What was Haggerty’s game, anyway? True, there was electricity between them. Nothing you could do about that. Such chemistry originated somewhere way below the cerebral cortex, down in the lizard brain. But Dave Haggerty was a stranger to her. Obviously, he was aware of his sexual appeal. She was sure he wouldn’t hesitate to use sex to his advantage. Was he messing with her? If so, why?
She was too damn tired to think about it. She managed to pull off her clothes and haul on her pajamas, and fall into bed. Her head hit the pillow like a rock.
She didn’t know how much later she felt Hawk slip between the sheets and pull her close. Or how long they slept, nestled like spoons, comfort seeping into her from his warm, firm body.
The phone rang, jolting them both awake. The clock on the bedside table said it was almost two A.M.
“Dr. Alder,” said the voice on the other end, sounding a little slurred. “This is Charlie Preston. Need to return your coat.”
“Thank God,” said Sally.
“I wasn’t gonna steal it or anything. I mean, what do you think I am?” Charlie retorted, defensive.
“That’s not what I meant,” Sally said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Where are you, Charlie?”
“Ummmm...” she was trailing off, losing focus, passing out, maybe.
“Listen to me!” Sally said, forgetting about calm. “You’ve got to tell me where you are, okay? Don’t be afraid. I’ve been trying to find you. I was down in Fort Collins, with Maude and Aggie Stark.”
“Yeah. I know. Talked to Aggie,” Charlie mumbled. “Aggie’s nice girl. Lil’ sis. So sweet.”
“Are you in Laramie, Charlie?” Sally asked, hoping against hope.
“MMMMMmmmm. Laramie. Yeah. Took the bus. Hangin’by the station. Cold here. Sure you need your coat?”
“Stay right where you are. I’m going to come and get you. Don’t move, Charlie. I’ll be there in ten minutes at the most. Are you on your cell phone?”
“Cell. Yeah. Haven’t cut me off yet.” Charlie began to giggle.
“Stay on the line. Keep talking to me.” Sally was out of bed by now, rummaging in her closet until she found a ratty fleece pullover, yanking it on, grabbing a pair of socks, searching for shoes. “I’m coming right there. Meanwhile, I’m going to put my boyfriend on the line. His name’s Hawk. He’s a good guy, Charlie. Talk to him.” She handed the phone to Hawk, who managed to pull himself up on one elbow in the bed.
“Hawk? What kind of name is that for a boy?” Charlie asked, giggling some more.
“Charlie? What kind of name is that for a girl?” he answered.
By that time, Sally had dragged on the sweater, jumped into her shoes, and was headed out the door.
The gray and blue plastic sign glowed pale in the darkness. Gray-painted cinder-block wall, concrete sidewalk, curb, driveway, and a parking lot littered with soda cans and wrappers from vending machine food, discarded cigarette packs. The grime-streaked front window revealed the interior tableau: a few people slumped on chairs, haggard and dejected in the harsh fluorescent light, waiting for a bus that probably didn’t come for hours. Nighthawks at the bus station.
Some small relief: she didn’t have to go inside. Sally found Charlie sitting on the sidewalk around the corner from the entrance, legs splayed out and back against the wall, surrounded by cigarette butts and empty beer bottles. She was holding a cell phone halfway to her ear. Her eyes were closed, head drooping. Sally could hear Hawk still talking, tinny and faint. She took the phone. Charlie didn’t seem to notice.
“I’m here,” she told Hawk. “She’s sitting outside the bus station, on the side by the parking lot.”
“I’m coming down there,” he said. “You probably need help.”
“She’s totally out of it,” said Sally. “Come on down. I might have to carry her to the car.”
Sally squatted, put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, gave a little shake. “Come on, Charlie.
Charlie startled, looked up, utterly dazed. “Oh. Umph. You’re here.”
“It’s cold,” Sally said. “How come you aren’t inside keeping warm?”
“Too bright,” said Charlie. “Hate those fucking lights.”
“Okay. That’s fine. I want to take you to my house, get you into bed. Can you get up and walk?”
