The year She Fell

by Rasley, Alicia

  She looked sweet and pretty, refusing to meet my gaze. I didn’t know if this was an act, playing shy now that we weren’t in bed. Whoever knows with an actress. But I called her over. “Come here. Look at something for me.”

  As she approached my desk, I reminded myself this was her sister’s death scene. The photo was cropped, but she might recognize the muddy shore there, that particular bend of the creek. I zoomed in so that all that showed was the shoeprint.

  I got up from my chair, and gestured for her to sit down. “There. Look at the footprint.” The rectangle in the middle showed up well, but the logo was blurry. “I figure you know more about shoes than anyone in town—”

  “Bass,” she said right away. She hardly had to glance at the image. “A man’s shoe. Probably one of the less-expensive ones, a moccasin, I bet.”

  I leaned over her shoulder and studied the image. “How can you tell?”

  “Oh, we all used to wear them in high school, no socks. Remember?”

  “No. I think I wore the same pair of Adidas running shoes for most of high school.”

  She shook her head. “And I still dated you?”

  “At least I wore socks.”

  Laura frowned at the screen again. “Anyway, it’s definitely Bass. And a moccasin. Probably with a leather thong tie.” She actually looked a bit nostalgic. “They were kind of cute, in a clunky way.”

  Our class graduated just a year or so before this photo was taken. “So only teenagers would wear them?” A teenager didn’t fit my preliminary profile.

  “Oh, no. They were classics. Still are. Well-made and not very expensive. Sort of, oh, preppy athletic ecological. Easy to walk in.”

  Hmm. “Could you hike the mountains in them?”

  “I doubt it. They weren’t that rugged, and you can see that the tread isn’t that grippy. No ankle support either. They were more for taking walks around town.”

  “So who would wear them? Around here?”

  The urgency in my voice must have alerted her, because she stared hard at the image, and when she spoke, her voice trembled a bit. “Someone, I don’t know. Not rich, but not poor. Concerned with image but not, oh, ostentatious. A lawyer on the weekends. A banker. A teacher up at the college. I mean, this isn’t the most trendy town. They go with the traditional.”

  Why anyone bothered with psychologists, I couldn’t say. Laura and her shoe analysis trumped any profiler I’d ever known. “Were they sold here in town, back when we were in high school?”

  “Sure I bought mine at Mabley’s.”

  Mabley’s was an old family-owned shop, still run by the old man who was old back in those days. I wondered how long he kept records. Not this long, I’d bet.

  “So why am I looking at this?” Laura asked. “Is it a crime scene?”

  Belatedly, I decided to be upfront. Maybe, you know, start a new trend in our relationship. So, gently as I could, I said, “With all these new revelations, I started wondering about your sister’s death. And these are photos of the accident scene.”

  She pushed back the chair and started to rise, but fell back. She didn’t seem angry, at least. Anguished, maybe. “Why? What were you wondering about?”

  “The police force then wasn’t really well-trained. And there weren’t any accident scene teams nearby, and there’s no sign they called in the state police team. So I thought they might have missed something.”

  “Jack—” Laura put her hand on the screen, her fingers touching the photo of the sandy shore. “Look. I know what you mean. And it’s nothing we haven’t all suspected all along. But—”

  She suspected, and didn’t report it? Or maybe I wasn’t understanding her. “You suspected all along . . . what?”

  “You know.” Laura’s face now was wet with tears, but her voice was even. “We always suspected that maybe Cathy—well, brought the accident on herself. At least Ellen and I did, and Mother maybe too.”

  I relaxed a little. They’d only been concealing the suspicion of suicide. And yeah, probably it would have helped if they’d shared it, but they wouldn’t be the Wakefields if they could be open and direct. I looked over at the folder which contained all the reports on Cathy’s death. “Yeah. Well, that’s probably what the detective thought too. But there’s no use worrying a family that’s already grieving. So the official verdict was accidental death.”

  She was silent for a moment, staring out the window. “It did make it easier. To believe that, or at least to pretend to believe that. But when we learned about—about Brian, we couldn’t help but think that she’d been depressed afterwards. Now we find out that he was the second baby she gave away—”

  “And this one, Mom didn’t manage to retrieve.”

  Laura whispered, “I have thought such a terrible thing about Mother for so long. That she betrayed my father, and Theresa was the result, and she hardly waited for him to be buried before she took Theresa back again. And the truth was . . . more complicated. Maybe worse. Cathy was so young—she couldn’t raise a baby, I know. But Mother taking Theresa back later—it might have seemed like a rebuke. And so Cathy had another child. And if she told Mother about that—Mother could have been so disappointed . . . Cathy was supposed to be the golden girl, you know. The one who always triumphed.” Laura took a deep breath. “Mother might have said something angry. And she could be looking back and feeling guilty—afraid that she drove Cathy to this.”

  She looked tired and strained, and I wanted to take her to bed—just to hold her until she fell asleep. For so long, she’d tried to get away from this family of hers, all the sorrow of her father’s death and her sister’s, her mother’s coldness. And yet she couldn’t let go. Now she was back again, suffering with her sisters. I knew her, knew the apartness of her—but she couldn’t stay apart now. And I might just be making it worse.

  I went ahead and said it. “Maybe your mother has figured something out. Maybe she’s learned something new, and that makes her think that she was wrong about what happened.”

  Laura’s eyes cleared and focused on me. “What do you mean? That it was an accident after all?”

  “No. Not an accident. Not suicide.”

