In the Heart's Shadow

by T. L. Haddix

  “God damn you, look at me! Look at what she did to me! Don’t you turn your head like a coward!” She slapped the table, wincing when her wrist protested, but she didn’t look away from Maggie’s face. After a minute, Maggie faced her again. She wouldn’t look below Stacy’s chin.

  “I know what happened to you was awful, and you’re so strong for surviving it, but, baby girl, you have to let it go.”

  Stacy had to fight to rein in her temper and not go across the table and slap Maggie. Her point made, she fastened her shirt and moved aside the pictures.

  “Do you want to know what your friend, my mother, has been doing this past week?” she asked, her voice low.

  Maggie swallowed hard. “Not if it’s more lies.”

  Straightening, Stacy walked to the mirror and stared into the room beyond. She couldn’t make out any of the people inside, but she knew they were there. Reminding herself that Gordon was only as far as the other side of the glass, she turned back to Maggie. “She burned my house down.”

  “What? Now, Stacy, I know you’re wrong.”

  “Do you? You know she didn’t do it?” Moving back to the table, she pulled out the pictures of the still-smoldering pile of rubble that had been her house and tossed them at Maggie. “We have her on video going into the house. Ten minutes later, the fire starts. She rigged the gas line in the basement. She had help. We know that much. But we absolutely have her dead to rights on the video. That’s a still shot from it. You can see her face.”

  Maggie’s cheeks had gone ashen, and she touched the pictures. Pam Kirchner was unmistakable. “Maybe it was a coincidence?”

  Stacy crossed her arms as the woman she’d thought was her friend looked up at her. “You’ve never struck me as being stupid before now. I realize you don’t want to face facts, but it is the truth. Pam burned my house down. And two nights before that, she drugged me. Got something and put it in my cigarettes, then broke into my house and vandalized it. She’s been working with someone in my department to make me think I was losing my mind. She damned near succeeded. But we figured it out in time, and now we know what she is. Do you want to see the pictures of what she did to me, to my house, before she burned it?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Please, no. I believe you.” Her voice was little more than a whisper. She glanced at the pictures of the girls. “I can’t believe she would do that. Not hurt those girls like that.”

  “But you don’t have any problem believing she’d hurt me that way, and you’re willing to forgive her for it. Why, Maggie? What does she have on you? What do you owe her?” Exhausted, Stacy sat down and gathered up the photos.

  “I need to light this. If I don’t, I can’t tell you.” Maggie nudged the pack of cigarettes. “I’m not trying to pull anything. I really, really need to light up.”

  “And then you’ll tell me everything?”

  “Yes.”

  Stacy didn’t move, but a few seconds later, Detective Hathaway opened the door. He was carrying a lighter, an ashtray, and two Cokes.

  “Gordon said you looked like you could use some of this.” He handed her a Coke.

  “Thanks.”

  He left, and while Maggie lit the cigarette and inhaled, Stacy twisted off the lid of the bottle. Gordon was right; she needed the boost. The too-sweet drink helped her regain a little of the focus she’d lost in the heat of the argument.

  “I met Pam when we were in grade school, but you know that already,” Maggie started. She had made it through her first cigarette and was lighting the second. “We just connected. I don’t know why. Maybe because neither of us had much of a home life. Her mother was a no-good drunk who had a different man nearly every night of the week, and mine wasn’t much better. By the time we were teenagers, we were inseparable.”

  “In Lynchville?” Stacy asked when Maggie paused to take a drink of her soda.

  “Yeah. Your daddy was from there, too. So handsome, so charming, he was a year ahead of us in school. Well, two years ahead of Pam. She’d fallen behind her freshman year. One of Becky’s—that’s your grandmother—boyfriends had nearly beaten Pam to death. That was the only time I ever saw Becky get mad for Pam. Anyhow, Matt was so good. He really was. And he wanted to help Pam.”

