Garza thanked her for coming. “You be sure and let us know if you think of anything else.”
“Oh, you can count on it, Detective. Trust me.” Lissa didn’t know how, but she managed to keep the agitation she was feeling out of her voice. She managed to sound as if talking to a detective about a murder investigation was normal, one more item to cross off her to-do list. But walking away, her heart slammed against the wall of her chest, and her head filled with a horrible sense that showing up here was the worst mistake she’d ever made. If Tucker did get arrested, it would be her fault.
It would be because she had put the idea into Detective Sergeant Garza’s head.
* * *
She got into her truck, slammed the door and sat staring through the windshield, feeling blank with disbelief. This couldn’t be happening, and yet it was. The police were fixed on Tucker; they had no one else, and they were serious, deadly serious. Unshouldering her purse, Lissa dug out her cell phone. Tucker had mentioned Sonny Cade, that he was a policeman, that he worked at the club. Lissa hadn’t really known Sonny in school; he’d been two years behind her. But Sonny knew Tucker. Maybe there was something he could do. She didn’t know what exactly. Turning on her phone, she did a Google search for his name.
She remembered him having a reputation as a troublemaker in school, always in detention for fighting, for mouthing off. She remembered him having the face of a crow with a long beak of a nose and small, glossy black eyes set close on either side of it. He’d combed his dark hair back from his forehead, making a sleek, shiny cap. She imagined he would end up in prison, but the last she heard, he enlisted in the army and served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, or somewhere like that, overseas. It must have turned his life around, she thought, because here it was, an article from a few years ago all about his military career, and alongside it was a photograph of him, wearing a Houston police officer’s uniform. The article said nothing about a second career, working security at La Femme Mystique, nor did it give a hint about how she might reach him.
She continued scrolling through the search results, and her heart rose when she saw it, the bold line of text that read Security Firm Opens, Hardys Walk, TX. Clicking on the link, she read the short announcement. Sonny’s name was there along with the contact information for the firm, and even as Lissa programmed it into her cell phone, the prospect of speaking to him loosened a bolus of panic from the floor of her stomach. It wasn’t as if they would be sitting around revisiting their glory days. For all she knew, he wouldn’t talk to her at all.
Pulse tapping, she went back to the news article and studied his photograph. His eyes were still set close together and the look in them was still mean. He was bigger than she remembered. She couldn’t imagine approaching him, much less asking him for— What exactly? He knows Jessica and I hung around a lot together. Knows a lot about the shit that goes on at the club. What Tucker said about Sonny went through Lissa’s mind. What else could Sonny know? She glanced up, her stare drifting.
Working security he would see a lot; he would see the men who frequented the club. He would know the troublemakers, the ones who might have given Jessica Sweet a hard time, the ones who would be capable of hurting her. Garza had warned Lissa to stay out of it, to let the professionals handle things. But how could she when Tucker was in so much trouble, when even his life could be at stake? How did Garza’s warning or her fears compare to that?
Lissa stowed her phone in her purse. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for her appointment with Dr. White.
8
THE INSTANT EMILY wakened, she was aware that every fine hair on her body was standing on end. Roy’s presence was tangible; she could feel him towering over her, willing her to open her eyes, but she didn’t. She feigned sleep, buying time, trying to discern his mood from the rasp of his breath, the hesitant scrape of his steps as he gave up on her and walked away. The snick of the bathroom door when it closed behind him was soft.
It was automatic, this daily mapping of Roy’s emotions. It wasn’t any use resenting it, but today she did. Today it aggravated her.
Her mother had predicted it, that Roy would make Emily unhappy. But she would have said anything, done anything, to prevent Emily from marrying Roy. And the more she worked against the idea, the harder Emily fought her. He wasn’t their kind, her mother said. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into,” she warned.
