Alicia looked white around the mouth. “Was it always like that?”
He didn’t know. Not really. But they’d come this far, so why not just put it out there. “I killed Larimer for some pretty obvious reasons. That was actually premeditated murder. If you punched in Troy’s number on your phone and told him what you saw, you could send me to prison for life.”
“I don’t want to do that at all.”
He believed her. “I killed Larimer for a reason. I have never had any reason to kill Amy. I’m imperfect, but fairly logical.”
Alicia looked relieved. It wasn’t very reassuring she’d doubted him in the first place.
He didn’t blame her, so he added, “Alicia, I haven’t lied to you, and I haven’t lied to Troy. I haven’t seen Amy.”
“You said probably.”
He had said that. Jon leaned back. It wasn’t much to look at but her couch was comfortable. “Alicia, if you can’t account for every second of your day, what exactly are you supposed to say?”
She didn’t seem to have a response to that question.
He was drowning in quicksand, sliding under, and he thought about the shirt he’d thrown away. It had a label on it from an exclusive men’s store in Chicago because Connie had shopped there for him, and though he doubted a small time sheriff’s department would easily make the connection, the FBI probably would. If he’d had a nosebleed or something and the blood was his, there was no crime in throwing away a shirt. He had no doubt they were gathering DNA samples at the cabin as he sat there sipping his beer.
If for some reason it wasn’t his blood, he was looking at a very unpleasant future.
Alicia had spent more time peeling off the label from her bottle than drinking from it. When they’d arrived she’d gone to change and put on gray sweater that was tight enough it hugged her breasts, and jeans that fit so you could tell she had the true definition of an hour-glass figure. Her blond hair was loose and soft around her face.
“You deserve better than all this,” he said, trying not to think about the bleak possibilities ahead of him. “In case I don’t get the chance to ever say this because I’m so preoccupied with a set of problems I never really expected, you are incredible in and out of bed.”
Her smile was wry. “That’s an interesting way to earn a compliment. ‘Oh, I might be arrested for murder, so maybe I should tell you now I find you nice and a good lay.’”
He lifted his brows. “Is that how I put it?”
She vanquished the beer bottle label and set it on the coffee table. “No, I’m sorry. I’m very worried about all this but you just seem…I don’t know, resigned? I should have taken you up on your offer and chosen Miami or Santa Fe.”
“I believe we’ve been forbidden to leave this county by the Great Almighty.” He said it with a calm he didn’t really feel. “There’s nothing in the cabin to incriminate me.”
“That tombstone was put there. You didn’t do it. I was with you.”
He was fully aware some of it was out of his control. It had been from the beginning. “I can’t explain it either.”
“If I’m so sweet and sexy, why won’t you kiss me?”
It wasn’t like he wasn’t braced for the question. Inevitable and well-deserved. He equivocated with a slight smile. “I think I’ve kissed pretty much every inch of you.”
“But never on the mouth.” Her gaze was intent. “Why?”
“I don’t like it.”
She was too smart to just accept that. “Kissing? It is normally how every relationship starts. Boy kisses girl. There’s a reason you don’t.”
“Or the other way around. Girl kisses boy happens too.” He was avoiding it. Luckily Connie had wanted everything else so much, she’d settled for his answer. He pretty much didn’t have anything to offer Alicia. Financially he was still pretty well off despite the divorce, but it wouldn’t last forever, and he was not inclined to get married again. She hadn’t indicated she wanted that either.
Maybe, under their current circumstances, he could just tell her the truth. He’d never wanted to tell Connie who was as empathetic as a lump of clay, or anyone else either, even George, but Alicia was neck deep in this mess too, so it could be therapeutic for them both if he just explained it.
Out loud. He shied away from it, but he was tired of avoiding truths he didn’t want to face.
Jon got up. “I need another beer first. Do you want one?”
“Do I need one?” She looked at him askance. “Jon?”
He came back with two, set one on a coaster on the table in front of her, and started to talk.
“I’ve already told you that I’d started to suspect Larimer when those girls went missing when we were in high school. When my mother died I knew the entity was responsible. It was the first time I was really aware of it. At the time it was Larimer.”
It sounded off the wall, but that was the truth.
* * * *
“I don’t understand.”
Alicia was already on emotional overload and this really wasn’t helping.
If there was one lesson she was learning in her interesting relationship with Jon Palmer, it was be careful what you wish for applied.
She’d refrained from asking so far, and maybe she should have listened to that inner voice.
“I would never tell you this except for what happened between us the other night. I’ve never told anyone else.”
The look on his face was frighteningly remote. A part of her wanted to just tell him to not go on. But if she was ever going to make any sense of all of this, maybe he should. She was swimming in murky waters right now and caught in a riptide. How Larimer was responsible for his reluctance to the intimacy of a real kiss was a leap she couldn’t make without more information. “Okay.”
“When I was seventeen I came home from football practice one day. I still remember it was hot out, one of those muggy days and I’d showered in the locker room, but not put on a shirt. Just wearing a pair of jeans, my hair still damp. We were out of milk, so I closed the refrigerator and when I turned around my mother had come into the kitchen. I informed her about the milk situation. It was probably my fault, feeding me back then was probably a challenge, like with every teenaged boy.”
