Broken Places

by Sandra Parshall

  Chad stared at me for what seemed an eternity. Then he got up and stood so close that I could feel his breath on my face. “Take her home,” he said, very quietly.

  Celia and Donna were watching us. I felt tears filling my eyes and I hated myself for being so weak. “Take her yourself,” I said, even though the last thing I wanted was for him to be alone with Donna. Once I’d spoken my brave words, I didn’t have the confidence to let my refusal stand. I had to justify it. “It’s snowing too hard and my car doesn’t have good tires.”

  He narrowed his eyes and I could tell he was furious with me. “You’re from upstate New York,” he said. “Don’t tell me you don’t know how to drive in the snow.”

  “Why can’t Celia take her?” I couldn’t just say I didn’t want to and leave it at that. I had to go on seeking his approval.

  “I told you, Celia and I have things to work out together.”

  I looked at Celia, who looked back with a tiny, self-satisfied smile on her face.

  I had a choice between leaving Chad alone here with Celia or insisting that he and Donna go off alone.

  Chad pulled my coat out of the pile on the bed and held it up. I thought of all the things I should say, but I didn’t say any of them. I wanted to snatch my coat away from him and stomp out and go back to my house, but I didn’t. I slipped my arms into my coat and buttoned it up. Donna, still pouting, put on hers.

  Donna kissed Chad—a quick little peck, but it was enough to make my heart constrict.

  Donna wouldn’t shut up in the car. She recovered from her pique over Chad refusing to drive her home and talked nonstop about him. “He’s not like these boys around here. He’s so smart, and so educated, and he’s got so many great ideas. He makes all the boys around here look stupid and lazy.”

  The car was pitch black and I couldn’t see her. I held tightly to the steering wheel and tried to concentrate on driving. The snow was falling so heavily that I couldn’t see the road anymore. The windshield wipers couldn’t keep up with the snow, and they made an ominous groaning sound as they scraped the glass.

  “Chad’s goin’ places,” Donna said. “He’ll be an important man someday.”

  “And you think you’re going to be part of his life?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Donna answered proudly. “I will be.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I love him, and he loves me.”

  I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Shut up!” I screamed. “You’re out of your mind if you think he cares about you. You’re nothing but a stupid little hick.”

  “Ha!” Donna said. “I guess you think he loves you. Well, I happen to know the only reason he paid any attention to you was because he feels sorry for you.”

  “You don’t know anything,” I said. “He’s just using you. You’re nothing but a slut.”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me that way!” Donna cried. “I’m gonna tell Chad what you said. He loves me. He told me so. He’s mine.”

  I braked so hard that Donna screamed.

  I couldn’t control myself. I was out of my mind with anger and resentment and pain. I put the car in park.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Donna yelled.

  I jumped out and left the door open so the dome light would stay on. I went around the car and felt for the handle of the passenger door. I opened it and reached inside and grabbed Donna’s arm.

  “Have you gone crazy?” she cried.

  I had both my hands around Donna’s arm and I was pulling her out of the car. I’d never felt such strength before.

  I yanked her out and she fell onto her knees on the snow-covered road.

  I pulled her to her feet and pushed her away from the car. She screamed and started beating her arms at me. I pushed her again, and she stumbled into a big pile of snow by the side of the road and fell again.

  I got back in the car and made a U-turn. I drove away and left Donna on the dark road in the snow.

  I told myself I had left her close enough to her family’s house that she could walk home. I was sure she knew her way around, even in the dark.

  I returned to my own house. I added coal to the stove, for all the good it would do with winter blasting through a million cracks in the thin walls. I crawled into bed in all my clothes, including my coat and boots, and I pulled the blankets over me and cried for hours.

  I didn’t care if Chad and Celia called me a coward and a quitter. I was going home as soon as I could get out of this place.

  Eventually I cried myself to sleep, and I didn’t wake up until the next morning when someone banged on my door. It was Celia. She barged in as soon as I unlocked the door, and Chad was right behind her. The storm had passed and the sun was shining, sparkling on the fresh snow in the yard.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, groggy from too little sleep. I combed my fingers through my hair, concerned even then about how I looked to Chad and hating myself for caring.

