"I thought he had an older brother. That he was living with him in a trailer or old house on some chicken farm. That was what Ashley said."
"That may very well be what he told her, but he has no siblings. There was a cousin he was living with and the cousin took off more than a year ago. Before Grandma went into the nursing home, apparently."
Claire glanced at the clock on the wall given to her father when he retired. He had loaned it to her because he said it belonged in that office. The second hand seemed to have stopped. All time seemed suspended to her. "So he's been living alone?"
"Going to school, to work, volunteering on his own. Eats those little bags of Chinese noodle soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner so he can pay the electric bill. So he says. I'm still checking up on what he's told me so far, but I know he never missed a day at the Boys' and Girls' Club, because I see him there."
She frowned. "So he's a saint?"
"I didn't say that, Chief. I only said that, so far, he checks out."
She ran her hand over her forehead. "Go ahead and talk to Ashley. If you think there's a problem, you halt the questioning." She watched him turn to go. "Wait—"
He glanced over his shoulder.
"I'm trusting you with my daughter. I'm not asking you for any favors, just to keep her best interest at heart."
He nodded and went out the door and Claire glanced at the clock again. It was ticking, but slowly. She figured she'd give him ten minutes alone with Ashley and then she was breaking up the little party.
The second hand dragged around the face of the clock. The minute hand tick-ticked.
Three and a half minutes and a lifetime had passed when the phone rang, startling her. She picked up the receiver, thankful to have the distraction. Watching the clock was ridiculous, and she wasn't going to allow herself to contemplate why Walt needed to talk to Ashley. She wasn't going to make herself crazy by wondering if Chain had killed those women and her daughter knew something about it. She just wasn't going to go there. She'd know soon enough—in six and a half minutes—why he needed to speak with her.
"Captain Gallagher, line two," Jewel said.
Claire switched lines. Usually she took a minute before picking up when it was Kurt. After all this time, she still got a little light-headed when she heard his voice. She still missed him in her life.
"Kurt." She opened her desk drawer and reached for a bottle of antacid tablets.
"Claire." It was the same voice she had known,
maybe still loved on some level. A little gruff, definitely cynical.
"I won't ask you how you are," he said, "because I can guess you've got your stomach turned inside out and you haven't slept in weeks. You've probably bought out the stores in town of antacids."
She dropped the bottle and slid the drawer shut. "I'm okay." There was no way she was going to tell him that at this very moment, Walt was interviewing her daughter in possible connection to the murders. "What can I do for you?"
"This is just a heads up."
She sighed, a certain resignation washing over her. "The task force I've been hearing about for weeks. The state is finally going to move on it?" She crossed Billy Trotter's name off the top of her list in front of her.
"Yeah."
When she heard the word come out of Kurt's mouth, she wasn't sure if she was angry or relieved. If the attorney general sent a task force down to run the investigation of the serial killer, as they had been saying they would, the case would no longer be her responsibility. It would be out of her hands.
It would also mean she had failed. Failed in the investigation. Failed those dead women.
She flipped the page on the legal pad in front of her, studying Seth Watkins's name. She scanned the list of details that made him a possible suspect. They were so damned weak, she wasn't even sure she could bring him in on them. She could get away with bringing a guy like Billy Trotter in because no one cared about Billy Trotter. Waterfront Reality, the multimillion dollar company Seth worked for, just might care.
"So, when is this so-called task force supposed to convene?"
"Still don't know yet."
She lifted her hand and let it fall. "Still grappling over money?"
"That and some other issues."
She rubbed her temples with her thumb and forefinger and opened the desk drawer again, going for the over-the-counter migraine medicine bottle this time. "Well, I appreciate you calling." She glanced at the clock. Somehow ten minutes had passed since Walt left her office. "You hear anything else," she told Kurt, "and—"
"Claire," he interrupted. "They're asking me to head up the task force."
"You?" she ground out, immediately on the defensive. "You're going to take my job?"
"I'm not going to take your job. You would remain the chief of police of Albany Beach, of course. You wouldn't even be taken off the case; you'd just be a part of the team." He seemed to be struggling with what he wanted to say to her. "Claire, listen, I don't want to do this. I've got too many other things going on here, but—"
"You of all people, Kurt." She popped two pills into her mouth and washed it down with flat diet soda. "You who supported hiring women, not because they were filling a state-mandated quota, but because you thought they deserved to be hired."
"Claire, this has nothing to do with you being a woman, so don't pull that sexist crap with me, because you know it won't fly."
She leaned forward, resting her forehead in her hand. "You're right. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."
"What I was going to say was that I'm dragging my feet with the attorney general's office and the governor's office because of what I've seen of your reports. I think you're on the right track."
"You've seen my reports?"
"Claire, I'm trying to make them understand that you don't catch these assholes overnight. It's the nature of the beast. They kill over and over again because they can. Because they're smart. But we're smart, too. You are, Claire. You're just on the learning curve, that's all."
She didn't know what to say. Having him bust in and take over was almost easier to deal with than him being supportive. She brushed her hair off the crown of her head. "I have to go, Kurt. Something's come up." She hesitated. "Thanks."