Emily had so wanted her mother to stop her constant diatribe. She’d felt sick enough over her suspicion that she wasn’t really in love with Roy. At least, not the kind of love you’re supposed to be in when you agree to marry someone. It took Roy being half the world away for her to discern the truth of her feelings, and it seemed so natural when her heart’s path found its way with Joe.
Emily was drawn to him from their first encounter. There was something in his gaze, a gentle intensity that made her feel she was important to him, as if he valued what she had to say. The first time she gave herself to him was after they shared a picnic on a remote beach in Galveston Bay. As they sat listening to the ocean’s hushing whisper, she became chilled in the cooler evening air, and Joe brought a blanket from the trunk of his car and covered them both. She remembered lying back in his arms, the night sky flung like a lush, velvet cape overhead, a jeweled rain of glimmering stars, falling all around them.
She didn’t suffer a moment’s regret for their intimacy. Some soul-deep intuition told her Joe was her man; he was the one for her, and she would have followed her instinct without hesitation if Roy had come home safe and in one piece. She would have suffered her mother’s gloating gladly. But Roy didn’t come home in one piece. He was horribly wounded, inside and out. The loss of his leg cost him almost everything. His dreams were in shreds. He would never be the man he’d planned to be, and Emily couldn’t bear to hurt him more. It wasn’t in her.
She grew to love Roy in her way. And Joe married someone else, too, a woman with whom Emily thought he’d been very happy until her death from ovarian cancer six months ago. They had no children. Emily never asked Joe why. On the rare occasions they met, they almost never discussed their personal lives. Outside of Tucker.
“I don’t want Tucker living here anymore, Emily.” Roy’s voice above her was low. “I don’t believe any of his bullshit about wanting to change. He’s only saying what he thinks we want to hear.”
She opened her eyes. “He’s our son,” she said.
“He’s a grown man. We’ve done all we can for him.”
“He just needs a little more time, Roy.” Emily was unflinching now. But so was he. She saw the flint edge of his will that hardened his expression. She saw his pain, too, that was never better, fighting in the shadows of his eyes, and it broke her heart. It always broke her heart.
“If we don’t cut him loose, he’ll end up taking us down, too,” he said.
She shook her head. Anxiety was like a snake uncoiling, racing through her mind, looking for a gap, a way out.
“You wouldn’t keep a dog you couldn’t trust in your house, would you? You would put that dog down.”
Her eyes widened. “My God, Roy!” She sat up, flinging aside the bedcovers. “What a thing to say!”
He left her, rounding the foot of the bed, disappearing into the closet. She heard the sounds as he pulled on a shirt, buckled his belt. “I’m going out to the lake house,” he said when he reappeared.
“Really?”
“Evan’s idea about how we can build the deck over the water might just work. I want to check it out.”
Roy sounded inspired. Evan’s strategy had worked, Emily thought, and she wanted to give in to the pleasure it would be to watch Roy take up his pet project again. If circumstances had been other than what they were, she might have asked him whether he planned to finish the house. She might even have offered to go with him, but he had aggravated her wit
h his talk about Tucker moving out. If only he would finish the damn house. He could move into it then, she thought. Alone, for all she cared. It was what he wanted, wasn’t it? To be rid of them all? She settled her breath and said she would make his breakfast.
The mattress sagged as he sat beside her on the bed. He trailed the tips of his fingers across her cheek, rubbed the pad of his thumb gently across the fullness of her lower lip. “I’ll get something on the way,” he said. “When Tucker gets up, you tell him to clear out. I want him gone by the time I get home.”
“He doesn’t even have his car, Roy.”
“He said last night it’s supposed to be ready this morning. You can run him over to the shop to get it, then he can be on his way. I mean it, Em.”
It’s him or me. Emily waited for Roy to say this. But he didn’t.