“I dunno. Real tired.” When Charlie tried to pull away from the wall, she toppled over. She curled up on the pavement. “Lemme sleep.” She pulled Sally’s now-filthy coat close around her. Sally got the feeling it wasn’t the first time Charlie Preston had bedded down on a sidewalk.
She heard a truck pull into the parking lot. A moment later, Hawk knelt beside her. “Pathetic,” he said.
“Yeah,” she replied. “But at least she’s here. At least Bea didn’t find her.”
“All right. Why don’t you pull your car up to the curb here, and we’ll load her in?”
Charlie was shorter and skinnier than Sally, but she was passed out cold. Dragging her up and maneuvering her into the Mustang was harder than they’d expected. It took them half an hour to get her out of the car, into the house, out of the coat, her shoes, her pants, and into their bed.
They’d debated loading her into the shower. Charlie reeked of cheap tobacco and bad beer. But they ended up deciding that she probably needed sleep more than she needed to be clean and awake.
So while Charlie slept the sleep of the dead drunk, they sat at their kitchen table, sipping herbal tea and discussing their next move.
“I’m going to call the sheriff’s office. In just a little while,” said Sally.
“Why wait?” Hawk asked. “You should call right now.”
“Hold on a second. I haven’t had a chance to tell you what happened today.” She gave him the rundown on the day’s events, including an apology for not giving him much detail on why she’d gone to the mall (he accepted) and a heavily edited summary of her encounter with Dave Haggerty (he frowned, but didn’t say anything). “So the police are holding Billy Reno. Billy’s and Charlie’s fingerprints are all over that lug wrench we found. That’s enough for them to charge him with murder. What do you think they’ll do to her?”
Hawk pressed his lips together. “Probably the same. Or something close to it.”
Sally took a breath, made herself imagine the sight of Brad Preston’s shattered skull. The room tilted a little. “I can’t do it. I can’t see in my mind what the wounds in his head looked like. But wouldn’t you think that the medical examiner will be able to tell whether the person who hit Preston was taller or shorter than he was? Wouldn’t there be something about the angle of impact? Hell, they can probably tell whether the attacker was right-or left-handed.”
“And then match the prints on the wrench. It’s not rocket science. If two people accosted him, they could tell which one of them it was, or if both of them hit him, and whether he was standing up or on the ground.” Sally looked crushed. “I’m sorry,” said Hawk. “You really don’t want it to be her.”
“If it was,” said Sally, “I want to know what drove her to do it.”
Hawk put down his tea, reached over the table, and took her hand. “This isn’t about you. You have to call the police. Call Dickie at home, if it makes you feel better. But you can’t play cop here.”
“She came to me before. She called me tonight,” said Sally. “She trusts me. I just want to talk to her before they take her.”
He gave her a long look. “She could be a murderer, Sally.”
“You helped me undress her. All she had on her was a bus ticket, a ten-dollar bill, and half a pack of cigarettes. No weapons. No ID, even. She’s a lost kid, Hawk. I agree, she might still have done something terrible. Maybe she was high on meth. Maybe her boyfriend decided they should shake down the old man, and she agreed, and things got out of hand. Or maybe, well, anything. But she’s been in the system a long time. If ever there was a victim, it’s her. She’s used to thinking they’re out to get her. She has reason to believe that they are.
/>
“What harm would it really do if we let her sleep off her drunk and then gave her something to eat, and listened to her side of the story? Don’t you think she deserves at least that much sympathy?” Sally asked.
“Why in hell do you think she’d tell you anything?” Hawk asked.
“I don’t. Or at least I’m not counting on it. But it’s worth a try,” Sally insisted.
“So you’re not going to call Dickie right now, are you?” he said.
“What difference does it make?” Sally replied. “If I call him now, they’ll just come wake her up. She’ll be miserable enough going with them in the morning, after she’s had some sleep. We can give her that.”
He didn’t like it. “You know, if she didn’t do it, every minute of delay might give whoever did more time to get away. And you also know that Dickie will be pissed at you, and he’ll be right.”
“He’ll be pissed,” said Sally. “But if he was sitting here, I bet he’d let her sleep.”
Hawk looked at Sally, looked toward the bedroom, looked back at Sally. “Yeah. Okay. I could use a couple more hours in the rack myself.”
