Thick as Thieves

by Sandra Brown

  Ledge mumbled, “He had it coming.”

  Don had held his gaze for a moment, glanced over at Henry and, particularly, at the pair of sheriff’s deputies who were questioning him about who Morg had been playing pool with. Coming back to Ledge, Don said querulously, “Aren’t you supposed to be studying for an algebra test?”

  Taking the hint, Ledge had gone to his room and lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling for almost an hour before Henry came in. He’d sat down heavily on the foot of the bed, and looked at Ledge’s bruised hands.

  “How’d you get crosswise with that horse’s ass?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Then why’d you send him to the hospital?”

  “There’s this girl in my grade. Crystal. She’s his stepsister. Today, I caught her crying. She talked to me. Personal like.” He stared hard into Henry’s eyes, and what he had sworn to Crystal not to tell, he compelled his uncle to interpret.

  “Morg messes with her?”

  Ledge didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.

  “Jesus.” Henry had dragged his hand down his face and contemplated the gravity of the situation. “The girl’s name is Crystal?”

  “Ivers.”

  Henry repeated her name as though committing it to memory. “Is she your girlfriend?”

  “Not like that.”

  “This wasn’t secondhand information? She told you herself?”

  Ledge just looked at him.

  “Are you sure she’s telling the truth?”

  The question had so angered Ledge, he’d glared at his uncle.

  “Okay, okay.” Henry had tugged on his chin thoughtfully. “Could he point you out as the guy who attacked him?”

  “I made sure he didn’t see me.”

  “Did anybody?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t think so, either. The man who found him said the parking lot was empty except for his car and one other, and no one else was around.”

  “What will happen?”

  “I don’t know. Let me think on what I’m going to do about this. I should turn you in. On the other hand…” He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “I understand why you did it. I’d be tempted to myself.” He pondered it for a moment longer, then said, “For the time being, keep your head down, your mouth shut, and pray that the son of a bitch doesn’t die.”

  “I wish he would.”

  “No, you don’t, Ledge,” Henry had said, sounding angry for the first time. “No, you don’t. It’s ugly what he’s done. Damn ugly. Disgusting and criminal, and he should never see the light of day for the rest of his miserable, perverted life. But you can’t be his judge and jury. You can’t go taking matters into your own hands.”

  “Nobody else did.”

  “No, but…but…Aw, hell. There’s no arguing with you when you think you’re right. In that respect you’re just like my brother was.” He’d spoken with both gruff annoyance and affection.

  “Please promise me that from now on, when you want to set a wrong situation right, you’ll talk it over with me first. We’ll figure out a way to fix it that doesn’t involve you drawing blood. Promise?”

  That was the second promise that Ledge had been called upon to make that day. He’d upheld his promise to Crystal never to reveal her secret. To an extent. He hadn’t told about Morg out loud. But he’d intimated enough that his uncle had read between the lines.

  Although he and Ledge had never mentioned it again in all the years since, Henry must have reported the abuse to CPS, the cops, something, because when Morg had recovered enough to be released from the hospital, he’d left it manacled and in police custody.

  Crystal and her mother were persuaded by the authorities to testify against him. He stood trial and was convicted. Only three months into his prison sentence, another inmate had done the world a favor by jamming a shiv into Morg’s left kidney, killing him.

  Ledge could justify fudging a bit on his promise to Crystal, because it had served to liberate her and her mother from the degenerate. However, he’d flat broken the promise he had made his uncle Henry. After leaving the diner on that rainy Saturday morning, he should have gone straight to Henry and told him about Rusty’s mad plan to burglarize Welch’s. He hadn’t. That had been costly bad judgment, which he was still paying for.

  To this day. To this moment.

  Crystal covered his hand resting on her knee with her own. “Memory lane is a dangerous neighborhood, Ledge. Why don’t you stay out of it?”

  “I wish I could. I can’t.”

  “What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

  He pulled his hand from beneath hers. “The night I got arrested for the second time, when all that weed was found in my car? Remember?”

  Caution clouded her eyes. “What about it?”

  “Was Rusty with you that night?”

  Her expression became guarded. “That was twenty years ago.”

  “I know exactly how long ago it was, Crystal. Please answer the fucking question.”

  She hesitated, then left the sofa, went over to a bar cart, and uncapped a bottle of bourbon.

  “I don’t want a drink.”

  “It’s not for you, it’s for me.” She poured and carried the glass of neat whiskey over to him. “But you’ll probably need one, too.”

  He took the glass from her but didn’t drink from it. She returned to the bar and poured another for herself. “Yes, Rusty came to my house that night. My old house. Mother was asleep. He knocked on my bedroom window and threatened to raise a ruckus that would wake the dead if I didn’t let him in.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Lord, Ledge, I don’t remember.”

  “Try.”

  “Why is it so important?”

  “What time?”

  “Late. One, one-thirty. Thereabout. And I couldn’t swear to that. I was too astonished by the condition he was in.”

  “What condition?”

  She gave him a withering look. “Like you don’t know.”

  Matching her pique, he thumped his untouched drink onto the coffee table. “Please stop making me repeat my questions. Describe his condition.”