Leaving her, he went to his chest of drawers, pulled out a pair of socks, and sitting again on the end of the bed, he slid one over the metal foot of his prosthesis and the other over his flesh-and-blood foot. Emily watched his shirt shift across his back, and she warmed with her desire for him that like her heartache had never faded. The still-strong, muscled contours of his shoulders and arms, the notched blade of his spine, the narrow plane of his hip—all were a familiar landscape to her after so many years, a territory both loved and despaired over. She felt his power and the power of his anger, and she knew why it was there and the effort it had taken to keep it leashed all these years. He came into her sometimes and he was a battering force, a pounding fury. It was as if he meant to cleave her in two, and afterward, when he was spent, he held her so tenderly, and she would feel his tears against her breast.
They seldom speak of it, his tears, their meaning—those battle-shocked children: his own small son whom Roy himself had terrorized, and that other boy, the one he’d rescued, left behind in another country to who knew what sort of fate. The awful memories are always present, haunting Roy’s eyes. Emily could never look at him without seeing them, however unconsciously.
“You’ll talk to Tucker?” Roy stood looking down on her.
“We can’t just put him out.” Emily slid her feet into her slippers, reaching for her robe. “He has no place to go.”
“He isn’t going to learn any other way. It’s called tough love, Em. We should have done it years ago.”
“Why can’t you give him a chance? Give him the benefit of the doubt?”
“I’ve done that. I’ve jumped through hoop after hoop. Now he’s back in hot water, and not just some Mickey Mouse bullshit, either, Em. It’s murder, for Christ’s sake.”
“There’s no evidence tying Tucker to Jessica,” she said. “The police have nothing, just as they had nothing when Miranda was killed. Even Lissa says—”
“He’s considered a person of interest. She said that, too.”
“But you can’t possibly believe—”
“What I believe doesn’t matter. The cops have other ideas. I can’t go through it again. Can you?”
“What choice is there? He’s my son. It’s what I have to do.”
“Do you remember the last time?” Roy sat down again, taking her hand in his, looking earnestly at her. “Do you remember how the police and the media came through here and tore the shit out of the neighborhood, parking all over folks’ yards and the street? People were pissed. We got a fucking brick tossed through our window. Somebody wrote murderer on the garage wall. Do you think they’re over it?” Roy didn’t wait for her answer. “Hell, no. They want Tucker out of here. They don’t care how it happens. If they have to take the law into their own hands, they’ll do it.”
“Our neighbors aren’t like that.”
“Hah! Like I’ve always said, Em, you live in a different world from me. Always seeing the good that isn’t there. If we’re tolerated, it’s because of your family. People around here still respect the Winter name.”
She looked at Roy in surprise. She hadn’t thought he was aware, or that he cared about her family’s name. She had always thought he resented it.
“But even that’ll go unless Tucker does, then where do you think we’ll be? They’ll run us out of the business. Probably run us out of town. I don’t like it any better than you, but if we protect him again, we’ll lose everything. Is that what you want?” Roy stood up.
Emily studied her hands folded in her lap.
“We have a daughter, too. We have to think of her and of Evan. You and I aren’t the only ones who would be affected. God knows I wish it wasn’t true. I wish you and Liss weren’t involved in this nightmare. But the cord’s got to be cut, Em, if you want to eat, if you want to keep a roof over your head and Lissa’s.”
She didn’t answer.
“It’s for Tucker’s own good.”
“You should believe in him.” Emily flung the words at Roy. “You’re his father.” You know what you put him through, what he’s suffered because of you. That part of it hung unspoken, but Roy understood her meaning nonetheless. Emily knew, by the way his shoulders dropped, by the way he pinched the bridge of his nose. Rubbing her upper arms, she stared at the floor, feeling anxious and sorry that she had raised the specter of that awful day. She didn’t like reminding him, but he had driven her to do it. For several long moments neither of them moved, and then Emily heard the sound of his steps as he left her and the decided click of the door when he closed it behind him.
