by Nancy Rue
“No.” His pause was full.
“Dan?” I said.
“You said the lid on the jar was from powered dye. I use that. And I have a jar missing.”
“Are you sure?” I didn’t point out that he had a lot of stuff out there, and keeping close tabs on the inventory wasn’t his MO.
“Yeah, but not sure enough to confront Ian with it. I did search his room, though, and I found something—I don’t know if it means anything.” His voice dropped. “I don’t know if I want it to mean anything.”
“I hear you, but—”
“It’s a magazine.” I heard pages rustle. “Proceso. The whole thing’s in Spanish, and Ian doesn’t speak Spanish. So unless he’s using it for one of his debate arguments—”
“Whoa—what did you—”
“But there’s a picture cut out of it.”
“What page?” I said.
“Thirty-two.”
I stood up and threw off the blanket. “Dan, the picture on the note that was thrown through my windshield was from that magazine, that page.”
A stunned silence dropped between us. From within it, I heard Dan whisper, “God help us.”
“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Please.”
God was showing off in Las Cruces at one o’clock Thursday afternoon when Sully walked out of jail. All of the aspens had turned October gold, and the sky was a crisp blue that beckoned his eyes upward to the brilliant flashes of two hot air balloons chuffing above the city.
Once he and Rusty Huff were beyond the reporters and the cameras that had blurred before him down the steps to Rusty’s rental car, Sully let the window down on the passenger side and breathed in. Sagebrush, restaurant lard, the exhaust from some guy’s Harley—he didn’t care—they were the smells of freedom.
“Dude, I’m a happy man,” he said.
Rusty glanced over from the steering wheel and nodded, but there was no real agreement in his eyes.
“Okay,” Sully said. “Dish.”
Rusty ran a hand over his clean-shaven head. “You want to grab something to eat first?”
“I’m not excited about going into a restaurant with this ankle bracelet on. The judge actually sees me as a flight risk?”
“I guess $500,000 doesn’t talk as loud as we thought. How about a drive-through?”
Sully wasn’t hungry, but he nodded. “Let’s take it to the clinic and eat. There must be a lot of damage control to do.”
Rusty jittered his fingers on the steering wheel. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. We all know you’re innocent, Sully, but we feel like it’s the best thing for you to stay away from the clinic until this whole thing is cleared up. Besides . . .” He frowned as he looked back to change lanes.
“Besides what?”
“You look like death. You’ve got to get yourself put back together again physically, my friend. Why don’t you take some time to get your head straight?” He pulled the car into a Taco Bell driveway. “You want a couple of burritos?”
“Sure,” Sully said.
Get his head straight. How was that going to happen? He wasn’t sure he should call Porphyria. He’d like to run things by Kyle, but if he wasn’t supposed to go near the clinic, that was out. The one person he wanted to go to was Tess. He swallowed back a rise of anxiety. She had to have written him off by now. He’d gone over that ad nauseum in jail. She knew he was desperate to find Belinda. He’d insisted on going alone. Why wouldn’t she buy what the police believed? He tried not to consider that she may have been the one who told them he was stalking the victim. But that meant not thinking about her at all, and that was impossible.
When Rusty left him at the house and went back to the clinic, Sully tossed two uneaten burritos into the trash, and after one glance at the evidence that his house had been searched, pulled a kitchen chair out to the front porch. He couldn’t see the street for the overgrown bushes, but at least he was outside. He wasn’t sure he could ever stay in an enclosed room again. He avoided entertaining the possibility that he wouldn’t have a choice.
He was gazing up at the Organs, searching their crags for peace, when his cell phone rang. It was Harlan Snow.
“Sorry I didn’t get to talk to you after the hearing,” he said. “Things got stacked up. How are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Sully said.
“That’s to be expected. Listen, Sullivan, we have some time before your case goes to trial, so I’m going to continue to flesh this thing out.”
Sully waited.
“Aside from the fact that they found nothing on the clothes they took from your house, the DA has a strong case. Hernandez has a good track record, but I don’t think she can knock down extreme emotional distress as a defense.”
Sully let that sink into a cold place in his brain. “You think I did it.”
“I didn’t say that. But I have to be prepared if this thing starts to go south.”
There was no way Sully could process that right now. “I’m going to get some rest,” he said.
“Do it. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Sully hung up and dropped the phone into his lap. Extreme emotional distress. He hadn’t been feeling it the night he walked up Belinda Cox’s front walk, but he was getting there now.
A vehicle pulled to the curb, and Sully stood up to peer over the tops of the bushes, anxiety immediately pumping. God, please don’t let it be Baranovic, coming to tell him there’d been a mistake about the bail.
It was a small SUV with the name of a courier service emblazoned on the side. The driver left the motor running and started up the path with a large white envelope in his hand. He stopped and squinted at the numbers on the mailbox and then at the package.
“Yeah, somebody lives here,” Sully called to him.
“Sullivan Crisp?”
“Yeah,” Sully said, but he wondered if he was going to regret this.
Palms sweating, he signed for the thing and waited for the driver to take off before he slit it open. Unwelcome possibilities flipped through his mind until he pulled out a white sheet with a line drawing penned across it.