Alicia was lost. It seemed like the thread of their conversation had veered off course. “I’m not at all sure where this is going.”
Jon looked at her, his eyes that perfect crystalline blue. “On that sunny afternoon, my mother walked up to me, put her hand on my bare chest, and kissed me. Not like a mother would kiss her son either. On the mouth, her arms went around my neck, uh…yeah, from your expression, I assume you realize why I’ve never told anyone else. That was what it was like for me, too.”
She wasn’t sure if she felt privileged or violated to be the recipient of this information. Both maybe.
He went on. “I just stood there. I mean, it was my mother. She was kissing me and it was sexual and not affection. I was in shock. I was old enough to get that. I’d dated my fair share of girls by then.”
Of course he had. He was Jon Palmer. Pretty much any girl at their high school would have gone out with him. Alicia had daydreams about him fairly frequently at that age.
But…
“I was already six-feet tall, I might have looked like a man, but I was still not quite there emotionally. Who is at that age? What was I supposed to do? If she told me to take out the trash, I did it. She was an authority figure in my life, the authority figure, since I despised Larimer. Aside from some of the coaches I respected, I only listened to her. A part of me wanted to shove her away and just run but I couldn’t. I was paralyzed.”
An answer for that escaped her.
“Then I heard it. Him. Larimer was laughing from the doorway, slapping the doorjamb. He’d come home from work early for some reason. She let me go and turned around and she went so pale. I still remember clearly. He said, ‘you incestuous bitch. I knew it.’”
Jon said carefully, “I
promise you, she’d never touched me inappropriately before. Not once. I was her child, and she treated me that way. There was more vitriol…I can’t remember all of it. He asked if we were going to use my bedroom or theirs, things like that, and I was just standing there. He said some pretty awful things, and she was crying, not saying a word…” He trailed off.
“What happened next?”
“He walked across the room and slapped her. I went after him. Quite frankly, I’d wanted to for years.” Jon went to that place she’d seen before where he didn’t engage but just remembered, his voice hollow. “She broke us up, or I might have killed him right there in the kitchen. We were both bleeding but the fight was going my way. She didn’t want to save him, she just wanted to make sure I wasn’t charged with manslaughter.”
Then Isabelle Palmer had hung herself and Jon had killed his stepfather anyway. Alicia understood the situation a lot better now. He was right, if she hadn’t felt the influence the other night at the cabin, she wouldn’t have understood at all.
Those poor children, drowned in the lake…their mother probably hadn’t intended that, either.
Alicia said very quietly, “She didn’t mean to do it.”
“The kiss? I don’t think so, either. At first I told myself it might have been because I look a lot like my father. But I don’t think it is that easy at all. I didn’t sleep for days. We just avoided each other. She and I never talked about it.”
“I can’t even imagine.” Not much comfort, but all she could offer.
Jon said frankly, “If Larimer hadn’t walked in, I don’t know what might have happened next. There’s no part of me that doesn’t think that’s wrong, sick, whatever you want to call it. But it wasn’t her. I think I knew that then, and I definitely believe it to this day. That Larimer showed up at that moment confirms it to me. Whether or not she couldn’t live with it or if he strung her up on that beam, he killed her. I’ve never held anything against her. The influence was there, you’ve felt it too. I admit at the time I was confused, conflicted, horrified, and about everything in between, but nothing changed in my loathing for him.”
So Jon had killed Larimer. Or whatever or whoever he was.
All in all, she didn’t disagree with that decision.
“He was following me that night,” Alicia said slowly. “I remember it so clearly. There’s a moment when those headlights in your rearview mirror start to mean something, when you have a sense you’re in trouble. And I knew it.”
“Sometimes two worlds collide at just the right time.”
He’d murdered someone who had been about to murder her. Now they were involved, at least sexually, but emotionally? Yes, but she wasn’t sure on what level. That was a match made in heaven right there.
“What is going on in Black Lake, Jon?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out most of my life.”
>Chapter 19
I sat in the old cemetery and examined the mélange of headstones there. It was a family history with names like Olava and Signey for the women, and of course, William and Morris for men. I’d frequented the old graveyard as a child, playing in the stones, running around the graves.
I never thought anything of it.
Now I wonder if it was an early dance with the idea of death itself. That death and I had made an appointment when I was very young, and I meant to keep it. My grandparents had told me it was morbid and disrespectful and had forbidden it, but that naturally made it more attractive to a curious and admittedly rebellious boy. I would jump over the low fence when called in for supper or prayer and make it seem like I’d been playing in the woods instead.
I studied their markers with some measure of satisfaction.
Their birthdates were different, but they shared a special bond in that the date when they died was exactly the same.
What were the odds of that?
Fairly high if I had anything to say about it.
My mother knew. I know she did for I would catch her looking at me, watchful, afraid of the monster she birthed and nursed.
So she should have been.
Troy walked into his cold, empty house and wanted to cry, but oddly enough he was just glad to be alone, away from the sympathetic looks, the hushed silence, the general view that he was now a lost soul, alone and adrift.
