by John Hart
“Why?” I asked, leaning closer. “Why me?”
“Because . . .” Her voice trailed off. She tried again. “Because . . .”
I finished her thought. “Because if you didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, then Alex did. Is that what you were going to say?”
This time, she did roll away; she curled into a fetal ball, as if I might kick her, and for that moment I was at a loss. Jean hadn’t done it. Had I not known the truth about Alex, I would not have accepted that fact.
I’d been so damned sure.
“There are some things about Alex, Jean. Some things you might not know.” I had to jolt her out of her complacency, force her to accept the truth.
She spoke from across the chasm I’d opened between us. “I know everything there is to know about Alex, Work. There’s nothing you can tell me.”
“Do you know that’s not her real name?”
“Don’t do this, Work. Don’t try to come between me and Alex.”
“Did you know it?” I asked again.
Jean sighed. “Virginia Temple. That’s her real name. She changed it when she was released.”
“Do you know she killed her father?” I asked.
“I know,” she said.
“You know about that?” I couldn’t believe it. “Do you know how she killed him?” Jean was nodding, but I couldn’t stop. The horror of it was still too fresh in my mind. Cooked meat. Charred lungs. Alex watching and her mother sliced to ribbons. “She handcuffed him to the bed and set it on fire. She burned him alive, Jean. For Christ’s sake, she burned him alive!”
Suddenly, I was on my feet. Beneath me, Jean contracted even further. She was hugging her knees to her chest, cringing, and I saw that the line from her saline bag had a kink in it. The sight calmed me down, forced me to get a grip on my raging emotions. I knew that I was losing it. It was all too much. I took a deep breath, then leaned over to straighten the kink, but when my hand brushed against her arm, she flinched.
“I’m sorry, Jean. I’m really sorry.” She declined to respond, and her body rose up as she sucked in a mighty breath. I found the chair again and fell into it. I buried my face in my palms, pressed against my eyes until I saw sparks. But for her wet breath, the room was silent. I took my hands away and looked at her. She was still clenched in a ball.
“It scares me, Jean. It scares me that she killed her father, and it scares me that she has this power over you.” I paused, looking for better words. “It just scares me.”
Jean did not respond, and for a long time I watched her in silence. After a few minutes of this, I felt the need to move, to do something. I got up and went to the window. I pulled back the curtain and stared across at the parking deck. A car pulled in and turned on its headlights.
When Jean spoke, I could barely hear her.
“She had a pool. Growing up, she had a pool.”
I walked back to the bed. When she rolled her face off the pillow, I could see the wet spot of her tears. “A pool,” I said, letting her know I was there and that I was ready to listen. I sat down. Her eyes were huge and raw; she showed them to me briefly, then turned back to the wall. I looked at her back and waited for her to go on. Finally, she did.
“It was one of those aboveground pools, like we used to make fun of when we were kids. A poor kid’s pool. She didn’t care that it was cheap or flimsy. She didn’t care that it sat behind a single-wide or that it was visible from the road. She was a kid, you know. And it was a pool.” Jean paused. “The best thing that ever happened to her.”
I could see it as if I were there; yet I already sensed the truth of it. It was the way she said it. The pool was not the best thing that ever happened to her. Not by a long shot.
Jean continued. “When she turned seven, her father implemented the new policy. That’s exactly how he said it. ‘We’re implementing a new pool policy.’ He tried to make a joke out of it. She didn’t care one way or another. But if she wanted to hang out around the pool, she had to be wearing high heels and makeup. That was the policy.” She paused, and I heard her sharp intake of breath. “That’s how it started.”
I knew where this was going, and I felt my insides clench in disgust. Hank had been right.
“The policy didn’t include her mother. Just her. She told me once that her mother stopped hanging out at the pool after that. She didn’t do anything about it. She just didn’t want to see it. Her father was out of work that year, so that’s what they did. They hung out at the pool. In the summer, I guess, that was enough. Watching, I mean. But two weeks after they closed up the pool for the winter, it started.”
I did not want to hear this. I wanted her to stop. But I had to hear it and she had to say it. We were trying to find the road.
“He didn’t just fondle her, Work. He raped her. He sodomized her. When she fought back, he beat her. After that summer, she wasn’t allowed to have pajamas. For God’s sake, she had to sleep naked. Another policy. It didn’t start slow and build up. It exploded into her life. One day she was seven. The next day she was getting it regular. His term. But in spite of that, it somehow got worse over time, like he got bored with her and had to find new ways to make it fun. She can’t talk about some of the things he did, not even now. And she’s the strongest person I know.
“It went on for years. He never did go back to work. He drank more and he gambled more. On three occasions, he loaned her out to cover his gambling debts. A hundred dollars here, two hundred there. She was eleven the first time. The guy was a shift foreman at the rubber plant in Winston-Salem. He weighed three hundred pounds. Alex weighed a little over seventy.”
“Her mother . . .” I began.
“She tried to tell her mother once, but she didn’t want to hear it. She accused her of lying and slapped her. But she knew.”
Jean fell silent.
“She could have gone to the authorities,” I said.