For the first time in more than a week, Sully felt a grin spread slowly, deliciously across his face—the same grin, he was sure, that smiled up at him from the drawing. An expert had sketched him in caricature—short hair askew, eyes dancing, grin loping from lobe to lobe. It was Sullivan Crisp himself, right down to the too-wild Hawaiian shirt.
She’d signed it unnecessarily. No one else but Tess could have drawn it. But the note she’d written at the bottom he did need.
I did you in ink, it said.
Sully propped a foot on his opposite knee and spread the paper on his calf. When another vehicle pulled up and its motor died, he shook his head. Leave me alone, he wanted to call to it. I’m falling in love.
I practiced my spiel all the way up the ragged front walk to Dr. Crisp’s house: I know I’m crossing some kind of therapist-client boundary, but I don’t care. I had to see you face-to-face and tell you I don’t believe you’re any more guilty than Jake is.
Tucking my laptop under my arm, I used one hand to part the bush that hung over the steps and jumped a foot when I saw Sullivan himself sitting on the front porch.
“I’m sorry!” we said in unison.
He stood up and put his hand down to me. I grabbed it and held on until I got the tears to back off. He didn’t look like he needed anybody crying right now.
Even though I’d seen him earlier from afar, his appearance up close was a shock. His eyes seemed to have sunken into the dark crescents under his eyes, and the grin he was attempting now curved into gaunt cheeks. If he had eaten or slept in the last week, I would be surprised.
“I know I’m not supposed to be here,” I said.
“Actually, I’m not sure what the rules are in this situation,” he said, “so let’s just make them up as we go along. Have a step.”
I sank down onto the edge of the porch beside him and hugged my laptop
to my chest to hold in the pain. I hoped I was keeping it off my face.
“Tell me about you,” he said.
“You sure you want to hear, with all you’re going through?”
“I do.” He looked down at a folded piece of paper he was creasing over and over. “I’m so sorry I haven’t been there for you.”
“But you have been. I’ve been using everything you’ve taught me.” I tried to smile. “I haven’t destroyed any property since the last time we talked.”
He tried to smile too. Neither of us made it work.
I lowered the computer to my lap. “I really came to tell you that I know what injustice feels like. For what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth a lot.”
“I’m just glad you got bailed out. We didn’t have that option with Jake.”
“I looked for him in there, but they don’t let you mingle much.”
“I told your colleague—what’s his name? Kyle Neering?”
“You saw Kyle?”
“The night it happened, when I went to the scene to take pictures. I told him I’d help with bail, but he never called me.”
Sullivan’s eyes widened. “The night of the murder?”
“I didn’t even know you were a suspect already, but he seemed to know what was going on. He was really concerned, and it scared me.” I hunched my shoulders. “I guess rightfully so, huh?”
His attention seemed to have snagged on something else. I rubbed my hand across the computer.
“I’m not going to keep you,” I said. “I do want to show you something.”
Sullivan pulled himself back to me and nodded. I opened the laptop, pulled up the shots I’d taken earlier, and clicked on a close-up of his profile. His chin was lifted, his eyes focused and clear. There was no downward slant of shame, no uncertainty around his mouth. It was the picture of a man anyone would trust.
“This’ll be on the front page of the Sun-News tomorrow,” I said. “I made a picture of an innocent man.”
“I always said you were good.”
“Just remember what I told you: I don’t manipulate. I just photograph what’s there.”
“Thank you, Ryan. I mean it. This is . . . I can’t even . . .”
“Don’t try,” I said.
I closed the computer and stood up. Only then did I see the KRWG van parked across the street.
“I think you should go inside and close all your shades,” I said. “I’ve given you all the coverage you need.”
Despite his vow never to be closed in again, Sully did what Ryan suggested—though not only to get away from the reporters. He had to get a handle on what else she’d told him.
He closed the last set of curtains in the kitchen and leaned on the sink, forcing himself to line up the facts in a mind that was running in a frantic circle.
He saw Kyle the day of the murder, Wednesday, just before he talked to Porphyria. He had a duffel bag in his hand, and he told Sully he was going back to Little Rock for a few days to finalize the sale of his house.
Kyle had been shocked when he got back to town and found out what happened—Sully was sure that was what Rusty told him when they talked Saturday morning.
Sully cocked his head back and searched the cracks in the ceiling. Ryan had just told him she saw Kyle at Belinda Cox’s the night of the murder.
All right—so he hadn’t left town yet. Then why the big surprise when he got back?
That part might be explained by a blurring of somebody’s memory. But not the other thing. Not Kyle’s concern for Sully before he was even arrested. For that matter, before the police had even questioned him.
The doorbell rang.
“Channel 6 News, Dr. Crisp,” someone shouted. “We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Sully shook his head in the empty kitchen. No. Not until he asked a few of his own.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I didn’t need coffee to wake me up the morning the trial resumed. I hadn’t slept all night.
But I rethought that when I arrived thirty minutes before they opened the courtroom doors and had nothing to do with my hands as I stood in the corridor waiting. The stuff they sold in the kiosk downstairs tasted like engine sludge, but holding a cup might keep me from taking a swing at Ian if I saw him. I turned to the steps and ran almost head-on into Elena Sanchez.
