“I can appreciate that. Is there anything I can do to help speed things up?”
“I could fax your signature with a request for the records to the university. Can you come by my office this afternoon, or tomorrow morning?”
“Just tell me when it’s convenient.”
Karen tuned into her own reflections as the two men made plans to meet later. Without asking Ed, she could almost picture the chain of events that had transpired. Because of his early, vague suspicions that Judd wasn’t on the up-and-up, he’d probably been concerned when he learned of the mysterious death of Marlene Hall. Her uncle made it a policy to never meddle in police business, so Karen was sure he’d gone to the Creekside Diner and talked to Ricky about Judd solely because he was concerned for his niece’s safety. The fact he’d heard everything the waitress had to say and dismissed her suspicions, in light of what he’d learned of Judd’s character from his ex and his college advisor, was extremely reassuring.
Karen called up her memories of what she’d learned about abnormal psychology in grad school. Psychopaths were always loners, alienated from others at an early age. Her uncle had probably focused first on Judd’s college social life for that reason. And surely, if Judd had ever been angry enough at a woman to want to harm her, it would have been his shrewish and unfaithful first wife.
Uncle Ed finished talking to Judd and turned to her.
“Karen, while I’ve got you here, I wanted to ask if you know anyone down at the county assessor’s office. I got a notice from them yesterday.”
As Ed began describing some problem he was having with his property-tax bill, Judd quietly turned his attention to Karen. He was relieved that her shoulders had relaxed from their earlier hunched position, and her hands were limply thrust into the pockets of her coat. Apparently something her uncle had told them had overbalanced whatever fright she contracted at the diner.
“Don’t worry,” Karen was saying to her uncle. “It’s probably just a computer glitch. I’ll stop by the assessor’s office and get it straightened out”
Judd thanked Ed for everything he’d done and said, “I’ll see you at your office today at three.”
He lightly touched Karen’s elbow to lead her to the car. He could feel the warmth of her arm right through the coat sleeve, remembered how incredibly soft the skin of her inner arm was. She sent him an affectionate smile as he held the car door open for her, and he imagined he saw a flicker of sexual awareness in the depths of her green eyes, in the slight upturn of her lips. It was like an acknowledgment of a secret connection between them, and very arousing. He had to force his eyes from her shapely legs as she lifted her skirt to get in the car.
Karen couldn’t know what fire she was playing with, and he was little wiser than she! What would it take to bring them both to their senses? On the trail above Silver Lake, even in the midst of his anger and her suspicion, there had been an incredible sexual pull between them. It had sent them deep into each other’s arms, tapped into a vein of desire so throbbing it had overwhelmed him. He was sure he’d never felt anything even remotely similar with his first wife, nor would again with any woman other than Karen.
Judd jerked his tie loose with one hand as he stepped into the car. He started the engine, and with great effort redirected his thoughts. His next stop should be Marlene Hall’s cottage, but he had to finish things with Karen first.
“You know, honey…” The endearment was inappropriate as hell, but it just slipped out. He cleared his throat. “You don’t need to fix me any breakfast. I’m really not hungry.”
“That’s okay.” She reached out a hand, tentatively laid it on his shoulder. To his dismay, she inched toward him on the bench seat and leaned her head against his shoulder. It took all his willpower to refrain from reaching his right arm around her shoulders and drawing her even closer.
Devil take it, this was going to be tough! Judd let out a long breath. She sounded tired. Poor woman, she must be exhausted after playing nursemaid to him and his gimpy memory all week. The thought of all she’d had to do for him made him angry.
He owed it to her to explain why he was leaving, to not let her think it was her fault. Then he would pack his things and go.
He tried to think how to begin, what words to say to end it. But the right phrases eluded him, and instead he thought how hungry she must be. He found himself saying, “You should eat something. Why don’t we stop and get a sandwich or something? It’s almost lunchtime.”
“Whatever you like.” She sounded a little sleepy, or dreamy…“I hope I didn’t disappoint you, not wanting to go into Granite.”
“No, it’s better that we stayed here.”
They rode in silence for almost a minute, then Karen said, “You’re so quiet. Did something my uncle said give you a flashback?”
Her voice was so sweetly hopeful, it made him want to throttle himself. He was a suspected murderer. He didn’t deserve her kindness, her concern. She’d be better off feeling sympathy for the snake that had crossed their path. “I’m afraid not.”
“Are you mad at me for asking Ed to look into your past, even though you told him not to?”
“No, no, of course not!” His abruptness made her stiffen. “You did the right thing, and I’m in your debt” He added in a more normal tone, “Any new evidence helps at this point.” He wanted to say something more, about how she could never possibly do anything to hurt him. That her presence had been the most encouraging, heartening part of this whole nightmarish week. However, he was just minutes from saying goodbye to her for good, and it would be suicidal to reveal any part of his feelings for her now.
At the deli, he insisted she get herself a turkey sandwich and potato salad while he ordered only black coffee for himself. As they returned to the car, he asked, “Is there a park we can go to, somewhere near here, and sit outside while you eat?”
“Sure, there’s one by my house.” She paused, and her mouth quirked a bit. “It’s still pretty cold out. Anyone would think you wanted to enjoy the outdoors before someone locked you up.”