“She was a child! She didn’t know any different. By the time she turned thirteen, it started to get a little better. He molested her less and beat her more.” Jean rolled her eyes to me. “She was getting too old for him. She hit puberty and he started to lose interest.”
“She was fourteen when she killed him,” I said. “Well past puberty.”
A sound escaped Jean’s throat, part laugh and part strangled cry. She turned her entire body over, raised herself up on one elbow as if to meet me eye-to-eye. “You don’t get it, Work.”
“If he’d stopped abusing her—”
“She had a sister!” This time, she yelled. “That’s why she did what she did. A seven-year-old sister named Alexandria.”
Suddenly, I understood. I understood everything.
“On the day that Alex killed her father, her sister had just turned seven years old. Her party was the day before. Guess what her daddy gave her.”
I knew the answer.
“High heels, Work. Her own high heels and a tube of lipstick. For daddy’s little girl. And she loved it. She didn’t know what it meant; she just wanted to dress up like her big sister. That’s why Alex killed him.”
I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t want to hurt my sister further, but knew that I probably would. Hank had told me that Jean loved Alex like a preacher loves his God. So be it. But this was no divine being, no benevolent soul. She was damaged, a killer, and Jean had to understand the truth of this. For her own good.
“What happened to her sister?” I asked. “Did Alex ever tell you that?”
Jean sniffed loudly, but her voice was calmer. “She doesn’t talk about her sister. I guess they lost touch after Alex was locked up. Her sister probably didn’t understand, not at that age.”
I had to do it fast, before I froze. She had to know.
“Her sister died, Jean. She ran back into the house and she burned to death along with her father.”
Jean’s mouth formed into another silent, seemingly toothless black circle.
“Accident or not, she killed her sister. And for some r
eason, she took her name. Alexandria, Alex. It can’t be a coincidence. She killed her father, she killed her sister, and, as far as I’m concerned, she killed Ezra, too.”
Jean’s body trembled. “She would have told me,” she said, then looked suddenly suspicious. “Why are you doing this?” she demanded.
“I’m sorry, Jean. I know it hurts, but I had to tell you. You deserve the truth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I swear it, Jean. On our mother’s name, I swear it’s the truth.”
“Get out of here, Work. Get out and leave me alone.”
“Jean . . .”
“You always took Dad’s side. You’ve always hated her.”
“She killed our father, and she wants me to fry for it.”
Jean rose from the mattress, a gray and quaking shadow of herself; her sheets fell away and she swayed on the narrow bed. I feared she would tumble off and crack her skull on the hard floor. Her finger stabbed at me, and I saw the denial in her. I’d pushed it too hard, too fast.
I’d lost her.
“Get out!” she screamed, and burst into tears. “Get out! Get out of here, you fucking liar!”
CHAPTER 31
I fled the room because I had no choice. Jean was distraught; I’d pushed her to a dangerous place. She had two things in this world, Alex and me. But right now, Alex was all that mattered to her, and I’d tried to take that away.
But at least I had the truth, finally. Jean had not killed Ezra. She was not a murderer, and without that weight on her conscience, she might eventually pull out of the nosedive that had brought her to this hospital in the first place. Yet the alternatives could be equally devastating. Someone was going down for Ezra’s murder, and the way it looked now, it would either be Alex or me. Could Jean recover from either of those eventualities? She would have to. It was just that simple.
For me, things had changed dramatically. I might have been willing to take the rap for Jean, but not for Alex. No way in hell.
I leaned against the wall. It was hard and cold under my back, and I closed my eyes. I thought I heard her weeping, but then the sound was gone. Imagination, I told myself. Guilty conscience.
When I opened my eyes, a nurse was standing in front of me. She looked worried.
“Are you okay?” she asked. The question took me by surprise.
“Yes.”
She studied me. “You’re as pale as a sheet and look dead on your feet.”
“I’m okay. Just tired.”
“I’m not going to argue about it,” she told me. “But if you’re not a patient, you’ll have to leave. Visiting hours aren’t for another hour.”
“Thanks,” I said, and walked off. When I looked back, she was watching me, a puzzled look on her face. I could almost read her mind. Don’t I know you from somewhere? she was thinking. Then she turned away.
As I followed the hall toward the elevators, I thought about Alex. I was no shrink, so I could only guess at the state of her mind, but it had to be a wreck. Why the name change? I could understand wanting to escape her childhood, but why take her dead sister’s name? Because she’d died untouched and unspoiled, purified by her innocence and by the fire that killed her? Or was it guilt, and the desire that she live on in some small way? I would probably never know. But one thing was crystal clear, and that is what scared me. Alex Shiften was fiercely loyal, and she would take drastic measures to eradicate any perceived threat to herself, to Jean, or to their relationship. She’d killed her father to protect her sister. She’d killed Ezra to protect her relationship with Jean. Now I was the threat, and she was setting me up for the murder. She’d turned Jean against me. She’d undermined my alibi, somehow acquired a copy of the will, and planted it in my house.
Suddenly, I froze, paralyzed by a thought that came unbidden yet with horrifying clarity. Alex had undermined my alibi. She knew that I was not home with Barbara when Ezra was shot. Did she know where I was that night? Did she know about Vanessa? Dear God! Did she know that Vanessa could give me an alibi? Now Vanessa was missing.
