Paradise Falls

by Jacobs, Jonnie

  Chapter 39

  Through her bedroom window, Grace watched the darkness of night begin to lift as morning emerged. Light gray sky, the silhouette of trees bending in the wind, a lone, pale star fading in the horizon. She’d taken a sleeping pill again last night but it hadn’t done much good. She’d lain awake, as she had the night before, her mind filled with horrific images, her heart with stone. Sleep, which might have offered temporary escape, continued to elude her.

  Dead. Her daughter was dead.

  There was no more wiggle room. No more clinging to the gossamer filaments of hope. No more bargains with God.

  Her daughter’s death knocked not only the air from her lungs but the marrow from her bones. It clawed at her insides with the ferocity of a mountain lion and pounded inside her head like the roll of thunder. Relentlessly and without end.

  And now, with Adam’s arrest imminent, she was more alone than ever. Last night she and Carl had each stewed in their own private misery, the divide between them as great as the Grand Canyon. Grace knew he needed her as much as she needed him. Yet they remained on opposite rims, not even looking to the other side.

  She wondered how it had happened, what Adam had done to Caitlin. Her mind raced with appalling vignettes. Her heart ached for Caitlin’s fear. Her pain. What evil festered in the mind of someone like Adam? How could Grace have lived with a murderous animal and not known?

  Worn out from crying, frayed from endlessly replaying imagined horrors, drained by loss, she still couldn’t sleep.

  She checked the clock. Five-thirty. Another half hour or so and she could reasonably get up. To what end? Did it matter anymore?

  Finally, she got out of bed to go the bathroom and heard frantic activity downstairs in the kitchen. Opening the bedroom door, she listened, then padded down the stairs. Carl was standing in front of the sink, shaking.

  “What is it?” Grace asked, moving toward him.

  For a moment, he didn’t speak. Couldn’t speak, Grace thought. She worried he might be having a stroke.

  “Carl, are you okay?”

  “Mimi just called. It’s Adam.”

  “What about him?”

  Carl’s face crumbled. “He tried to commit suicide. He may not live.”

  “My God.” Emotion rose in waves, leaving Grace feeling battered and beaten. Her heart raced, her stomach clenched. She fought the rush of guilt. She hadn’t done anything wrong, she reminded herself. But she felt the finger of blame pointed her way. “Oh, Carl.” She stroked his arms. “How terrible. Where is he?”

  “Pacific Memorial. Intensive care. I’m on my way there.”

  “What happened exactly? When?” The kettle on the stove had begun to boil. “Sit down, I’ll make your coffee. You can’t go anywhere without coffee first.”

  Carl complied like a zombie. He pulled out a chair and sat, with elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “Mimi wasn’t totally coherent, but I gather it was Lucy who discovered him. She got up early this morning and heard music coming from Adam’s room. Thinking he was awake, she went in.”

  “Poor Lucy.” It was a shock she wouldn’t easily recover from. Grace felt the heat of blame intensify.

  “He’d apparently taken a lot of pills. Mimi’s. But only a few hours before Lucy found him. At least, that’s the speculation, or what I know of it. We’re lucky she found him while he was still alive, but he’d taken enough to do serious damage.”

  Grace brought Carl’s coffee to the table and poured herself a cup as well. She stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “This is just awful. Terrible. Oh, Carl. Baby.”

  “Mimi says they won’t let us see him for more than a few minutes. One person at a time. But I’m heading over to the hospital anyway.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  The silence was palpable. “I don’t think so, Grace. Under the circumstances, that’s a very bad idea.”

  Of course. What had she been thinking? “How can I help, then? Is there anything I can do?”

  He pulled away from her touch and turned to look at her. His eyes were cold. “Don’t you think you’ve done enough already?”

  Chapter 40

  Although Rayna didn’t actually need to be present when Adam turned himself in, she wanted to be there. It was her case and she was the one who’d taken the heat. For her own sake, she needed to see it through to the end. But Adam wasn’t scheduled to appear until noon, which still allowed her a leisurely Saturday morning, something she hadn’t enjoyed in several weeks.

