Tell No Lies

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Augusta nodded, her face warming. She wished the damned pot were anywhere but in front of her face. It was a sweet gesture from her sister, but the last thing in the world she wanted to be reminded of was the man she’d lost her mind over.

  “Oh God!” she heard Caroline exclaim from the hall. “Oh . . . dear God . . . Jack.” Caroline choked out the last few words and a chill skittered down Augusta’s spine. Her sister wasn’t the sort for melodrama—none of them were—but Caroline least of all. As the eldest child of Florence Willodean Aldridge, she had often been the one left to pick up the pieces. At times, Caroline seemed as much a stone fortress as their mother.

  Obviously eavesdropping as well, Sadie slid Augusta a curious glance, and Augusta sipped at her coffee while she waited for Caroline to walk back into the kitchen. What in the world would have her so upset already this morning?

  Maybe Jack was backing out of the wedding?

  But Augusta didn’t think so. She had never seen a man with bigger goo-goo eyes than her prospective brother-in-law. After ten years apart, she didn’t think those two could be separated with a crowbar at this point in time. But Jack was a police officer, so maybe it had something to do with his job . . .

  There was a weighted silence from the hall. When Caroline walked back into the kitchen, her face was pale as paper, her eyes glassy.

  “What on God’s green earth?” Sadie asked, her black eyes full of dread.

  Blinking back tears, Caroline walked into the kitchen, her gaze zeroing in on Augusta. She swallowed hard, clutching the kitchen island, and said, “They found Pam Baker’s body.”

  “Oh no!” Sadie exclaimed.

  Caroline looked as though she were about to faint. “There’s more,” she said, and a prickle raced down Augusta’s spine.

  Ian had learned to tune out most of the sounds of prison, but the small things still got through somehow. The constant running of his toilet, the distant ting, ting, ting of someone tapping impatiently on a metal bed and the low-grade scratching of what sounded like fingernails on cement walls.

  Lying on his cot, he stared at the yellow stains on the mattress above him, wondering how the hell he had become so deeply embroiled in someone else’s affairs.

  As always, everything had begun innocently enough. He’d been asked to search for a missing girl—a member of his parish. Sixteen-year-old Jennifer Williams had accused him of improper conduct, but she had been in pain at the time, and his rejection had sent her reeling. The girl had regretted her accusation almost at once and fessed up—too late to save his affiliation with the Church. But it was just as well. Ian wasn’t cut out to be a priest.

  He obviously wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s savior either, because he was doing a piss-poor job of helping anyone—including himself. Somehow he’d managed to dive headfirst into legal piles of shit. First, Williams’s accusations. And now he was being held on not one but two counts of capital murder, neither of which he’d committed.

  Scheduled in exactly thirty minutes, his preliminary hearing would establish once and for all whether the evidence was solid enough to go to trial.

  He knew it wasn’t. Ninety percent of the evidence had been planted. But by whom and why? That he didn’t know. All he could figure was that someone knew he was getting close to the truth and wanted him out of the way. Somehow, he felt in his gut that it all came back to the Aldridges. There was a connection there; he just didn’t know what it was yet.

  “Enjoying your vacation?”

  Recognizing the voice, Ian tensed. He didn’t bother to get up. “Sure,” he said, sliding a look at the face peering in through his bars. “The accommodations are great. Always wanted a bird’s-eye view of men getting fucked up the ass, both literally and figuratively.”

  Jack Shaw stood outside his cell, assessing him, and Ian sat up.

  “You’d look great in pink,” Shaw suggested, referring to the color of the jumpsuits issued by the state to sexual offenders. “But I’d personally love to see you in green.”

  The color issued to inmates on death row.

  Despite the fact that Ian was innocent, Jack’s comment hit the mark.

