by Karen Rose
“I wasn’t planning on racing through the streets, Miss Fallon. You’re doing fine.”
“You know, you could call me Alex.”
“I don’t know. Miss Fallon was economical. I’d have to remember two names.”
He was teasing her and she smiled. “Do you have a first name, Agent Hatton?”
“I do.”
She looked up at him. “Are you going to tell me what it is?”
He sighed. “George.”
“George? That’s a perfectly fine name. Why the sigh?”
He rolled his eyes tolerantly. “My middle name is Patton.”
Her lips twitched. “George Patton Hatton. Interesting.”
“Just don’t tell anybody.”
“I won’t breathe a word,” she promised, feeling a little lighter in spirit-until they reached Sister Anne’s shelter, and her spirit sagged. Sister Anne was critical. The ICU nurses at Atlanta’s County General had given Alex the prognosis, and it was not good.
Another one of the nuns met them at the door with a smile. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Alex Fallon. I was here two nights ago, talking to Sister Anne about my stepsister, Bailey Crighton.”
The nun’s smile disappeared. “Anne said you were coming back last night.”
“We couldn’t come last night. We took Hope to a doctor. Did Sister Anne say anything yesterday, anything to let you know who might have done this to her?”
The nun hesitated, then shook her head. “She wasn’t here yesterday. She went out looking for Bailey’s daddy. Because you told her you were coming back last night.”
Alex’s heart sank. “Did she find him?”
“I don’t know. I expected her back this morning and she probably would have told me then. But she didn’t come in.” The nun’s lips trembled and she firmed them.
“I was just at the hospital,” Alex said. “I’m sorry.”
The nun nodded brusquely. “Thank you. Now, if that’s all, I have supper to get on.”
“Wait.” Alex held the door open. “Will you see Sarah Jenkins tonight?”
“Why?” the nun asked suspiciously.
Alex held out the sack filled with the samples of prescription-strength antibacterial cream the nurses at the Atlanta ER had given her. “Her little girl has impetigo and this will fix it. There are also a few other supplies in there.”
The nun’s face softened. “Thank you.” She started to close the door again.
“Wait. I have one more question. Do you know this song?” She hummed the six bars Hope had been fixated upon the day before.
The nun frowned. “No, but I don’t get out much lately. Hold on. I’ll be back.” She shut the door and Alex and Hatton waited for a long time.
Hatton checked his watch. “We need to go. Vartanian will be here soon.”
“Just another minute. Please.” A minute came and went and Alex sighed. “I guess she’s not coming back. Let’s go.” They were almost out to the street when the door opened and the nun stuck her head out, a scowl on her face.
“I said I’d be back.”
“We waited. We thought you weren’t coming,” Alex said.
“I’m eighty-six years old,” the nun snapped. “Turtles move faster’n me. Here. Talk to this one.” She opened the door wider, revealing another nun who was only slightly younger and who looked very worried. “Tell them, Mary Catherine.”
Mary Catherine glanced up the street, then whispered. “Check Woodruff Park.”
Alex looked up at Hatton. “What’s that?”
“It’s one of the areas where musicians gather,” he said. “Anybody we should talk to in particular, Sister?”
Mary Catherine pursed her lips and the first old nun gave her a nudge. “Tell her.”
“You’ve heard the song before?” Alex asked, and Mary Catherine nodded.
“Bailey was humming it on the last Sunday she was here, while she was making the pancakes. She looked so sad. The song sounded sad. When I asked her what the song was, she got this scared look and said it was just a song she’d heard on the radio. But Hope said no, that it wasn’t the radio and didn’t her mama remember it was her Pa-paw and he was playing the song on his flute.”
Alex stiffened. Hope’s magic wand.
“What did Bailey do then?” Hatton asked, and she knew he thought the same thing.
“She got real flustered and sent Hope off to help set the tables, saying Hope thought every man with a beard was her Pa-paw. She said it just some poor drunk on the street corner playin’ a flute, that was all.”
