by Alex Kava
MONDAY
December 2
Washington, D.C.
Maggie waited outside the police chief’s conference room. She leaned her head against the wall. Her neck still ached, even more than the shoulder she had in a sling. Tully sat quietly next to her, staring at the door as though willing it to open, ignoring the newspaper he had spread out on his lap. The front-page headline of the Washington Times spoke of yet another new and improved piece of airport security equipment. Somewhere below the fold was a sidebar story about a photojournalist’s suicide.
Tully caught her glancing at the newspaper. “Cleveland Plain Dealer kept Everett’s suicide below the fold, too,” he said, as if reading his partner’s mind. “Probably would have made top headlines if there had been photos to go along with the stories.”
“Yes.” Maggie nodded. “Too bad there were no available photos.”
He gave her one of his looks, the raised brow and the unconvincing frown. “But there were photos.”
“Unfortunately, they’re considered evidence. We certainly can’t release photos that are considered evidence, right? Aren’t you always trying to get me to play by the rules?”
At this, he smiled. “So this evidence is being stored in a proper place?”
She simply nodded again, sitting back and adjusting her sling. It was her own personal attempt at justice—that Ben Garrison’s horrifying images would not win him the notoriety he so longed for. A notoriety that he had become so obsessed with that he had even been willing to include himself as one of those horrifying images.
“Have you heard from Emma?” Maggie asked, a transparent attempt at getting Tully to put an end to the subject of evidence, of photos and film canisters that remained safely stashed in her file cabinet back at her Quantico office.
“She’s staying an extra week with her mom,” he answered, folding the newspaper and willingly abandoning the subject along with the newspaper next to a pile of outdated Newsweeks on the table beside him. “She invited Alice to stay with them. She wanted to invite Justin Pratt, too.”
“Really? What did Caroline have to say about that?”
“I don’t think Caroline would have cared. The house is huge, but I said no boys allowed.” He smiled as if he was glad he had some say. “Didn’t really matter, though. As soon as Justin heard about Eric, he wanted to be in Boston.”
“So there are actually some happy endings to this, after all?”
As the words left her mouth, Maggie saw her mother coming down the hall. She was dressed in a conservative brown suit, wore heels and makeup and was drawing a few looks from police officers in the hall and doorways. Her mother looked good, in control, not at all like some lost soul, and yet Maggie felt her muscles tense and her stomach knot.
“Hello, Mrs. O’Dell,” Tully said, standing. He offered her his chair and she sat next to Maggie with only a nod to her daughter and a quiet “thank you” to Tully.
“I think I’m gonna get some coffee,” Tully said. “Can I get a cup for either of you?”
“Yes, please,” Kathleen O’Dell said with a smile. “With cream.”
He was waiting. “Maggie? How ’bout a Diet Pepsi?”
She glanced up at him and shook her head, but caught his eyes to show him she appreciated the gesture. He simply nodded and started down the hall.
“I’m not sure why you’re here,” Maggie said, looking straight ahead, following her mother’s lead.
“I wanted to be here to put in a good word.” Then as if she remembered something, she set her purse on her lap, opened it and removed an envelope. She hesitated, tapping it against her hand. She set the purse back down. More tapping. Then she handed the envelope to Maggie with only a glance.
“What’s this?”
“For when you’re ready,” her mother said in a soft, gentle voice that made Maggie look over at her. “It’s his name, address and phone number.”
The knot in Maggie’s stomach twisted even tighter. She looked away and laid the envelope in her lap. She wanted to hand it back and forget about it. And yet at the same time, she couldn’t wait to open it. “What is his name?” she asked.
“Patrick.” Her mother managed a smile. “After Thomas’s brother. I think your father would have liked that.”
The door opened, startling both women. Chief Henderson held it open while Julia Racine stepped out, her face immediately showing surprise at seeing Maggie and her mother. Today the detective wore a well-pressed navy suit and heels, her blond hair tamed and styled. She was even wearing lipstick.
“Agent O’Dell? Mrs. O’Dell?” Racine made an effort to hide her astonishment and be polite. Maggie couldn’t help thinking the detective would have felt more comfortable asking what the hell the two of them were doing. But Racine was on her best behavior this morning. She had better be. Henderson wasn’t taking any of these discipline hearings lightly.
“We’ll hear from you first, Agent O’Dell,” Henderson said, still holding the door, waiting.
Maggie could feel Racine watching, wondering whose side she would take. She stopped in front of her, met Racine’s questioning eyes and said, “You mind keeping my mom distracted, just one more time?”
She waited for Racine’s smile, then she walked past Chief Henderson and into the conference room.
* * * * *
Keep reading for a special sneak peek at
GOOD GIRLS LIE by J.T. Ellison
Coming soon from MIRA Books.
1
THE HANGING
The girl’s body dangles from the tall, iron gates guarding the school’s entrance. A closer examination shows the ends of a red silk tie peeking out like a cardinal on a winter branch, forcing her neck into a brutal angle. She wears her graduation robe and multicolored stole as if knowing she’ll never see the achievement. The last tendrils of dawn’s fog laze about her legs, which are five feet from the ground. It rained overnight and the thin robe clings to her body, dew sparkling on the edges.