  She slept until seven-thirty, woke without an alarm, and then went for a three-mile run. She wasn’t in the shape she’d once been in, when logging six or seven miles was as routine as brushing her teeth, but she was steadfast in her determination to fight middle age on every front.

  The morning was cool and crisp, but, for a change, the sky promised more blue than gray. Her spirits were light. There was a newfound spring in her step as she left her house and headed for the two-lane country road that led out of town. She greeted each passerby with a smile and filled her lungs with the elixir of living. Even the prospect of reading Seth Robbins’s column—a chronic morning irritant—didn’t phase her. He was about to lose a powder keg’s worth of ammunition. She grinned, imagining the obnoxious little twerp flailing at nothing but vaporized shadows.

  She was glad they’d been able to work out a voluntary surrender for Adam. Not only was it somehow more humane—although she recognized that some might find the concept of humane surrender an oxymoron—it was far more private for everyone concerned. Media cameras and reporters would have to twiddle their thumbs until the department was good and ready to give them a statement.

  The chief liked that. In fact, he was feeling pretty good about the entire case, and when he was happy, life was better for all of them. Of course, Karen Holiday’s murder was still unsolved, but Rayna was hoping the DA might be able to pry more information from Adam as part of a plea bargain.

  If it weren’t for the sympathy she felt for Grace and the niggling worry that Adam didn’t seem to her like a killer, Rayna would feel like she was on top of the world. She recalled Cody’s cautioning them about teenage boys and lust. It was a big jump from lust to murder. But it wasn’t just the photos of Caitlin, she reminded herself. There were the Garfield paper towels in the Dumpster and Caitlin’s necklace hidden in the basement of Mimi’s house. The DA thought they had enough. It wasn’t Rayna’s role to second-guess him.

  She’d worked the kinks out of her muscles by the time she reached the fenced property that marked the halfway point of her run. It was one of those mornings she felt she could keep going farther, but in the interest of time she turned and headed south, where she’d pick up a secondary road that led back to town.

  Teenage boys and girls. If Kimberly were alive, they’d be in the thick of it, Kimberly pushing for her freedom while Rayna agonized over every step. Or maybe not. Grace and Caitlin hadn’t seemed at loggerheads. And Rayna couldn’t help feeling that Kimberly would have turned out a lot like Caitlin. Once again Rayna’s breath caught at the pain of her own loss—a pain that seemed sometimes less sharp than it had once been, but other times was honed like a spike through her heart.

  No, she wasn’t going to let herself go there this morning. Instead, she tried to imagine Cody at seventeen. She knew he’d grown up in L.A., the middle of three boys, and that he’d played first base on the high school varsity baseball team. She suspected he’d been cocky even then, but she didn’t know for sure. Maybe he’d been shy and tongue-tied. Had he seen something in Adam that resonated with his own memories of growing up? Had Cody fallen prey to an unrequited teenage crush? If she had to guess, she’d have said he was more a Ty Cross than an Adam Peterson. Not that it mattered. He was out of her life. Again. He hadn’t even bothered to return her call from the previous night.

  If only he’d never drawn the assignment to Paradise Falls.

  Rayna tried to put him out of her mind, but
instead found that she missed him, which was totally stupid. In the few shorts weeks he’d reappeared, he’d managed to handily undue the years she’d spent forgetting him.

  Well, she’d done it once, she could do it again.

  As was her routine on weekend runs, Rayna stopped at the Starbucks two blocks from her house for a latte to sip as she walked the rest of the way home.

  Not unexpectedly, the line was long, snaking along the counter and past the pastry display. Rayna was trying to decide if she wanted to splurge calories on a scone when the front door opened.

  Hank’s friend Earl spotted her at the same time she noticed him. He fell into line behind her, shoving his hands into the pockets of his plaid lumberman’s jacket.

  “Small world, huh?” The greeting was mumbled and directed more at the floor than her.