  “Donna’s family’s looking for her,” Celia said. “She didn’t make it home last night.”

  “What?” I said, confused. “But I—”

  Chad gripped my arm tightly, his eyes boring into mine, and pulled me farther away from Celia. He spoke in an intense whisper. “Where did you let her out?”

  I whispered too. “Near her house, just up the road—”

  “You left her right in front of her house, do you understand? You saw her walking toward the house.”

  “I—I—” I couldn’t string together words. I could feel Celia watching us.

  “Nobody can blame you,” Chad said, his voice now strong and certain. “You were right in front of the house, and she was walking toward the house, so you thought she was home safely and you headed back.”

  I couldn’t tear my eyes from his. I was mesmerized, as if every bit of inner strength I had was draining away and he was filling me with his will, his determination.

  I heard a car door slam outside, then footsteps on the porch and a knock on the door. Celia went to open the door.

  Chad leaned close and whispered to me, “The local politicians are just itching for an excuse to scrap the poverty program. If anything happened to that girl because of a VISTA—”

  Celia opened the door and Donna’s sixteen-year-old brother, Larry, was standing there. Tears ran down his face.

  Celia stood back and motioned for him to come in. For a moment nobody spoke. Larry wiped his face with his sleeve. Finally he said, “They found her. The deputies found her in a ditch by the road, curled up like a baby and all covered with snow. She froze to death.”

  He burst into sobs.

  I couldn’t breathe. I felt as if cold fingers were strangling me. What had I done? I never meant to hurt her.

  Celia watched Larry silently, but Chad was watching me. I knew what I had to do. The only thing I could do.

  I went to Larry and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “If I’d known there was any danger, I would have driven all the way up the driveway to the house before I let her out. But she said it was okay, we were right in front of the house and she didn’t want me to go up the driveway because the car would probably get stuck. Maybe somebody else came along after I drove away, and she…I can’t imagine what happened. Oh, Larry, I feel awful. I’m so sorry. If I could go back and—”

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. He laid his head on my shoulder, and I patted his back while he cried like a heartbroken child.

  In that moment I surrendered my dreams for the future and began a lifetime of atonement.

  ***

  The manuscript ended there.

  Chapter Forty

  At 1 p.m., the side door of the courtroom banged open and Scotty Ragsdale shuffled in, handcuffed and flanked by the Blackwood twins. The deputies steered him to a chair at the defense table. Ragsdale shot a belligerent look at Tom and Brandon in the front row behind the prosecutor, but he i
gnored his parents sitting directly behind him.

  In a courtroom that could hold 100, the Ragsdales were the only spectators other than Tom and Brandon. Irma Ragsdale blotted her tears with a crumpled tissue. Beside her, Carl sat with his jaw clamped tight, staring at the back of Scotty’s head. Tom imagined Carl asking himself for the millionth time how they’d ended up with a son like this.

  Following Tom’s advance orders, Kevin Blackwood unlocked the plastic cuffs when Ragsdale was seated, and Keith grabbed the prisoner’s right arm and clicked his wrist into the metal cuff dangling from a bolt on the table.

  Irma Ragsdale whimpered and reached across the railing that separated her from her son. The Blackwoods stepped between them, and her husband pulled Irma back onto the bench. “They don’t have to chain him up like a dog!” she wailed.

  Jeff Fuller, the young lawyer at Scotty’s side, swiveled in his chair to lodge a protest with the prosecutor. “Is it really necessary to handcuff my client in the courtroom?”

  Raymond Morton, the longtime Commonwealth’s Attorney for Mason County, swung his head around in a long, slow glide and gave Fuller a raised-eyebrow Are you talking to ME? look. After a moment he said, “Yes.” Then he returned his attention to the papers on the table before him.

  Fuller’s cheeks flushed deep red and he faced forward again without another word.

