Poison

by Jordyn Redwood

  Lilly offered a warm smile. “I wish other people would be as honest as you rather than offering platitudes that come across sounding fake.”

  Keelyn dropped Sophia into the crook of her arm like a newborn. “For me, honesty is the most important thing.”

  “I really am fascinated by your career. How did you become a body language expert?”

  “Unfortunately, real-life experience. Growing up exposed to a hostile family situation, I had to learn to take a read on everyone’s emotional state. Kept me out of trouble.”

  “It probably saved your life that day.”

  “Maybe. Being able to detect deception could save a lot of lives. During my schooling, I came across a story about Hitler meeting with Chamberlain where he bald-faced lied to him and said he didn’t have any plans for invasion. If the prime minister could have picked up on that, imagine how different the world would have been. All those lives could have been spared.”

  “There’s probably more than that, though. It seems more personal to you than some anecdotal story you ran across.”

  Sophia slept in her arms. Keelyn’s stress fell away at the peaceful look on her face. “My father became ill with depression. Started having suicidal ideation. He’d been in and out of treatment, and I thought things were getting better. I’d always ask him before I left for work if he had any plans to hurt himself.” Keelyn swiped a tear from her eye. “The last time I saw him, he had the sweetest smile on his face, kissed me on the cheek, and promised he’d have dinner waiting for me when I got home.”

  Lilly handed her more tissues. “I’m guessing that’s not what happened.”

  Keelyn sniffed hard. Sophia stirred and Keelyn pulled her closer and rocked gently. “He shot himself. They thought probably right after I left.” She tore the tissue into small bits. “Then I was so mad at him for leaving me to clean up the mess. For leaving me . . .”

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  The pressure of Lilly’s hand on her shoulder calmed her sorrow. There was a lightness in her eyes, a warm touch of shared experience. “See, you do know the right things to say.”

  Lilly’s eyes twinkled. “I get more practice in my job than you probably do.”

  Keelyn gathered up the tissue and clenched it in her fist. “What people don’t get is that it’s the lying that kills you. No matter what it is, if you know the truth you can deal with it.” Sophia’s breath shuddered. Keelyn stroked the little girl’s arm.

  “Lilly,” Keelyn looked up through her lashes. “Have you ever felt like Nathan was lying to you?”

  “One thing about Nathan: he’s honest to a fault. If he causes a minor scratch on someone’s car, he leaves them a note about it.”

  “So, you’ve never felt he was hiding something from you.”

  “Are you having these feelings about Lee?”

  “It’s just a feeling like he’s holding something back.”

  “What are his thoughts about Sophia?”

  “That he’s been completely honest about. We’ve talked a lot about having children. I knew from the beginning he wasn’t keen on adopting older kids. He’s seen so many troubled ones that he wants to be in their lives from the beginning. After a year, he considers them . . . I don’t know . . . spoiled goods in a way.”

  Lilly tucked her hair behind one ear. “One thing I’ve learned about God is he has a way of disproving you in the most obnoxious ways sometimes. Painful ways—to break you and draw you closer. Show you where your imperfections are. What would you do if there came a time when Sophia needed a home and it was you or foster care and Lee said no?”

  Keelyn curled Sophia’s fingers around her thumb. “My choice would be clear. I’d have to choose her.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me if this is more of a test for Lee than for you. I know you’re strong. You could do it by yourself. The question is, will Lee put his love for you aside and let you go it alone.”

  Keelyn took a deep breath as fresh tears pushed their way into her eyes. “If he did, then he probably never truly loved me.”

  Chapter 14

  Thursday

  THE DRIVE FROM AURORA to Florence took two hours. Keelyn sat with her chin on her hand and watched the scenery pass. Evaporated thunderclouds left thin white threads against the soft blue sky. Sunlight warmed the glass of her passenger window, and she leaned her cheek against it, hoping it would thaw the gloom hovering over her spirit. Miles of reddened dirt pushed at the base of the Rocky Mountains, seemingly shoving them out of reach. The solace of mountain pines and cool river streams often made her feel so close to God. It was the one place she felt swaddled in his comfort.

