'He didn't say anything more than that, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that you've lost someone too.'
Once again Evan's emotional world was being turned upside down. He was here to help this woman with her problems, not the other way around. And it had to be kept strictly businesslike; he couldn't afford to get emotionally involved.
'Yes I have, but then so have a lot of people,' he said a little too quickly. 'I think what Guillory was getting at was that I expressed my own dissatisfaction with the police's efforts fairly forcefully. In fact I would have hit one of them - a fat slob called Ryder - if Guillory hadn't stopped me. From what you've just told me, he probably thought we'd get on like a house on fire.'
She smiled at him, and Evan thought again how attractive she must have been before a double dose of tragedy invited itself into her life. 'I think he's probably right,' she said.
Evan coughed nervously and met her gaze. He knew Guillory was right - he would work his butt off for this woman. The problem was going to be how to avoid getting too involved, especially now that she knew some of his past.
She stood up and asked him if he wanted coffee, breaking the tension before it became awkward. He got up and followed her into the kitchen.
'I don't know how much you know already,' she said, 'but let me tell it to you from my point of view.'
She ran through the same story that Evan had heard from Faulkner up to the point concerning her husband.
'Faulkner wants me to believe that Robbie was here at home when Daniel got back from school, and that he killed our boy for some unexplained reason and got rid of the body somehow. Then the cold-hearted son-of-a-bitch stayed here, living with me for a couple more weeks before making a run for it himself.'
The soft flush in her cheeks had turned a deeper red. 'Like I wouldn't know if something was wrong; if he was hiding something. I knew my Robbie and I know he couldn't have hurt Daniel if his life depended on it. And he couldn't have fooled me either.' She gave Evan a defiant look, challenging him to contradict her.
'I'm sure he couldn't, but the police say that Robbie's alibi didn't stand up. Nobody remembered him in the bar where he said he was.'
'Alibis are for the police to worry about. They're the ones who get all antsy if they can't check all the boxes and square everything away. I mean, it is just a paper exercise after all, isn't it?' She snorted contemptuously. 'But I knew my husband and I know he couldn't have done it.'
She looked down and was quiet for a moment, fiddling with the wedding ring she still wore on her finger. Evan thought she was deciding whether to tell him more. All she'd told him so far was that her Robbie couldn't have done it because she said so.
'Do you have a theory about his alibi?' he prompted.
She looked up and Evan could see the start of tears welling in her eyes. 'I've never mentioned this to anyone else...but I'm pretty certain he was seeing somebody else. That's where I think he was, in some woman’s bed, not in some bar, and he didn't want to tell that to the Police.' She swallowed thickly.
Evan felt like a heel for pushing her. His voice came out hoarse when he asked his next question. 'Did you say anything to him about it?'
'You bet I did.' The tears were gone as quickly as they'd appeared. He got the feeling it wouldn't have been a conversation her husband enjoyed. At the same time, with her face flushed and the wetness still in her eyes, Evan couldn't see why any man would want to look further. 'What did I care if all the old gossips round here laughed at me behind my back? If it meant the police would believe him and keep looking for the bastard who really did it, then it would've been worth it.'
'What did he say?'
'He denied it all, of course. Stuck to his story - said he'd been in the bar the whole time and it wasn't his fault if they all had a collective dose of amnesia. Said they were all too drunk to remember their own names, let alone his.'
'But you didn't believe him.'
'Like I said, I knew my husband. I know he didn't hurt our son and I'm also pretty certain he was seeing someone else. Men think they can hide things like that, but they can't.'
She caught him looking through the doorway into the lounge where the walls were covered with photographs of her errant husband.
'So why are all those still on the wall?' she said. 'That's what you're thinking isn't it?'
'It crossed my mind,' he admitted, 'but then again, one lapse doesn't mean a whole marriage is bad, does it?'
'That's the way I look at it - he's a man, he can't help himself.' She laughed then but without any real humor. Evan laughed with her, despite being a man himself. He supposed it was quite funny, but only if you were sitting in the comfort of not being the injured party.
'Why didn't you say anything to the Police?'
She shrugged. 'What would've been the point? Robbie would have denied it and that would have been the end of it.’ She turned back towards the kitchen countertop so that Evan couldn’t see her eyes. ‘He was obviously prepared to be considered a murder suspect in order to keep her name out of it. She must have been some woman.'
He could feel the bitterness overlying the layers of hurt. He wanted to ask her if Robbie had stopped seeing the other woman, or whether there was the possibility he had run off with her, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. She must have asked herself the same things a million times. An idea he didn't want to even think about came to him and he tried to push it away without success; what if Daniel had seen or caught the two of them together and they'd killed him in an attempt to keep him quiet? Had Linda thought the same thing over the years? It was a question that would have to wait for another day.
'You know what the worst of it is?' she said suddenly, turning back to face him. Anger had replaced the hurt in her eyes. 'It looks like it all came out anyway. Ed Guillory told me he'd heard rumors around town. Rumors which Faulkner must have heard too and which gave Robbie an alibi. But that was years later, just before he retired, and obviously he couldn’t be bothered to get up off his lazy butt and open it all up again.’ Her eyes challenged Evan to come to Faulkner’s defence, but that wasn’t a cause he was about to take up. ‘What did he care if I still felt like it was only yesterday. Guillory told me they had more than enough on their plates, what with budget cuts and all, to re-open an old case like that. It was only rumors after all, probably just old women's idle tongues wagging.'
