by K. L. Murphy
Pink spots appeared on Talbot’s cheeks. Cancini shifted to face Baldwin. “If the girl lives, she can identify her attacker.”
Baldwin looked away with another shake of his head. “The girl has a hole in her belly. I’ve been told she’s in a coma and isn’t gonna make it.”
“How do you know that?” Talbot asked. “We haven’t released any information.”
Cancini watched the mayor’s face. His lips twitched for a moment before he turned his anger on Talbot. “How do I know that?” His voice shook. “How do you think? I’m the mayor of this town, for God’s sake. I’ve known every person, every law officer, and every goddamn doctor and nurse in this town for years.” He waved a hand toward the lobby and the long white corridor. “These are my friends.” Baldwin’s eyes slid from Talbot to Cancini. “I expected more from you, Mike. I thought you cared about the people here and about the truth. I even warned you about Spradlin coming back. I thought you would help us, protect us. Ha! You’re not the detective you once were.” He spun on his heels, pushing his way back through the reporters. He delivered a terse “no comment.”
“Goddamn hothead,” Talbot muttered.
Cancini’s head shot up. His eyes followed Baldwin until the mayor emerged from the mob of shouting journalists. With reporters trailing, he pushed through the glass doors.
“How’d you ever stand him?”
“Huh?”
“How’d you ever stand that asshole?”
Cancini stared after the retreating mayor, his mind racing. Baldwin was more than a hothead. His emotions still swung wildly. “He’s worse now.”
“Yeah? Guess politics will do that to a man.”
“I guess.” The reporters returned to the waiting room. Whipping out their notebooks and phones, they huddled together, but none of them was Julia. Cancini’s shoulders tightened. It was odd that she wasn’t here, large bag on her shoulder and microphone in her hand, angling for a snippet of information.
“Hey, you all right? You seem a million miles away.” Talbot touched Cancini on the shoulder.
“Yeah, sorry.” He cleared his throat, turning his back on the reporters and thoughts of Julia. “I was thinking about Baldwin and Spradlin. They were best friends once. Now, I think Baldwin would flip the switch on Spradlin himself if he could. Strange, don’t you think?”
“A little, but friendships don’t always last. Maybe Baldwin decided being friends with a convicted rapist and murderer didn’t look good anymore.”
“At the trial, Baldwin testified for the defense. Remember? He even had some half-assed, cockamamie story giving Spradlin an alibi.”
Talbot nodded. “That’s right. It was a bit of a bombshell, wasn’t it?”
“You could say that.” The detective remembered the day Teddy came to him about testifying. He remembered his shock and his anger.
“The defense has called me as a witness,” Teddy had said. “I’m gonna testify about seeing Leo in Harrisonburg the night Cheryl Fornak was murdered.”
The news had stunned Cancini at the time. Teddy had never mentioned seeing Leo Spradlin in Harrisonburg on that night or any night of the murders. “What are you talking about? We’ve been putting this case together for weeks. You’ve never said a word about this.”
Teddy hadn’t been able to look him in the eye. “Yeah, well, I’m telling you now.”
“You’re lying for him.”
Teddy hadn’t denied the accusation, only apologized. “I thought you should know,” he’d said.
During the trial, Teddy’s testimony was easily discounted. It was late, the lighting had been poor, and he’d only been passing through the town. No one was with him when he saw the man who resembled Spradlin. No one could corroborate his story. He wasn’t accused of lying or charged with perjury. It was too hard to prove. Folks around town assumed he’d made a mistake or had testified out of some misguided sense of loyalty. Cancini hadn’t cared about Baldwin’s misplaced loyalty. He’d cared that Baldwin had lied. Their brief friendship over, Cancini hadn’t spoken again to Teddy Baldwin until after Leo’s release.
Cancini bristled still at the memory. “His testimony wasn’t credible.”
“But as I recall, no one could prove he was lying.”
“He was.”
“Fine. Baldwin was lying.” Talbot frowned. “But he was in law school, right? He had to know what committing perjury would do to his career before it even started. Why do it?”
It was a question Cancini hadn’t considered back then. He’d been young and wholly focused on seeing the case through to trial. In hindsight, Teddy had taken a huge risk. “I don’t know. I don’t understand a lot of what Baldwin does.”
“Yeah. He talks big, like he hates Spradlin, but I don’t know. I mean, that pension he gave Spradlin’s mother? Why do that?”
Cancini’s brows drew together. “What pension?”
“After Spradlin’s mother lost her job.” Cancini shook his head. “Sorry. I thought you knew.” Talbot buttoned his jacket, his eyes on the growing cluster of reporters. “When Spradlin was convicted, the college let her go. Not surprisingly, she couldn’t get work anywhere in town and she couldn’t afford to move. She was broke. The lady had used every penny of her retirement to send Spradlin to school before he dropped out.”
“And?”
“She stayed. Had money for groceries and electricity with no obvious source of income. I couldn’t understand it at first, so I had our financial forensic team go through her statements. Turns out when she stopped working, she started receiving a monthly check to her savings account until the day she died, deposited directly into her account at the college. I’m not sure if she even knew where it came from.”
