Vindicate

by Beth Yarnall

  I lean over and flip through the pages of my notebook until I find the one I created for the eyewitness. “Damien LeFeaux. He’s got several arrests for possession and three for dealing. He’s a big, fat meth head. He testified in my brother’s case and somehow escaped California’s three-strikes law. Of course, he’s such a freakin’ idiot that he got arrested again for possession and is serving twenty years in Donovan. I guess he didn’t witness any new crimes to get out of that one.”

  “I’d like to talk to him,” Leo says.

  “That might be a job better suited for me,” Mr. Nash cuts in. “I have a connection at Donovan. We’re going to have to tread very lightly with Mr. LeFeaux.” He turns a few more pages. “I’m not joking here, Cora. This is some of the finest, most thorough investigative work I’ve ever seen. You’re organized and resourceful. If you’re ever interested in a career in private investigation, I’d hire you in a minute.”

  I lower my head and nod. My cheeks are on fire, my heart is thumping hard, and I don’t know where to look. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Where do we start?” Leo asks.

  “We start at the beginning.” Mr. Nash flips back to the first page of my notebook. Cassandra’s page. I used a photo Beau had taken of her. She’s smiling at him and you can see how much she loved him.

  “We start with the victim, Cassandra Bethany Williams.”

  Chapter 4

  Leo

  My dad isn’t easily impressed. He’s certainly never been as enthralled with anything I’ve ever done as he is with Cora and the work she did on her brother’s behalf. I should be jealous or ashamed, but I’m not. Cora is damn impressive. When I think about her—which has been pretty much every waking moment since I laid eyes on her—I imagine what life has been like for her since her brother went to prison. I try to picture myself putting my life on hold to help one of my sisters, but I can’t. That realization does shame me. I wouldn’t have done what she has. Not many people would.

  Glancing over the papers strewn across the table after she unloaded her box, I realize I’m totally fucked. Luckily my dad helped us map out a plan and now it’s up to me to captain this investigation. I’m in way over my head. Cora is looking at me like she expects me to either come up with something brilliant or fall on my ass. I will not fail her. I won’t. This isn’t at all the way I pictured my summer, but now, looking into her take-no-bullshit stare, I can’t remember any of the plans I made. I’ve fallen headfirst into her life, inserting myself into it like I had a right to be there. She challenges me on that every time I dare to meet her gaze.

  “Tell me about Cassandra,” I say.

  She pulls her binder toward her. It’s meticulous. I mean that in the most sincere way possible. It’s a work of art. She took the tiniest pieces she could find and fashioned them into something that is organized, informative, and flat-out fucking brilliant. I can see the case the way she sees it. She laid it all out for anyone who would care to look. But I don’t need her to tell me what’s in it. I need her to tell me what’s not in it. I need to know what can’t be put down on paper—her impressions, her feelings, her, I don’t know…intuition.

  She opens the binder to the first page—Cassandra’s page. For a split second I can see the grief on her face and then in the next blink it’s gone and her usual don’t-fuck-with-me expression is back.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me how she and Beau met. What was their relationship like? What did you think of her?”

  “They were both juniors in high school when Beau asked her to prom. It was their first date. They were inseparable after that. She was his first serious girlfriend. I don’t know if he was her first or not. She came over to our house a lot, so I got to know her pretty well. Some of his friends were real assholes to me, but she wasn’t. She treated me like a sister. Even let me borrow her clothes sometimes.”

  She loves Cassandra. I can hear it in her voice, but I don’t think it’s an old love. I think it’s a love that grew from necessary familiarity through the case and with Cassandra being a victim in this just like her brother.

  “Why did she and Beau break up?”

  “I’m not really sure.” Her gaze slides away to the photo of Cassandra.

  “Beau never said?”

  “No.”

  “How long were they broken up?”