She didn’t come home last night.
I couldn’t finish the thought. But I had to. There was no time left for fear or denial. So I asked the question. If Alex knew that Vanessa could ruin her plans, would she kill her?
The answer was unequivocal.
Absolutely.
The elevator opened. I pushed through the waiting crowd of green shirts and white coats and nearly sprinted for the exit. Outside, I realized that I had no plan. Nowhere to go. I looked at my watch. It was 10:30. I called Stolen Farm, knowing better than to hope, yet doing so with every fiber of my being. Just pick up. Please, pick up. The phone rang four times, and each unanswered ring was a nail in my heart. Alex had killed her. Vanessa was dead.
The grief almost overwhelmed me, yet through the pain, like a whispering traitor, came a single selfish thought: I had no alibi. I could go to jail for the rest of my life. The presence of that thought made me think that maybe I should. I squashed it and it did not resurrect itself, for which I was grateful.
Next, I called Hank. I had to talk to him, now more than ever. He didn’t answer at home, so I tried his cell phone.
“I was about to call you,” he said.
“Hank, thank God.”
“Shut up for a minute. We’ve got big fucking problems.” I heard his hand go over the mouthpiece, heard muffled voices. Almost a minute passed before he came back on the line. “Okay. I’m outside.”
“Listen, Hank. I think I’m onto something about Vanessa.”
“Work, I mean this in the most polite way, but we don’t have time to deal with your missing girlfriend. I’m at the police station now.”
“In Salisbury?”
“Yeah. I came here to check accident reports before I started looking for your friend. But it’s a damn hornets’ nest down here. We need to talk, but not on the phone. Where are you right now?”
“I’m at the hospital. I’m standing outside the emergency-room exit.”
“Stay there. Try to stay out of sight. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
“Hank, wait.” I caught him before he hung up. “What the hell is going on?”
“They found the gun, Work. The one you threw in the river.”
“What?”
“Just sit tight. Two minutes.” He hung up, and I stared at the dead cell phone in my hand for what may have been the longest two minutes of my life.
They’d found the gun. Could Alex have been responsible for that, too?
When Hank turned into the parking lot, I met him at the curb. I climbed into his sedan. He neither looked at me nor spoke. He turned left out of the parking lot, made several seemingly random turns, and then stopped at the curb. We were in a residential neighborhood. It was quiet, nobody in sight. Hank stared wordlessly through the windshield.
“I’m waiting for you to speak,” he finally said, looking at me.
“What do you mean?”
His face was hard; so were his eyes. When he spoke, I found that his voice had chilled, as well. “What river? What gun? Those are the questions you should have asked. It concerns me that you did not ask those questions.”
I didn’t know what to say. He was right. An innocent man would have asked the questions.
“I didn’t kill him, Hank.”
“Tell me about the gun.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” The lie came instinctively.
“You don’t have many people in your corner, Work, and you’re about to be all alone. I don’t help people who lie to me; it’s that simple. So you take a minute, and think about the next words that come out of your mouth.”
I’d never seen Hank so tense, like he could punch me in the face or rip his own hair out. But it was more than anger. He felt betrayed, and I couldn’t blame him.
If Jean hadn’t pulled the trigger, then I had no reason to lie about the gun. In fact, I should want the police to have it, if that would help convict A
lex. But I’d wiped it down and ditched it, a crime in and of itself. Yet all that mattered right now was finding Vanessa, and if Hank could help me do that, then I would tell him anything he wanted to know. I had one question first.
“How’d they find the gun?”
Hank looked like he was about to drive off and leave me, so I spoke again.
“Swear to God, Hank. Just tell me that and I’ll answer your questions.”
He seemed to mull it over. “Someone called in an anonymous tip, said that they’d seen someone toss a gun into the river. A diver from the sheriff’s department went down this morning and found it right where the caller said it’d be. That was about an hour ago. They know it’s Ezra’s gun because it has his initials right there on it.”
“Do they know who made the call?” I was thinking about Alex. She would have had to know that the gun was clean before she’d do something like that. She would not want it traced back to her.
“The guy didn’t identify himself, but he described someone who looks a hell of a lot like you. Same build, same age, same hair, same car. They’re trying to track him down to do a lineup. If they find him, you’ll be the first to know. Mills will have you downtown so fast, your head will spin. And if he identifies you, that’s it; you’re as good as convicted.”
“It was a guy?” I asked. “The caller?”
“Didn’t you hear me? They’re trying to link you to the gun.”
“But the caller. It was a man?”
Not a woman?
“Look. That’s what I heard, okay? It’s not like I was on the phone. I heard it was a guy. Now tell me about the fucking gun. I don’t want to ask again.”
I scrutinized his features. He wanted me to be innocent; not because he liked me, although I thought that maybe he did, but because he did not want to be wrong, not about something like this. Hank Robins would never help a killer, and, like everybody, he hated to be played.
“You want to know why I ditched the gun if I didn’t kill him.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
So I opened my mouth. I started talking and didn’t stop until I’d explained it to him. He didn’t say a word until I was through.