Alex frowned. “But Sister Anne said she didn’t think Bailey had found her father.”
The first nun nudged Mary Catherine again. “Go ahead.”
Mary Catherine sighed. “Anne wasn’t in the kitchen at the time. I told her about it Monday night after you left. That’s when she decided to go lookin’ for him yesterday.”
Alex’s shoulders sagged. “She should have called me. I would have gone looking for him myself. Why did she go alone?”
The first nun sniffed. “Anne’s been ministering on these streets for years. She ain’t afraid to walk around herself.” Then she sighed. “I guess she shoulda been. At any rate, she didn’t want to get your hopes up. She said she’d check it out, then tell you when you came back last night. But you didn’t come back and neither did she.” The old nun shook herself back to brusque. “Thanks for the medicine. I’ll make sure it goes to good use.” She shut the door in Alex’s face.
Alex looked up and down the street. “Which way to Woodruff Park?”
But Hatton took her arm. “You don’t have time to look. I’ll find the flute player, and even if he’s not Crighton, I’ll bring him in. Now come on. You have a date.”
Atlanta, Wednesday, January 31, 3:30 p.m.
Daniel had parked his car in the prison lot, but he still sat behind the wheel. He’d told her about the interview with Gretchen French, about the assault and the empty whiskey bottle. He’d told her his plan to startle Fulmore with her face, that neither Fulmore nor his lawyer knew she was coming. All that conversation had eaten up about twenty minutes. The rest of the drive, he’d been withdrawn, deep in thought. She’d let him brood, hoping he’d eventually say something, but he’d said nothing at all.
Finally she broke the silence. “I thought we were going inside the prison.”
He nodded. “We are, but we need to talk first.”
Dread had her stomach clenching. “About?”
Daniel closed his eyes. “I don’t know how to ask you this.”
“Just ask, Daniel,” she said, her voice trembling.
“Is the picture I found of Alicia… or of you?”
Alex shrank away. “No. It’s not me. How… why would you even ask me that?”
“Because you have nightmares and hear screams and there are things you can’t remember. I assumed that Alicia was raped the same night she was killed, but the MO is too different. I wondered if they’d happened at different times, by different perps. And then I started to wonder…” He opened his eyes, and they were filled with pain and guilt. “What if the victims were different, too? What if Simon and the others hurt you?”
Alex pressed her fingers to her lips and for a moment simply focused on breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry.”
Alex dropped her hands to her lap and made herself think. Could it be? No. She’d remember something like that. Maybe not. Meredith had said so in response to her exact same declaration earlier in the day.
“You’re the second person today to ask if I’ve been molested. I don’t know how to answer you except to say I don’t remember it happening, but I don’t remember the night she died, either. I started feeling sick on the way home from school and went right to bed. The next thing I remember was my mother shaking me awake the next morning, demanding to know where Alicia was. But I wasn’t bleeding and I don’t remember any whiskey bottle. I would think details like that
would be harder to forget.”
For a moment the two of them were silent. Then Alex lifted her chin. “You never showed me the picture of Alicia,” she said.
He looked horrified. “You want to see it?”
Quickly she shook her head. “No. But there is one feature we had that was different.” She lifted the left leg of her slacks. “Can you see it through the hose?”
Daniel leaned over the gearshift. “The sheep tattoo. You said Bailey had one. No, you said you all had one, on Monday morning when you were viewing Janet’s body.”
“It’s actually a lamb. We thought it was cuter than a sheep. My mother called us her little lambs. Bailey, Alicia, and Alex. Baa. On our sixteenth birthday, Alicia got the idea to get the tattoos. Looking back, I think she was a little high. But Bailey was going, too, and it was our birthday, Alicia’s and mine, and I didn’t want to be alone.”
“A tattoo parlor gave sixteen-year-olds tattoos?”
“No, Bailey knew a guy. She told him we were seventeen. I tried to chicken out at the last minute, but Alicia triple-dog-dared me.”
One side of his mouth lifted. “The dreaded triple-dog-dare.”
