by Linda Wisdom
“Can we have friends here?” Lisa asked.
Sam turned to Keely. “That’s up to you, since you’d be the one to put up with them.”
“One apiece is fine, but no slumber parties for right now.”
They nodded.
“Keely and I need to go somewhere this afternoon, but someone will be here with the two of you.” Sam stood up and walked over to the rack where he kept his hat. His weapon was already comfortably holstered at his side. He dropped a kiss on top of Lisa’s head, ruffled Steffie’s hair and caressed the back of Keely’s neck with his fingertips. A moment later he was gone.
As if planned, the moment Sam was out the door, two sets of eyes swiveled in Keely’s direction.
“Mother, is there something we should know?” Keely asked archly.
Keely merely smiled as she refilled her coffee cup.
“Follow the rules or you get to visit Grandma” was all she’d say.
Chapter I6
This is a good idea, right?” Keely appealed to Sam during the drive to her childhood home.
“You felt it was. If you don’t, we can go back,” he said agreeably, pulling the truck over to the side of the road and letting the engine idle.
She huffed several times. “If I don’t go I’m a coward who’s afraid to face the truth.” She looked at him narrowly. “A truth I have a hunch you already know.”
“I only knew your dad while I worked for him,” he replied. “Back then, I was more concerned with my bike and not letting old lady Morrison catch me stealing apples from her tree.”
She looked as if she wasn’t sure whether to believe him and turned back around. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap.
“Let’s go.”
The moment Sam parked in front of the house he sensed the tension rolling off his passenger in waves. He shut off the engine and turned in the seat. Keely sat stiffly, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles were white. She stared straight ahead as if the windshield held all the answers for her.
“Are you sure?” he asked softly.
She nodded jerkily and reached for the door handle. She hopped out before he could come around to help her out. With her back ramrod stiff, she walked toward the front door and unlocked it. She pushed the door open, but she didn’t enter immediately.
Sam remained behind her letting her know he was there without her feeling he was pressuring her. A red-hot knot centered in his stomach as he stared at her back. When she finally walked inside, he stayed close by.
Keely walked around the living room, pausing at the wall near the fireplace. Her hand hovered in the air as her unfocused gaze stared at the same spot for some time.
“Mommy hated the couch and wanted a new one,” she whispered. She shuddered and moved away. She headed for the stairs and slowly climbed upward.
Sam waited until she’d reached the top of the stairs before he switched on the portable cassette tape player he’d carried in with him. He’d kept it behind his back so Keely wouldn’t see it. Now, he placed it on the floor and punched the Play button.
Keely froze at the top of the stairs the moment the haunting music echoed in the empty house. She dropped to her knees and clung to the banister.
Sam moved up the stairs, but remained behind her.
“What do you see, Keely?” he asked softly.
“The loud voices woke me up,” she said in a barely there whisper. Her eyes were glassy with terror. “Daddy was yelling a lot.”
He dropped down behind her, but didn’t touch her for fear of breaking the spell. “Was he yelling at your mom?”
She shook her head. “I wasn’t supposed to get out of bed. But the night-light was off and I can’t sleep without the night-light” She clutched the rungs with her fingers as she stared downstairs at a scene only she could see. “Daddy was yelling at Mr. Willis. He said he wasn’t a nice man and did something really bad. Mr. Willis yelled back at Daddy. I didn’t like them yelling.” She started shivering violently. “And Mommy started yelling, too. She was really scared. I don’t know why. Her favorite song was playing on the radio. I liked it cuz it had her name in it. Mom would laugh cuz when it played, I’d sing ‘go ask Alice’ and tell her we needed a white rabbit.” Her voice was a monotone as if she were telling a story she wasn’t part of. Sam wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and spare her the horror she would soon relate, but he deliberately held himself back.
“So, Mr. Willis was mean to your mom?” he asked in a quiet voice.
Her head bobbed up and down. “He said Daddy owed him money, but Daddy said he didn’t do what he was supposed to do. Mr. Willis had a toy gun with him and Mommy screamed like she does when she sees a spider.” Her lower lip trembled and tears coated her voice. “Mr. Willis shot my daddy with the gun. Mommy screamed and called him names, but he shot her, too. There was a lot of red stuff on their clothes.” She unhooked her fingers from the rungs and carefully crab-walked backward. “I don’t want Mr. Willis to see me,” she whispered. “He might do something bad to me.” She kept up her stealthy retreat until she reached a door then she crept inside and carefully closed the door after her.
Sam took several deep breaths. He wasn’t sure whether to shout or cry. But he knew one thing he was going to do. He slowly got to his feet and walked down the hall. He opened the door and looked in.
Keely was lying on the floor.
“If I keep my eyes closed, he’ll think I’m asleep,” she whispered. “I can hear him at the door and he’s seeing if I’m asleep. So I’ll hold my dog and pretend to be asleep.”
Sam felt the chill invade his bones. Willis had come upstairs and actually checked on her? What if she hadn’t had the presence of mind to pretend to be asleep? Would she have been a victim too? Perhaps Willis wouldn’t even have been convicted, since she had been the prosecution’s star witness.