  Now both the mountains and God seemed unreachable.

  “You’re so quiet.”

  She turned to look at Lee. He sat with one hand on the steering wheel and the other hand around a travel mug.

  “Is there something you want me to say?” Keelyn asked.

  He tapped his fingers against the cup. “There’s nothing I want you to say. But could it be the other way around?”

  Chilled bumps raised on her arms despite her shirt and sweater. Did she want to get into this now? On the way to see her stepfather in prison?

  Lee eased the car into the passing lane. “You’ve been pretty quiet of late.”

  “I have a lot on my mind.”

  He nodded. “Has Nathan spoken to you?”

  Her suspicion grew at the question. “About what?”

  He shrugged his shoulder as if unconcerned, but the fact that he left it raised betrayed the tension he felt. “About anything.”

  “Is there something he’d ask me about?”

  Lee looked away from her out the driver’s window.

  Hiding his reaction?

  “I don’t know. You can never tell. He’s been known to have some peculiar theories about things.”

  “Theories proved to be true in the end, right?” Keelyn studied Lee. He stroked at the muscles in his neck. What did Nathan know about Lee that worried him? Did he suspect something about him as she did?

  “You must be nervous. Seeing your stepfather and all.”

  Topic change. Another tell. He didn’t want to be pushed on whatever the subject was. Keelyn turned back toward the view out the passenger side. They passed a rusted blue Chevy truck. “I’ll do what I have to do for Raven.”

  Even as the words fell from her lips, her ears could hear the hollowness in them. After all, she hadn’t done all she could. If she had, wouldn’t Sophia still be with her mother?

  “Are you ready for this?”

  “As ready as you can be to talk with your mother’s murderer.”

  “You need to be mentally prepared. It’s not a spa, Keelyn. It’s a harsh environment. We’re just lucky he’s out of supermax.”

  The Alcatraz of the Rockies. A prison in a sea of desert red clay. An individual water drop or particle of sand rarely provide a barrier. But their collective force can be daunting. A violent, churning bay. A harsh, dry desert.

  Where John Samuals was confined.

  Keelyn saw the prison structures in the distance. They passed a sign that warned, “Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers.”

  From the sky, ADX Florence appeared like a fan-shaped structure, a mock salute to the heat that accumulated between the desert and the sky in stifling waves during hot days. Redbrick buildings with harsh metal watchtowers.

  The trial of John Samuals had been easy fodder for the cable TV court shows. He was a murderer and a domestic terrorist. The new catchphrase of the twenty-first century.

  It wasn’t just his attack on Keelyn’s family that had gotten Samuals into trouble; it was the biological experiments in a home-built lab. Law enforcement theorized he was creating a bioweapon. Discovery of his lab made an insanity plea over his hallucinogenic murder spree difficult. After all, how could a man be truly insane if he could maintain and function a well-designed lab stocked with toxic neuroagents and not infect himself? Prosecution lawyers
pointed to that as the product of a well-functioning mind.

  In addition, at the time of John’s arrest, drug levels for his antipsychotic medications were at therapeutic levels, which surprised many involved in his case because it was presumed financial difficulties had prevented him from buying his medication. Had Lucent been a ruse by an intelligent man for the insanity defense? Had an evil mind, not a psychiatric illness, driven him to slaughter his family? Medical records provided historical proof that when these drug levels were normal, John’s hallucinations were kept at bay.

  The proposed theory was he’d used Lucent as a scapegoat for the murder of his family so he could continue his experiments unimpeded. No one really knew what had been in the man’s head, but everyone agreed he was dangerous.

  He had been convicted under federal law.

  That gave him a free pass to the supermax. Fellow inmates included convicted Mexican drug lords, white supremacists, and the Unabomber.