"Talk to you as soon as I know anything."
Claire hung up the phone and got out of her chair. She couldn't stand it any longer. She was going to see what Walt needed to talk to Ashley about. It was her right; she was her parent.
Walt met her halfway down the hall between his office and hers. "You need to hear this," he said without any preamble.
Claire didn't say anything; she just followed him down the hall. She didn't know what to say.
Inside his office, she was surprised to see Ashley and Chain sitting side by side. Drinking colas.
Walt walked back around to his chair behind the gunmetal gray county-issued desk. He cleared his throat as he eased into the chair that didn't seem quite big enough for him. "I asked Gerald where he was Sunday night, the night Brandy Thomas disappeared."
She glanced at Chain, struggling with the impulse to reach out and punch him. So his name was Gerald? An eighteen-year-old named Gerald? It was no wonder he went by Chain. She let Walt continue.
"And he said..." Walt looked to Chain.
Chain reached out and covered Ashley's hand on her jiggling knee with his hand. It was the first time Claire realized the teens wore matching silver skull rings. Skulls with a rose entwined in the orifices.
"I was with Ashley," the young man said.
Claire looked at her daughter, then at Walt. "That's a lie! Ashley was with my parents Sunday night. She—" The sympathetic expression on Walt's face made her look at her daughter again. "Ash—" Claire groaned and turned away. Calm, she told herself as she flexed her hands at her sides. You have to stay calm. She took a deep, cleansing breath before she spoke. "From when to when were you with my daughter that night?"
"From about ten p.m. until four a.m."
; The bottom seemed to fall out of Claire's stomach. She wanted to accuse him of being a liar, but the expression on Ashley's face made her realize that such an allegation would make her appear more foolish than she already did. "You snuck out of your grandparents' house to be with your boyfriend?"
Ashley's eyes were bright with tears. She nodded. "Yes, but Mom, you have to believe when I tell you—"
"And you wouldn't lie to me, lie to the police"—she indicated Walt with her hand—"to cover for your boyfriend?"
"Chief Drummond, I could have lied here, even though you would have found out. Ashley could have lied," Chain said.
"I don't want to hear anything out of you, all right?" Claire looked down at Ashley who seemed small in the chair right now, even though she was close to Claire's height already. The pediatrician thought she might be six feet before she stopped growing. "Where were you? Did you go back to his place?"
Ashley shook her head. "We went to this party at the Dunes. You can ask people who were there."
Claire folded her arms over her chest. The Dunes was a large, sprawling old apartment house right on the beach that catered to college kids there working for the summer. It was notorious for parties. "There was underage drinking, I suppose?"
"We went to the party," Ashley continued. "And we just walked on the beach until about four when Chain walked me back to Grandma and Grandpa's and I climbed back in the window."
Claire didn't know what to say, where to start. The throbbing headache of ten minutes ago had become blinding. She took a moment to collect her thoughts before she spoke again. "And you're sure this is the truth. You're absolutely sure, Ash, because if—"
"Mom," Ashley cried. "I didn't tell you the truth before because I knew how mad you would be." Tears ran down her face, smudging the black eyeliner, making it run down her cheeks. "You wouldn't have understood why we needed the time together. Chain's got a lot going on. He has some decisions to make."
"This isn't about Chain right now, Ashley," Claire intoned. "It's about you. What am I supposed to do about you and your deliberate defiance of the rules set down in our house?"
She gave the typical teenage shrug. "I guess you're just going to have to believe me when I tell you that I know I shouldn't have sneaked out of the house like that, but I didn't drink any alcohol. I didn't do any drugs and I did not have sex. I wasn't doing anything wrong, Mom."
"Not doing anything wrong?" Claire flared.
"Chief, can I see you outside?" The detective started for the door, not waiting for Claire's assent.
Claire balled her hands into fists and walked out the door. "I don't want her alone in there with him," she said from between clenched teeth.
Robinson closed his office door and spoke softly. The calm in the storm. "I'm sorry you had to hear that this way, but I know you needed to know. Now, I'm going to check out this kid's alibi, but I don't think he's our guy,"
"Don't you understand that's my daughter, Walt?" Claire whispered, barely holding it together. "I thought she was tucked safely away watching TV with my parents while I tried to catch a serial killer, when in reality—" She pointed to the door, her voice catching in her throat.
"I know, Chief. Hurts like hell." He reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder. "But what I wanted to say is that I'm going to investigate his alibi from the other night. Look at what we have on the murders, see if any circumstances could apply to him—"
"His grandmother lives in the nursing home at the hospital. Ashley said he goes almost every day. A smart kid, he would have access to latex gloves, maybe even a scalpel—"
"Chief, whoever is doing this is probably buying that stuff off the Internet and you know it." Releasing her, he plucked the handkerchief from his pocket and began to dab at his forehead again. "Do you realize how many sites on the Internet sell latex gloves? Scalpels? Hundreds. I know; I've been looking at them, night after night."
Claire's shoulders slumped and she stared at the clean institutional tile at her feet. "What am I going to do, Walt?"
He shook his head. "I don't know what to tell you."