  She took a quick sip of her whiskey. “He was all banged up. His jaw had a fist-sized bruise. Here.” She pressed her knuckles against her jawline in front of her ear. “His lower lip was split open. His left arm was black-and-blue, swollen twice its normal size. I assumed that it was broken. An assumption that was later confirmed. He was in a lot of pain. Anxious. Sweating profusely.”

  The more she told him, the more incredulous Ledge became. She wasn’t describing Rusty as Ledge had last seen him that night, getting out of his car and taking the canvas bag of cash with him. He hadn’t been battered and bruised. He’d been his whole and healthy, arrogant, asshole self.

  “Did he tell you what had happened to him?”

  Her eyes remaining on him, she said softly and with empathy, “Yes, Ledge, he did. There’s no need for you to pretend anymore. I know what you two did that night.”

  Chapter 20

  That night in 2000—Crystal

  What in God’s name happened to you?”

  After letting Rusty in through her bedroom window, Crystal spoke in a stage whisper out of fear of waking up her mother. Morg was gone for good, but her mother still slept fitfully.

  Rusty shouldered Crystal aside and went to sit on her bed, cradling his arm against his abdomen. “Get me something to drink.”

  “I don’t have any alcohol.”

  “Nothing? None?”

  “Nothing. None.”

  “Who doesn’t keep a bottle for emergencies?”

  “Since Morg was put away, Mother’s gone apostolic.”

  Rusty swore under his breath. “Percocet?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing like that. Your arm looks broken. You need a doctor.”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “Not now! Okay?” He grimaced with pa
in. “You must have aspirin. Advil?”

  “I’ll drive you to the ER.”

  “For godsake, Crystal, will you give it up? I can’t go right now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I can’t.”

  “What happened?”

  “Your boyfriend happened, that’s what.”

  “Ledge?”

  “Ledge,” he repeated, mimicking her astonishment. “You gotta have a fucking aspirin.”

  “Shh! All right.”

  She left the room and slipped down the hallway, moving as silently as possible past her mother’s closed bedroom door. Using only the nightlight in the bathroom, she took a bottle of Advil from the medicine cabinet and rinsed out the toothbrush glass. She made it back to her bedroom without being detected.

  In her absence, Rusty had switched on the bedside lamp. In its dim glow, he looked ghastly. He had smeared the blood dripping from his mouth across his chin. Drops of blood speckled the front of his shirt. He continued to hold his left forearm against his middle.

  With his uninjured hand, he lifted his shirttail and inspected the damage done to his midsection. There were abrasions. A large, dark bruise had blossomed between the bottom of his rib cage and his pelvic bone.

  “Rusty, you need to go to the emergency room.”

  He dropped his shirttail and reached for the bottle of Advil. He popped off the top with his thumb and shook several tablets into his mouth. Crystal passed him the glass of water. He drank it all and set the empty glass on the nightstand, where there was a framed school picture of Ledge.

  “Sweet,” Rusty said, glowering up at her.

  She had always tried her best to avoid Rusty and the sly manner in which he looked at her, implying an intimacy that had never existed. Gossip about her sexual escapades had been started by him. He had boasted of encounters that had never occurred.

  All of that now made her self-conscious of her dishabille. She pulled a cotton housecoat on over the short pajama bottoms and t-shirt she’d been sleeping in. She clutched the robe to her, arms folded over her torso. “What did Ledge have to do with this?”

  “Everything. The bastard.” He looked at her with mad, feverish eyes. “But I can’t report his assault on me without incriminating myself. So he’ll get away with it and only be charged with selling weed.”

  “He doesn’t sell weed.”

  “And the pope doesn’t wear a beanie.”

  “Ledge smoked that one time and got caught. That’s it.”

  “You believe that? He only tells you what you want to hear so you’ll fuck him.”

  “That’s not true.”

  He snorted a dismissal of her incensed denial. “Tonight, he was dealing out of his car on the parking lot of his uncle’s shitty bar. I…I…” He looked aside, then came back to her. “I had supplied him some of the goods.”

  Her lips parted in dismay.

  “Surprise!” he said. “The sheriff’s kid peddling pot. Who’d’ve thunk it?” He shifted his arm slightly, winced, swore, took several stabilizing breaths. “Anyhow, Burnet and I got into a dispute over the division of our profit. When we couldn’t reach a fair and reasonable agreement, he came at me with fists flying. I guess it comes from being raised in a pool parlor, but he doesn’t fight fair.”

  “You’re saying Ledge did this to you?”

  “Haven’t you been listening?”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  But despite her assertion, she did. She believed him, and that made her apprehensive and afraid for Ledge. She sat down on the same side of the bed as Rusty but kept her distance.

  She thought back to what Morg had looked like the night she and her mother were summoned to the hospital and informed that he’d undergone emergency surgery to repair a ruptured spleen. Their assumption was that he’d been in a terrible car wreck, but when told that he’d been attacked on the parking lot of Burnet’s Bar and Billiards, she’d known who had thrashed him.

  Only a few hours earlier she had told Ledge about Morg’s abuse. Ledge hadn’t ranted, hadn’t taken an oath of vengeance for her, hadn’t pledged he would put a stop to it.