  “Two months. Maybe a little longer. Cassandra was getting ready to go to UC San Diego. Beau was supposed to go to Santa Barbara. I don’t know if they broke up because they thought they had to because of the distance or if it was…something else.”

  She rubs her thumb over Cassandra’s hair. She’s far away, somewhere in her head. I want to reach across the table and take the hand that can’t stop touching the photo of a dead woman. Instead, I stand and move around to her side of the table. She glances at me as though I materialized into the chair next to her by magic. I pull the binder away from her and try to see what she sees when she looks at the photo. All I see is a pretty young woman with brown hair and brown eyes. I have no emotional attachment to this person, but I can tell by the expression on her face that she was happy. And in love.

  “Did Beau take this?”

  “Yeah.” She’s uneasy letting me touch her binder. She puts a hand out as if to take it back and then pulls the gesture, tucking a blue strand of hair behind her ear. Earrings stud her ear from bottom to top. That blue again. Cora blue.

  I stroke my thumb over the pic just the way she did. I want to know Cassandra. I want to know what it’s like to have a chick look at me like Cassandra’s looking at Beau. I want Cora to look at me like that just once. That’s a stupid, fucked-up, selfish thing to think, but I can hardly think of anything I want more.

  “Why do you think they broke up?” I have to know. How could they go from this picture to…nothing? Beau must’ve hated not seeing that look on Cassandra’s face anymore. I know I would.

  “I think…” She stares down at the photo as though she doesn’t want to betray a woman who wouldn’t even know it if she did. “I think Cassandra met someone else.” Not just Cassandra. Cora’s admission betrays Beau too, because it gives him a motive to kill.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I overheard part of a conversation Beau had on the phone with her a couple weeks after she stopped coming over. Beau locked himself in his room every day when he was at home, so I knew something was up. Then one day I heard shouting, so I put my ear to his door. I heard Beau ask her how many times and then he asked her why she was just telling him this now. He was very, very angry with her.”

  Whoa. “What do you think he was talking about?”

  “I don’t know. That’s all I heard.”

  “Did you ever ask Beau about that conversation?”

  “He wouldn’t talk about it then or now. He gets mad all over again when I mention it. I didn’t find anything that might answer your questions in my investigation. But then my notes on her aren’t as complete as they could be.”

  I nod. We’re going to have to find a way to get in with Cassandra’s group of friends and family. That isn’t going to be easy. We can’t come at them with the truth.

  Cora takes a long drink of water. I watch her throat move and the way her lips press against the mouth of the water bottle. She drains it and replaces the cap, looking at it like she doesn’t know what to do with it. I take it from her and toss it behind us. She gapes at me like I’ve just committed some horrible crime. I like surprising her. She doesn’t seem like someone who’s easily shocked.

  “I’ll get it later,” I tell her.

  She taps her nails on the table once, twice, and then looks at the bottle.

  “I’ll get it,” I say again.

  The expression on her face as she turns back around makes me laugh.

  “No, really. I will.”

  A corner of her lip tugs up. “Uh-huh.”

  “Are we having our first fight?”

  “Something t
ells me we’re going to have lots of fights before the summer’s over.”

  “As long as we make up.”

  I took it too far. The almost smile fades and she takes in a breath like you do when you’re about to deliver bad news.

  “It was just a joke,” I cut in, before she can say anything.

  I don’t like the rejection in her eyes. I want the almost-smile back. I want to make it grow into something real that creases her cheeks. But I have a feeling it’s been a long time since she’s allowed herself to smile with any real happiness. Too damn long. I don’t feel sorry for her though. You can’t look at her and feel pity. That’s not one of the emotions she provokes in me or from the world in general. There’s pride there—so much pride—and determination. She’s stubborn, but it’s the kind of obstinacy that draws you in and makes you want to be a part of whatever she’s involved in.

  That’s exactly why I’m sitting in this chair next to her, silently vowing to be her knight in this battle she’s waging. And why I gave up whatever fuck-around things I was going to do this summer to do the one thing I swore I’d never do—become a private investigator, if only temporarily.