If Amy’s body was in the woods, they hadn’t found it. Tomorrow the state was providing cadaver dogs. That sounded like a fun day.
Nothing in Palmer’s cabin.
He’d gotten George’s message but had been a little occupied to put it mildly. Taking a deep breath, he called his cousin back. “What are you doing right now?”
“I have a date with a supermodel but I can put it off. It’s common knowledge I’m irresistible to gorgeous women.” Then he quit kidding around and his voice got somber. “I only have a hint of what’s going on. Do you want me to pick up something because I’m thinking you haven’t eaten, right?”
“Whiskey might be nice.”
“Oh, shit, Troy. No. If you need some therapy, I’ll be right there, but don’t go that direction.”
“I’m tempted.” He really was.
“I’m getting that loud and clear. I’ll get us some carry out. I’ll drink beer like I always do, and you’ll have water or a cup of coffee as we sit and talk. That’s the deal on the table.”
George was right, of course. This would be the worst time to go back on the bottle, but the craving was so overwhelming Troy could hardly handle it. “Fine. Maybe you’d better hurry.”
The trouble was, he knew Amy had some whiskey in the house. He’d never asked where she kept it because he was a recovering alcoholic so that was a subject they left untouched. The temptation to go looking for it was almost overwhelming. They had a nice house, but it wasn’t big, so it would be easily found.
Instead he changed out of his uniform and slipped into an old faded sweatshirt and jeans, and sat at the dining room table and looked at the framed picture of him and Amy on their wedding day. Him, holding her in his arms, her bouquet in her hand, her laughing, the white dress flowing over…
He was convinced Palmer was a part of this, but not sure how.
Luminal had turned up nothing in his cabin except one set of muddy boots with traces of blood that could be anything. It was whitetail season for bow hunters. Troy needed a lot more than that to spend the taxpayer dime on expensive lab analysis for a pair of muddy boots. The residue was also on the soles. Palmer could easily have just walked across some tracks of an injured animal.
He made coffee. He wanted the whiskey.
George found him sitting there since he’d left the front door unlocked, set down a bag, took out two sandwiches wrapped in parchment paper, opened a beer, and plunked into a chair. “Eat first? We have smoked turkey on rye and a meatball sub. You choose. Then we’ll talk.”
“I don’t know if I can—”
“You will,” George said firmly, his eyes holding a steely glint in his rounded face. “Be careful, the meatball sub is going fast if you just sit there not able to decide. All that cheese isn’t good for me and my dicey heart. Hurry up. Save me from myself.”
In the end Troy found he was hungry after all, surprised at how the food helped his growing headache, and when they were done, he at least could say the urge for alcohol, which was never good on an ordinary day and never went away, had at least abated.
“She’s dead.”
There. He’d said it.
George was such an odd mixture of intellect and pragmatic realism. “You and I both thought so two days ago at least. No body?”
“Not yet.”
“How are you dealing with this?”
His cousin, the psychologist. “I have no idea if I even am dealing with it,” Troy admitted. He did know he was going to have to take down that damned wedding picture. “I want to blame Palmer. He knows I want to blame him, too, but I’m afraid I’m influenced by the past. I’m just as afraid he’s smart enough to have done
this and not get caught.”
George nodded. “He’s smart enough. Oh, yeah. Never doubt that. It doesn’t mean he did it, but smart enough? Sure.”
Oh God. Troy wished he could disagree. His voice was thick. “Why would he kill Amy?”
George put his elbows on the table. “Do you want my take as a longtime friend of his—and I am unconvinced he had anything to do with it yet—but hypothetically?”
“At this point, I’ll take what I can get. I suspect you know him better than anyone, even his ex-wife.”
George frowned. “Jon is hardly in control of his life, and that started when his mother married Larimer Hanson. I don’t know if he just didn’t want to share his only parent with someone else, or if he was right to dislike the man, but he is completely convinced his step-father was responsible for those girls disappearing when we were in high school.”
It wasn’t the finest legacy Black Lake had to offer the world. “Why?”
“They were all tied back to Jon. Either they’d dated him or had a known crush on him.”
Troy really wanted to grind his teeth. “George, every fucking girl had a crush on him unless they were trying to decide if they were lesbian or not, in which case he was batting about fifty-fifty with even the ones on the sexuality fence. I don’t care about how he looks, or what he does, or anything like that, I’d just like to have Amy back sitting across from me at this table instead of you. No offense. His charmed life doesn’t matter to me.”
George opened another beer. He’d already had three. His cousin looked almost amused. “Jon? Charmed life? His father died when he was young, his mother married a man he despised that was probably a serial killer. Then his mother committed suicide, such a nice way to finish out high school, and the glorious athlete with the scholarship was injured his first year of college. He just got divorced, and though we have never discussed the details, I think she took him for every possible dime she could wring out of him. Now he is the lead suspect in a murder case. If that’s charmed, I’d rather be me, bordering on fat, losing my hair, living in my grandmother’s dated house, no romantic possibilities on my horizon, and another heart attack lurking in the background.”
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