“You never asked her for details about what she was looking into?”
“No. But I did warn her not to go around talking about other people who might have had some quarrel with Brian. I told her she could get herself into a lot of trouble that way, if people thought she was accusing them of murder.” Morton paused, frowned at Tom. “To tell you the truth, the Hadleys are the ones that worry me. Especially that hothead Skeet. He seemed pretty determined to stop Shelley.”
“Right. Don’t worry, they’re on my radar.”
Tom and Morton both bit into their sandwiches and ate in silence for a moment.
“Where’s your colleague from Fairfax today?” Morton asked.
Tom chewed and swallowed. “I don’t know where he disappeared to. I’m just glad to be rid of him for a while.”
“Is he still convinced the killer’s in Northern Virginia?”
“Yeah. Who knows, he could be right. I’m going to Fairfax County tomorrow to talk to a few people myself. To get back to the Hadley case, nobody saw Lankford attack Brian Hadley, right?”
“Now don’t tell me you’re starting to think we got the wrong man.”
“No, I just want to clarify some things.”
“That’s right, there weren’t any witnesses to the murder. It happened at the fairground, out behind the tent where the band gave a concert. The concert was over, the rest of the band had packed up their instruments and taken off, and Brian was about to leave too. The night guard at the fairgrounds found him lying dead next to his car a couple hours after he should have left.”
“And Vance Lankford was the prime suspect from the start?” Tom asked.
“Oh, yeah. Lankford and Hadley had been fighting over Rita Jankowski for weeks, and they’d also started fighting over the record contract the band was offered. They were arguing that night in front of a lot of people, before the concert started. But we had a strong case on the physical evidence too.” Morton sipped from his coffee cup and took another bite of his sandwich.
“You mean the tire iron?” Tom said.
“Yep. Your dad searched Lankford’s car and found it under the carpet in the trunk. It had been washed, but there was enough blood left on the business end to give us Hadley’s DNA. More than enough. Lankford claimed the tool wasn’t his, he didn’t know how it got in his car. I guess I don’t have to tell you that wasn’t a compelling argument. He beat that boy’s head to a pulp, practically pulverized his skull—they had to have a closed casket at the funeral—and now he’s paying the price.”
Tom’s mind filled with the image of two young men on a darkened fairground, one of them swinging the heavy tool again and again as his victim dropped to his knees and then collapsed on the blood-splattered ground. His appetite suddenly gone, Tom folded the wrapping paper around the rest of his sandwich and set it on the desk. “It’s strange he’d be so careless about cleaning the weapon. And why did he keep it around? Why didn’t he throw it in the river?”
“People do stupid things when they’re scared and under pressure. I don’t have to tell you that. You see even more of it than I do.” Morton sat forward and met Tom’s eyes. “You read the transcript if you think it might help you in some way, but in my opinion your time’s better spent doing two things: pinning down Skeet Hadley’s whereabouts on the dates in question, and finding out who the Beecher girl was accusing of murder.”
***
After Fagan left her office, Rachel took a couple of minutes to calm down before she rejoined Michelle, Ben, and Holly.
Holly looked madly curious, but she didn’t ask any questions. Michelle leaned close and whispered to Rachel, “Are you okay? What did he want?”
“Nothing. It’s not important. Let’s go eat.”
The four of them walked in silence down Main Street to the restaurant.
Rachel didn’t see Fagan anywhere along the way, but she couldn’t relax. When she forcibly expelled him from her thoughts, another brand of anxiety seized her and she found herself studying the faces of the few strangers they passed. Was Michelle’s stalker right in front of them? Following them? She glanced back but saw only a middle-aged woman she knew as the owner of one of her patients. Rachel made herself smile, and she got a wiggly-fingered little wave and a “Hi, Doctor Rachel” in return.
When they walked into the Mountaineer, the first person she saw was Detective Fagan in a booth near the front.
“Oh, no,” Michelle groaned.
“Do you want to leave?” Ben asked.
