Traces of Guilt

by Dee Henderson

  He got his first real surprise in the second article, reading about the trial. As he made the connection, he said in a low voice, “She’s the witness.”

  “Yes.”

  He glanced over as he heard Evie’s dogs return to the back porch, settle back into a watchful waiting. He turned the page in the article, kept reading. “Karen Josephine Spencer,” he said. “Now, that’s a nice name.” Karen Joy captured her personality, but her birth name was pretty cool too. Nice and regal, that Josephine. He smiled at the thought and moved to the final article.

  He scowled at the headline. “Not guilty? Are they nuts?”

  He read through to the conclusion, looked up at his guests. “The jury agrees he probably did it, but they let him walk on two violent murders because they didn’t think Karen’s testimony was enough to make it beyond a reasonable doubt. Did they listen to her? She’s like the nitpicker of precision in everything she says. She won’t say white when its cream, won’t say a few hours when she means two and a quarter. She’s so precise, I joke about it just to get that smile of hers.”

  “They didn’t believe her,” Ann said softly, watching him. “She found that bewildering, Will. Devastating. She’s become even more cautious and precise in what she says because of it.”

  Will dropped the articles back on the table. “Okay, you’ve showed me stuff about the trial. Karen obviously decided to wash her hands of Chicago and find somewhere else to settle, use her skills as a chef elsewhere. What’s the problem? I get the name change. That’s common sense. Why bring gossip with you when you can change your name and not have people asking you lame questions about what happened?”

  “Tom Lander.”

  “He’s here giving her trouble?” He was on his feet before he finished the question. “Where is she now?”

  Ann cast a look at Gabriel, already blocking his brother’s path.

  “What? Come on, guys, spill it!”

  “Karen’s likely working the first shift at the Fast Café as she does most Wednesdays,” Gabriel replied easily. “Lander is in Chicago. He doesn’t know she’s in Carin County. Sit down, Will, we need you to listen.”

  Will dropped back into the seat, picked up the coffee mug to have something in his hands. “Fine. Just make it the CliffsNotes version.”

  Ann nodded. “He’s an extremely violent man who terrorized Karen for the sport of it, then stabbed to death his ex-wife. Maybe simply to send a message.”

  Will closed his eyes and rolled the mug between his hands. “Okay. Got it.” He looked from Ann to his brother. “You’re still the sheriff, right? You’re carrying a gun? What’s the problem? He shows up, you deal with him.”

  “You know it’s not that simple, Will.”

  “Of course it is. You’re the one who makes the law difficult, Gabriel. I’m like, that’s a good guy, that’s the bad guy, now let’s go deal with business.”

  “Yeah.” Gabriel smiled, and it was a look Will remembered from their childhood.

  “What?”

  “I don’t need a soldier messing up my town.”

  Will snorted. “I’m retired. Am I not up to my armpits in house construction, barn construction, baby animals, and Mom’s fussy pansies?”

  Gabriel laughed. “Mostly, yes. You’ve also got a shooting range out back, and don’t bother telling me those illegal M-80 fireworks I hear go off occasionally aren’t you blowing up coffee cans to see how high they’ll fly.”

  “Those were legal when I bought them a decade ago. You should have confiscated the leftover spare box.”

  “Boys.”

  Will and Gabriel both looked over at Ann.

  “Back to the problem at hand. Karen Joy.”

  “Did you come up with her new name?” Will asked. “Nice job, if that was you.”

  “It was her idea, but I like it too. She’s worried about you, Will.”

  “Karen? Why?” He groaned. “Oh, I was teasing her a bit about being a soldier guy. She’d been ragging on me that, as a medic, I was more nurse than soldier. And I protested it was more like Rambo with a first-aid kit. Did she take that the wrong way? I didn’t mean to spook her, Ann. It wasn’t—”

  “Will, shut up,” Gabriel said, but his tone was kind.