“But you’re safe now, Keely.” He kept his voice low and non-threatening. “Mr. Willis is gone.”
She turned over and sat up, sliding backward until she reached the wall. “Why did he have to kill them, Sam?” she asked in a hoarse voice. “Was money that important to him?”
“He had a couple kids, so maybe that’s why. But his wife left him before the trial started.” He moved over and crouched down by her. “That’s why the song affected you so much, although you’ve probably heard it many times before without even thinking about it. You were back up here where it all began. Somehow he knew the song would upset you.”
“The first time I heard it was at the bookstore. I felt as if a fog surrounded me and I heard shouting. That’s how my nightmare would start. With shouting,” she mused. She combed her fingers though her hair, which hung loosely down to her shoulders. “A courtroom. People asking me questions. A man trying to say I didn’t even know what I was talking about. I was only a little girl. I couldn’t say the handyman killed my parents.”
“But you did and he was convicted because of what you saw.”
She raised her head. Eyes glimmering with tears looked at him. “You knew everything, didn’t you? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me go through this?”
This time, he followed through on his wishes and pulled her into arms. “It wouldn’t have been a good idea. You had blocked out that entire time. Your remembering couldn’t be forced.” He kissed her forehead and noticed her skin was icy to the touch. “I wasn’t going to suggest you do something like this, but I knew if you were going to go through with it, I was going to be with you.”
She clutched at him as if he were her lifeline. “The man committed two horrible murders. He’s still in prison, right? Right, Sam?” Her voice sharpened when he hesitated.
“No, Keely, he’s out. He has been for a few years,” he said quietly. “He was released early for good behavior.”
Her lips parted, her eyes dilated with shock as the words rocked her back and forth like a cold slap in the face.
“The man killed two people in cold blood and would have kil
led a child if I hadn’t pretended to be asleep,” she said in a low voice throbbing with fury. “Yet they let him out for good behavior? What does this say about our justice system?”
“Prisons are overcrowded. If someone keeps his act together while inside, he has a chance of getting out. My dad was in charge then and I don’t even know if he heard about it when it happened, but he probably did and purposely kept it quiet. I’m sure he knew if there was a chance Willis would come back here, there would be a lynching party waiting for him.”
Keely kept shaking her head, unable to believe all she was hearing. The chilling memory of how her parents were killed in such a violent manner was now a recent memory for her. And the man who had destroyed a little girl’s life had been set free because he behaved himself in prison. She rubbed her hands over her face.
“Why didn’t anyone ever say anything to me about this?” she demanded. “I can’t believe everyone who lived here back then is gone now. This must have been the biggest thing to happen up here since the Gold Rush.”
He tightened his hold, pressing her cheek against his shirtfront. “That was a decision made thirty years ago. After the trial ended, you got very sick. There was a time the doctors weren’t sure you’d survive. When you did and it was learned that you’d forgotten everything about the murder, your grandmother decided it was a sign. She sold her house and moved the two of you out of here. She didn’t want you to ever remember the truth behind your parents’ death. Your grandmother was a much loved woman in this town and it seemed to be an unspoken agreement that the murder wouldn’t be mentioned around you back then. When you came back it was pretty obvious you hadn’t remembered what happened and no one felt it was right to bring it up first.”
Keely assimilated his words. She was stunned people would care so deeply about a person’s feelings that they were willing to do such a thing for someone they hadn’t truly known.
She disengaged herself from his arms and stood up. She didn’t bother brushing the dust from her jeans as she walked out of the room. Sam followed more slowly. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, she was standing by the cassette recorder. She had stopped the tape and pulled it out of the machine. She held the tape up and carefully unwound it until ribbons lay in a brown shiny pool around her feet. She didn’t turn around as she spoke.
“I need to go into town,” she said in a voice that gave no indication of her mood.
By the time Sam was downstairs, Keely was out in his truck. He paused long enough to pick up the cassette recorder, and on his way out he flipped the lock and closed the door.
“I want to go to the newspaper office,” she said in a monotone.
Sam stifled a deep sigh. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
She turned her head. The blank expression on her face was chilling Sam’s soul.
“Was playing that song to help jog my memory a good idea?” she asked. “I guess in your mind it was. Now I have to do something to finish the process which means I need to read some old articles. Where else will I learn besides the newspaper office?”
He didn’t bother to argue with her. He figured he’d lose anyway. Keely was right. He’d made the judgment call in playing the song while she was in the house and it had worked. He wasn’t sure if she hated him or not for what he’d done. So far, she hadn’t shown much in the way of emotion. He switched on the ignition and drove down the driveway. Instead of turning toward his house, he turned toward town. If she was going to find any articles on the murders, he preferred to be present.
“Hey there, Sam,” the man at the front desk in the small local paper’s office greeted him. He nodded toward Keely.
“George, this is Keely Harper,” Sam said. “Keely, George Weaver has been the newspaper’s owner, editor in chief, and head reporter for the last forty years.”
George nodded a head covered with snowy white hair that was pulled back into a ponytail. With his faded jeans, tie-dyed T-shirt and sandals he looked like a refugee from the sixties. His dark eyes were keen as he offered Keely his hand.