"Her father lives in Utah. He's offered to take her for the school year. Just for a change." She pushed the hair from her face, over the crown of her head. "It might be what she needs."
"It might be," he agreed quietly.
She sighed, sniffed and looked over at him. "You don't think she's involved, do you?"
"My gut tells me he isn't either, but like I said, we'll check it out." He squeezed her shoulder and turned to go back into his office. "I'm done here. You want me to send her to your office?"
She shook her head, wearily. "She can go back to the break room. I need to make some calls. If I speak to her now, I might kill her, and then there would be all those forms to fill out, questions to answer, blood to mop up."
He chuckled. "That's the spirit, Chief. You'll get through this. Parents always do."
Chapter 9
"So that's where I am with my daughter right now," Claire said, sipping her vodka and OJ by candlelight.
A thunderstorm had blown in out of the west just after ten in the evening and the house had lost power. She'd called into the station and found that within city limits, there were no downed lines. It was only some of the outlying areas that had been affected and the electric co-op had assured the police department that power would be restored within two hours.
Satisfied that she needn't worry about what was happening in her jurisdiction, Claire had settled down to wait out the storm. She didn't mind going without the lights, the TV or the air-conditioning for a couple of hours. The fact that her home's alarm system was down was what made her uneasy. Her dad had been telling her for a year that she needed to get a generator and tonight she had decided that maybe he was right.
"I don't know what to say, Claire," Graham said, his empathy obvious in his voice. He had called her half an hour ago on the premise that he just wanted to check on them and be sure everything was all right; he had heard about the power outage. She'd been thankful for his call, even this late. It wasn't as if she would be sleeping tonight anyway, not after today.
"Maybe just that being a parent is damned hard these days," he continued. "And I really think you're doing well with Ashley."
"Yeah, right." Curling her bare feet up beneath her on the couch, Claire pushed the drink away. She'd made it and now she didn't even want it. She didn't need the alcohol muddying her thoughts. "What a great parent I am. My daughter dyed her hair black and started dressing like she should be a guide on a haunted house tour. She loses her job, lies about it, deceives me, oh, and, did I mention that she's climbing out windows to meet her eighteen-year-old boyfriend? The one I was told was only sixteen?"
"Claire. She's also a B student. She visits her grandparents regularly. She likes gardening. The Goth thing is a phase. It's an identity right now, a way that she can feel as if she belongs somewhere."
"Oh, the direction she's headed, she's going to belong, all right." Claire threw her hand up and let it fall to her side. "She's going to belong in the unwed mother's program at school, that or in the terminal care ward at the hospital with AIDS."
"You said she said she wasn't having sex with him. That she said she was still a virgin."
Claire stared into the flickering candlelight. The living room smelled of cinnamon and spice; she only had decorative candles, nothing utilitarian. "She also said she was going to work every day. Look where believing that got me."
He didn't answer and she cradled the phone between her head and shoulder and reached for a cracker from the plate she'd made for Ashley. When they got home from the police station at seven, Ashley had gone directly to her room, refusing to talk anymore. When Claire went in to check on her after the power failure, she hadn't eaten the cheese and fruit she had taken to her. She hadn't even touched the bottle of water.
"You think I'm overreacting." Claire sighed.
"Honestly, I don't know. I've never had children—Annie wanted them,
but she couldn't—" He stopped and started again. "What I'm trying to say is that there's no way that I can fully understand what you're going through right now. There's no way I can understand your fear, and that is what your reaction is about here, Claire. You're angry, yes, you're hurt, certainly, but mostly you're just afraid for your daughter. In the world we live, who wouldn't be?"
Claire held the phone with one hand and smoothed the old quilt thrown over the back of the leather couch. "I don't want to overreact. I really don't. But I don't want to stick my head in the sand either." She got up, suddenly feeling restless. She could still hear thunder and occasionally lightning illuminated the room for an instant, but the storm was moving southeast and out over the ocean. "I've seen too many parents do that," she told Graham.
"But, the fact that she admitted what she'd done has to account for something. She could have lied about the whole night."
Claire walked to the double glass doors that led to the back porch and pulled back the drape. Her restlessness was turning to uneasiness. She didn't know why, but she felt strange all of a sudden.
Maybe it was just the change in barometric pressure with the storm, or maybe it was the stress of the day.
She gazed out onto the dark porch and beyond, into the yard. The woods line that ran the length of the property was barely visible in the darkness.
"I suppose you're right; she could have lied," Claire admitted. "Of course, we would have found out if she did. We always do." She continued to study the woods, unable to shake her unease. "Which leads us to the next logical question, which is, is she lying now about where she was Sunday night to cover for him?"
"I suppose it's possible," Graham said.
She fingered the tapestry drapes, still staring into the dark. The candlelight from behind danced off the glass, misshaping images as some reflection from the room superimposed over her view of the yard. "Yeah, and then I wonder if I'm thinking that because on some level I want—"
A streak of lightning lit up the sky and a formless shape near the shed appeared. It only lasted a second, only as long as the lighting illuminated the yard, but abruptly her heart was pounding in her chest.
She'll Never Live Page 11