“No,” Rachel said. “We’re not letting him drive us away.” Besides, this was the only decent place to eat in Mountainview. Rachel led the group past Fagan to the back of the room, walking under the big wagon wheels that hung from the ceiling and served as lighting fixtures. She sat in a booth facing forward so she could keep an eye on Fagan. Not beneficial to her blood pressure, she supposed, but turning her back on him and wondering if he was watching would be worse.
Sliding in next to Rachel, Holly whispered, “I sure would like to know what’s goin’ on, but I guess it’s none of my business, huh? Do y’all want to talk without me bein’ here?”
“Of course not,” Rachel said. “I don’t blame you for being curious.”
Michelle leaned forward and spoke quietly to Holly. “That man is a police detective in Fairfax County, and he arrested the maniac who shot Rachel when she still lived in McLean.”
Ben didn’t bother to lower his voice when he continued the story. “Instead of doing his job and standing up for her, he got on the witness stand at Nelson’s trial and made excuses for him. He made it sound as if Nelson wasn’t responsible for his actions. So the jury acquitted a guilty man and he was sent to a mental hospital instead of prison, where he belongs.”
“Oh, that’s awful.” Holly laid a consoling hand on Rachel’s arm. “That must have been so hard on you.”
Rachel glanced toward Fagan, wondering if he’d heard Ben. The waitress, a heavyset woman with wiry gray curls, blocked Rachel’s view, standing by his booth and taking his order.
“What was the story about Fagan’s brother?” Ben asked Rachel. “He was an addict, died of an overdose? Or did he kill himself?”
“That’s no excuse,” Michelle said. “He was an experienced law enforcement officer. He shouldn’t have let his misguided pity for addicts color his testimony. Nelson tried to kill Rachel, and he knew exactly what he was doing. In my professional opinion, that’s not insanity or diminished capacity. It’s a crime. He should be in prison.”
“Could we please not talk about it?” Rachel said. Fagan’s role in Nelson’s trial wasn’t what had her tied in knots now. Fagan knew. He was one more person, one person too many, who knew that Rachel and Michelle’s so-called mother had abducted them when they were small children and raised them as her own.
The waitress arrived with glasses of water and menus.
After she took their orders and left, Ben asked, “Did Fagan have anything to say about Shelley’s case? That’s why he’s here, isn’t it?”
“No, I’m sorry, he didn’t.” Rachel could see grief reclaiming Ben, his face settling into a mask of sorrow, his eyes growing distant. She suspected that by now his sense of guilt had solidified: he had steered Shelley toward the innocence project, somebody had killed her because of her work for Vance Lankford, therefore Ben felt responsible for her murder. Rachel knew the police had no proof whatever that Shelley was killed because she was trying to free Lankford, but she also knew that trying to reason Ben out of his guilt would be pointless.
The four of them sipped their water. Rachel glanced at Fagan, who seemed engrossed by the Roanoke newspaper. The silence around the table lasted a couple of minutes, until Holly spoke up. “That man is still in the hospital, isn’t he?” she asked Rachel. “He can’t hurt you now, can he?”
Rachel suppressed a groan. “Yes, he is, and no, he can’t. Now can we please change the subject?”
“He’s still in the hospital,” Michelle said, “
because Rachel has fought very hard to keep him there. But he’s never stopped harassing her.”
That dragged Ben out of his thoughts and back to the here-and-now. “You never told me that,” he said to Rachel. “What’s he doing? How is he harassing you if he’s still in the hospital?”
When Rachel hesitated to answer, Michelle jumped in again. “He’s sent her letters, and—”
“Please stop.” Rachel wanted to stuff her napkin in Michelle’s mouth to gag her. What had taken possession of Michelle to make her chatter like this? Maybe her sister’s volubility on the sensitive subject of Rachel’s stalker was a way of blowing off the tension her own tormentor generated. Rachel was in no mood to allow it. “Can we drop the subject?”