Judd’s head turned sharply. He recognized it as one of her now familiar attempts to tease him out of a mood, but she must believe profoundly in his innocence to kid him with such a gibe. Well, hard as the truth might be for her, it was time to start making her see it. “Without realizing it,” he said, “you read my mind exactly.”
Karen blushed, reminding him of a kitten who bats playfully at a moth, only to be surprised and slightly guilty when she catches it However, she rallied with the rejoinder, “Well, it’s about time I learned to read your mind. You’re awfully good at doing that to me.”
He wanted to do a lot more to her than read her mind, he told himself ruefully. That was part of the problem.
They drove to a small, grassy park near her house. The clouds that had seemed to be lifting earlier were closing in again, threatening to drizzle, and the usual weekend flock of families had abandoned the park. Judd and Karen made for a picnic table under a white wrought-iron gazebo near the kiddies playground.
Karen arranged herself facing the jungle gym, Judd across from her. Her long, water-repellent coat had a flannel lining that promised to keep her warm; however, Judd had on only a single-breasted sport jacket. He didn’t seem to notice the chill, though.
As Judd unpacked her lunch for her, she remembered the time, earlier this summer, when she’d walked down here with a neighbor and her two little ones. She’d enjoyed pushing the swing for the fiveyear-old and playing in the sand with the baby. Now, she pictured Judd beside her in the sand, catching a freckle-faced girl at the bottom of the slide. It was easy to imagine Judd scooping the child up, laughing, pushing the hair out of his eyes as he set her down and took her hand so they could go find Mommy.
Judd cleared his throat, and Karen snapped back to the present. This was no carefree picnic in the park, she reminded herself.
“Would you like half of my sandwich?” she offered.
He didn’t say
anything, and she had to ask him again before he absently shook his head.
Karen fretted. Despite her earlier attempts to cheer him up with a little kidding, he looked like nothing so much as Socrates contemplating the hemlock. He must be more upset than she’d thought. She dutifully unwrapped her sandwich, but really had no taste for it. She wasn’t sure what was bothering him, but she had to make it better before she could bear to swallow even a sip of her soft drink.
She reached for his hand, wrapped her fingers around his hard, work-roughened palm and felt a signal communicate itself like a charge down a line. She gasped, deciphering not a cabled plea for reassurance but a primitive declaration of sexual hunger.
Longing flickered like a smoky candle in the blue gray depths of his eyes. Pent-up desire welled within her, coursed between them on the current of their locked gaze.
Judd was the one to break the connection. He looked down at her hand, lifted it from his own and gently placed it next to her lunch. He cleared his throat, but a telltale huskiness lingered as he said, “You’d better eat.”
Karen picked up the sandwich, tried to nibble at it. Though physical intimacy had been only a brief, sporadic part of their relationship, an undercurrent of sexual awareness had existed between them from the beginning. From the first moment they’d met, she’d been acutely aware he was a man, she a woman. Perhaps she should be glad he often seemed to restrain himself from touching her. The force of their attraction was so strong that with one too intimate touch, one too lingering kiss, they might be swept into something neither was ready for.
“We should talk about next steps,” Judd said.
“You’re right I’m sorry my uncle upset you.” She took a sip of her drink. “I was rather encouraged by what he found.”
“I know it sounded good on the surface.” Judd laced his fingers. “But you have to consider that I graduated college with a useless diploma, a failed marriage and no direction. If I’d wanted an excuse, I had a perfect one for being frustrated and disgusted with myself. That’s probably about the time I took up working in a grease pit, and it sounds like I never had the guts or ambition to rise above it.”
Karen’s eyes widened. She’d taken quite a different spin on those facts, but wasn’t sure if she should contradict him outright. Much as she didn’t agree, there was logic in what he said, and with Judd, that would be hard to counter.
“What happened at the diner?” he asked. “Did you overhear something that you haven’t told me?”
Karen dug a spoon into her potato salad. She couldn’t justify withholding the truth from him any longer, now that she knew revealing it wouldn’t place her in any danger from him. And the longer she waited to confess, the more embarrassing and difficult it would be.
She sighed and stirred the salad so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes.
“You’re right.” Shucks, she was always telling him he was right. How inept he must find her. “I wasn’t completely forthcoming about that. In fact, I was able to talk for a while with one of the waitresses. The older one, Ricky Black is her name. Apparently Uncle Ed interviewed her last night, too, and he seemed to think she was mostly full of hot air, but you have the right to know what she’s telling everyone.”
Karen looked up, afraid he was going to ask her why she hadn’t told him this when she left the diner, but he simply waited, sober faced, for her to go on.
She told him what Ricky had said about Judd’s friendship with Marlene, about Marlene’s personality and her need for privacy that kept her from sharing the details of her love life with her co-workers, and about Marlene calling Ricky the night she was killed to say she was going out of town. Karen finished by repeating a point she’d already made twice. “No one has any evidence that you were the man Marlene was seeing. There isn’t even any proof she was planning to go away with someone. It’s all assumption.”