  “What did Cassandra do after she and Beau broke up?” I have to get her mind back on the case. That’s the only way I’m going to win with her. “Did she have a job?”

  “She worked at a clothes store in the mall. But that was years ago. I doubt anyone would still be working there who knew Cassandra.”

  “We can try.”

  “Yeah, okay. I guess.”

  “I think I should talk to Beau. Alone.”

  “He doesn’t talk about Cassandra.”

  “Not to you, but he might talk to me.”

  She thinks this over with flickers of hurt flashing across her features like lightning across the sky. It had to have occurred to her that her brother wouldn’t want to talk about his love life with his little sister. I sure as hell wouldn’t. I don’t want my sisters to know anything about sex, especially since the youngest one just got her first boyfriend.

  “Maybe,” she relents. “But you have to tell me what he says.”

  “I can’t make that promise.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “He’s not going to confide in me if he thinks I’ll take everything he says straight to you.”

  “If you can get him to talk.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  “This isn’t a game. This is my brother’s life.”

  And hers too. Both siblings have a lot at stake here. Neither one of them has had a life since Beau’s conviction. Even though Beau’s the one in prison, Cora built and maintains a wall that blocks her off from the rest of the world. Beau’s the convict, but they’re both doing time.

  “We’re going to figure this out,” I say, wanting more than anything to touch her. “Trust me.”

  She doesn’t really have a choice, but I feel like I have to ask for her trust or she won’t completely give it. I have to want it and I have to show her I want and deserve it.

  She lets out a laugh like she can’t believe what she’s about to say. I hold my breath because I don’t think I’ll be able to either.

  “Okay.” She doesn’t add the part about her not having any other choice but to trust me.

  I won’t forget that.

  Chapter 5

  Cora

  Leo wants more than my trust. He wants to invade parts of my life where no one’s ever been. I’ve been alone with my notes and my reports and my never-wavering faith in my brother. But now he’s here, taking up too much space in the room and asking questions that make me look at my brother’s case the way someone who hasn’t lived it and breathed it would. I can see the holes. In just a few short hours Leo exposed the cracks in the case that make Beau look guilty.

  I know Beau’s been hiding something from me and everyone else, including his attorney. It’s one of the reasons he doesn’t want me investigating his case. I get so angry with him sometimes. He sits across from me at that dirty, scarred table, looks me right in the face, and talks about stupid shit instead of giving up his secrets. It’s the talking but not saying anything that frustrates the hell out of me. It’s the beatings he’d rather take, the obliteration of our family, and the blithe acceptance of his fate that I can’t stand. It jolts me out of a sound sleep. It keeps me awake at night. And it rides my shoulders all day.

  And now Leo thinks he can get my brother to open up and fill in those gaps? As if one quick trip out to the prison will clear everything up. I’ve got five and a half years of prison visits behind me and not a goddamned thing to show for it. But Leo is going to fix all that. Right.

  He asks me to trust him and the stupid, messed-up thing is—I do.

  He’s been flipping the pages of my notebook back and forth for nearly an hour now, taking notes. Every once in a while he asks a question or asks me to find a report for him. So far I’ve been able to answer every question except why Beau and Cassandra broke up and why—after months apart—he went to her apartment the night before she was murdered.

  “Who found Cassandra’s body?” Leo asks.

  He’s been poring over the paperwork on the table for hours and it’s making me twitchy. I want to get out there and do something.

  “Her neighbor across the hall. They were supposed to go to a yoga class after work.” I flip through the binder of copies of the police reports I got from Leo’s attorney until I find the right page. “Here.” I point to the entry by an Officer Hannigan. “Zelda Marks. She said she knocked on Cassandra’s door and got no answer. So she called. Again no answer. Cassandra’s car was parked on the street, so she knew Cassandra was home. Zelda used the key Cassandra gave her to feed her cat when she went on vacation and found Cassandra’s body in the bedroom tied to the bed.” I grab a folder and open it. “Here’s the 9-1-1 transcript of Zelda’s phone call at six-thirty-two p.m.”