  Brandon sniggered, but Tom had too much sympathy for the older Ragsdales to laugh at this situation. In the past, they’d hired the best attorneys they could afford for Scotty, but they’d apparently run out of local lawyers who were willing to get involved in a lost cause. This time, with Scotty facing charges of assaulting two police officers and possible murder charges looming in the near future, the Ragsdales had scraped the bottom of the barrel and come up with Fuller. He was borderline competent at best and had spoken with his client for a total of three minutes before the hearing.

  The Ragsdales had always bailed out their son, but today Tom hoped the judge would set the amount so high they wouldn’t be able to swing it. He wanted Scotty to stay in jail. Meredith’s manuscript—if it recounted actual events—provided a credible motive for Ragsdale to kill both Meredith and Cam Taylor. The man had obviously loved his sister, and if he’d somehow discovered after all these years that Meredith caused her death and Cam helped her cover it up, Ragsdale would have lashed out. Armed with a new knowledge of past events, Tom believed he could wring the truth out of him if he had Ragsdale in custody.

  “All rise,” the elderly bailiff intoned, sounding as if he were stifling a yawn.

  Judge Angus Buckley took his place and frowned over his bifocals at the defendant. “My lord, Scotty, I thought you’d cleaned up your act and started behaving like a man.”

  Fuller leapt to his feet. “Your honor! Is it really necessary to—”

  “Oh, sit down,” Judge Buckley said. “Let’s get on with it.”

  After Ragsdale entered his not guilty plea and the judge advised him of his rights in the court system, they moved on to the bail hearing.

  “Your honor,” the prosecutor said, rising, “the defendant is a suspect in three murders. When Captain Bridger and Deputy Connelly visited his home to question him, he attacked both of them. As you can see, they’re still recovering from their injuries. At the time of the attack, the defendant was under the influence of drugs and was brandishing an ax. Only the deputies’ quick action in subduing the defendant prevented far more serious, and possibly fatal, injuries.”

  Tom heard a whimper of protest from Irma Ragsdale. Her husband hushed her. Scotty slumped over the defense table, his head down.

  “As you know, your honor,” the prosecutor continued, “Mr. Ragsdale has a long history of drug abuse. And the recent assault was the second time he has tried to harm Captain Bridger.”

  When Fuller’s turn came, he reminded the judge that Ragsdale had stayed clean for several years, ran a one-man woodworking and restoration business that supported him, and had lifelong ties in the community. “He realizes how disappointing it is to his family that he allowed his grief over the death of a close friend to pull him back into bad habits,” the lawyer concluded, “but it was a temporary setback, and he is determined to resume living a productive life. He poses no risk of flight and is not a threat to anyone in the community. I’m asking that you release him on his own recognizance into his parents’ custody.”

  Tom barely listened. He was busy plotting his strategy for drawing a confession from Ragsdale. The man was so volatile right now, with so much preying on his mind, that one poorly chosen word could ruin any chance of getting him to talk.

  When the arguments concluded, Judge Buckley studied Ragsdale long enough to make him squirm under the scrutiny. At last the judge said, “Scotty, I don’t want to believe this slip-up means you’re falling back into your old patterns, but common sense tells me it’s highly likely. And on top of those misgivings, I take a dim view of anybody attacking an officer of the law.”

  Tom nodded, relieved that things were going the way he wanted. Then Irma Ragsdale stood and spoke directly to the judge. “Please, Angus, just let us take him home. We’ll make him stay with us, we’ll get him some help, I promise we will. It’s just killing me to see him in jail.”

  The judge sighed, and he looked so sympathetic that Tom felt compelled to interrupt. Getting to his feet, he said, “Your honor, if you’ll allow me to speak—”

  “Hold on, Tom,” the judge said, raising a hand. After another long look at Scotty Ragsdale, he said, “I’m setting bail at $200,000.”

  Carl Ragsdale gasped, and a cry of distress escaped his wife.

  “The usual restrictions apply. Court is adjourned.” Ignoring Fuller’s cries of protest against the high bail, the judge swept out of the courtroom.

