“Yeah. Did you call him?” Evan helped himself to a bite of his chili, savoring it.
Lissa said she had tried calling him, and her mother and dad, on the way home, but no one had answered. She’d left messages at each number and on the landline. She was thinking of the article in the paper, the one that had mentioned an arrest was imminent in the Jessica Sweet case, when she said, “What if something’s happened?”
Evan set down the spoon he’d been using to stir the chili and pulled her into his embrace. “Somebody would have called. Let’s have dinner, then we can run over there and check on them if you want.”
Lissa nodded. She went into the mudroom to hang up her jacket and bent her forehead to the wall. She wanted so badly to tell him about Darren, that Miranda had been assaulted and threatened by him, that even Revel knew it happened. It could be such good news for Tucker. But it would mean reliving that night in Galveston again for the second time in one day, and she would have to admit that Darren attacked her, too, and she had said nothing, done nothing. She couldn’t face Evan’s reaction, his anger that she’d kept it a secret, the disappointment in her that seemed inevitable.
“Chili’s ready, Liss. Can you make a salad?”
Pasting on a smile, she emerged from the mudroom, and she was glad Evan was concealed from her behind the open refrigerator door. She took the head of lettuce, fresh spinach and the cucumber he passed to her. She plucked a tomato from the windowsill and agreed with him when he said he’d be glad when they could put in a vegetable garden.
She carried the salad to the table.
Evan brought the chili and crackers, and they sat down.
He groaned when he took a bite. “I swear to God I make the best chili in the state of Texas, maybe in the entire world.”
“Hah. Let me see.” Lissa spooned a bite onto a cracker and popped it into her mouth, closing her eyes, savoring it. “Not bad,” she said, playing the moment, drawing it out, wishing with her whole heart it never had to end.
Mock hurt rode his expression. “That’s all you can say?”
“You already have a big enough head,” she said.
“Speaking of heads, how is yours? Is whatever Doc White prescribed working?”
Lissa dipped her gaze into her bowl. Here it was, the moment she’d been dreading.
Evan said her name. “Lissa?”
She met his gaze. “The truth is he couldn’t prescribe anything stronger than Tylenol, and that hardly touches the pain.”
“You said he gave you— What’s going on?”
“I might be pregnant, Evan.”
“What?”
His expression was comical. He couldn’t have looked more astonished if she had handed him the maybe-baby alive and squirming across the table.
“The urine test was negative, but he said the other symptoms I have—”
“Passing out?”
“Umm, and my breasts are tender and I’m peeing more.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What? That I’m peeing more?”
“You know what I mean!”
“Well, anyway, he did a blood test. He’ll call me tomorrow, or the next day, or sometime, I guess.” Never? Could it be never?
“Oh, my God!” Evan half stood. He sat back down. “Oh, my God.”
“This was never supposed to happen, and anyway, we don’t want children, right? That’s what we said.”
“Dr. White said it probably couldn’t happen.”
“We should have been using protection.”
“Not even the pill is a hundred percent, Liss.”
She got up from the table. “I guess how it happened doesn’t matter, does it? The result is the same, and so is the answer.”
“You can’t get an abortion.”
She looked at him. “Are you forbidding me?”
“Well, no, what I mean is—is that really what you want?”
“Don’t you? Haven’t you said a gazillion times you had enough of fathering, helping to raise your siblings after your dad died?”
Evan was the oldest of five, and he’d stepped in to help his mother care for his three younger sisters and a brother after their father walked out. He’d told her in the very first conversation they ever had about children that he would be fine in a marriage without them. Lissa knew there were people who thought choosing not to have a baby was un-American or irreligious—her mother-in-law, for instance—but she didn’t care what anyone thought. She was smart enough to know that motherhood was not for her. She didn’t have the courage for it. Suppose she was given someone as difficult to handle as Tucker? She didn’t know how her mother stood up to it, the worry and frustration; Lissa only knew she couldn’t. And until this moment, she had believed Evan felt the same. She met his gaze. “Am I remembering wrong?” she asked him. “Was it not a joint decision?”
“Yes, it was, but this is our baby. We made this baby. How can you just—”
“I’m not doing anything. I thought we had an understanding.” She sat back down. “We should finish dinner.”
“We should have our baby.”
“We don’t even know if there is a baby.”
A cell phone sounded.
“Must be yours,” Lissa said. “Mine’s dead.”
She watched Evan leave, nervously rubbing her upper arms. She heard the murmur of his voice, and then it rose, taking on an edge.
“Okay,” she heard him say, and then, “Yes, we’ll come right now.”
Lissa’s arms fell to her sides; her heart picked up its pace. “What is it?” she asked when he appeared in the kitchen doorway.
“That was your mom. A reporter called a while ago and asked her if she knew her son was being arrested for Jessica Sweet’s murder.”
“Oh, no—”
“Now there’s a sheriff’s car parked out in front of the house. She said she can’t see who’s inside.”
“They’re going to arrest Tucker? Does he know?”
“She said the cops are just sitting there. She wants us to come.”