Evan could imagine how she must have tortured herself over the years. It was bad enough that a crucial fact was buried for all the wrong reasons at the time, but for it to come out anyway later on must have been almost too much to bear. And to know that the Police knew it too, and were too busy or indifferent to take it up again - he was surprised she hadn't gone crazy. He was even more surprised by what she said next.
'There are some wicked people in the world, you know,' she carried on. 'Not just the monsters who abduct and kill children, but ordinary, everyday folk who like nothing more than to cut a person to shreds with their dirty tongues, just to spice up their sorry, sad lives.’ She threw her head back and ran her hand through her hair. Evan thought what a nice neck she had. ‘I'm told it's been said that my Robbie might have run off with his whore because Daniel saw them together, so they killed him to keep it secret and then ran away together. What kind of a sick person makes up something like that?'
Evan didn't have an answer. He couldn't bear to look her in the eye. Whoever had told her - Guillory presumably - didn't have as much respect for her feelings as Evan did. No wonder she chose not to mix with people around town. Chose instead to hide herself away, refusing to listen to the rumormongers. But Evan knew only too well you couldn't hide from yourself. In the small hours of the morning all your doubts and fears come to haunt you.
'I'm sorry, it's been building a long time,' she said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. 'I don't suppose you expected this when you knocked on the door.' She gave him a small smile.
'I'm not sure now what I expected, but this is probably more
than I bargained for. Certainly more raw emotion anyway, but that's fine.' He smiled back at her, letting her know that he was Mr Emotional Sponge, the man with the inexhaustible capacity to absorb other people's problems. He just hoped he didn't spoil things and start to cry himself. He needed to get it back on track. Time to get back to nice hard facts; less of the emotional claptrap.
'Do you have any ideas about what might have happened?' he said.
'Plenty of things might have happened. As far as what actually did happen, I haven't got the first idea. And there's not a day gone by when I haven't thought about it.'
'Faulkner mentioned the teacher, Ray Clements.'
He managed to get Faulkner’s name out without starting her off again. 'Ray Clements is a good man. As far as I'm concerned he could no more have hurt Daniel than Robbie could. I know Faulkner hounded him before he had his epiphany regarding Robbie, but I never thought that was right either.'
It seemed to Evan that Linda managed to see the best in everyone - except Faulkner that is. He got the feeling that when they finally got round to whoever she thought was the prime suspect (and he was sure she had someone in mind) it was all going to come pouring out again. Perhaps she thought it was Faulkner, she certainly hated him enough.
'He didn't tell them he'd given Daniel a ride home. That must have looked like he had something to hide.'
'If you knew what Faulkner was like back then, you wouldn't have been volunteering any information.' She snorted again. It wasn't an attractive habit and detracted from the nice neck. 'He seems such a nice guy now and everyone feels so sorry for him because of his wife dying, but if he got you in his sights back then, you'd have had a very different opinion. Ask poor Ray Clements; he ruined his life.'
'What makes you so sure Clements was innocent?
'I can't say. But just because I can't prove why he didn't do it, doesn't mean he did. I thought we had a presumption of innocence in this country. Nobody seems to have told Faulkner.' Evan agreed, but was getting the feeling that Linda's reasoning was a little light on facts and biased more towards whether she liked you or not. It seemed you were just meant to accept what she told you. 'The only reason Faulkner concentrated on him was because that low life Hendricks convinced him Daniel never left the campus - and Ray Clements was an easy target. Faulkner liked things easy.'
Evan wondered if they'd finally got round to the point where she was going to let rip. 'I get the feeling you don't like Hendricks. You think he had something to do with it?'
He thought she was about to snort again, but she held it in this time. 'You're not kidding I don't like him. He's a really nasty piece of work. The best part of him ran down his mother’s leg.’ The vitriol in her voice surprised him more than her language. It also seemed to him that two distinct teams were forming here.
‘Unfortunately, just because I don't like him doesn't mean I think he had anything to do with it. How could he have? He was driving a bus full of kids around at the time.' She went suddenly quiet and started fiddling with her ring again. It didn't take a genius to work out what she was thinking. If only she'd allowed Daniel to take the bus like all the other kids, none of this would have happened. Sometimes it takes a while to get there, Evan thought, but in the end we all end up blaming ourselves.
'Hendricks might not have done it,' she went on, 'but I think it's fair to say he enjoyed watching what happened to Ray Clements after he convinced Faulkner that Daniel never left the campus on foot.'
'Did he have some reason for not liking Clements?'
'I don't think so; he's just one of life's truly horrible people. There are plenty of people like him - schadenfreude they call it.'
'So how he did he get a job driving the school bus?'
'That I can't tell you.'
Evan's exasperation must have shown on his face. He was going to have to work on keeping it under control.