  Once upon a time, he’d believed all good people went to heaven; all the bad ones went to hell. Now he suspected there was no heaven or hell except for the one that existed right here on earth—more specifically right here in this cell. He never would have imagined an innocent man could be convicted of a crime—not even after Jennifer Williams had accused him of wrongful conduct. In the end, justice had prevailed. But right now he was facing the possibility of a death sentence, because South Carolina was one of thirty-three states that still kept a death row.

  Struggling with his anger, he peered down at his prison-issue shoes. “What do you want, Shaw?”

  “To see your reaction, I suppose.”

  Ian leaned forward, interested despite his anger. He crossed his fingers into a fist—never again would he bend his hands in prayer.

  There was no justice.

  There was no God.

  No one was innocent anymore.

  Not even him.

  Shaw’s canny eyes watched him.

  “Reaction to what, exactly?”

  “You’re going to find out soon enough,” he suggested. “So I wanted to be the one to break the news. Seems they found Pamela Baker’s body.”

  Ian’s stomach plummeted. It didn’t matter that they thought he was guilty. He wasn’t. And now another girl was dead; he braced himself for the rest of the news. He might as well know exactly what it was they were going to attempt to pin on him. “And?”

  Shaw hitched his shoulders. “Looks like you’re off the hook for this one.”

  Ian surged to his feet. “Why?”

  “Doesn’t seem the sort of question an innocent man would ask.”

  “My innocence hasn’t stopped you from trying to prosecute me thus far—or from harassing the girl who’s my alibi.”

  “People lie,” Shaw suggested.

  The two of them stared hard at one another, unflinching.

  “Baker has been dead for less than a week,” Shaw finally offered.

  Blinking, Ian found himself drawn toward the bars, staring Jack directly in the eyes. Something like hope took seed in his gut. “I didn’t kill anyone,” he swore for the hundredth time.

  “So you’ve said.”

  “It’s the truth.” He reached a hand toward the bar, wrapping his fist around the cold metal.

  Shaw didn’t bother to move away. “So you say.”

  The two locked gazes, and in a moment of weakness, Ian came close to pleading. “I’m not guilty,” he insisted, his jaw working.

  Shaw seemed to study him harder. “Maybe not,” he conceded after a long moment, and then he took a step backward, and turned and walked away, down the hall toward the security doors, leaving Ian securely locked behind bars.

  “I want to see my attorney!” Ian shouted at his back.

  “He’s on the way,” Shaw offered without turning, and God help him, Ian felt a bolt of relief. More than love or human compassion—or even sorrow for the girl who had lost her life—he felt relief for himself.

  As he stood there watching Shaw disappear behind the security doors, he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that every last trace of the man he used to be—the man he was trying to be—was gone.

  Who was he now?

  Someone he didn’t know.

  Someone he didn’t want to know.

  After the phone call from Jack, Caroline went right to the hospital to see Rose Simmons. Augusta declined to go, mainly because she couldn’t bear the thought of facing Rose or her family right now . . . not knowing what she was about to do . . .

  A memory of Cody Simmons—tiny and premature, with shining black hair, emerged in her thoughts as she sat in her mother’s car, staring at the King Street building that housed Greene & Ashe Law Offices, their family attorney. There were bars on the windows—a necessity in this part of town. While Augusta ha
d defended Daniel’s decision to remain here in this area of urban reconstruction—because she admired his resolve to stand firmly by the people who needed him most—after being mugged last month, she no longer felt comfortable coming here alone. Her car doors remained locked and her windows were up despite that the car’s vintage air-conditioning was sputtering a little.

  Beads of sweat trickled between her breasts as she waited. Her gaze shifted anxiously between the newspaper on the passenger seat and the black-painted door of the law office.

  The sound of ringing suddenly erupted from her purse. She fished the phone out with some trepidation. It was Josh. She grimaced at the sight of his name on her caller ID. Of all the people who might have called, he was the one person Augusta couldn’t bring herself to avoid. Unlike with her sisters, she felt obligated to pick up his phone calls, even though she didn’t want to talk to him—maybe out of some lingering sense of loyalty? As kids, her mother had claimed they were “tight as ticks” and they had been, but things changed. She had changed. She tapped the answer button and tried to keep the chagrin from her tone. “Hello.”

