Past Due

by Jenna Bennett

  “He might could,” Rafe agreed.

  “I don’t suppose you’d have idea who?”

  He shook his head. “Like Darlene said, it coulda been anyone. Lots of girls at those parties.”

  “Names?”

  “Shit.” He ran a hand over his head while the other stayed on the steering wheel. “It was a long time ago, you know? I remember Darlene. And Yvonne. Even Elspeth, once or twice.”

  “Elspeth Caulfield?”

  He nodded.

  “Is that where...?”

  He looked at me, one brow arching, and I added, “Never mind.”

  It wasn’t like I really wanted to know where he and Elspeth had been when they got it on, after all. Bad enough that they had.

  “Anyone else you remember?”

  “Some of the girls from the softball team. Some of the cheerleaders.”

  “Epiphany?”

  He shook his head. “Not her kind of scene. She was right about that.”

  “What about Jan?”

  “Jan?” For a second, it sounded like he couldn’t place her. Then I realized he was just trying to figure out what I was thinking. “Are you thinking Ethan and Matt did something to Jan, and Danny found out and killed them?”

  “It’s possible.”

  “Not sure a guy would cut off another guy’s equipment, darlin’. Even for something like that.”

  “No?”

  He shook his head. “We’ve all taken hits to the privates at some point on our lives. We know what it feels like. No guy’s gonna do that to another guy. And anyway, no guy’s gonna want anything to do with that part of another guy.”

  “Unless he’s gay.”

  “Sure,” Rafe said. “But Danny ain’t.”

  No, he wasn’t. Unless they were all gay—Ethan, Matt, Danny and Willem—and Jan had found out about it, and decided to kill them all for sleeping with her husband.

  But that seemed a little too far-fetched, even for me.

  The Maury County Medical Center was on the east side of Columbia. It didn’t take us long to get there. We went inside and asked for Danny Emerson’s room, and were told to head up to the third floor.

  “The ICU?”

  The nurse behind the desk—late middle-age, with steel gray hair and kind but weary eyes—shook her head. “He’s been upgraded to a regular room. We’ll keep him overnight, to make sure he gets enough oxygen, but he’s probably going home tomorrow.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  She nodded. “His wife is up there. You a friend?”

  “We went to school together.”

  “There’s a lot of that going around. Go on up. The elevators are over there.” She pointed to the left.

  “Thank you.” We headed in that direction.

  “This is good news,” I said after we had pushed the button and were waiting for the elevator car to arrive. The little light above the door kept moving down, from four to three to two. “If Danny’s conscious, maybe he remembers what happened.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Rafe told me, as the elevator dinged. The doors opened slowly. “Chances are he won’t remember much. Blunt force trauma to the head tends to have that effect.”

  “I know. You warned me already.” I stepped aside to let an older couple pass by, going out. “The carbon monoxide probably didn’t help, either. But maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “You never know.” He held the door for me. “After you.”

  “Thank you.” I brushed past him, and waited until he had followed me inside to push the third floor button. Nobody else was going up, so the doors closed on the two of us, and the elevator started moving.

  On the third floor, we headed down the hallway in the direction of Danny’s room.

  “Good,” Rafe said after a few steps.

  “What?”

  “They’ve set a guard.”

  So they had. And not just any guard, but Cletus Johnson himself was leaning against the wall, thumbs hooked in his weapons belt.

  He scowled when he saw us coming, and straightened to his full height—still a couple inches shorter than Rafe. “Collier.”

  “Hi, Cletus,” I said. “We won’t stay long. We just wanted to see how Danny’s doing, and whether Jan needs anything.”

  Cletus looked like he wanted to object, but Jan must have heard my voice, because she popped her head out of the door. “Savannah?”

  I left Cletus and Rafe to sneer at one another, and approached her. “We were just on our way home from dinner and thought we’d stop by. How’s everything?”