'You must be wondering why you bothered speaking to me at all,' Linda said. 'It must seem like I just deny everything I don't want to hear, and can't offer anything helpful - despite having thought about nothing else for the past ten years.'
Evan did a better job of controlling his face, but, privately, he thought that was a pretty succinct assessment. 'Of course not,' he said. 'It's been very useful.' He didn’t think that came out too well - he was going to have to work on his sincere voice too.
Luckily Linda didn’t ask him exactly how it had been useful. 'So what are you going to do next?'
'I think I need to talk to Ray Clements and then perhaps Carl Hendricks.'
Evan thought he'd got about all he was going to get from Linda. On his way out he asked her to call him if she thought of anything else, but he knew there wouldn't be anything. After all these years she'd either thought about every detail a million times over, or it was gone for good.
CHAPTER 10
He didn't really know what to think as he drove away. She was adamant her husband didn't do it and that he didn't run off with another woman either. He didn't know if he agreed with her or not. In the world he worked in until a few days before, people cheated on their partners and ran off with each other every day of the week. Did she really know him? She was probably right about the affair - in his experience most people had an inkling about what was going on or else why would they come to him.
But just because she got that part right didn't mean she was right about everything else as well. He couldn't just accept her word for it; he would need to look into it further and try to find out if any women went missing at about the same time. Even if he found out that he had run off with some other woman, it didn't mean he'd killed the boy. He had to agree with Linda on that score - it would take a special kind of monster to kill his own son in order to cover up something as run-of-the-mill as a bit on the side.
He still had Guillory's card and thought that would be the easiest way to find out. He might be able to give Evan the official take on the gossip and rumors Linda had told him about. He felt he had more chance of developing a relationship with Guillory. Faulkner was likely to be on the defense all the time.
He phoned Guillory on his cell phone.
'Well, well, if it isn't Mr Peeper himself.' Guillory said after Evan identified himself.
'Mr Ex-peeper.'
'Ex-peeper, eh. I'm glad to hear it. Got any clients?'
'Ha ha.'
Evan could feel Guilllory smiling down the phone. 'You liked that one, eh? So, you're working for Linda Clayton now are you?'
'That's right, and thanks for the introduction.'
'My pleasure.’ It wasn’t just the routine reply; he sounded genuinely pleased that he was able to help. ‘Pro bono, is it?'
'We haven't even talked about money.'
'That's good, because she hasn't got any. She might not believe her husband did a runner and thinks he's dead, but the insurance company don't agree. No body, no life assurance payout. She's poorer than a church mouse.'
'It's not a problem.' Evan said. He meant it too.
'I know it's not. That's why I gave her your name. You're a man searching for your salvation. I don't think you'd charge her if she was a Patty Hearst.'
Evan wondered how he had managed to make such a good assessment in such a short time, but that was probably part of his job. 'Okay, you made you point; I'm a sucker for a sob story. But I need some help.'
'And here I was thinking you just called me up to say thank you.'
'Thank you.'
'You're welcome...didn't we just do this? Anyway, what do you want to know?'
Evan told him about the rumors Linda had heard, and how she completely dismissed them.
'You're right; she won't have a bad word said about her husband. But anything like that should have been investigated at the time. All I remember is that one day he just wasn't around any more. I don't recall anything about another woman.'
'I know it won't prove anything but it must be worth looking into. Besides, if he ran off with a single woman she probably wouldn't
be listed as missing anyway.'
'No shit Sherlock, I'd never have worked that out.'
'Always happy to help.'
'Leave it with me, smartass; I'll see what I can dig up.'
Evan debated whether to ask a more delicate question that was on his mind. He didn't know Guillory at all but he seemed pretty straight. What the hell.
'Can I ask you one more thing?' he said, immediately regretting it.
'Uh oh. When somebody asks you if they can ask you something, instead of just coming straight out and asking it, you just know it's something they know they shouldn't be asking.'
He was right about that. Evan had been about to ask him what he thought of Faulkner and his abilities, but now he decided not to. It could wait.
'You're right; no tongues on a first date. Let me know what you find out.'
He was about to end the call when Guillory said, 'For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing here; you reap what you sow. You probably sleep better at night too.' He cut the connection before Evan had a chance to reply.
CHAPTER 11
Evan decided he should talk to Ray Clements while he was waiting for Guillory to get back to him. He didn't think Clements would have a problem talking to him if he mentioned Linda's name; he no doubt thought of her as highly as she did him. Despite that he still decided not to call ahead and drove round to Clements' house, not far from where Linda lived. The house and yard were small but tidy and well looked after. They looked every bit like Evan expected a retired school teacher's house would look like.
As he pulled up, a large woman wearing too much makeup and totally inappropriate heels for her age was coming out the front door. Faulkner hadn't lied - she'd been hit with the ugly stick more than once. Like all ugly women the world over, she insisted on scraping her hair back so tightly that it stretched her face. Evan hated to think what happened when all that tension was released at bedtime. And from the barrel-like shape and size of her, he thought it likely that Clements used her as a roller to flatten the bumps in his immaculate lawn. If he had any sense he'd put her away in the shed until next year when he was finished.
Cruel Comfort (Evan Buckley Thrillers Book 1) Page 6