Judd made no attempt to respond as he listened to Karen argue for his innocence. The horror of what he might have done to Marlene clawed at him from one side, while Karen’s selfless concern and utter sincerity pulled from the other. It was like being torn physically in two.
He tried to drag his eyes from hers and couldn’t How could he ever leave this tender, desirable woman, who had come to mean everything to him, and not cease to care about living? They might as well pronounce the death sentence on him now. She was so agonizingly beautiful, with all that trembling anxiety in her voice. Even when she was trying to be logical and professional, her eyes were vulnerable, pleading with him to agree with her.
He buried his head in his hands. He was all twisted up inside, sick at heart from loving her and fearing what he might be capable of doing to her. He couldn’t trust himself to remain near her one more hour. He would hurt her one way or the other, emotionally—or, please God no, physically—whether he wanted to or not He savagely scrubbed his face with the heels of his palms, then stared past her at nothing, dreading what he had to say.
Karen waited, alarmed at how tormented he appeared. Had he been sleeping at all? He didn’t look it. Eerily, at that moment he said, “I have to be honest with you, too, Karen. I’ve been having some terrible nightmares. They started in the hospital, and continued at my apartment. I thought they were gone, until this morning when I had another. In these dreams, I see the faces of several young women. They are dead, their throats cut, and looking at them I feel this incredible sense of anger. Of murderous rage.
“At first I couldn’t see the faces clearly, or at least couldn’t remember them when I awoke, I’m not sure which. But this morning, when I unfolded the newspaper and saw the photo of Marlene on the front page, I realized she was one of the faces in my dream.”
An icy coldness enveloped Karen. But this time, she knew in her soul there must be another explanation for what he’d experienced. She would never again doubt him, as she had so easily before.
While Judd shifted in his seat to stare bleakly at the deserted playground, she quickly compared what he’d said to what she’d learned about human psychology both on the job and in her many years of training to be a social worker.
“Judd.”
He reluctantly faced her.
“Dreams are strange things, and we know that memories from your past can surface at any time. Because you were acquainted with Marlene, and probably liked her since she was a nice girl, and because you’ve been so troubled that she was killed, it makes sense that your subconscious mind would bring up her picture while you slept and insert it in your nightmare.
“Have you considered, too,” she continued, “that you might have witnessed Marlene’s murder? Perhaps you were close friends and had made arrangements to take a trip together. When you arrived at her house to pick her up, you could have found her body, or even walked in as she was being killed. That would also explain the anger you feel—you could be mad at the killer, not the women victims.”
Judd shook his head impatiently. “I’ve thought of that, but it doesn’t add up. If I’d found Marlene dead, why didn’t I pick up her phone and immediately call the police? If I interrupted the murder, surely the killer would have tried to take me out, too, but there were no signs I’d been in a fight. Or if I witnessed the murder unobserved and fled, why did they find me in my car, headed out of town? Wouldn’t I have stopped at the first house down the road and asked to use their phone to call the police?”
“I don’t know, but I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation. Together we can piece together what really happened.”
Judd’s broad shoulders hunched in frozen misery. Icy glints of rage gathered in the depths of his eyes. He shook his head slowly. “No, we can’t do it together, Karen. You can only make it worse. I have to get away from here, away from you.”
A SHINY WHITE sedan and two Silver Creek police units idled in front of Karen’s house as Judd and Karen pulled up. Lieutenant Rossini, his partner, Talmadge, and a pair of uniformed cops rushed forward as Judd exited his car.
“Mr. Maxwell, would y
ou place your hands on the top of the vehicle,” the lead detective ordered. Judd slowly reached for the hood, and Talmadge began frisking him. The hands of the edgy patrolmen hovered over their holstered guns.
“We’re taking you in for questioning regarding the murder of Marlene Hall,” Rossini said. “Talmadge, read him his rights while I show Ms. Thomas the warrant to search her house.”
Chapter Twelve
It was almost 8:00 p.m. when they let him go. Judd picked his jacket off the back of the chair and slung it over his shoulder as he preceded Lieutenant Rossini from the interrogation room. The offices opening off the dimly lit hallway were deserted on this Saturday evening, the two men silent with fatigue and mutual distrust.
Not counting the time it took for fingerprinting, Judd estimated he had been in that room almost six hours. He noted his mind was a little fuzzy now, his back and legs tired, but that was merely from sitting all day. He could probably go another twenty, twenty-four before he needed sleep, and then just a couple of hours.
Judd’s brain switched from the assessment of his endurance to examine the strange, almost absolute detachment he’d assumed. All through the afternoon and evening, as the detectives had interrogated him, called breaks, then returned to repeat the same questions, he had been curiously outside himself. Like an invisible counselor, he had advised the subject Judd how to respond, watched Judd speak and evaluated the cops’ reactions.
It had been helpful. He’d been able to set aside any foreboding he might have felt sitting across from the law, undoubtedly being studied by a prosecutor and a curious honcho or two from the other side of the one-way glass set in the wall. He had endured the tedium of being asked, over and over again, questions he could not answer. And he’d kept cool when a frustrated Rossini baited him, and later told him outright that he was a lying scum.
Only A Memory Away Page 14