  She took a breath. “Better. He woke up for a bit. Recognized me. Asked about the kids.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  She nodded. “He’s back to sleep again now. They’re still giving him oxygen, just to make sure everything’s all right. But he’ll be coming home tomorrow, if nothing goes wrong.”

  “I’m happy for you,” I said warmly. “It’s great that things turned out so well.”

  Or maybe ‘well’ was going a bit too far, but I couldn’t really tell her how nice it was that Danny hadn’t died. Even though it was nice that he hadn’t died, it isn’t something you can say. Not in those words.

  “Did he... um... say anything?”

  Jan blinked at me, and I added, “About what happened. Did he say anything about why he wanted to... you know...”

  Jan’s face darkened. “He said he can’t remember anything. Just that he was working on the car, and then he woke up in the hospital.”

  “That’s not uncommen, when someone hits their head.”

  “Hits their head?” Jan said.

  “There’s a bump on the back of his head, isn’t there?”

  She nodded. “The doctor said he probably hit his head when he fell.”

  And the doctor might be right. But if Danny wanted to kill himself, so he sealed the garage and started the car, why did he fall at all? Why didn’t he just sit down on the floor, or inside the car, and wait for unconsciousness to overtake him?

  And if he hadn’t tried to kill himself, but it had been a simple accident... well, that didn’t make a lot of sense, either. He was a mechanic by trade. Dix had said so. There was no way he wouldn’t have known that running the engine of an old car in an enclosed space could be hazardous to his health. Surely he would have opened the garage door, especially since the weather had been nice and warm this afternoon. Had it been cold or rainy, I could have seen him making a case for keeping the door closed, but it wasn’t. It had been a nice day.

  And anyway, if he’d been working on the car, and the car had been running, and the carbon monoxide had built up to enough of a degree to knock Danny out... wouldn’t he have fallen forwards onto the car? People work on cars facing forward. Any bump on his head would be in the front—forehead or nose—and not in the back.

  A bump in the back made it look more like someone had come up behind him while he’d been bent over the engine, and had hit him over the head with something. Then that someone had started the car and left, closing the garage door behind himself.

  But mentioning that would only make Jan feel worse. Better just to let her focus on her husband.

  “Do you need anything?” I asked. “Food? Coffee?”

  She shook her head. “One of the nurses brought me dinner. With red Jell-O.” She managed a smile. “I’m going to spend the night here. My sister has the kids, so I don’t have to worry about going home.”

  I nodded. And hesitated. But in the end, I figured I didn’t have a choice. “Did you hear about Willem?”

  “Willem?” I thought she paled, but it was hard to tell in the garish hospital lights. “Willem Gunther?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Jan’s hand flew to her throat, as if she couldn’t get enough air through and into her lungs. “Murdered?”

  “Like Ethan and Matt.”

  “God.”

  She’d definitely turned pale. And now she glanced over her shoulder at Danny, who was just
a lump in the hospital bed inside the room. I could hear the wheezing of the oxygen.

  “Cletus is out here in the hallway,” I said. “He’ll stop anyone from getting at Danny.”

  She lowered her voice. “I don’t think he’s here to protect us. I think he’s here to make sure Danny doesn’t try to kill himself again.”

  “Do you think he tried to kill himself the first time?”

  Earlier, I’d gotten the impression that she’d been firmly set against that possibility, but maybe she’d changed her mind.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Jan admitted. “I can’t think of any reason why Danny would do something like that.”

  “But?”

  She shook her head. “The police are here. Maybe they know something I don’t.”

  “They don’t know Danny the way you do.”

  She nodded, but didn’t look particularly cheered.

  “Were you...” I took a breath and tried again. “Someone told me that Ethan raped her in high school. And I’ve heard that there might have been others. That both Ethan, Matt, and Willem were involved.”

  Jan didn’t say anything, just stared at me.

  “Did anything ever happen to you, that would make Danny want to hurt them?”