* * *
The silence as they drove was anxious, gnawing. Lissa couldn’t stand it. She glanced at Evan, taking in the rigid line of his jaw, the knot under his ear that jumped like a tiny piston. She said, “I’m sorry this is happening,” and she thought he would say he was sorry, too. She thought he would pick up her hand, kiss the tips of her fingers, her palm, the way he often did when they were driving. But he didn’t. He only looked at her, and his eyes were baffled, as if he wondered who she was.
What about you? she wanted to ask. What about how you blindsided me? How could you decide you wanted to be a father and not tell me? When did you? The questions ran a heated circuit in her brain, but she was too panicked about Tucker to ask them. Her heart thudded in her chest. She wanted to get to her parents’ house; she wished they would never get there.
When they arrived, the deputy sheriff’s car that sat at the curb was empty.
Evan said, “Come on. They must have gone in already.”
The ruckus of loud voices coming from the kitchen was audible the moment they opened the front door, and they went quickly toward it. Lissa halted on the threshold, her glance shooting across the room to Tucker and the man who had him up against the wall. “You aren’t arresting him?” she asked, and it was stupid, a stupid question. Clearly they were arresting him, but it was as if her mind refused to accept it.
Her father got up from the table, thrusting his napkin aside. She felt the heat coming off him when he brushed by her. She heard the sharp snap of his office door when he closed it.
“We have a warrant, Mrs. DiCapua.”
Lissa’s eyes collided with Detective Sergeant Garza’s eyes. “But when I saw you this morning, you said nothing a
bout an arrest.”
“Things have changed.”
“What things?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Can they do this?” Lissa’s mother was appealing to Evan. She was white-faced. She looked as if someone had struck her full force from behind. Lissa went to her and took her hand.
“They can do whatever they damn well please,” Evan responded.
They both flinched when Garza’s partner snapped the metal bracelets around Tucker’s wrists.
“He hasn’t had anything to eat,” her mother said, as if that were the worst of it.
“It’s okay, Mom.” Tucker looked at Lissa. “Tell Pop it’s nothing, will you? Tell him I’ll be back before he can miss me.” Tucker laughed now, but not as if it were funny. “Maybe somebody should call me a lawyer,” he said. “Who’s that guy in Houston, Ev? We built his house, remember? Loomis? Mickey Loomis, wasn’t it?”
“I’ll call him. Don’t worry, squirt,” Evan said.
It had been a while since Lissa had heard Evan call Tucker by that name, and it sounded almost like a term of endearment. It sounded laden with love and regret.
Garza and her partner ushered Tucker into the front hall.
Lissa’s mother ducked into the laundry room and emerged with Tucker’s jacket.
Evan and Lissa fell in behind her.
Outside it was dark, but someone had switched on the porch light, and in the glow, the sidewalk was a dull gray seam wedged between the darker rectangles of grass. Evan and Lissa stopped where the glare bled into shadow, but her mother followed closely behind Garza, finally catching her elbow, thrusting Tucker’s jacket at her. “There’s no sense in my son being cold.”
Garza took the jacket and pushed Tucker ahead of her through the gate.
“Hey, Ma,” he hollered, “keep my dinner warm, will you?” A pause ensued while he was stuffed into the backseat of the sheriff’s car, then he called, “Don’t rent my room out, okay, ’cause I’ll be back.”
Lissa’s heart lurched. She slid her arm over her mother’s shoulders.
Tucker bent forward as the car pulled away from the curb, and the last they saw of him before it disappeared from view was his frightened, white face framed in the rear passenger window.
14
THE PHONE WAS ringing when they came back into the kitchen. Emily darted a glance at Lissa and saw her own shock and bewilderment mirrored in Lissa’s eyes.
“Don’t answer it,” Evan said, but Lissa already had.
“Hello?” She was tentative, wary.
“Who is it?” Emily asked.
Lissa put the caller on speaker and upped the volume.
“I’m Vincent Treadway with the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal,” a man said. “I’d like to ask you about Tucker Lebay. Are you a family member? Is it true he’s been arrested?”
Emily’s breath went down hard.
Evan muttered, “Just what we need.”
The man went on, talking fast, his words running together. “I’ve heard he may also be charged in the strangling deaths of other women who’ve been found murdered along I-45. Can you comment?”
Lissa didn’t bother; she punched the off button.
“Why would a reporter call from Lubbock?” Evan took off his jacket. “How did he find out so fast?”
“Maybe because Tucker went to Tech. He played baseball there, remember?” Lissa docked the receiver.
Emily went to the table. The setting was undisturbed.
Eerily pristine.
She looked at the dished plates, each one bearing a slice of meat loaf with mashed potatoes and buttered green beans. There are yeast rolls, a tossed salad. All of it was waiting for a family that wasn’t coming, that might never again be together in a way that was familiar or ordinary. Her throat knotted. She wanted the dinner gone, out of her sight, but the idea of so much good food going to waste defeated her.
As if they could read her thoughts, Lissa and Evan took over the task of clearing the table, and when the phone rang again, Emily answered it.
It was another reporter, from a newspaper in Huntsville this time. There was a prison there, Emily thought. The one where the state executed men for their crimes. She hung up even as the reporter was firing his questions.