It wasn’t until after she showered and dressed that she found the gun. The toe of her shoe encountered the barrel of the Colt service revolver Roy had brought back from Vietnam when she was straightening the coverlet on his side of the bed. Going to her knees, she lifted the hem of the dust ruffle and picked up the weapon, then gingerly, she stood with it balanced across the cup of her palms. The safety was on, but it was loaded. She could tell by the weight. Still, she checked, carefully lowering the trap door and spinning the cylinder, the way Roy taught her, and then closing it again, she aimed it at her shadow on the opposite wall.
“Bang, you’re dead,” she said.
* * *
She waited until Roy left to call Joe, and hearing his voice, hearing him say her name, she was instantly steadied.
“I heard about Tucker,” he said. “That he was questioned about Jessica Sweet’s murder last night.”
“Yes.” She paced to the kitchen window and looked out. “He seems to think that was the end of it.”
“It’s hard to say. I sure hope so.”
In the background, Emily heard the sound of a siren, a tangle of voices. A woman’s laughter. “You’re busy. I shouldn’t have called,” she said.
“No, it’s all right. I’m on a break, actually, getting coffee.”
“I’m so worried, Joe. It’s scarcely been a year since we went through this with Miranda’s death, and there’s the other thing now with Revel Wiley.”
“Have you heard from her again?”
“She’s called, but I haven’t answered. I think she’s calling the house now, the landline, and talking to Roy. He’s acting funny, not himself....” She fell silent.
“Maybe I’ll take a run by the club after I get off, see what she wants.”
“No. I’ve already put you in enough jeopardy.”
“You let me worry about that, okay?”
Emily ran her fingertip along the countertop’s edge, remembering the day she drove into Houston to see Joe after his wife died. She brought him chicken miso soup and a small loaf of homemade wheat bread, and when he opened the door, her heart shifted hard in her chest on seeing the shadows of his grief so dark in his eyes. She followed him into his kitchen, setting the soup and bread aside, and spent the rest of their short, awkward visit fighting an urge to move her fingertips over the lines sadness had carved on his face. She would have given anything to be able to soothe him, to bring him peace. He had done so much th
e same for her more times than she could count. When she expressed her regret over this to Joe, he took her hand and, folding it, pressed first her knuckles and then the inside of her wrist to his lips. She left him shortly after that. Neither one of them had mentioned her visit to him since.
“Have you ever heard of anyone named Darren Coe?” he asked her now.
She straightened. “His family lives in the neighborhood. Why do you ask?”
“His name came up back when Miranda was murdered. Nothing developed on that score so I didn’t follow up on it, but now, I’m hearing it again in relation to Jessica’s case.”
“Is Darren a suspect?”
“More a person of interest. Word is he knew Jessica, and he knew Miranda, too.”
“He did. They went through school together. Tucker and Miranda were the same age. Darren was two years ahead of them.”
“What about recently, in the year before she was killed?”
“If they had a relationship then, I never heard about it. Besides, he’s married.”
A silence came, one just long enough for Emily to realize her folly in assuming men were always faithful to their wives. She sensed Joe’s smile.
“Were Coe and Tucker friends?” Joe asked. “Are they now?”
“No, I don’t think so, not anymore. Something happened—” Emily paused. The incident she referred to was years ago now, but the old disgust and regret lingered, like specters.
“Emily?” Joe prompted.
“A girl, Holly McPherson, who lived in the neighborhood then, accused Darren of assaulting her. He denied it—he claimed she misunderstood. She was so young, only fourteen at the time. It was awful.”
“You didn’t believe Darren?”
“No. Holly was shattered over what happened, so much so, she and her parents moved out of state.” It was never resolved. Emily could have said that, too. She could have said the neighborhood was never the same again. She could have said she’d never liked Darren even as a child. There was something off about him, something false and too glib in his demeanor, his speech. He was arrogant, a manipulator. But people found him charming; they fell for him. Women fell for him. Emily thought how Roy would disagree with her. He didn’t see Darren in the same unflattering light. But not many in town did.
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