  She put out the cigarette, a sad smile creeping across her face. “You look so much like her. It’s scary. And you couldn’t be more different. I’ve often wondered if Pam would have been more like you if she’d had anyone who cared about her.”

  Stacy shrugged. “I managed to turn out okay, and I didn’t have anyone. A bad childhood is an excuse, and you know that.”

  “And you know that, as bad as it was, you could have had it a lot worse. Pam did have it worse. And yeah, she should have done better than what she did. But she wasn’t capable of that.”

  “How’d they meet, my parents?”

  “At a football game his senior year. He was the quarterback. Some kids were picking on Pam, and he stood up for her. By the time he graduated, she was pregnant with you.”

  Stacy had to grip the bottle hard, and she took a couple of sips to ease the constriction in her throat. “What about my grandparents? That couldn’t have made them happy, their good son and the town drunk’s daughter.”

  Maggie’s eyes flared with surprise. “You have been busy learning things, haven’t you? No, they weren’t pleased. Henry and Matt had a huge fight, and Henry told him that if he married Pam, he was disowned. Matt was too young to stand up to his daddy, and he and Pam left that night. I went with them. I didn’t have anywhere else to go. They got married a couple of days later, and he enlisted in the Army right after that.”

  “That’s where you met Lee?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what happened?”

  Maggie slumped in her chair. “Time happened. We all grew up a little. Well, most of us did. Pam didn’t. She hated being married, hated being tied down in one place. She was only nineteen years old, and she wanted to live. That was her big thing. She always wanted to go somewhere and live.” Her laugh was a crackle of emotion rather than an expression of true humor. “She met another GI, and she started an affair with him. Matt found out. He was devastated.”

  Stacy was unbelieving. “He couldn’t have been that naive. Not after living with her for three years.”

  “He wasn’t. But he was still hurt. And I hated Pam for what she did to him. He was a good boy. He didn’t deserve that.”

  A tingle of awareness crept up Stacy’s spine, and she tilted her head to the side. “Maggie? Did you have feelings for him?”

  She didn’t meet Stacy’s gaze, but started peeling the label off the plastic bottle. “Lee was in the middle of transferring to Fort Bragg. I didn’t want to go. We didn’t live on base, and if we moved, we’d have to. So he went on down to North Carolina, and I stayed here. And while Pam was out with her new boyfriend, someone had to watch you. That was me.”

  “You had an affair with my father, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I did. It was wrong, and we both knew it, but neither of us cared much. It didn’t last long. Pam’s new man turned out to be married, with three kids, and she came crawling home to Matt. Stupid man, he took her back.” She wiped her cheeks with her fingers.

  “Did Pam find out?”

  Maggie nodded. “Yes. Six months later. They’d been arguing, apparently, because she was seeing someone again. And he threw me in her face. I need a minute.”

  “I’ll be right back.” On shaky legs, Stacy went to the door and asked the deputy to watch Maggie for a minute. She continued on to the observation room.

  “What do you need?” Gordon asked, meeting her at the door.

  “A box of tissues.”

  Detective Hathaway reached for the tissues, but Stacy didn’t look up at them. Thanking the other man for the tissues, she turned to go back down the hall. Gordon heaved a frustrated sigh behind her, but she didn’t stop.

  Once back in the room with the door closed, she pushed the tissues over to Ma
ggie.

  “Thanks.” After she blew her nose, she stuffed the used tissue down inside the now-empty Coke bottle. “I should have told you this years ago. I’m sorry.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Stacy asked softly.

  “Because I didn’t know what Pam was doing. Because I thought she deserved to have one thing go her way in life. And because I didn’t want to go to jail, if we’re being honest.”

  They were finally getting to the truth. Her instincts humming, she eased forward in her chair. “Why would you go to jail, Maggie?”

  “Because I helped Pam cover up your father’s death.”

  Even though she’d known that was what Maggie was going to say, the words hit Stacy like a ton of bricks. She looked away, blinking rapidly.

  “Damn you for letting me think he might still be out there all these years, for letting me think he abandoned me. He didn’t do that at all, did he? She killed him.”