“And you traced it to Teddy?”
“Well, yes and no. It was actually Dr. Baldwin who initiated the original transfers.”
Cancini said nothing, but found himself wondering why a college president would authorize money to Mrs. Spradlin, her son a pariah in town.
“After Dr. Baldwin died, Teddy continued the payments. He took care of her until her death, I presume, for Spradlin.”
“Did Spradlin know?”
“I don’t know. I doubt it,” Talbot said, shrugging. “You’re right though. That friendship, or whatever you want to call it, was strange. Is strange.”
Teddy was full of surprises, and supporting Spradlin’s mother out of loyalty to a long-dead friendship was just another in a long string of surprises. Teddy had made no secret of his feelings for Spradlin now. He’d lynch the man if given the opportunity. “Yeah,” Cancini said, “very strange.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
BLOOD DRIPPED FROM Julia’s wrists. Her phone had buzzed several more times, but she’d been unable to reach it. She’d screamed in frustration. She’d fought until her arms lost all feeling and her legs were like rubber. Dried tears stained her face. She had no idea how many hours had passed since he’d gone.
Car wheels crunched gravel in front of the cabin. Julia jerked, every nerve firing. The car door slammed. He was there, standing in the doorway, gray skies behind him.
“It’s worse than I thought,” he said. Spradlin came close and pulled a knife from his pocket. Reaching up, he cut through the ropes, and her arms dropped to her sides. She wiggled her hands until the feeling returned, pinpricks from the tips of her fingers to her elbows. He walked her to a chair, arm around her shoulders, and helped her to sit. Grabbing a water bottle, he opened it, handing it to her. “Drink this.”
Julia gulped the water, watching him move about the small cabin.
“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he said, dragging a cardboard box out of the corner. He brushed away the dust and sliced it open with the knife. Spradlin tossed some crumpled newspapers to the floor. He pulled out a rifle, about three feet in length, the long steel barrel widening to
a wooden butt. Julia stifled a gasp, her heart and mind racing. He held the gun in both hands, turning it over several times. He brought it up to his shoulder and looked through the viewfinder. “Looks like it’s still in good shape,” he said.
He reached back inside the cardboard box and pulled out several small boxes. He opened the chamber of the rifle and pulled out a tube. She watched him wipe each part of the gun with a cloth. He loaded the brass bullets one by one. “I never liked hunting,” he said. “You’d think I would. I never missed, but there was no fun in it. I always liked this gun, though.” His fingers trailed the length of it, resting on the trigger.
Her chest pounded. “What are you going to do?”
Spradlin sighed. He lowered the gun until the barrel was pointed at the ground. Shadows hollowed his face when he raised his eyes to hers. “Something I should have done a long time ago.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
THE DOCTOR’S GRIM face told the story, the long hours at the hospital evident in the dark circles under his eyes. “I want it on record that I don’t like this. I don’t like it one bit.” He wagged a finger at the FBI man. “But her father is insisting if there’s any chance she can speak or communicate . . .”
“I understand,” Talbot said, his tone somber.
“I don’t want you upsetting her,” Dr. Charles warned. “She’s stabilized but still in critical condition. We can’t be sure of the extent of the internal bleeding. She’s not out of the woods.”
“I understand,” Talbot repeated. “We were—”
“When can we see her?” Cancini interrupted.
The doctor shifted his gaze to Cancini, not hiding his resentment. “She’s only been out of surgery a short while. She should wake up soon.” He looked from one man to the other. “When she does, you will have five minutes. That’s all. Am I clear?” He didn’t wait for a response, turned his back on them both, and left.
Talbot spoke first. “She might not be able to tell us anything.”
“True.”
“And even if she can, this might be unrelated. A shooting in a residential home. Doesn’t fit with the M.O. This could be a crime completely apart from our case on campus.”
“It’s not,” the detective said.
Talbot, who’d been pacing the hall, stopped, looking back at Cancini. “How can you be so sure?”
The detective hesitated. “I can’t,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t feel like an attempted robbery. Nothing was taken. No evidence that anything even happened outside of the kitchen.”
“Maybe the girl surprised an intruder. Someone who knew the Walshes go to church every Sunday like clockwork. I mean, the girl wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“True again. Like I said, I can’t be sure.”
A young FBI agent came down the corridor, handing some stapled pages to Talbot. “It’s from the priest at the church,” he said. “A list of the people he remembers seeing at the nine o’clock service this morning. There are several witnesses who can verify the Walsh family was there the whole time. Father and daughter sat in the second row, and the mom sang with the choir.”
“Okay, thanks,” Talbot said to the young man. He scanned the pages and handed the list to Cancini. “Looks like fifty or so folks including your buddy, the mayor.”
The detective looked up. “Baldwin? Are you sure?”
“That’s what it says.”
“Interesting.”
“Okay. I’ll bite. Why is that so interesting?”