  He stopped talking, not because of his brother but because his gut was churning. He’d scared the girl he liked more than anyone he’d met in his life, and she was wondering if he was a violent man like this Chicago guy. He’d often complimented her that she was a really good chef, but occasionally jested that he was good with a knife too. What an idiotic thing to have said. He was feeling sicker by the minute.

  Ann’s hand came over to rest on his arm, and she squeezed, tight enough to force him to look at her. “Chill out, Will. Please. She likes you, more than a little. I’d say she’s halfway toward being in love with you.”

  He sucked in a breath, let it out. A smile then spread across his face. “Really?”

  Ann looked at him with a humor that went back years. “What is it with you Thane men? You’re hung up on Karen, Josh is still hung up on Grace, and Gabriel would be hung up on someone around here if he’d let himself, and you’re all stunned that it might be reciprocated. My advice, Will? Put a ring on the woman’s finger, settle down, have some kids. Life would be so much easier on the females around here to not have you three all still available.”

  “Ann, I thought we were here to talk about some cautions,” Gabriel said, stepping on her statement to pull it back a bit.

  Ann smiled. “I’m changing my mind. Do you see Tom Lander causing problems for anyone Will cares about, that between the three of you brothers and your dad, you can’t effectively halt in its tracks? Look at this place.” She gestured toward the backyard. “Tom Lander hasn’t seen more than a patch of manicured grass and a few neatly kept trees in his life. He couldn’t get near here without being bit by a few snakes, find some dogs sniffing around him with bared fangs, or finding an M-80 tossed at his feet to move him along. It would be a collision of worlds so far apart he’d be lucky to leave the county in one piece. Although what Karen would think of living out here is a mystery, but that’s another question.”

  “She’s coming around to the view that a town with a couple of stoplights is too much traffic for her; country life sounds more appealing,” Will calmly replied.

  Ann laughed, then turned somber again. “Seriously, Will, you need to know Tom Lander is a nasty, dangerous man, and life stays better for everyone if he never learns Karen is living in this county. If he figures it out, if he comes this direction, you don’t attempt to handle it alone. You call every family member and friend you have, we create a little war council of our own to convince Tom Lander he doesn’t want to be here or have anything to do with Karen in the future. Promise me that? No handling it on your own?”

  Will held out his hand. “I’m retired.”

  She accepted the handshake, and Will smiled, rather than let go of her hand. “Of course, I hear you are too.”

  She smiled back, tipped her head. “I was afraid you’d mention that.”

  Will nodded and gently let go. “Ann, I appreciate you telling me all this. It explains a lot of things Karen hasn’t said. But we Thanes have a long history of taking care of our own within the law. That’s not going to change if Tom Lander shows his face in Carin County.” He paused and grinned. “Mostly because Mom wouldn’t like it, Karen might not either, and life is more pleasant when a guy is in good graces with his mother and his girl.”

  Ann leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, Will.”

  He felt himself turning red and went for a change of subject. “Does Evie want her dogs back? Because they’re comfortable here and welcome to stay another week, if that would help.”

  “I can tell.” Ann nodded toward the back porch, where Evie’s two dogs and his own two were now lined up in their own pack, studying the backyard for interesting movements. “If you can keep them for now, it’s appreciated.”

  “
They’re fine here,” Will repeated, pushing back his chair. He had a place to be and it wasn’t here. “Karen was worried what I was going to think?”

  “Some, yes.”

  “She didn’t flinch when I told her I tumbled out of a helicopter once on purpose, so why does she think this was going to bother me?”

  “She’s a woman. We tend to let such things bother us.”

  Will laughed at the way Ann said it. “I’ll set her mind at rest on this topic, you can be sure of that. Gabe, I want a photo of Tom Lander, along with his bio. It needs to be spread around town that I’m looking for the guy and paying a nice reward to anybody who calls me with a sighting. I’ve got a few favors to call in. He won’t be showing up without me hearing about it.”

  “I’ll get you the photo,” Gabriel promised. “We’ll be talking more, Will.”