  Maggie was sobbing openly, and Stacy didn’t feel a single twinge of remorse. She reached for a tissue and blotted her own eyes, sniffing back the grief. There would be time for that later.

  “Tell me what happened,” she instructed Maggie after the other woman had stopped crying.

  “Matt had left the Army. He wanted to go back home to Lynchville, to reconcile with his family. Pam didn’t. And he was going to divorce her, take you with him. She wouldn’t hear of it. She knew he’d have to pay child support if she kept you. But he had proof that she’d done something, I never knew what, and he threatened her with it. At least, that’s what she told me.”

  “Any idea what it was?”

  She shook her head. “No. She never would tell me.”

  “So they were arguing.”

  “Yeah. You know how your mother is when she gets mad. She would get right up in your face, and she wouldn’t back down. I guess that’s what happened that night, and she shoved him. He fell and hit his head.”

  Stacy couldn’t reconcile the image with the trailer park they’d lived in. “Why didn’t any of the neighbors hear them fighting, call the police?”

  “They weren’t in the trailer. Matt didn’t want to argue in front of you. You had strep throat, and Mrs. Hawkins had gone over from next door to stay with you. Pam came back alone, hysterical, came straight to me. They’d been out in the woods on an abandoned farm near the base; I guess they’d been there before to talk.”

  “And when she came in, what did she say?” It was hard to get the words out of her throat, it was so tight, but Stacy managed.

  “She was furious with me, but she was scared to death. She said I owed her for what I’d done, for cheating, and that if I didn’t help her cover Matt’s death up, she’d tell Lee about the affair. He would have killed me, Stacy.”

  “So you helped her?”

  Maggie laid the back of her hand against her forehead and bit her lip. “God forgive me, I did. I got two shovels out of the shed, and we set out. I had to drive us. Pam was too upset. We buried him in the backyard of the farmhouse, next to an apple tree.”

  On top of everything else, the realization that her father had been buried with little more respect than one would give a family pet was simply too much. Feeling the contents of her stomach rising, Stacy rushed to the garbage can in the corner. She heaved until there was nothing left, and then Gordon was there, holding her. Someone handed him a soft, wet towel, and he wiped her mouth.

  “Get her out of here, please?” she heard him ask.

  A man’s voice responded. “Mrs. Turner, come with me.”

  “Stacy, I’m sorry. I never would have hurt you. I’m so sorry.” Maggie’s voice faded as she was escorted out of the room.

  Clutching Gordon’s arms, Stacy urgently cleared her throat. “Stop her. We still have to find out if she knows who Pam’s working with in Leroy.”

  Gordon cursed. “Detective, Stacy has a few more questions for her.”

  Hathaway stopped in the door. “You sure you’re up to it?”

  “Yes. I need a couple minutes first.”

  “Okay. We’ll move her next door, then. Come find us when you’re ready.” He pulled the door closed behind him, leaving Stacy and Gordon alone.

  “Let’s get you out of this corner.” Gordon stood, taking Stacy with him, and guided her to the table. She sank down gratefully into her chair.

  “I’m okay,” she told him before he could ask. “I just need a minute and the restroom before I go back in there.”

  He lifted her right hand and gently removed the ring, then put it back where it belonged. Returning his attention to her right hand, he very carefully probed the area around the wrist. “You hit that table pretty hard. Feel okay?”

  Stacy winced when he hit a sore spot. “Not really. Gus is going to kill me. I have the feeling I just undid several weeks’ of therapy.” Before he could get too comforting, she stood and grabbed the file with the pictures. “Let’s get this done, and we can get out of here.”

  The deputy outside Maggie’s room told her where the restroom was, and after a quick trip down the hall, she returned to the new observation room.

  “I’m ready,” she told Detective Hathaway.

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll go in with you. We need to get directions to the farm she described.”

  “That’s fine.”