I’d managed to avoid her on Monday, and our eyes hadn’t met in the courtroom. She may have watched me from across the aisle, the way I had studied her, and made the connection that I was Jake’s mother; I didn’t know. Now, as delight replaced the grief in her eyes, I hoped she hadn’t.
“Grafa!” she said. Her warm hands grasped mine, and her eyes went to my chest, where in her presence my camera always hung. “No pictures today?”
My hope was realized. But as she gazed at me, smiling and trusting, I couldn’t let it go on.
“I’m not here as a photographer today, Elena,” I said. “I’m here as Jacob Coe’s mother.”
I let the truth sink in, watched the disbelief and the disillusion rise to the surface. She withdrew her hands and stepped back from me, and in her eyes I saw what might have been slip away.
“Ryan,” a male voice said behind me.
I turned to face Will and felt Elena brush past as she hurried away.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be talking to her,” he said.
I shook my head. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”
I couldn’t think about Elena Sanchez once Jake was brought in. He smiled at me when I said his name, and he even let Will put his arm around him and pull him closer for a conference.
“He seems good, doesn’t he?” Dan whispered to me.
“Almost.” I looked around him to the empty seat on his other side. “Where’s Ginger?”
“Out in the hall with Ian. He can’t come in until it’s time for him to testify, so she’s waiting with him.”
“So . . .” I said.
“I gave the magazine to Will,” he said.
I wasn’t completely satisfied with that and was about to say so when Will patted Jake on the back and swiveled toward us, eyes drooping at the corners. “I couldn’t get the magazine into evidence,” he said.
“Why not?” I said.
“An issue of relevance. But I can still use what you’ve told me on cross.”
I started to protest again, but the bailiff told us to rise. My hope didn’t.
With the usual preliminaries out of the way, Nina Hernandez stood up as if she were about to announce an Academy Award winner and called Ian Iverton to the stand. My old anger went right up my spine and, I knew, into my face. Will had instructed us not to make any audible responses, no matter what happened, but he hadn’t said anything about curled lips and squinty eyes.
Ian approached with a confident stride, wearing pressed khakis and a crisp white oxford shirt and a necktie he must have ripped off some prep school kid. He took his oath to tell the truth soberly, while I, to use Alex’s word, tried not to puke.
When I stole a look at Jake, however, he was watching Ian with the same rapt attention he always gave the boy. He sat upright at the table, neck straining forward, the picture of eager anticipation. Will said he’d told Jake everything Alex reported to me and informed him of our suspicions that Ian had planted the bomb as well, but Jake still refused to talk—so what was this? What was Jake expecting Ian to say?
What Nina Hernandez expected him to say was apparent right after she established Ian’s relationship to Jake and how, because Ian was a school leader, a star athlete, and an honor student, he could assess a situation intelligently.
“Were you aware of the relationship between Jacob Coe and the victim, Miguel Sanchez?”
Ian sighed deeply and said yes.
“And how is it that you know about their friendship?”
“It wasn’t a friendship,” Ian said. “Jake hated Miguel.”
“Objection. Hearsay,” Will said.
> The judge overruled him and nodded for Hernandez to proceed. Dan put his hand on my arm. That and that alone kept me in my seat.
“Did Jake tell you he hated Miguel?” she asked Ian.
“All the time.” Ian made a pained face. “But he didn’t have to tell me. I saw it.”
“Saw it how?”
“When we were playing soccer, Jake was always making racial slurs, calling Miguel a bean eater, among other things. He was extremely upset when he found out Miguel was trying out for the select team.”
“Did he do anything to stop him?”
Ian shook his head. “He wanted to, but I told him no—everybody has a right to take their shot.”
I had to plaster both hands across my mouth. Jake was perfectly still at the table, staring at Ian, all color gone from his face.
“Did Miguel make the team?”
“Yes, ma’am. So did Jake.”
“Was Jake upset about that?”
Ian looked down at his lap, something I had never seen him do.
“Ian,” Hernandez said. “I know Jake Coe is your friend, but you’ve got to tell the truth.”
He made a show of swallowing and finally said in a half whisper, “He was beyond upset. He said he was never playing soccer with that Mexican—”
And Ian let out a string of words I knew had never come from my son’s mouth. I jerked my head toward Will, certain he would stand up and object to this obvious perjury. But he was turned toward Jake, who was whispering into his ear.
“Ian,” Hernandez said, “did you know Jake Coe planned to attack Miguel Sanchez in the alley that day?”
Ian pulled his neck up indignantly. “Absolutely not. If I had, I would have told someone. Friend or no friend, I wouldn’t have let something like that happen.”
“One more question.” Nina Hernandez pressed praying hands against her lips before she went on. “If you and the defendant were such close friends, why wouldn’t he tell you about his plan?”
“I guess because he knew I wouldn’t have anything to do with killing somebody.”
The room went black around the edges, and I could hear myself gasping for air and sanity. Will put a hand back toward me and stood up, all in one fluid motion.
“Your Honor, I would like to request a recess to confer with my client,” he said.