  “God,” Jan said, with a hand over her mouth. “No. Nothing like that. Danny wouldn’t hurt a fly. And nothing like that ever happened to me. I didn’t hang out with that group in high school. Danny and I didn’t get together until after.”

  I nodded. “I should let you get back to him.”

  Jan nodded, too. I tried not to take it personally that she seemed to want to get rid of us. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  She said she would—not that I thought I’d hear from her—and I watched her go back to the chair beside Danny’s bed before I made my own way back to Rafe.

  He and Cletus were still snarling at each other like two mongrel dogs. I tucked my hand through his arm, and he took his eyes off Cletus to look down at me. The curled lip disappeared. “All done?”

  “Yes, thank you. She says Danny doesn’t remember anything.”

  “That happens with a knock on the head,” Rafe said, while Cletus sneered.

  “That’s what I told her. I also told her about Willem.”

  “Willem?” Cletus said.

  “Willem Gunther. We went to school with him.”

  “I know who Willem Gunther is. What happened to him?”

  I glanced at Rafe. “I thought you’d told him.”

  “We’ve been busy.”

  Having their staring contest, no doubt.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Cletus, “but he’s dead. The Columbia police went to his business about an hour ago and found him.”

  “How?”

  “The same way as Ethan and Matt.”

  Cletus winced, probably remembering the mutilation Officer Vasquez had mentioned. He’d been in Columbia that first night when Ethan was murdered, so he’d know about that. He might even have seen it with his own eyes. “Same murder weapon?” he wanted to know. “Two unsubs?”

  “I assume the same murder weapon. They’re not likely to share information like that with me. What’s an unsub?”

  “Perp,” Cletus said. “Bad guy.”

  “Short for unknown subject,” Rafe added.

  Of course.

  And then I realized what Cletus had said. “What do you mean, two?”

  There was silence. Or not silence—it’s never really silent in a hospital; there were beeps and whirs and hisses and muted footsteps all around us, along with the hissing from Danny’s oxygen treatment—but Cletus didn’t speak.

  “Did you know anything about this?” I asked Rafe.

  He shook his head.

  Cletus muttered a word that would have offended my mother. “Some of the stab wounds were deeper and more forceful than others. Could mean there were two people using the knife.”

  Shades of Murder on the Orient Express.

  I lowered my voice. “How does that jibe with you standing guard outside Danny Emerson’s hospital room? If you don’t think he’s in danger...”

  And then the pieces rearranged themselves, and I added, “Oh, surely not? You don’t think Danny and Jan...?”

  “It’d explain the wounds.”

  It would. But that wasn’t the only thing that would explain them. “Did you spend any time with Ethan, Matt and Willem growing up?” I asked.

  “We crossed paths,” Cletus answered cautiously. “Willem and I were in the same grade. We played football together.”

  “Did you ever go to parties at his place? Or at Ethan’s or Matt’s?”

  Cletus shrugged. It was quite a sight. He has massive shoulders, as broad as Rafe’s. He’s also three or four inches shorter and built like a refrigerator. Even so, it was quite impressive. Like a small mountain experiencing a localized earthquake.

  “Someone mentioned girls getting raped,” I prompted.

  He shook his head. “Dunno nothing about that. Wasn’t there that night.”

  “I wasn’t talking about a particular night. What night?”

  Cletus squirmed. It was quite a sight to see: this big, tough cop in his uniform wiggling like a five-year-old in trouble. “Just rumors. That things had gotten outta hand at one of the parties and some girls had ended up getting it from all the guys.”

  Getting it? “You mean...?”

  “Gang rape,” Rafe said, since he hasn’t my hangups about saying something like that out loud.

  Oh, God. “Do you know who the girls were?”

  Cletus shook his head. “These days, somebody woulda filmed the whole thing and it’d be all over the internet the next day. Back then, it was just talk. If somebody mentioned names, I don’t remember.”

  “But you think one of them might have been Jan?”

  He shrugged. Which can mean yes, no, or maybe, depending on the circumstances.