  “I expect so. I’m going to stop by the café for a late breakfast and a Karen coffee break. Anything you want me tell her, Ann? Not tell her?”

  “Tell her to enjoy the day and not to worry about the past, present, or future.”

  He smiled. “I can do that. For both of us.”

  Gabriel Thane

  Gabriel looked over at Ann as he pulled out of Will’s driveway. “That did not go as I expected. You caved, Ann, like two minutes into the discussion. I thought we were going to head him off—”

  “I forgot who Will is,” Ann cut in with a shake of her head. “And wisely, I think, changed my mind.” She turned reflective. “Seriously, Gabe, are you worried about Will meeting up with Tom Lander?”

  Gabriel thought about it. “Not really, no. That guy has been terrorizing civilians who don’t know how to fight back. He’d get the shock of his life if he tried to threaten Will or someone he cares about. You don’t take the soldier out of a man once you’ve trained it into him. You might temper it a bit, but it’s still there.”

  “He’s a good, capable man,” Ann agreed.

  “If it didn’t sound like Karen was headed toward marrying Will, shifting to a life out here, it would worry me a bit more,” Gabriel said. “Being in town on her own makes her much more vulnerable. She’s a lot safer once she’s married and her life is in the middle of us Thanes. We’ve a tradition of moving in and out of each other’s lives. We’d all naturally be able to keep an eye out for her safety.”

  “Exactly,” Ann said. “I’m thinking the best place for Karen is where she can have a good life and good future, and I couldn’t draw up a better solution than the one she has here. We make it work. Whatever it takes, we adapt, draw the line here, and make Carin work for Karen.” She smiled at the rhyme of her words.

  “Suits me fine,” Gabriel said with a smile. “But if Tom Lander steps one foot outside Chicago, I need to be the second call.”

  “I’ll make that happen,” Ann said. She shifted her seat back, closed her eyes against the morning sun.

  Gabriel thought about his conversation with Evie the night before, his own thoughts on the drive home, and shifted the subject. “Grace had a hard night.”

  Ann murmured her agreement.

  “I know you’re keeping her confidences, Ann. I’m not looking to trespass there, but anything Josh can do—the rest of us in the family can do—to help Grace, you’re the bridge. We’re floundering right now.”

  She was quiet for a long moment before she said, “You already know what to do, Gabe. Don’t treat Grace differently from others. If you can smile without sadness, hug without a hesitation, joke about Josh’s crush on her in grade school without thinking twice about the remark, you’ll do more toward helping her heal than anything else you could do or say.”

  She turned her head toward him. “I don’t know how you do that, but you all need to figure it out and give her that. Be yourself. Treat her as if she can and will be normal again. Give her the gift of seeing past this and treat her accordingly. She can’t imagine that for herself yet. It has to be friends who paint that picture for her, give her permission and space to recover, to reaffirm she will heal, that the past doesn’t have to come forward into the future a day further than it has. She’s going to be beyond these crying waves when she’s done the unpacking of the memories, but it’s a three- or four-year process, and she’s pretty much in the middle of it now.”

  “This is nearly as hard on you as it is on her.”

  “Being friends of a victim is its own particular kind of weight. I wouldn’t ever want to be left in the dark, not know, not be that friend. I know we’ll survive, Grace and I, because I’ve done this journey before. But sometimes that knowledge just makes the days heavier. I can anticipate the coming terrain and the mountains and valleys ahead, which sometimes only makes it worse.”

  “I can understand that, Ann.”

  “Do you? You need to know something else. Grace really hasn’t let me in that far. I know she’s in great pain, processing unimaginable grief. I know she’s facing some first memories, her mind bringing up fresh ones like toxic bubbles rising in a hot spring. I know she’s getting struck by painful emotions striking her in unexpected ways. The smell of an aftershave making her vomit is the latest one. But I know that only because I’ve seen the signs rather than her telling me.” She shifted in the seat with a sigh.