There is no breeze, no birds singing or squirrels industriously gathering for the long winter ahead, no cars passing along the street, only the cool, misty morning air and the gentle metallic creaking of the gates under the weight of the dead girl. She is suspended in mid-air, her back to the street, her face hidden behind a curtain of dirty, wet hair, dark from the rains.
Because of the damage to her face, it will take them some time to officially identify her. In the beginning, it isn’t even clear she attends the school, despite wearing The Goode School robes.
But she does.
The fingerprints will prove it.
Of course, there are a few people who know exactly who is hanging from the school’s gates. Know who, and know why.
But they will never tell.
As word spreads of the apparent suicide, The Goode School’s all-female student body begin to gather, paying silent, terrified homage to their fallen compatriot. The gates are closed and locked—as they always are overnight—buttressed on either side by an ivy-covered, ten-foot-high red-brick wall, but it tapers off into a knee-wall near the back entrance to the school parking lot, and so is escapable by foot. The girls of Goode silently filter out from the dorms, around the end of Old West Hall and Old East Hall to Front Street—the main street of Marchburg, the small Virginia town housing the elite prep school—and take up their positions in front of the gate in a wedge of crying, scared, worried young women who glance over shoulders looking for the one who is missing from their ranks. To reassure themselves this isn’t their friend, their sister, their roommate.
Another girl joins them, but no one notices she comes from the opposite direction, from town. She was not behind the red-brick wall.
Whispers rise in the morning air, nothing loud enough to be overheard but forming a single question.
Who is it? Who?
A solitary siren pierces the morning air, the sound bleeding upwards from the bottom of the hill, a rising crescendo. Someone has called the sheriff.
Goode perches like a gargoyle above the city’s small downtown, huddles behind its ivy-covered brick wall. The campus is flanked by two blocks of restaurants, bars, and necessary shops. The buildings are tied together with trolleys—enclosed glass-and-wood bridges that make it easy for the girls to move from building to building in climate-controlled comfort. It is quiet, dignified, isolated. As are the girls who attend the school; serious, studious. Good. Goode girls are always good. They go on to great things.
The headmistress, or dean, as she prefers to call herself, Ford Juliane Westhaven, great-granddaughter several times removed from the founder of The Goode School, arrives in a flurry, her driver, Rumi, braking the family Bentley with a screech one hundred feet away from the gates. The crowd of girls in the street block the car, and for a moment, the sight of the dangling girl. No one stops to think about why the dean might be off campus this early in the morning. Not yet, anyway.
Dean Westhaven rushes out of the back of the dove gray car and runs to the crowd, her face white, lips pressed firmly together, eyes roving. It is a look all the girls at Goode recognize and shrink from.
The dean’s irritability is legendary, outweighed only by her kindness. It is said she alone approves every application to the school, that she chooses the Goode girls by hand for their intelligence, their character. Her say is final. Absolute. But for all her goodness, her compassion, her kindness, Dean Westhaven has a temper.
She begins to gather the girls into groups, small knots of natural blondes and brunettes and redheads, no fantastical dye allowed. Some shiver in oversized school sweatshirts and running shorts, some are still in their pajamas. The dean is looking for the chick missing from her flock. She casts occasional glances over her shoulder at the grim scene behind her. She too is unsure of the identity of the body, or so it seems. Perhaps she simply doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth.
The siren grows to an ear-splitting shriek and dies mid-range, a soprano newly castrated. The deputies from the sheriff’s office have arrived, the sheriff hot on their heels. Within moments, they cordon off the gates, move the students back, away, away. One approaches the body, cataloging, another begins taking discreet photographs, a macabre paparazzi.
They speak to Dean Westhaven, who quietly, breathlessly, admits she hasn’t approached the body and has no idea who it might be.
She is lying, though. She knows. Of course, she knows. It was inevitable.
The sheriff, six sturdy feet of muscle and sinew, approaches the gate and takes a few shots with his iPhone. He reaches for the foot of the dead girl and slowly, slowly, turns her around.
The eerie morning silence is broken by the words, soft and gasping, murmurs moving sinuously through the crowd of girls, their feet shuffling in the morning chill, the fog’s tendrils disappearing from around the posts.
They say her name, an unbroken chain of accusation and misery.
Ash.
Ash.
Ash.
GOOD GIRLS LIE
by J.T. Ellison
Available December 30, 2019, from MIRA Books.
Copyright © 2019 by J.T. Ellison
ISBN-13: 9781488057403
Maggie O’Dell Collection Volume 1
Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.
A Perfect Evil
First published in 2006. This edition published in 2019.
Copyright © 2006 by S. M. Kava
Split Second
First published in 2006. This edition published in 2019.
Copyright © 2006 by S. M. Kava
The Soul Catcher
First published in 2007. This edition published in 2019.
Copyright © 2007 by S. M. Kava
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