  Tom stood to leave, satisfied with the outcome. While the Ragsdales tried to find the money to free their son, Tom would get a confession out of him and charge him with three counts of felony murder.

  Chapter Forty-one

  By the time Rachel got away from the animal hospital, it was past one o’clock, and she was afraid she’d blown her chance to search Lindsay’s room. Lindsay’s car sat in the funeral home parking lot when Rachel drove by, but how long had she been there and how soon would she leave?

  Rachel sped out of town and made it to the horse farm in less than twenty minutes. As she turned into the farm road, she debated whether to park in plain view outside Joanna’s house, so any employee who passed would wonder why she was there in the middle of the day when Joanna and Lindsay were absent. If she hid her vehicle, on the other hand, and someone saw her stealthily entering or leaving the house, she might arouse even greater suspicion. Both possibilities fed her guilt about doing this behind Joanna’s back. She was sure, though, that Joanna wouldn’t approve a search of Lindsay’s room and belongings, and she didn’t want to lose this opportunity to find the photo album.

  Rachel bypassed the paved driveway in favor of a dirt track on the far side of Joanna’s house that led to a big tool shed in the back yard. She parked behind the shed and hustled toward the house, feeling as if a million eyes were watching.

  Her hands shook as she inserted a key in the lock. Joanna had entrusted her with keys to the front and rear doors in case she ever needed to get into the house in an emergency, but Rachel doubted the current circumstances were what Joanna had in mind.

  Inside the kitchen, Rachel closed the door and leaned against it, letting her racing heart slow down. So far, so good, but she couldn’t even guess how much time she had before either Lindsay or Joanna returned. She hurried along the hallway and up the stairs. When she reached the second floor, she paused, watching dust motes float in sunlight at the far end of the hall, listening for sounds from behind the closed bedroom doors. She heard nothing. The silent emptiness of the house spooked her a little, and she scolded herself. Stop wasting time. Get moving!

  She entered Lindsay’s room, closed the door, a
nd walked straight to the dresser. Yanking out the drawers one by one, she ran a hand beneath a jumble of panties and bras. God, what a mess Lindsay left her belongings in. Rachel hated the feel of the slick fabric against her own skin because it had touched Lindsay’s most intimate places.

  Nothing there.

  Moving fast, she searched the bureau, which was empty, and the closet, where she found only a few tee shirts, a pair of jeans, and a pair of black gabardine slacks.

  Damn it, where did she put it? Unless Lindsay had hidden the photo album in her car, it had to be in this room. Wiping her sweaty palms on her slacks, Rachel turned in a circle, looking for more hiding places. Her gaze came round to the bed.

  Rachel dropped to her hands and knees, lifted the bedskirt, peered under. Nothing there either. She sat up, drew the bed’s coverlet and top sheet out of the way, and shoved her hand and half her arm between the mattress and box springs. She felt all the way up, then back down again on that side of the bed. She moved to the other side and repeated her blind search.

  Halfway down, her fingers collided with something solid. She grabbed it and pulled it out. The photo album’s green leather cover had A Book of Memories embossed on the front in gold.

  “Yes,” Rachel whispered, hugging the album to her breast. She felt as if she’d snatched something precious from a fire.

  But was the album intact? Had Lindsay removed pictures, perhaps to use in tracking down information about Rachel’s family?

  She flipped through the pages, watching her sister and herself age from small children to teenagers to young adults. The pages were still full, the photos where they should be. She allowed herself a sigh of relief, then scrambled to her feet. She had to get out of here. She didn’t know how much longer—

  The door opened.

  “What the hell?” Lindsay exclaimed.

  Rachel froze.

  “What are you doing in my room?”

  Lindsay started forward, and Rachel instinctively tried to step back, but she bumped against the bed, lost her balance, and sat down hard. Infuriated by her own awkwardness as much as Lindsay’s self-righteous outrage, she jumped to her feet and held up the album. “I was looking for this. It happens to belong to me.”