  “After the abuse ended,” Ann said, “Grace got seven years of a surface kind of peace, and then the past washed up like a tidal wave. She’s getting badly buffeted right now. She’ll survive it, she’ll get back to an authentic rest, but it’s going to be years of work. She’s dealing with the past the hard way, pushing way too fast through it. I ache watching her make the attempt. As I’ve said, this isn’t how I would have had this unfold. And if we find the Dayton girl’s remains on that land, I honestly don’t know how Grace will keep breathing through it.”

  “If you can’t ease her away, you help hold her together. You help her crumble in a controlled and safe way.”

  Ann nodded. “Yes. Mostly. I just don’t know what day and time Josh plants that flag, one of you turns over that dirt, and we see what we fear is there.”

  “Do you want the Dayton girl to be found?”

  Ann shook her head. “No. And that’s sad, because as an officer of the law, it’s the thing I should most want—closure for the Dayton family. But for Grace . . . if she could walk the farmland with Josh, they discover nothing, she sells the land and moves on, that’s probably a better outcome. She needs hours of sharing trivial things with him, sharing memories from childhood, talking about life in the decade since they last saw each other. The interaction with Josh about their shared past will maybe give Grace a new layer of memories that can be useful. When she thinks of Carin, it isn’t just the devastation of life with her uncle.”

  “I see what you mean, Ann. The memories have to be made more manageable, and Josh providing other memories from their childhood might help with that.”

  “I think it will.” Ann looked his way again. “How’s Josh doing? He’s bearing the brunt of this. I should have called him last night.”

  “He’s shaken but determined. He wants, needs, to help her. Like the rest of us, only more for him, I think. It’s eating him alive that he didn’t see the signs of trouble.”

  Ann nodded. “If there were any to be seen—that’s what you should tell each other. You need to caution Josh about something. She has to be willing to risk talking with a guy about this. So far she’s only told women. She has to risk a small comment, get a reply, and find out a man can get through it without viewing her as damaged beyond repair. I don’t know if she’ll choose Josh to be that guy, or she may first turn to Paul, but she’ll eventually decide on someone.

  “I can’t coach Josh on what those words should be, because I don’t know them,” she said after a moment. “It’s a guy’s reaction she needs. It may be anger over what happened, or kindness towards her, or a hand touching her arm when she tells him something awful. I don’t know what she needs. I just know it’s something she can’t get from the women in her life. When i
t’s the authentic reply of a male who cares about her, it’s going to matter. Warn Josh so that if she ever does say something about it, his best move is not a nod and then silence.”

  “He’d be relieved that she opened a difficult subject, and he’ll handle it okay. But I’ll talk with him about it anyway.”

  Ann nodded, accepting Gabriel’s reassurances.

  “Paul’s staying in town for the day?” Gabriel asked as they turned into Carin.

  “Yes. We’ll fly back tonight late, return this weekend with Rachel—at least that’s the current plan.”

  “Come to dinner tonight at my parents’ place. It’d be nice to have everyone there.”

  “I’ll ask him,” Ann said. “You’re doing okay with Evie?”

  He was surprised by her question. “Sure. The doctor thing at lunch today, we wouldn’t have that if she weren’t so curious about matters and dug it out. I’d given up on the Florist case having an answer, but maybe Evie is right. The person who did it can still be found. She’s got me hoping again we can catch a break in the case.”

  Ann smiled at his answer. “Not exactly what I was after, but it’ll do for now.” He pulled up to the building where they were working. Ann stepped out and then leaned back into the vehicle. “Let’s assemble here after dinner with your family, talk the case through with Paul before we leave,” she said. “You, me, Evie, your dad. We’ll have whatever your lunch appointment turns up, and maybe Paul will have something from their finances.”

  Gabriel agreed. “I’ll have most of the interviews done by end of the day too. We’ll do that, Ann. Thanks for your help with Will. The conversation went better than I hoped.”

  Ann smiled. “He’s going to be fine—he’s a Thane. See you later, Gabe.”

  Karen Joy Lewis