They pulled out the so-called sleeper sofa in the living room. Hawk had gotten it at a garage sale when he’d first bought the house, and everyone who’d ever attempted to actually sleep on it had the same opinion: Are you kidding? They’d bought a new mattress for it, put an extra pad on top, but nothing disguised the fact that the thing was basically an assemblage of sagging springs and unforgiving metal bars. They finally gave up and put the mattress on the floor, but no sooner had they shut their eyes than bird-song and pearly light prodded them awake.
Birds and light and the muffled noises coming from the kitchen.
They found Charlie Preston sitting at the table, dirty and disheveled and fully dressed, writing them a note.
Sally looked over Charlie’s shoulder, reading. “ ‘Decided to split. Thanks for the bed.’ ” She sat down, facing the girl. “Where, exactly, were you planning to go?” she asked.
Charlie tried to glare at Sally, but she was utterly out of gas. She put her head down on the table.
Hawk sat down too. “You’re out of options, Charlie. Your boyfriend is in jail. The police are going to charge him with murdering your father.”
She lay motionless.
“I don’t know what happened,” Sally told her, “but you need to go in and tell them what you know.”
Minutes passed. Charlie’s shoulders shook a little, but she remained silently prostrate on the table. Sally and Hawk said nothing, waiting her out.
Finally, with huge effort, Charlie raised her head. Her eyes were a thousand years old. “It doesn’t matter. They won’t believe me anyway. They never do.”
Sally took a chance, took Charlie’s hand. “I have to ask you. Were you there? Did you see who...”
Charlie wrenched her hand away and leaped up with a shriek. “I didn’t! I wasn’t! I didn’t fucking kill my old man! I wasn’t even in Wyoming when he died. I don’t know anything about it! I didn’t hear about it until two days after it happened.”
“Can you prove that?” Sally said. “Is there anybody who can back you up?”
Tears began to leak out of the corners of her eyes. She nodded. “I had, uh, s-some m-medical problems.” “I know,” said Sally.
“I saw you before you took off, remember?”
“Yeah. R-right. There’s this doctor in Fort Collins. I don’t want to tell you her name.”
“If she’s the person who’s going to corroborate your story, you’re going to have to let the police know who she is,” Hawk said.
Charlie looked down. “I don’t want her name getting out. They’ll come after her. Do to her what they did to that guy up here. She volunteers at the shelter down there. She does all kinds of things.”
“Like patching up people who’ve been battered, and dealing with unwanted pregnancies?” Sally asked.
Charlie nodded, took a big breath. “This wasn’t the first time for me, Dr. Alder. I got pregnant when I was fifteen. Then again last year. This was my third, um, operation. The first one wasn’t so hot. There’d been some problems, a lot of scarring. I thought I got through this one okay. I just went in for the day and had it done, then they let me out and told me to call if anything came up.
“For a few days, things were fine. I had a job and everything. But then, there were some complications. They had to do... some other procedures. I ended up in the hospital down there.” Charlie shook her head. “Well, anyhow, I guess I can’t get pregnant anymore.”
Dear God. At the age of eighteen, Sally Alder had been partying her way through her sophomore year at Berkeley. She’d been madly in love with a bass player from South Carolina, a sloe-eyed premed from Montreal, a chain-smoking radical preppie, and half her American Folklore class. Plenty of drama. Not much trauma.
At eighteen, Charlie Preston found out her father had been murdered, maybe the very day she’d learned that she’d never be able to have children of her own. Sally covered Charlie’s hand with her own. “How did you find out about your father?” she asked gently.
“Billy came and got me when they let me out of the hospital. He was freakin’. The day after it happened, the cops came knocking on his door. He snuck out a back window and got the hell out of there. He came and told me as s-soon as he could. He didn’t want me to be a-alone,” she said, hiccupping down tears.
“I lost my mom when I was little,” Hawk said. “It’s the worst thing in the world.”
“My dad... I mean, I can rememb-b-ber him bouncing me on his knee and singing to me when I was just a little, little kid. He’d sing and sing and bounce me until I was laughing and laughing. That was b-before...oh shit. Before. He’d get so mad at me. I d-don’t . . . whatever.” She was gasping for air. “Whatever! Then he’d try to make it all up. He’d be so sorry. He’d try to explain, and then— then I’d end up in... I can’t ...and then Bea... I just fucking had to get out of here. It was so fucking awful!”