But the flow of calls didn’t stop, and in the next hour she answered the telephone so often, the questions blurred: “Are you Tucker Lebay’s mother sister wife daughter?” “Are you a relative neighbor detective cop?” “The police won’t confirm it, but the rumor is they have enough evidence to charge Mr. Lebay for the murder of Miranda Quick as well as Jessica Sweet. Did you know her father was the late U.S. Senator Erwin Sweet from Lubbock? Do you care to comment?”
“No.” Emily repeated it over and over.
“I didn’t remember the senator was from Lubbock,” Evan said at one point.
“That must be why the reporter called from there.” Lissa was twisting the dishtowel in her hands.
Emily wanted to go to her and stop her from doing it, but she couldn’t leave the telephone. She was waiting for it to ring again, waiting for some other reporter to mention the other killings the way the Lubbock reporter had. She was afraid to ask Lissa or Evan about it. But maybe she heard wrong, or maybe the Lubbock reporter was into sensationalism. She traced the feathered lines of her eyebrows with her fingertips. Only God knew what they would read in the newspapers, or hear about themselves on television tomorrow and in the coming days.
The phone rang again, and she was reaching for it, but suddenly Roy was there, pushing her aside, grabbing the cordless from its base, shouting into it, “Who is this?”
Emily stared at him.
“Well, here’s my comment, asshole,” he yelled. “You call here again, and I’ll sue you and everybody at your fucking paper to hell and back.”
“Dad!” Lissa said.
Emily put her hand on his arm. He shook her free. He was having none of their protest if he was even aware of it.
His voice rose. “You won’t have so much as a ballpoint pen to write down your precious fucking facts, do you hear me?” Jerking the receiver from his ear, he banged it once hard against the counter before slamming it back onto its base, looking around at them. His face was dangerously red. His eyes were wide, and the irises, which were usually a pale shade of blue, were as dark as bruises. He was like a maddened bull, Emily thought.
“Dad!” Lissa tried to get his attention. “This isn’t helping Tucker.”
“You think we can help him? Are you crazy? You think the cops arrested him for kicks? They’ve got something on him, something strong, like DNA, or who knows what. Enough to make their case. Enough that he’s going down.”
The phone rang again, and before Emily could stop him, Roy grabbed it, ripping the cord out of the wall. The receiver skittered across the floor, but he dangled the base from his fist like a trophy, grinning, enraged.
Emily took a step back. She was acting on old instinct when she took several more steps, crabbing her way around the table, putting it between her and Roy. Her ears were ringing, her breath all but stopped. She found Lissa’s frantic gaze and knew Lissa was remembering those long-ago days, too, when Roy had broken, when his control had collapsed. Reaching out her hand, Emily said, “Lissa, come. Come here to me.”
But she didn’t move; she seemed paralyzed. The silence spun out, mute, yet electric.
“Roy, come on, why don’t we sit down.” Evan’s was the voice of reason, and Emily thanked God for him.
Roy looked in Evan’s direction, but his face was drained of expression, as if he didn’t know where he was. And he very well might not, Emily thought. She kept her gaze on him. They were each one staring at him. He might have been a live bomb or a grenade someone had tossed into their midst.
“Dad?” Lissa took a tentative step toward him, and Emily gripped the back of a dining chair. “Daddy, we have to call Mickey Loomis. Tucker needs a lawyer.”
“No,” Roy snapped. “I’m not asking one of our clients—”
“Technically, he’s not a client anymore,” Evan said.
“I don’t care. I’m not asking anybody for help, and I’m not paying any lawyer to bail out a killer.”
“Dad!”
Emily was as shocked as Lissa. “Tucker is our son, Roy.”
“No.” He swung his glance to her; his finger rose. “He’s your son. You coddled him. You let him do whatever he damn well pleased, and now I hope you’re happy with the result.”
“Don’t you dare blame me for this! I’m not the one who drank myself nightly into oblivion. I didn’t scare him to death and throw him into a closet. I should have left you then. I should never have listened when you said you could make it up, make it right!”
“You’re never going to let me forget that, are you? You’ll blame me for every fuckup in this family until the day I die! It’ll never matter how many times I say I’m sorry, will it?” Roy crossed the floor toward her, kicking aside the chair that stood between them. Emily flinched, and somehow Evan was there, blocking Roy’s advance, telling him to stop, and Roy did stop.
He bowed his head.
Lissa crossed her arms, and Emily could see that she was shaken. She knew so little about her father’s struggle. Maybe they’d been wrong not to be more open about it, but a man’s pride was important. Roy had so desperately wanted to be the hero his children had believed he was.
“You know Tucker isn’t capable of murder, Roy.” Emily spoke to him from the circle of Evan’s embrace, over the thudding of her heart. She was sorry for their harsh words that she knew were the result of shock and terrible fear. She would take them back, if it were possible. She knew Roy, knew better than anyone how torn he was by guilt and utter despair. They had brought Tucker into the world. Roy, perhaps even more than she did, had welcomed a son. They had raised him together with the highest hope, the greatest joy, only to see him flounder and fail again and again.
Safe Keeping Page 13