  “Hey, you. I heard about Cody. Where are you?”

  Augusta frowned at his question. For a guy who seemed to get his way without fail, he was strangely lacking in social graces. Augusta didn’t want to tell him where she was. “Downtown,” she offered.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” she reassured, but refused to offer more. The days of confiding all to Josh were done. Besides, he of all people wouldn’t understand.

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. She had the sense that her answer disappointed him—as though somehow Josh had expected her to handle the news of Cody’s disappearance with the same outrage of her youth. More than that, she had the feeling he needed her to lean on him.

  Unbidden, the memory of the two of them out behind the boathouse accosted her. They had been sixteen that day when he’d kissed her. Augusta had immediately regretted it and their relationship had suffered afterward, although Josh seemed bound and determined to pretend everything was exactly as it had once been.

  Well, it wasn’t.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” he said. “Are you on your way to the hospital now?”

  Guilt pricked at her. “Caroline’s there,” she said. “You know I’m not really all that great with words.”

  “If it’ll make you feel better, I’m not sure anyone really knows what to say. Gruesome shit. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

  Why did everything he said seem to annoy her these days? She smacked the steering wheel with the butt of her hand, eyeing Daniel Greene’s office door. “I will, Josh. But you don’t have to worry about me, you know. I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

  But that wasn’t exactly true. They could all use a watchful eye these days, including Josh. So far, three bodies had been discovered—all found naked, hands posed in prayer, the tongues cut out. As much as the police tried to keep the details quiet, there wasn’t much chance Augusta wouldn’t know some of the more gruesome details when her sister was both a potential victim and publisher of the Tribune—not to mention the fact that Caroline’s fiancé was, at least initially, the detective in charge of the investigations.

  Josh was trying to help, she reminded herself. He wasn’t Caroline. Her sister’s micromanaging eclipsed everyone else’s. So what was she really reacting to? Maybe her own sense of guilt for the kiss behind the boathouse? In fact, she had never kissed anyone before that day and had actually egged him on, eager for the experience. The fact that it had left her with a sick feeling in her belly afterward had little to do with Josh, or anything he had done, and everything to do with herself.

  Across the street, Daniel Greene pulled into a parking space in front of his building and got out of his car. “Look, Josh, I’ve got to go.”

  He sighed, but Augusta just couldn’t change the way she felt. She wanted him to move on and let go. “Bye,” he said.

  Augusta hung up as Greene walked into his office. Her eyes returned to the morning’s edition of the Tribune on the passenger seat beside her.

  Ian was innocent, she was sure of it.

  Cannibalizing the inside of her lip, she stared at the paper. Jack hadn’t given Caroline all that many details, but she’d overheard enough to know Pamela had still been alive a week ago. Now she wasn’t, and there was no way Ian could have killed her sitting behind bars. No, someone else was doing this, and she felt guiltier now for not having come forward sooner. One more alibi might have gotten Ian out of jail. Apparently, despite all her talk, she was just a chicken at heart . . . but she could make up for it now . . .

  Considering the potential aftermath of her decision, she sat rooted to the seat of her car—not ambivalent exactly, just full of dread.

  Caroline would go out of her mind. Savannah would say nothing, but privately think she was insane. Who knew what Jack would do, considering the crimes Ian Patterson stood accused of—two counts of murder, and at least one count of attempted murder, with her sister Caroline being a potential victim . . .

  The thing was . . . Augusta hadn’t believed in Ian’s guilt from the beginning—and even though she had been there the afternoon they had cuffed him and hauled him away from the ruins on their property, she had had a difficult time believing any of it was true.

  That wounded look in his eyes—she couldn’t forget it. His gaze had been fixed upon her, unwavering, those blue eyes laced with anger . . . and something else . . .

  Disappointment?