“I never did anything exciting or fun. That was always Alicia. So I went along. In the picture of Alicia that you have, can you see her tattoo?”
“I didn’t look at her ankle.”
“Then look, at her right leg.”
He lifted his brows. “You didn’t get the same leg?”
Alex’s mouth quirked in a tiny smirk. “No. Bailey went first, then Alicia, which was the usual way of it. They were admiring their tattoos when the guy started mine. I purposely gave him my left foot. I was tired of getting in trouble for Alicia’s wildness.”
“You wanted people to be able to differentiate. What did Alicia say?”
“By the time she noticed me, he was already halfway done and it was too late. But oh, was she mad. And my mom, she was livid. She punished all three of us and for the first time in a long time Alicia had to take responsibility for her own actions instead of blaming me. I finally felt like I’d gotten the upper hand for once.” But then, Alicia had been murdered and all their lives had gone to hell. Her little smirk faded. “Look at the picture again, Daniel, and tell me what you see.”
“All right.” He found the photo in his briefcase and held it so that she couldn’t see, then pulled a small magnifying glass from his pocket.
When he sighed in relief, Alex did, too, unaware until that moment that she’d been holding her breath. He put the picture away, then met her eyes. “Right ankle.”
Alex moistened her lips, then pursed them until she was confident her voice wouldn’t shake. “Then that’s settled at least.” It didn’t answer Meredith’s concern, but she’d cross that bridge when she came to it. “So let’s go.”
Chapter Sixteen
Dutton, Wednesday, January 31, 3:45 p.m.
Well, well. He stood in the bank’s vault staring into Rhett Porter’s safe-deposit box. His chuckle was bitter as he read the letter Rhett had left behind.
My key is being held by an attorney you’ve never met, in a place you’ve never been, along with a sealed letter detailing our sins. If anything happens to my wife or kids, the letter gets mailed to every major newspaper in the country, and my key will be turned over to the state’s attorney. See you in hell.
It was dated less than a week after he’d fed DJ to the gators. He guessed Rhett Porter wasn’t so dumb after all.
He pocketed the note and left the vault, nodding to old Rob Davis, who waited outside. Davis owned the bank and normally would have delegated tasks such as safe-deposit boxes to a lowly employee. But this was a delicate matter, and he’d come without a warrant. He’d known Davis wouldn’t question his request, because he knew more about old Rob Davis than Davis knew about him. That was power.
“I’m done.”
Davis gave him a look of contempt. “You abuse your position.”
“And you don’t? Give my regards to your wife, Rob,” he said deliberately. “And if Garth asks, tell him I have it.”
Rob Davis’s cheeks went hollow. “It?”
“Your nephew will understand. Garth’s smart that way.” He touched his hat. “Bye.”
Macon , Georgia , Wednesday, January 31, 3:45 p.m.
“We’re late,” Alex said as Daniel signed them in.
“I know. I wanted Fulmore and his lawyer to get here first. I want a grand entrance.”
“He’s just going to say he didn’t kill her, like he’s been saying for thirteen years.”
“Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t. Between your memory and the yearbooks we’ve gathered, we’ve identified ten of the fifteen pictures. Only Alicia was murdered.”
“And Sheila,” she corrected, “but I get your drift. Daniel, I’ve read about the trial. They had evidence on Gary Fulmore that tied him to Alicia’s body. Her blood was on his clothes. It’s not like they railroaded him for murder.”
“I know. One of the things I’m hoping to get out of this is some way to determine if that picture of Alicia was taken the same night she was killed or a different night. If it was the same night and the rapists followed the same MO, maybe they left her somewhere and Fulmore came along and found her.”
“I wish I remembered that night,” she gritted out. “Dammit.”
“It’ll come. You said you were sick that night.”
“Yeah. I had stomach cramps and went to bed. It was awful.”
“Were you sick often?”
Her step faltered and she looked up at him, wide-eyed and miserable. “No. Hardly ever. It’s another coincidence, isn’t it? Do you think I was drugged, too?”