“Mr. Weaver, do you have the back issues for nineteen sixty-seven?” Keely asked.
He glanced at Sam, who nodded and mouthed die words “She knows.”
“I’ve kept up with the times and they’re all on microfilm,” he replied, sliding out from behind his desk and heading for the back of the room. “Why not come on back here and I’ll get out what you need.”
“So you know, too,” she said, the lack of tone in her voice making it impossible to tell if it was a threat or statement.
George turned around. “Yes, Keely, I know. You were a very brave girl back then. Have a seat here.”
Keely followed him to the desk and sat down in front of the microfilm machine. George came back with a spool of film and quickly threaded it through. He turned it on and leaned over, scanning it in bits and pieces until he came to the front page he wanted.
“Everything you’ll need to see is on this spool,” he said quietly. He glanced over at Sam. “Take all the time you want.”
“Thank you.” Keely’s eyes were already focused on the screen.
Brutal Double Homicide Rocks Echo Ridge! This morning, the bodies of Charles and Alice Davis were discovered in their home, victims of bullet wounds to the heart and lungs. Alice’s mother, Evelyn Stuart, discovered the bodies when she stopped by to pick up her granddaughter, Keely. Luckily, the five-year-old child had been sleeping upstairs and was unharmed. Police are conducting an intensive investigation to learn the reason for the killings and bring the murderer to justice.
Keely reached out with her fingertip, gently tracing the grainy photograph of a man and woman smiling at the camera.
“I’ve never seen them before now,” she whispered. “Grandma said there weren’t any pictures. I guess she thought if I saw a picture of them I might remember.” She moved the tape a little further ahead then stopped.
Edgar Willis Arrested for the Murder of Alice and Charles Davis! Due to Keely Davis’s testimony, Edgar Willis was arrested for the murder that shocked our small town. She told Sheriff Fred Barkley that the family handyman had been arguing with her parents and shot them. She had gone back to her bed and pretended to be asleep because she was afraid die bad man would hurt her, too. Fingerprints found at the scene matched Willis’s. Due to the heinous nature of the crimes, there is no bail set
Keely stared at a photograph of a man in his thirties who stared sullenly at the camera. Underneath his chin was a jail identification number.
“What do you remember about him?” she asked softly. He thought for a moment “Good worker, but had a bad temper.” He winced at his bad choice of words. “He had two kids, a wife who was afraid of him but never said anything negative about him. No one else complained about him because he was always on time for his jobs, drank only on the weekends and stayed out of people’s way.”
Keely continued staring at the picture. “He built the back porch,” she said to herself. “But afterward, he wanted more money even though the price had already been agreed on. My dad told him he’d been paid and he wouldn’t get any more. That’s why he came back that night. He wanted the money he felt he was due.”
As if she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore, she scanned forward. She read every word regarding the trial. Arguments made by both sides and a story about a little girl who told a story about the family handyman shooting a gun at her parents and now her mommy and daddy were in heaven and how much she missed them. The defense tried every trick in the book to trip up her testimony, but for a five-year-old she was very self-contained and answered in a clear piping voice. There was no doubt when the guilty verdict was unanimous.
Edgar Willis was given a life sentence in prison. People declared they wanted him to die there. His wife had divorced him before the trial began and moved herself and their two children out of the state.
“Why was he so angry?” Keely asked, turning around to Sam. “Why would he do something so vile whe
n he had to know he’d be caught?”
He shook his head. “I remember overhearing my dad talking about it, Edgar had been drinking and could be a mean drunk at times.”
“Did he start fights? Did anyone ever press charges against him?”
He shook his head. “His wife had it rough enough and he always paid the damages. No one had any idea he would go as far as he did. No warning.”
She stared at him, her face pale as if it were carved in marble. “Wonderful. No warning, a man who must have been troubled and people felt sorry for his wife, so no one ever intervened. During this time, Edgar Willis’s anger must have been building up until he exploded against my parents who didn’t deserve their fate.â€� She pushed back the chair and stood up. “I can’t do this anymore.” She walked swiftly toward the front, her sandals making barely there taps on the wooden floor. She paused by George’s desk. “Thank you, Mr. Weaver. It’s been enlightening.” She pushed open the door and walked outside.
Sam cursed under his breath as he hurried after her.
“It’s better she knows all of it, Sam,” George called after him. “It’s the only way she can get on with her life.”
“Not if someone is trying to end that life,” he muttered, pushing open the door with a heavy hand.
As he stepped onto the sidewalk, he felt a prickling sensation tickle the back of his neck. He remembered the last time he’d felt that. A coked-out kid carrying a sawed-off shotgun had been training his sights on Sam. Sam had ducked just in time.
Without appearing as if anything was seriously wrong, he glanced around. All he saw were the usual residents out shopping or local business owners returning from lunch or standing in a doorway talking to a customer or friend.
Could it be one of them? Could one of these people be in contact with Edgar Willis giving him information about Keely?
He only wished he knew what he could do to stop this here and now.
He walked over to Keely, who was standing by his truck’s passenger door.