  “Do you live in the neighborhood?”

  “No, I’m on my way to the lumber store. What about you?”

  “I live nearby,” she said. “What are you building?”

  “Nothing much. Just some porch repairs.”

  “Are you in the construction business?” She couldn’t recall if Hank had ever mentioned what Earl did for a living. If he had, she hadn’t been listening.

  “Guess you could call it that. I work for myself. Small jobs. More handyman than anything.”

  The line inched forward. Rayna decided to skip the scone.

  “Do you have time to sit for a bit?” Earl asked.

  “Sorry, I need to get home. Busy day and all.” She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about Earl that made her feel self-conscious. Maybe because Hank had been trying to play matchmaker.

  “Weekends can get pretty full, huh?”

  There was a stretch of silence then, thankfully, the cashier took Rayna’s order. Earl didn’t try to pick up the conversation again, but as she left the store he said, “See you around.”

  She wasn’t sure if it was a generic goodbye or if he actually harbored hopes along those lines. She hoped not, because she had no interest at all. She just wished she could recall who he reminded her of.

  ~~~~

  When she reached home, Rayna tossed her now empty cup into the garbage can in the side yard and picked up the morning paper. She dropped it on the kitchen table and headed for the shower. Half an hour later, back in the kitchen, she plugged in the pot for her second cup of coffee and poured a bowl of cornflakes. She thought longingly of the scone.

  While the coffee brewed, she ate her cornflakes at the sink and gazed out the window at her yard. She’d lost all interest in gardening after Kimberly died, but there were enough shrubs and perennials around the patio to make the space peaceful in the spring and summer. With the winter rains and dormant plants, her yard looked less appealing. Even the pot of daffodils on the patio table, which she’d picked up at the nursery in a moment of spring longing, were bent and broken and—

  Setting her bowl on the counter, she dashed outside. Sure enough, the stalks had been snapped at the base, but something new had been added: a tiny toy tiger propped against the base of the pot.

  She felt a chill snake down her spine. How long had the animal been sitting there?

  Chapter 41

  When the phone rang later that morning, Grace grabbed it on the second ring, expecting the caller to be Carl. Instead, it was Lucy.

  “I know this is a terrible time for you, Grace, and I’m sorry to be such a pest, but can you come be with me? Please? I’m scared and worried and I can hardly breathe.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the hospital. In some smelly old waiting room.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “With Adam. I’m here by myself. The doctors said they could stay with him for a while, but I couldn’t even see him. No kids”—she gave the word a disdainful emphasis— “like I’m six years old or something. And only two people max. Adam is my brother for God’s sake!” She paused then lowered her voice. “Shit, a person can’t even talk around here.” Then to someone else in the waiting room, “Yeah, yeah. I’m getting off now.”

  “I’ll come right over,” Grace assured her. “Where will I find you?”

  “In emergency. On the main floor.”

  “Hang in there, Lucy. You can do it.”

  Grace didn’t even bother with makeup. She grabbed a rumpled pair of slacks and a sweater, and ran a brush through her hair as an afterthought. She could have declined. After all, she’d learned of her daughter’s murder less than forty-eight hours ago, but wallowing in her own grief wasn’t going to help anyone. Lucy needed her, and Grace found it a relief to think about someone other than herself for a change.

  ~~~~

  She found Lucy curled in a chair in the corner of a very crowded waiting room. Families with babies, worried-looking couples, an old man holding an ice pack to his forehead, a middle-aged woman, still in her bathrobe, with an elevated and very swollen foot. On an overhead TV, a cartoon bunny ran through a plowed field, chased by a pack of hounds. No one watched.

  Lucy spotted Grace and raced into her arms. “Thank you, thank you. I’m so glad you came.”