  I pushed a little harder. “I just asked her, and she said she didn’t hang out with them.”

  “She’s lying,” Cletus said bluntly. “I seen her there. Before.”

  “So what you’re thinking is that Jan was one of the girls who was raped, and between the two of them, she and Danny killed Ethan, Matt, and Willem.”

  “He wasn’t at the reunion last night,” Cletus said. “His ten year reunion, and he wasn’t there.”

  “She said it was because he’d stopped drinking. He didn’t want to drink club soda while everyone else was partying. And someone had to stay with the kids.” And besides, he’d been disgusted by Ethan’s thing with the cheerleader. Which, if Ethan had raped Jan when she was a teenager, made only too much sense.

  “Someone’s staying with the kids now,” Cletus pointed out.

  That was true. If Danny had wanted to go to the reunion, there had been plenty of people who could have babysat for the Emersons. They both had family in town. Family who was taking care of their children while Jan was here in the hospital with Danny.

  “They’re each other’s alibi for last night,” Cletus continued. “Nobody else around. The kids are too small to testify one way or the other.”

  “So you think Danny got cold feet and went home and tried to kill himself?”

  “Or Jan decided to get rid of him, too. There’s only her word for it that the car was running when she got home. She coulda knocked him over the head and arranged the whole thing. And waited until she thought he was dead before she called 911.”

  She could have. And at least Cletus was willing to admit that the bump on Danny’s head might not be accidental.

  I glanced at the door. “She doesn’t seem like the type to kill three people plus her husband in cold blood.”

  Cletus shrugged. “Better safe than sorry.”

  Considering what had been going on in town over the past twenty-four hours, it was hard to argue with that.

  “This is crazy,” I told Rafe when we were out of there.

  He shrugged. Yes, no, or maybe. “Wi
ves have killed their husbands before.”

  “Sure. But Jan? She doesn’t really seem the type.”

  “You ain’t seen her for ten years.”

  No. And hadn’t known her well before that, either. “I don’t really remember her from school,” I admitted. “I pretended like I did, but when she introduced herself last night, I had no idea who she was. Or who Danny was, either.”

  “So you don’t really know that she ain’t the type to kill her husband.”

  When he put it like that... “What do you think?”

  “Dunno,” Rafe said. “All the facts fit.”

  “But?”

  “I didn’t say ‘but.’”

  “You implied it.”

  “Not sure I did, darlin’. It could be Jan and her husband, if she’s one of the girls Ethan and company raped back then.”

  “Or it could be someone else. Like Darlene and Rhonda.”

  He nodded. “Or any other combination. Darlene and Epiphany. Darlene and Jan. Jan and Epiphany.”

  “Epiphany?” She hadn’t admitted to having had interactions with Ethan and his friends in high school. In fact, she’d taken care to make sure we knew she hadn’t.

  “Still waters,” Rafe said. “And it don’t stop there. Every girl we went to school with coulda been at one of those parties. Not just the ones in your grade. It coulda been Elspeth. Or Yvonne. Or your sister.”

  “Catherine was too old. Four years older than Ethan and Matt. And anyway, my mother wouldn’t have allowed any of us to go to that kind of party.”

  “Sometimes kids do what they ain’t allowed to do,” Rafe said.

  I shook my head. “Not Catherine. She’s always been too smart to do something like that.”

  And it wasn’t like the two of us had had much opportunity to misbehave, anyway. Dix went out with Todd sometimes, without Mother keeping tabs on them—I guess she figured the fact that he was with Sheriff Satterfield’s son would keep him out of trouble—but whenever I slipped the leash, I was always accompanied by Dix, Todd and Charlotte. None of whom would have wanted anything to do with Ethan and his friends.

  “I’m just saying,” Rafe said, “it coulda been anyone. Maybe not even someone you remember.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Go to your brother’s house,” Rafe said, “so you can babysit his girls. And I can babysit your brother at Dusty’s Bar.”