  Reportedly, the rooms were nine by six with concrete furniture and a polished steel slab for a mirror. Every prisoner was under administrative segregation. When they exercised, they were singly caged to prevent them from killing one another. Television and radio were present but inaccessible to the inmate, given as reward and taken away for punishment, the jailors as proverbial gods.

  That this prison was a cleaned-up version of hell might well be an accurate description.

  John Samuals remained on death row.

  Normally, John would be allowed visits from his lawyer or special investigators. Lee had to request special permission from the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Prisons to allow Keelyn this visit.

  The only reason she’d agreed was John’s insistence that he would only share information in her presence.

  In consideration of the two murder victims, a missing woman, and an abandoned child, the agencies had approved her visit.

  Biologically, Keelyn and John were not related. What did she owe a man, her stepfather, who’d brutally murdered her mother and half siblings?

  Nothing, raged through her mind.

  But the Holy Spirit quietly nudged her on the road to forgiveness. And as she walked toward the structure, her steps hesitated as her old nature warred with the quiet voice within.

  After presenting their IDs, Keelyn and Lee were scanned and escorted through several security points before they came into a small room. Her stepfather sat alone, shackled to metal loops secured into the concrete floor behind a wood table. His head was Mr. Clean bald, and his eyes were cloudy and dark. The hollow gray of his irises bled of life. Keelyn wondered if the stress of the trial and prison had caused the changes in him. He was a low flame that struggled at the last vestiges of a wick before the wax choked it out.

  Hopeless.

  John Samuals hadn’t always been a dark figure. The change was slow, maybe unnoticed by her mother as she was by his side every day, but detected by Keelyn during her visits. On Easter one year, it was an antigovernment tirade at dinner. When she came the following year during summer, several large plywood signs sat on the edge of the property, touting freedom from taxes and supporting the right to bear arms. Others were more ominous:

  No Trespassing!

  No Government Agents Allowed!

  If You Can Read This Sign . . . You’re Within Range.

  The slogans were spray-painted in red and black, the color dried in dripped black lines like her mother’s mascara down her tear-stained face. One of the last times Keelyn had visited, she remembered looking back at a new glint off the wood fenceline. The top edge newly covered with barbed wire. It was during the same visit she’d noticed the house numbers missing. Darkened brown rectangles left next to the faded, chipped siding.

  Next Christmas, the mailbox was gone. How would she get her Christmas cards? Instead of the usual pine tree Keelyn loved to decorate, cut from a local tree farm, sat two long-arm guns and an archer’s set, complete with quiver of arrows. To demonstrate the weapons’ danger, John had taken her hunting and killed a rabbit. To say there was nothing left after the buckshot tore apart the creature was an understatement.

  It had evaporated into a haze of red mist.

  At least, that’s how her young eyes remembered it.

  Keelyn didn’t know how long she stood still, trapped by the memories, but she jerked to the present when she felt Lee’s hand on the small of her back nudging her forward—into another, current nightmare. Her heart stammered in her chest as her mind recalled John’s maniacal look the day he’d slaughtered her family, and she pressed her toes into the floor to prevent the forward motion. Closing her eyes, she began to pray for deliverance.

  Once she dared open them again, John looked docile, shrunken.

  Lee pulled out one of the metal chairs on the opposite side of the table, and the sound scraped her nerves. The word Papa hung unspoken on her tongue. What she used to call him as a child. As she grew older, the name didn’t seem to fit who he’d become and she began calling him by his first name. Why did her mind revert back to the more innocent times?

  Now, she couldn’t bring herself to say it . . . or anything else.

  Keelyn felt Lee’s hand on her shoulder as it pushed her into the seat. The coolness of the metal saturated her jeans like the crystals of frigid indifference hardened her heart. She held John’s gaze. He looked down.

  Lee rustled his hand over the wood. “Mr. Samuals. Thanks for agreeing to see us today.”

  John looked up and his gaze locked onto Keelyn’s eyes. She reached beside her and gripped Lee’s thigh. He covered her shaky hand with his.

  “I’ve missed you, Keelyn.”