Holly made a quick apology. “I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I ask too many questions.”
Ben reached across the table to squeeze Rachel’s hand. “Hey, kid, you want me to kill Fagan for you?”
Rachel burst out laughing. “He’s not worth the trouble, but thanks.”
Her laughter attracted Detective Fagan’s attention, and when he glanced their way he met Rachel’s gaze for a second before he turned back to his reading.
“Rachel can deal with it,” Michelle said. “She’s one of the strongest people I know. She’s always been my rock.”
Rachel shot her a surprised glance, only because she rarely heard direct praise from her sister. She knew Michelle depended on her and had faith in her inner strength. She also knew she was nowhere near as strong as her sister thought she was.
Chapter Fifteen
Rita Jankowski, the only cashier on duty, was flinging groceries into a plastic bag when Tom entered the supermarket. Neither her sour expression nor her shapeless supermarket smock succeeded in making her blend into her drab surroundings. With wavy red-gold hair, creamy skin, and doll-like features, she was a knockout who turned heads everywhere she went.
Her customer, an elderly woman with white hair, fluttered her hands and begged, “Please be more careful!”
Rita tossed two big cans of baked beans on top of eggs, bananas and lettuce. She dropped in glass jars instead of carefully placing them, and piled so much into each bag that Tom wondered whether the customer would make it into her house without one of them splitting and spilling everything.
The customer looked ready to weep by the time Rita read out the total of the bill in a bored monotone. The woman wrote a check with a shaking hand and Rita took it without once looking her in the face. Pushing her groceries out past Tom, the customer yelped in distress as one overstuffed bag tipped sideways and cans and bottles rolled out into the cart. Tom stopped to help her re-bag everything before he moved on.
“Hey, Rita,” he said as he approached the checkout, “who taught you that bagging technique? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”
She turned icy blue eyes on him. “What do you want?”
“Just need to talk to you for a few minutes. Can you take a break?”
She folded her arms and leaned a hip against the counter. “I don’t get many breaks and I don’t want to waste one of them. Do your talking right here and now before another customer comes through.”
“You’ve heard about Shelley Beecher’s death?”
“Who the hell hasn’t? I’m sick of hearing about the poor sweet angel. A whole month of that was enough.”
“Did you have something against Shelley?”
“Hey, now wait a minute.” Rita drew herself up straight. “I know how you cops think. If you’re desperate for suspects, go look somewhere else. I didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
“But you didn’t like her.”
“I didn’t hardly know the girl, but she was making a damned nuisance of herself. I was tired of her pestering me. I know it sounds awful to say it, but I was kind of relieved when she went missing, because she wasn’t bothering me anymore.”
“What did she want from you?”
Rita ran a hand under her hair and lifted it off her neck with a self-conscious movement she’d probably perfected in front of a mirror before she hit puberty. “What do you think? She wanted me to help her prove Vance was innocent. Her big cause.”
“Why did she believe you could help?”
Rita expelled a long sigh. “She had this idea that if I kept going over and over what happened, I’d remember something she could use. But I don’t know anything I haven’t already told the police.” She leaned a little in Tom’s direction, and her voice dropped to a confidential tone. “Don’t you think she could’ve been killed by some man she hooked up with? Maybe they were together, you know, and things got a little rough—I heard she had marks like she was strangled, and you know some people go in for that kind of thing when they’re—”
“No,” Tom said, stifling the desire to strangle Rita. “We’re sure that’s not how it happened. She was abducted. She was murdered. I’m trying to find out why.”
“Well, we’re right back where we started, I guess. I don’t know a thing that’s gonna help you.” Settling her hip against the counter again, Rita folded her arms, looking both casual and defensive at the same time.
“Did Shelley say she had evidence against somebody else for Brian’s murder? Did she name anybody?”
“Oh, she was sure she was gonna prove somebody besides Vance did it, but she was real cagey about it, you know? I kept trying to find out who she had in mind, you can’t blame me for being curious, but she’d just smile or she’d say, You’ll find out soon enough. Wait and see.”