  “Of course I came,” Grace said, brushing Lucy’s thick, unkempt hair from her face. “Let’s go somewhere else.” She put an arm around Lucy and led her toward the door. “Have you eaten breakfast yet?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “How about a soda or something? There’s a cafeteria on the second floor.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me tell the intake nurse where we’re going so we don’t worry your parents when they come looking for you.”

  ~~~~

  The designers responsible for the hospital cafeteria had clearly tried to break the mold of institutional dreary. The walls were a subtle sage and hung with soothing landscapes. Colorful round laminate tables were scattered around the room instead of being placed in rows. Classical music played softly in the background. Nonetheless, the atmosphere was anything but convivial. Hospitals were about waiting and hoping and praying, about exhaustion and nail-biting. Celebrations took place elsewhere.

  Grace bought a plate of French toast and bacon for Lucy in addition to a Coke, and coffee for herself. She set the French toast down in front of Lucy.

  “Any more news from the doctors?” Grace asked. It was hard to root for the recovery of her daughter’s killer, so she focused instead on the fact that Adam was also Lucy’s brother.

  Lucy shook her head. “What if he dies, Grace? Or is like, you know, brain damaged or something?” Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “He’s lucky you found him when you did,” Grace said, walking the middle ground. “You may have saved his life.”

  “So he can spend the rest of it in prison? What good’s that?” Her face contorted and she folded her hands across her middle as if in pain.

  “Are you okay, honey?”

  “I’m scared of what’s going to happen to him.” She looked up. Her mouth quivered. “He didn’t do it, Grace. Adam would never have hurt Caitlin. She was like one of his only friends.”

  Love and hate, devotion and resentment. Weren’t they often entangled? Grace had no trouble at all imagining how Adam might have been attracted to Caitlin and at the same time been angry enough or hurt enough or jealous enough to lash out at her. But she didn’t go there with Lucy.

  “That’s why we have our legal system,” she said. “We don’t throw people in jail without proof.” While her heart went out to Lucy, it held nothing but rage for Caitlin’s killer. That he might be Lucy’s brother and Carl’s son didn’t change that. “Adam has the presumption of innocence on his side,” she added for Lucy’s benefit.

  “For all the good it’s done so far.” Lucy broke a piece of bacon in two, then left both pieces on the plate. It had to be that serial killer, Grace. The one who killed Karen Holiday. He tossed Caitlin’s backpack in the same place—”

  “Not exactly the same.”

>   “Close enough. Two girls from the same high school. He gets rid of their stuff in the same way. What more do the cops want? Just like that reporter said, the stupid detective doesn’t know up from down.”

  “Reporter? Are you talking about Seth Robbins?”

  Lucy nodded.

  “He’s hardly a reporter. He’s a columnist with his own far from objective opinions.”

  “Whatever. He’s right.”

  What about the photos on Adam’s computer? What about Caitlin’s necklace, hidden in a drawer in the basement of Mimi’s house? Grace bit her lip to keep from asking. Lucy was upset enough. There was nothing to be gained by arguing with her.

  Lucy traced a circle on the smooth surface of the table top with her finger. “How are you doing, Grace? I feel so sad for you.”

  Grace reached out and squeezed Lucy’s hand. “Thank you for thinking of me.”

  “Of course I’d think of you!”

  “I’m not sure how I’m doing. I guess on some level I’m numb. I hadn’t fully realized how much I was . . .” Grace’s voice broke as emotion welled up inside her. “As irrational as it sounds, how much I was clinging to the hope that Caitlin was alive.”

  “That seems pretty normal to me.”

  “I guess I’m discovering how muddled and capricious a thing grief is.”

  “Yeah. I think I know what you mean.” Lucy pushed the bacon around on her plate some more. “Sometimes life sucks.”

  “That about sums it up.” Although, in truth, it didn’t begin to come close. “Would you like something else to eat?”

  Lucy shook her head, looked toward the door. “Oh,” she said and started to rise. Grace turned to see Carl and Mimi steaming toward them. It was hard to tell which of them was angrier.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” Mimi said with a snarl.

  Carl glared at Grace, but at least he sat down at the table so he wasn’t towering over her. “I told you not to come, Grace. What are you trying to prove?”