  A slow heat built in her chest. “How about I’m sorry?”

  “Keelyn, maybe this isn’t the way to start,” Lee warned.

  She pulled her hand away from his protective clasp. “You don’t get to decide what I say.” She turned back to John. “Really, that’s it?”

  He leaned forward, the chains strained at his wrists as he reached for her. “Would you have been happy with anything I said?”

  The spark of defiance in his eyes threw her vengeance off-kilter.

  John offered up his palms. “An apology would be worthless. My sorrow over what I did, hollow to the loss of those people in your life. Would it make you feel any better about what I did to your mother?”

  Her voice broke over a covered sob. “Why did you want me here? Insist on it, if not to apologize?”

  “I wanted a glimpse of Sophia. You always had her eyes.”

  Keelyn stood but Lee grabbed her hand. “We’re not going to solve this today.”

  “I’m not going to stay to help some sick freak remember the woman he murdered.”

  Lee’s lasso around her wrist pulled her back into the chair. “We’re here to ask about Lucent. We’ll work toward family counseling later.” His blue eyes, a calm lake, implored her mind to reason.

  She swallowed as images of her sister and niece came to mind. Taking a deep breath, her heart slowed. She would do this for Raven.

  The chains slid over the wood as John eased back into his chair. “Why ask about him? He doesn’t bother me anymore.”

  “A man, claiming to be Lucent, has threatened Keelyn’s life.”

  “That’s not possible. He was just something my mind made up. A chemical imbalance.”

  “Raven is missing,” Keelyn said.

  “How?”

  “This man says she’s with him. Did you know she had a little girl? Your granddaughter?” Keelyn asked.

  “Raven and I don’t keep in touch.”

  “Is Lucent a real person?” Lee asked.

  John pulled his hands toward his stomach. The metal links rang like ten children each hitting a musical triangle. “For a long time, I thought he was real. Now I know he wasn’t flesh and blood like you and me. Just a demon.”

  “When did you stop having the hallucinations?”

  John bent his head to his cuffed hands and wiped his nose. “The
prison loony docs seemed to come up with the right drug combo to put him in the grave.”

  “Your medical records show you had therapeutic drug levels in your system on that day. You shouldn’t have been seeing him at all.”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t just the drugs but a combination of other things.” John tapped his wrist. “I see your fiancé may know what I’m talking about.”

  Keelyn looked at Lee’s wrist. His cross tattoo. “You’re claiming God saved you from Lucent?”

  “What I know is when I learned about him, Lucent stopped coming. Call it new drugs. Call it whatever you want. I can tell you this happened. Part of that came with the realization of what I had done. The ramifications of it. Lucent was something evil my mind drew power from. I struggle with what the Holy Book says. I don’t think forgiveness for me is possible.”

  The admission caused his body to sag; his neck bent as if it pained him to look up. Keelyn’s heart felt a pang of compassion. The weight of his actions evident.

  Is remorse better than an apology?

  “You need to read more of that book, then. Forgiveness is possible for everyone. What you believe is a lie,” Lee said.

  Keelyn glanced sideways at Lee. Could he counsel another about such a truth and still be hiding something from her? She folded her hands and placed them on the table. “I thought Raven was writing to you.”

  “She was for a long time. But the letters grew strange and then stopped.”

  “What bothered you about them?” Lee asked.

  John placed his cuffed wrists onto the table and sawed with the chain into the edge for several unspoken minutes.

  The sound grated at Keelyn’s nerves. “John?”

  He stopped, one link of the chain caught into a crevice in the wood. An image of John’s knife edge buried into the skin of her mother’s throat flashed through Keelyn’s mind.

  “She said he was stalking her.”

  Keelyn swallowed. Her spit a thick gel that dried her tongue in its wake. “Lucent?”

  “So, he was a person to her?” Lee asked.

  “Physically, yes.”

  John traced scratches in the tabletop with his fingers, the sound of the trailing metal links discordant. Keelyn arched her back as if he’d laid the cold silver rings against her spine.