“Did you believe her?”
“What, that she was gonna clear Vance and get him out?” Rita shrugged. “I didn’t know what to believe.”
“Do you believe Vance killed Brian?”
For a moment Rita said nothing, avoiding Tom’s eyes as she brushed specks of lint from her smock. “I hate that he’s locked up, that’s all.”
“I hear he’s doing okay,” Tom said. “He stays out of trouble and nobody bothers him.”
“Yeah, because he’s a teacher. He helps guys write letters and study for their GEDs, stuff like that. I heard he even taught a couple of guys to read. He’s doing something for them, so they let him be.”
“Sounds like you keep in touch. Do you visit him?”
“I’ve been to see him now and then since they moved him closer to home. The place gives me the creeps. And the guards look at me like they’re taking my clothes off in their minds. I get these awful nightmares afterward, every single time.” She shook her head. “I’d go crazy if I was locked up.”
“Were you involved with anybody else back then, besides Vance and Brian? Was there anybody else who might have had it in for Brian?”
Rita gave a harsh laugh. “Believe it or not, two at a time’s my limit.”
“It must have been…uncomfortable, all of you being in the band together.”
“To tell you the truth, I thought it made us better. Lots of sparks flying around on stage when we played.”
“That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”
“You don’t understand. You have to give the music everything you’ve got. It has to come out raw, you know? That’s what made us special. We didn’t get up and sing pretty little mountain folk songs. We mostly sang what Brian and Vance wrote, and we really tore into it. We got the audience buzzing like we’d thrown a live wire at them.” She broke off with a sigh. “We were special. Everybody said so.”
“Why did you stop singing after Brian’s murder? You could have gone to Nashville or wherever and gotten started on your own. You could go on one of those TV talent shows and become a star overnight.”
Eyes downcast, Rita pulled a cloth from under the counter and wiped away a wet spot left by the last customer’s sweating ice cream carton. “I don’t know. I was good with the band. I was part of something special with them. By myself I’m just one more wannabe girl singer. I’d get lost in the crowd.”
“I’ve heard you sing, Rita. You don’t need Brian Hadley’s
band to make you sound good. And your looks will always make you stand out.”
A faint smile tugged at one corner of her mouth, but she said, “I couldn’t make it on my own. Like Jordy says, if you don’t know when to cut your losses, you’ll never be happy.”
“Jordy Gale? Are you back with him again?”
Her cheeks flushed and the look she gave Tom mixed defiance and shame. “I don’t need to hear your opinion about it. I hear enough of that crap from my mother.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
“He’s the only man in this county who doesn’t treat me like trash. I can’t even walk down the street without some creep sidling over and brushing up against me. Even men coming through the grocery line whisper dirty stuff at me while I’m ringing up their beer and junk food.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Tom said.
“Jordy treats me with respect. He knows what it’s like when people won’t give you a chance. Last time he was in rehab, back in the winter, he got fired from his job in Manassas, can you believe that? They said they couldn’t have a junkie working for them and going into people’s houses and maybe stealing from them.”
“That’s a legitimate concern with an addict,” Tom said. “I like Jordy, but if I thought he was using again, I wouldn’t let him in—”
“You’re as bad as everybody else!” Rita cried. She glanced around as if afraid customers had overheard, but nobody was nearby. She went on in a quiet, urgent tone. “Can’t you give him credit for trying to change and do better? He stayed in that damned hospital two whole months the last time. He’s back home now, so I can help him stay clean. God knows his mom and dad won’t. They’re just fine with him working and making money for them, but he has to live over the shop, they don’t want him living at home.”
“I hope things work out for both of you.” Tom had his doubts about that, but at the moment he wasn’t interested in either Jordan Gale’s drug problem or Rita’s social status. “To get back to the subject, did anybody besides Vance have problems with Brian? Not over you or the record contract, but over anything at all?”
Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 12