“Aggie told me you had friends down in Colorado. Or at least Billy does,” Sally said.
Charlie sniffled hard, breath coming fast. “They aren’t the kind of friends, who h-hang around hospitals,” she managed.
“So Billy knew what you’d been through.” Hawk made it a statement, not a question.
“Billy,” said Charlie, “knows every g-goddamn sorry thing about me.” She sat up straighter, face tear-streaked but fierce. “And he loves me anyway. As soon as he gets his hands on some money this guy owes him, we’re gonna get married and get the fuck outa Laramie! There’s nothing for us here.”
Sally leaned her forehead on her hand and closed her eyes, thinking. “Was Billy with you in Fort Collins?” she asked.
Charlie eyed her warily. “Some of the time,” she said.
Hawk leaned in close. “Was he with you the day your father died?” he asked.
Charlie glared, despite the tears, her mouth trembling.
“How well do you know Billy Reno, Charlie?” asked Sally.
“Fuck you!” shouted Charlie. “I love him! Just because he’s gotten in trouble doesn’t mean he killed my daddy.”
Not “my father.” Not even “my dad.” “My daddy.”
“Sally’s not saying he did,” Hawk said. “But he loves you too, right? He knows who hurt you. Maybe he was trying to pay Brad back. Maybe things got out of hand. Does he lose his temper a lot?”
“Do you?” Charlie screamed. “Mr. Fancy-Ass college professor, do you ever get so mad you want to punch your fist through a wall? Doesn’t everybody lose it sometimes?” She turned to Sally. “How about you? Does Ponytail Boy here ever get out of control and slap you around? Do you try to fight back? Or maybe he just sneaks off and gets his revenge other ways. Or maybe you do.”
They stared, appalled. “We get mad, sometimes, sure,” said Hawk. “But we don’t hit each other. Ever. That’s out of bounds.”
Charlie sneered at them. “You say that n
ow, but how do you know? Have you ever hit anybody else, Hawk? Anybody ever hit you?”
He had nothing to say.
“How do you know she won’t piss you off so much that one day you’ll just lose it? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s that you never really know anyone. You might think you do, but you don’t. One minute they’re all, ‘I love you. I adore you. I’d do anything for you.’ The next, they’re smackin’ you so hard you think your neck’s gonna snap. And then suddenly someone’s sticking a needle in your arm and hauling you off and you just can’t, you just don’t ...you can’t figure anything out, count on anything. My old man and his bitch wife were living proof of that.” She began to laugh and sob hysterically. “But at least now he’s dead.”
Chapter 14
Do You Want My Job?
Sally had never seen anything like it. One minute, Charlie Preston was hysterical. The next, she was motionless, incapable of speech, eyes dead. They tried to rouse her, rubbing her back, shouting at her, offering water. When Hawk put the glass to her mouth, Charlie didn’t move. The water dribbled down her chin. Then Sally tried to take her hand, and Charlie grabbed her wrist, grasping convulsively before lapsing back into immobility.
She needed a doctor. She needed a lot more than that, but a doctor first. Sally called 911, then called Dickie Langham at home. “Charlie Preston’s here,” she told him. “An ambulance is coming.... No, no, it doesn’t look as if she’s physically hurt, but she’s gone into some kind of catatonic state.”
“I’ll be right there,” he said, hanging up without asking more questions.
Then she called Dave Haggerty. “We’ve got Charlie Preston,” she told him. “But we’re getting her to the hospital. I’ve called the sheriff.”
“Thanks,” said Haggerty. “She’s gonna need a good attorney. I’ll call my associate, Melba Krich, and tell her to go down to Ivinson Memorial. Anything you want to tell me?” he asked.
Sally wasn’t sure of the protocol. She knew that she needed to give Dickie the fresh version of Charlie’s story. It was good to know that Charlie would have a lawyer on board when the police started asking her questions. When she was able to answer them. Whenever that might be.
Hello, Stranger Page 12
