’t touch her. Didn’t try to. Yet she felt as if she were shrinking from him.
“You looked at me there in that courtroom, and you didn’t know. Screw your evidence and your witnesses and your testimony — you, here—” His finger held steady a centimeter from her breast, “—didn’t know.”
“No.” He drew it out, discovering something in the saying of it. “It’s a hell of a lot worse than that. You did know. You knew I didn’t do it. Goddammit.”
He pivoted away.
“I — How could I possibly know? The evidence said—”
He slashed the air with one hand. “Be quiet, Maggie. Just goddamn, be quiet.” They held like that, the harshness of their breathing the only sound.
A minute. More.
She turned on her heel, strode out. Keeping her back straight, her pace steady. Grabbing her keys, ignoring Dallas’ questions. Walking back to the guesthouse. Getting into the car.
* * * *
Intuition. That’s all it had been four and a half years ago. A wobbly, woolly flash of unsupported what-if thinking for a handful of moments.
She hadn’t known.
Not in any sane, reasoned sense.
She’d looked at a man with evidence pointing toward his guilt, and she’d had an intuition.
What was she supposed to have done with that?
She’d already read the case notes. She knew the investigation was crap, but the conclusion was logical. From the start, she’d heard the closing argument in her head, writing itself. Layering the connections between defendant and murderer, drawing in all the threads. The poor boy from the bad family, who had longed for the town’s golden girl all his life. Came back to Bedhurst as a proud and successful man. Found the girl now an unhappy woman, prepared to give him what he’d always wanted — her love. And then, when it seemed she was within his grasp, she pulled back, set to return to the man who had belittled that poor boy all his life.
But he wasn’t a poor boy any longer. He was a deadly force in himself. And in that moment, the deadly force was unleashed.
The heat of his emotion was there in the note crammed into her mouth — his note. She had crumpled his dream, as he did the note.
All this on one side.
An irrational flash at the last instant on the other.
There had never been a moment during the days of the trial she hadn’t believed in what she was doing. Absolutely.
Not the way defense lawyers believed they had to give their client the best defense, guilty or not. But in the way she had always believed in her cases — giving the best prosecution because the defendant was guilty.
And then that moment before the verdict.…
But she hadn’t known.
She still didn’t know. Couldn’t know.
She’d made love with him. A man who might be a murderer. A murderer of young women, who looked like her … and Vivian.
Might be…
Might be.
She stopped along the highway, well out of sight of any house.
She opened the car door, leaned out and vomited.
* * * *
3:36 p.m.
Her phone rang.
Gave up.
Started ringing again.
Not J.D. Not Dallas.
Caller ID said Rambler Farm.
She answered.
“Maggie? It’s Ed. Ed Smith.”
“Ed. Hi.”
“Are you okay? You sound—”
“Just a little under the weather. I’ll be fine. What do you need?”
“Can we meet? Talk?”
“I can be at Rambler Farm in—”
“No. Not here. Where are you?”
She looked around. Grimaced. “I appear to be at the entrance to Bedhurst Cemetery.”
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. There’s a bench at the top of a rise on the east side. I’ll meet you there.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
After hellos, he talked about rereading the transcript. Mostly about how smart she’d been in the trial.
Right.
“Nothing seemed … off to you?”
That moment before the verdict. Thinking something was off, mocking herself…
“No. Nothing. And I was looking after what you said. Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Not at all. Thanks for going over it again.”
He sat staring straight ahead.
She broke into the silence. “What is it, Ed?”
“Oh. I … nothing.”
“Ed, if you know anything about the murders that—”
“No! No, I swear. I don’t.”
“Or anything about Laurel—” She took a wider swipe. “—Or background about her character or the interactions of people that might explain what’s happening now.”
His head dropped forward. His shoulders shuddered.
“What is it, Ed?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with her death. It’s … God, I feel…”
Light glinted off a trail of moisture beside his nose. She waited, a luxury she seldom had at trial.
“She was so sure, so sexy. I couldn’t believe it when she came on to me. And I wasn’t imagining it,” he added in a stronger voice. “She came on to me.”
Maggie’s brain teemed with possibilities. “When was this, Ed?”
“We weren’t married. I didn’t cheat on Charlotte.” His words crowded together.
She eased into it. “It was before you started dating Charlotte?”
He shook his head.
“Before you were engaged?”
Another head-shake, this one smaller, his head dropped lower.
“How long before the wedding, Ed?”
“Three weeks. It only lasted nine days.”
Maggie sat back, leaving him to his misery. Laurel had gone after her brother-in-law to-be three weeks before her sister’s wedding. And kept it going until days before the wedding.
Ed was sweet, but not exactly gotta-have-him-or-I’ll-die material. So why? Power? That fit with what they’d come to know of Laurel. Control? Over him? Or—?
“Did Charlotte know?
Ed’s head snapped up. “No! Absolutely not. No idea.”
He was too emphatic.
“She knows now, though.” And from what she’d seen of Charlotte, the woman would not be surprised.
Maggie had a sudden longing to see and talk to Ally and Jamie. Maybe it was the certainty that whatever strains there were between and among them, they would never do that to her, each other, or anyone else on the planet. The toxic sisterly relationship between Charlotte and Laurel had her longing for her cousins, which at least had the benefit of involving ethical human beings with shared old memories. Good memories. Despite what followed.
“I don’t know why you’d think she—”
“Ed.”
He stopped.
“How did she react?”
“She’s hurt. Of course. Unhappy. But she knows I take our vows very seriously. And we’re happy together. We have a good marriage. She’ll put it behind us, as I’ve put it behind me.”
“When did she find out.” No need to ask if he’d told her. Damn clear he hadn’t.
“I told her … a day ago.” Lie, lie, lie. “She’s had too much to deal with already with her sister’s murder, and supporting the judge, and now this. I’ll never forgive myself for adding to her burden.”
“She must be jealous. Any woman would be, under the circumstances, but even more jealous considering Laurel’s…ways.”
“No.”
“The kind of jealousy and worry about a relationship that could push a woman to viole—”
“No!”
“Violence,” Maggie repeated the whole word, “even against her own sister.”
Ed straightened some. Though his shoulders still rounded forward he achieved a kind of dignity. “I better leave now, Maggie. I’ve told you, my wife didn’t know anything about this until after Laurel’s death. It’s my guilt, my shame. And I won’t burden her further by talking about it ever again.” He looked at her, half stern, half pleading. “And you won’t either.”
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