Cancini scanned the list. “Denomination. The Walsh family is Catholic. There aren’t a whole lot of Catholics around here, so I know the church. St. Benedict’s, right? That’s Catholic.” He’d gone inside once, during the first series of rapes. Back then, the tragedy of the girls’ murders had nearly overwhelmed him. He’d been driven to find the killer, but the reality of it had scared him more than he was willing to admit at the time. Not long before Spradlin had emerged as his most obvious suspect, he’d found himself inside the sanctuary, sitting in a pew. A cluster of candles burned at the altar, the scent drifting to the back rows. He hadn’t prayed or sought out a priest. He’d sat, letting the quiet seep into his bones.
Cancini folded the list. “The Baldwin family is Baptist. There’s a huge church up at the campus; most of the churches around town are either Baptist or Methodist. Baldwin isn’t Catholic.”
“So, he isn’t a member of this church?”
“Doubt it.”
“Oka-ay. Then why was he there?”
“That’s a good question.”
The door to the private waiting room opened. “Gentlemen,” the gray-haired doctor said, his voice nearly a growl, “she’s awake.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” Julia whispered.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise,” Leo told her, wrapping strips of torn sheet around her wrists. “But you need to be here. You need to hear everything. I’m trusting you.” He sat facing her, wiping away blood and dirt. “When he gets here, he won’t be expecting you. You will be under the bed. I’ll get him talking.”
Julia shuddered, but he was right. She’d come to get the story; she had no choice but to comply.
“He won’t even know you’re here.”
“What about my car?”
“I’ll hide it in the brush behind the cabin. He won’t see it. There’s only one way in, and that’s to come down the dirt road. I’ll see him before he sees me.”
She nodded. He taped the bandages in place and handed her a fresh washcloth. She wiped the rest of the grime and dried tears from her face.
“I’ll need my tape recorder.”
“Is there any room left on the tape? I don’t want you to copy over what we talked about before.”
Her mouth opened and then closed. She knew the worst of this man, yet she didn’t understand him. After a moment, she said, “I have an extra in my bag.”
“Good. Get it.”
She found the extra tape and put it in the tiny recorder. She was ready.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he said. “But I couldn’t risk you leaving. He doesn’t trust you anymore. He won’t let you live.”
She knew Leo was right. Ted had seen the question in her eyes. She’d done her best to cover up her suspicions, but he hadn’t been fooled. She blinked back fresh tears. Damn. She was so stupid. She’d liked him. Trusted him. Then after she’d met with Nikki in the hotel, there’d been doubts. She shouldn’t have ignored them.
Leo moved around the cabin. He pulled a single chair to the back and placed it in the shadows. He picked up the rifle, wiped it again, and placed it on the chair. She watched him gather her bag and the bloody cloths. He tossed them into a cabinet, slamming it shut. Outside, the rain thudded against the thin wooden roof. She stood frozen, her heart racing.
He gestured to the bed. “It’ll be cramped, but you should be able to hear everything. Stay back against the wall, and no matter what you hear, no matter what you think is about to happen, do not look out from under the bed. Do you hear me? Do not look out.”
She inhaled, her fingers tightening around the tape recorder. “You’re going to kill him, aren’t you?”
“He’s given me no choice,” Leo said, his face impassive. “I have to.”
Chapter Seventy-Six
“NIKKI?” TALBOT SPOKE softly, standing as close to the bed as possible without touching it or the girl. Her eyelids fluttered, then closed again. “Nikki? We need to ask you a few questions.”
Her eyes opened. She blinked, moved her head a little, and seemed to take in the hospital room, the shiny equipment next to the bed, the plastic bags and tubes. A crease appeared between her brows. She closed her eyes again. Talbot stepped back, standing shoulder to shoulder with Cancini. “Why don’t you give it a try?”
&n
bsp; Cancini studied Nikki’s battered and bruised face. One eye was swollen and puffy. Her jaw was wired shut, and she’d lost a great deal of blood. The girl was fighting for her life, but they needed to ask questions. What if she knew something? What if she could identify her assailant? What if her attacker was the rapist? Cancini understood the doctor’s anger. Under different circumstances, he might feel the same way, but these were not other circumstances. He moved toward the bed and leaned in close. “Nikki, my name is Detective Cancini.”
Her eyes opened again, the crease between her brows back.
“I need to ask you a couple of questions about what happened at the Walsh house.”
For a moment, she lay still, blank-faced. Seconds ticked by. Her eyes glistened and tears slipped down her cheeks, as the memory of the attack seemed to return.
“I’ll try to be brief, but I need your help to find the person who did this to you. Do you think you can help us?”
Blinking back the tears, she tried to speak. Cancini leaned in close, but her words were unintelligible. He shot the doctor a questioning look.
“We had to immobilize her jaw. Between that and the swelling, she might have difficulty talking.”
She tried to speak again, but her words were garbled. Cancini put his face close to hers, but he still couldn’t make out what she was trying to say. He looked at Talbot, and shook his head. Fresh tears sprang to the girl’s eyes.
The doctor spoke, his attention focused on the screen with the green lights. “Gentlemen, I think that’s enough. Your questions are causing her stress and discomfort. We need to keep her calm.”