  Rather, he’d remained motionless and silent, simply staring into the near distance, his eyes radiating an intense, white heat. Then he had come to his feet and offered to walk her as far as the corner near the school where Morg was due to pick her up.

  In the hospital waiting room, she and her mother were questioned by a sheriff’s deputy. When asked if she knew anyone who held a grudge against her stepbrother, she was trembling on the inside but had lied with remarkable composure. “No, sir. No one.”

  Now, as then, her concern was more for Ledge than for his victim. “Is he as banged up as you are?”

  “You’re worried about him?” He looked at her with contempt. “I told you, he doesn’t fight fair. He walked away with barely a scratch, if any.” He reached for the glass on the nightstand and spat bloody saliva into it. “He left me there like this and sped off with what was left of our stash and the money we’d made. But I got the last laugh.”

  When he chuckled, it was an ugly, evil sound. Pinkish bubbles formed between his swollen lips. “Not long after he left me bleeding, he got busted. Caught with what we hadn’t sold. As we speak, he’s in lockup.”

  She made to leave the bed in a rush, but Rusty’s good arm shot out and caught her wrist. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “To the jail.”

  “Like hell you are.” He pulled her back down onto the bed. “You and I are staying right here. Where I’ve been all night.”

  “All night? What are you talking about?”

  “Why, Crystal, honey, I’ve been with you since around nine-thirty, when your mama turned in for the night. No more than five minutes after her bedroom light went out, I tapped on your window, and you let me in. The prints of my boots will be outside your window under those scraggly bushes, and right there under the window on your rug.”

  She pulled on her arm, but he held fast. “If your jailbird sweetheart tries to implicate me in his little sideline business, I have a rock-solid alibi. You. We were screwing each other’s brains out.”

  “You filthy piece of crap. We were doing no such thing.”

  “Okay, then. We weren’t screwing. You were sucking me.”

  She looked at him with disgust. “I will never lie to protect you.”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  “Like hell, and you can’t make me.”

  “Crystal, dear, you will go along with whatever I say. Want to know why? Because, so far, in order to save face, I’m willing to lie to anybody who asks how I wound up in this sorry state.

  “But if Ledge squeals on me, and you side with him, I’ll be forced to tell the truth. In which case, Ledge will be charged not only with dealing weed, but also with assault and battery. Maybe even attempted murder.” He snickered with regret. “In case you didn’t know, that’s serious shit.”

  “It would be your word against his,” she said. “Besides, your injuries aren’t life-threatening. A split lip, a broken arm? You’re hurt, but hardly knocking on death’s door.”

  “Oh, wait. You thought I was referring to this little fender-bender he inflicted on me?” He touched the center of his chest with his fingertips. “No, honeybun. I was talking about the near-fatal assault he wreaked on your sorry stepbrother.”

  Crystal felt the earth giving way beneath her. “How did you know it was Ledge?”

  A slow grin spread across Rusty’s features. “I didn’t. But I do now.”

  Chapter 21

  When Crystal told Ledge that he could drop the pretense, that she knew what Rusty and he had done that night, she hadn’t been referring to the burglary.

  Not at all.

  As she related her account of Rusty’s visit to her house, Ledge was by turns incredulous and enraged. Rusty had spun quite a tale. He’d left Crystal convinced that if she denied he had been with her much of that night, it would be Ledge who
suffered the consequences.

  But beyond the personal ramifications, this previously unknown information painted an even blacker picture of Rusty and what he might have done that night after he and Ledge had parted.

  I have a rock-solid alibi. But where were you? Where did you get off to after the four of us split up? Who could vouch for your whereabouts later that night?

  He’d baited Rusty with that this morning as part of his chest-thumping threat to go to the attorney general and try to get the cold case of Foster’s questionable death reopened. From the moment Ledge had learned of it, he’d suspected Rusty of having had a hand in it, though he’d figured it would have been from a distance, that Rusty would have had someone else do his dirty work.

  But maybe not. The burglary hadn’t left him anxious and sweaty. He’d come away from that humming a tune. It hadn’t left him bleeding and broken, either.

  When Rusty came to Crystal’s house with an urgent need to establish an alibi, he had been incapacitated, and Foster was dead. There was only one logical conclusion to draw from that. At least to Ledge’s mind. He would need more than supposition before he started slinging accusations.

  First, he must set the record straight with Crystal. “Everything Rusty said about selling marijuana that night was one big, fat lie.”

  “It was found in your car, Ledge.”

  “But I didn’t put it there. I sure as hell wasn’t in a dealing partnership with Rusty. If I’d had an intention to peddle it, I wouldn’t have done it on my uncle’s property. Risk implicating him? No way in hell.”

  He pushed himself off the sofa and began restlessly prowling the room. “I didn’t beat up Rusty. I didn’t break his arm, but I’d like to break his neck now for making you believe that I had.” He stopped meandering and faced her. “Do you believe me?”

  “I want to.”

  “Not good enough, Crystal.”

  “After what you did to Morg—”

  “I don’t deny that. I never did. But this I did not do.”