  Now another child was missing, and deep down in her gut, Augusta felt Ian was the best chance Cody Simmons had. She felt it down in her bones—maybe not quite the same way Savannah knew things, but she felt it nevertheless, without any ambivalence . . . despite the fact that it seemed to go against all rational thought. Ian knew something . . . even if he didn’t know what he knew . . . and someone was willing to frame him for it.

  A hearing had been scheduled for this morning. The news was already plastered across every headline. In a very emotional, controversial decision, they had set bail rather than hold Ian without. Set at one point five million, all he had to come up with was 10 percent. It was money she knew he probably didn’t have.

  But Augusta did.

  Their attorney would balk, but he would do exactly as she asked. After all, it was Augusta’s money and she had a right to use it however she wished. This time, it wasn’t simply about siding with the underdog. It was about a deep and abiding desire for justice. And Ian Patterson was at the heart of that justice. Having spent the last six months searching for Jennifer Smith, he knew as much as the police did about this investigation.

  Maybe he would find Cody? It was a long shot, but she was willing to risk it. Let the cards fall where they may . . .

  Even if it meant adding her name to the witch hunt.

  Even if it meant severing the fragile bond she was finally forming with her sisters.

  Even if it meant risking the chance that she might be wrong.

  Taking a deep breath, she opened the car door and slid out from behind the wheel of her mother’s Town Car. Locking the door and dropping the keys into her purse, she headed straight into Daniel Greene’s office, with the intention of paying Ian’s bail.

  Chapter 4

  Apparently, Lady Justice had a name; it was Augusta Aldridge.

  Less than two hours after Ian’s hearing, with his exit procedure completed, he made a beeline for the door, half-expecting to find Augusta waiting outside. She had paid his bail, but not in person—she had sent her attorney instead. He didn’t exactly know how to feel about that. He did know he felt both relief and disappointment that he didn’t spy her strawberry-blond head outside the station, though he wasn’t sure what he would say to her, aside from thank you.

  He hadn’t been able to get her off his mind.

  During the three weeks spent for the most part in his own head, Augusta’s face had been a constant ghost before h
is eyes. The look on her face as they’d handcuffed him and hauled him away after her sister’s ordeal had cut him deeper than he might have expected, especially considering that he really didn’t know her. He’d spent one night with her. One night.

  But one helluva night.

  Augusta was not the sort of girl you easily forgot. Brash. Honest. Beautiful. She spoke her mind and wore her heart on her sleeve. Exactly the sort of woman he could go for . . . if he were free. But he wasn’t free.

  What was worse, he was lost.

  He still hadn’t quite processed his excommunication from the Church—not that celibacy had ever been a welcome requisite, though he had been fully prepared to do what he had to do. But that wasn’t his problem right now.

  Right now, as much as he would like to walk away and forget everything he knew—forget there was a murderer out there snuffing out innocent lives—he couldn’t. Bottom line: Someone was willing to derail his life to get him out of the way. Someone was watching him. And if they were watching him, it meant he was getting close, even if he didn’t know what it was he was getting close to. But he was no longer moving under the radar—possibly never had been. If he let Augusta Aldridge anywhere near him, he’d be placing her in danger, too. Because now more than ever, Ian was determined to find out who was at the bottom of Jennifer Williams’s disappearance. He had a hunch that person was also responsible for the deaths of at least three other women and possibly more. In fact, he was sure of it. Though there was as yet no body for Jennifer, he knew in his gut that the disappearances and murders were all connected—including the disappearance of Amanda Hutto, a six-year old girl from Folly Beach who didn’t fit the profile of the known victims.

  He hailed a cab and went straight to the nearest rental car dealer, renting the cheapest vehicle they had—a red Ford Focus that would unfortunately make it real easy for everyone to spot him. His Acura had been impounded so they could go over it for evidence. Hopefully, they hadn’t destroyed it during the process. Maybe he’d get the damned thing back soon, but in the meantime, he had to have something to drive and he needed a little more time to consider what to do about his poor little rich girl.