  The transcript doesn’t even come close to the agony in the recording. The horror in Zelda’s voice of finding her friend’s naked, bound body echoed around the courtroom as they played the recording during Beau’s trial, while Zelda broke down on the stand, reliving that moment.

  “I have a recording of the call.” I pull a disc from a sleeve between the pages and hand it to him.

  “Hang on.” He leaves and comes back in the room with a CD player.

  I push back from the table. “Where’s the restroom?”

  He glances up at me as the disc begins to spin. “Take a right past Savannah’s desk. Second door on the left.”

  “Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

  I’m out the door before I can hear Zelda’s reply. I don’t need to hear it. I’ve got it memorized. Savannah isn’t at her desk and I let out a sigh of relief. Maybe she went to lunch.

  No such luck. I run into her as I round the corner, bouncing off her and back a step.

  “Watch where you’re going.” She knocks my arm with her purse as she passes.

  I whorl around and follow her. This is going to be a long, tedious three months if I have to constantly put up with Savannah’s bullshit jealousy.

  I plant a palm on her desk as she drops her purse into the bottom drawer. “I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but if you bump me like that again you’re going to find yourself on your ass.”

  She rises to her full height, which is half a foot taller than me. She doesn’t scare me. I’ve been up against worst bullies than her. Having a convicted murderer for a brother opened me up to anyone who wanted to take a shot. I know how to throw a punch and how to take one.

  “I don’t like you.”

  “Like I give a shit.”

  She crosses her arms over her chest and the advantage shifts to me. I can hit her before she can free a hand to block it.

  “Whatever you think is going on or going to go on between Leo and me—isn’t,” I say. “He’s all yours. The only thing I want from him is his father’s help.”

  She makes a rude noise and
echoes my earlier statement. “Like I give a shit.”

  “Look, I’m not going anywhere, so unless you plan on quitting this job in the next five minutes, we’re stuck with each other for the summer. It’s up to you how you want that to go down.”

  Her gaze flickers to the doorway of the conference room. I follow her line of sight. Leo is leaning against the door frame, his hands tucked into his front pockets, looking way too satisfied with himself. He thinks we’re fighting over him. What an ass. I head for the bathroom and away from his smug face.

  I close myself in the restroom. Savannah and Leo’s voices come through the thin wall. She’s giving him an earful about broken promises and how he just fucked her because he was bored. Ouch. No wonder Savannah’s carrying a grudge the size of Nebraska toward me. She’s got it bad for Leo. I can totally see why. He’s hot. Not my type at all, but hot just the same. The two of them make an impressive couple.

  I finish my business and wash my hands, but the two of them are still going at it. Leo is apologizing and she’s having none of it. He tries to placate her by telling her he’s not good enough for her. He’s got that right. She deserves way better than him. He tells her that it was fun, but it was just a fling. Oh, jeez, this guy’s such an idiot. That’s just what every girl wants to hear—she didn’t mean anything, she was an itch he scratched and nothing more.

  Savannah is crying. I can hear it in her voice. The way it wobbles rips at me. Why is she wasting her tears on this guy? She can do way better. I can’t walk back out there with all of that going on and I can’t stay in here. She’ll probably want to wash her face or something.

  I crack open the door and glance up and down the hall. My options are limited. There’s only one other door. I take it and find myself on a balcony overlooking the back parking lot. An orange cat winds its way around the dumpsters, sticking to the shadows. It reminds me of Oliver and the way he hugged the walls, trying to maintain as much distance from me as possible for the first few months after he came to live with me. Since then we’ve reached a wary kind of peace. I don’t try to pet him and he eats the food I give him and doesn’t shit where he’s not supposed to.