  When she opened the door to the interrogation room, Maggie barely glanced up. Stacy and Hathaway sat down across from her, and a full minute passed before Maggie spoke.

  “What else do you need from me?”

  “We need directions to the farm where my father is. And I need to know who Pam is working with in Leroy.”

  When she finally looked up, Maggie’s eyes were red-rimmed. “The map is fine. I can’t be of much help with the other, though. I don’t know who he is.”

  “But you know it’s a man?”

  “I think so. When did all this start, your trouble?”

  “About six weeks ago.”

  Brow furrowed, Maggie nodded. “That makes sense. The last time I saw Pam was at the end of January. I told her about your wreck, and she said she knew about it already. She was all excited, said she’d met someone who was finally going to help her get what she had always wanted. Said he was younger than her.”

  Stacy could barely breathe, but she forced herself to act normally. “Where’d they meet?”

  “In a bar in Cincinnati. Right after Christmas, I think.” A look of concern crossed her face. “It didn’t make any sense at the time, and I figured it was only Pam being Pam, but she said by the first of July, she’d finally have set things to rights the way she should have years ago. She was wiping the slate clean and starting over. If what you’ve shown me here is true, baby girl, I have to wonder if she wasn’t talking about you.”

  Rubbing her right wrist, Stacy sat forward. “What do you mean?”

  Maggie floundered for words. “I-I don’t know. Something about the way she talked, even without knowing all this, it made me uncomfortable. You don’t think she meant she was going to try and kill you, do you?”

  Shaken, Stacy stared across the table. “I don’t know.”

  After that, things went quickly. Maggie drew a detailed sketch of where Matt’s body was buried and gave them the exact location of the house.

  “I know it,” Detective Hathaway surprised both women by saying. “It’s on the road to the place we go target shooting. Some people bought it ten, fifteen years ago and renovated it. I’ll get a search warrant pulled together. We’ll probably go tomorrow or Tuesday to look. Mrs. Turner, are you willing to cooperate with me now that you’ve talked to Detective Kirchner?”

  “If that’s what will help Stacy, then that’s what I’ll do.”

  “It will,” Stacy told her. She stood, feeling ten years older than she had when she’d started. “But I’m not going to be here for the rest of the process. I need to go home. Will you still talk to them if I leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Hathaway, you have
my number. Just call if you need me.”

  “Will do. Thanks for coming down here.”

  With a nod, Stacy left the room without saying another word to Maggie. She simply couldn’t stand to be in the same space as the other woman any longer. Going straight to the observation room, she gave Garrett the file.

  “Thanks for the pictures.” She rubbed her wrist again, barely holding back a frustrated groan when she felt the swelling that had started.

  “Glad they helped. You did good in there. I’m sorry about your father.”

  “Thanks. It wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

  “We need to get that wrist checked out,” Gordon said. “You’ve hurt it.”

  “I know. Listen, I realize you wanted to spend a few more days in Louisville, but I’d really like to go home this evening. Do you think we can?”

  “Sure. Gar, are you going back home tonight?”

  “Depends on how late it is before I get out of here. I’m hoping I’ll get to talk to Maggie for a little while, see if she knows more than she thinks about this whole mess. If it’s too late, I’ll get a room, drive back first thing. Ronnie has Emma.”

  They headed for the lobby and stopped outside the front door.

  “Feel free to use the house. It’s an hour away, tops. The codes are all the same. Do you still have your keys?”

  “Yeah. I might do that, then, if you two don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.”

  Garrett crossed his arms. “If you’re heading back to Indiana, I guess that means you don’t want to be there when they start searching for remains,” he remarked to Stacy.

  She looked out over the parking lot at the storm clouds brewing in the distance. “I don’t think I can be. Maybe that will change, but for now, no. It’s too much on top of everything else.”

  “I understand. And if you two need anything, I’m a phone call away.”

  Stacy let him hug her briefly, and she and Gordon left. Her wrist was throbbing as they got in the car, and she took a sharp breath as she jostled it.