He slid his arm around her for a hard hug as they arrived at the small room in which she’d come face-to-face with the man accused of suffocating her sister before beating her face with a tire iron. “Let’s take one thing at a time. Are you ready?”
She swallowed hard. “As I’ll ever be.”
“Then you walk in first. I want to watch him when he sees you.”
Her shoulders grew rigid as she took a deep breath. Then, with determination, she twisted the doorknob and pushed her way inside where a man in orange coveralls and a man in a cheap suit waited. The cheap suit was Jordan Bell, the defense counsel.
Bell stood up, annoyed. “It’s about time you-” He stopped at the clatter beside him. Gary Fulmore had shoved back from the table, his chair bouncing against the concrete floor and his shackles clanging. His mouth was open, his face instantly pale.
Bell ’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell is this?”
Fulmore backed away when Daniel pulled out Alex’s chair and she slowly sat.
As pale as Fulmore was, Alex was paler. She was pale… as a ghost. Daniel felt like the biggest heel in the universe for putting her through this. But she’d wanted to find Bailey. She’d wanted to help him get justice for the three murdered women.
Somehow, some way, Alicia’s murder was the linchpin that held it all together.
“I said”-the lawyer hissed through his teeth-“what the hell is this?”
“M-m-make her g-g-go aw-w-way,” Fulmore stammered, his breath coming in shallow pants. “Go aw-way.”
“I came to see you,” Alex said, her voice calm. “Do you know who I am?”
Bell was frowning to beat all hell. “You never said you would bring her.”
Alex stood up and leaned forward, bracing her fists on the table. “I asked you a question, Mr. Fulmore. Do you know who I am?”
Who she was, was magnificent, Daniel thought. Calm, cool, and collected under extreme stress. Quite simply, she took his breath away.
She had the same effect on Fulmore, who was nearly hyper- ventilating.
Daniel moved so that he stood between Fulmore and Alex. She was still as pale as death, her eyes wide and intense, and he realized she wasn’t calm and collected. She was only cool, which meant she was terrified. But she was holding it together.
“Alicia Tremaine was my sister. You killed her.”
“No.” Fulmore shook his head vehemently. “I did not.”
“You killed her,” Alex continued as if Fulmore hadn’t spoken. “You put your hands over her mouth and smothered her until she died. Then you beat her face again and again until even her own mother didn’t recognize her.”
Fulmore was staring at Alex’s face. “I didn’t,” he said, desperation in his voice.
“You did,” she spat. “Then you dumped her in a ditch like she was garbage.”
“No. She was already in the ditch.”
“ Gary,” Bell said. “Stop talking.”
Alex jerked her face to glare at Bell with loathing and contempt. “He’s serving a life sentence. What more can I possibly do to hurt him?”
Fulmore hadn’t taken his eyes off Alex. “I didn’t kill her, I swear. And I didn’t dump her in that ditch. She was already dead when I found her.”
She turned back to him, her contempt now focused and cold. “You killed her. Her blood was on your clothes. On that tire iron they found in your hand.”
“No. That’s not what happened.”
“Maybe you could tell us what did happen,” Daniel said softly.
“ Gary,” Bell warned. “Shut up.”
“No.” Fulmore was trembling. “I see her face, still. I see her when I try to sleep.” His eyes locked on Alex’s, filled with misery. “I see her face.”
Alex made no move to comfort, her expression now set in stone. “Good. So do I. Every time I look in the mirror, I see her face.”
Fulmore swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his bony throat.
“What happened, Gary?” Daniel repeated, and when Jordan Bell would have protested, Daniel froze the lawyer with a look. Alex was trembling, and he gently pushed her back into her chair, Fulmore’s eyes following her down.
“It was warm,” Fulmore murmured. “Hot, even. I was walking. Sweatin’. Thirsty.”
“Where were you walking?” Daniel prompted.
“Nowhere. Anywhere. I was high. PCP. That’s what they told me anyhow.”
“Who told you?” Daniel asked, still softly.