  “You don’t mean—” She stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “Your mother has been looking into something. Ever since the kid wrote that letter and she intercepted it.” I watched as the realization dawned in her eyes, as the horror started.

  “No. You’re wrong. You must be wrong.”

  “She’s been keeping it from you—like she’s kept everything else. But she’s suspected someone.”

  “Maybe she’s just crazy,” Laura said desperately. She knew better—her mother was a lot of things, but not crazy. “She’s been acting crazy—changing her will, and suddenly leaving town when we’re all here. It’s not like she’s been really rational lately.”

  “But what if she has a reason for all this? And she’s not telling you?”

  “But Jack—” After a moment, she finished, “You can’t really be thinking that someone else was involved.”

  “I don’t know. And after so many years, I probably won’t ever know. But—” I gestured to the computer screen. “I thought I’d look at the photos. And found that.”

  “The shoeprint.”

  “Yeah.”

  “The police were walking there.”

  “You wouldn’t catch a cop or a deputy in a shoe like that, even off-duty.”

  “Then it was the photographer. Or whoever found the body. Or it was there before she fell—” Laura pushed her chair back from the desk and rose. “It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Maybe not. But your mother was looking for something. Someone. All this DNA stuff and Internet predator business—she was looking for something.”

  “But Jack—“Laura took a deep breath. “Look. She’s probably looking for any reason to believe it wasn’t suicide. Because she has to wonder if she’d done something differently, Cathy would have made another decision. But that does
n’t mean she’s right. She’s just not reliable.”

  “Maybe she is, about this. Maybe she’s on to something. And if she’s right—then someone’s walking around thinking he’s gotten away with it.” It felt simple to me. You didn’t let criminals get away with crime. But then, I was a cop.

  Laura wasn’t. She came to me and put her hand on my arm. Softly, she said, “Jack, please.”

  “I’m just going to look into it.”

  “Please don’t. My family has been through so much this last couple weeks. I don’t know if we can take another blow.”

  “I’ll do it quietly. Won’t hurt to look into it.”

  Her hand dropped from my arm and she moved back a step. “Won’t hurt? Of course it will hurt.” The entreaty was gone. Now she was angry. “It will bring it all back. And there’s been enough pain already, don’t you think? Mother in the hospital. Ellen finding out about Brian, and about Cathy betraying her. Brian learning his mother is dead, and his father doesn’t want him.”

  “Could be that little abduction thing getting in the way of paternal love,” I suggested, but she wasn’t listening.

  “And Theresa discovering that everything she thought about her life was a lie.”

  “What about you?”

  She walked to the door. “I’m okay.”

  “Just worried that all this is going to get into the tabloids, huh?” It wasn’t a nice thing to say—it might not have even been a true thing to say. But I was pretty fed up with it all. She was using me, using my protectiveness, to manipulate me. I’d proved already that I’d bend the law for her, and she meant for me to do it again.

  “It’s not about the tabloids. It’s about protecting my family.”

  “Right. Because thirty years of hiding the truth has worked so well.”

  “Thirty—” She fell into a stubborn silence.

  “Yeah. You don’t think your father might have liked to know he had a granddaughter? Might have liked to know that his daughter—his teenage daughter—had a baby. Might have liked to help out.” Thinking of my own daughter, not that much younger, I added, “And he might have liked to have a talk with the guy who got her into that situation. But your mother kept the secret, and so did Cathy. And what did you get from all that secrecy? Cathy ended up angry and desperate, didn’t she? And she had another child she never intended to raise.”

  Laura was silent, and I had to add, “And maybe it got her killed.”

  “By whom?” Laura shot back. “Did it ever occur to you that Tom would have the best motive to kill her right then, just after she’d told him about the child?”

  That stopped me. It was hard to think of Tom O’Connor as a murderer—if he’d been that, he would have killed the kidnapping little jerk off. “Yeah, well, if he did it, then he shouldn’t get away with it.”

  “And if he didn’t—and he didn’t. The idea is absurd. If he didn’t, and you drag him and Ellen and their daughter through an investigation and a trial, what good will that do?”

  “If he didn’t do it, then he doesn’t need to worry.”

  Laura’s eyes narrowed. “And in the meantime, what are you going to be doing? My mother is sick. Her condition is precarious. Stirring up the past for no good reason—that won’t help her.”

  “If it was murder, then there’s a killer out there walking around.”

  “And you know that because there’s a shoeprint.”

  I didn’t bother to tell her about cop’s instincts. She’d only point out that none of the cops involved seventeen years ago had the same instincts. I just said, “I’m going to look into it.”

  “No.”

  “It’s not your call.”

  She stood at the door, her face angry and anguished. “I don’t want you to do this. It’s just going to hurt us more.”

  I regarded her, and I actually considered what she was saying. The cop in me was insisting that justice had to be done. But the lover in me just wanted to soothe her.

  The cop won. Or at least persuaded the lover that it did no good for Laura to keep on denying the truth. They’d done that long enough. “I’m just going to make some inquiries.”

  “You mean, talk to my mother.” She opened the door and stood there, half in, half out. “You don’t care that she’s sick, that she’s not in her right mind. And you don’t care about me or my sisters. You just care about your case.”

  “I’m doing it for you.”

  “I don’t believe you.” She took a deep breath. “I mean it, Jackson. You keep on with this, hurt my family, and we’re through.”

  It pierced me, that flat remark of hers. And I shot back. “I don’t take well to ultimatums.”

  “It’s not an ultimatum. It’s just a warning.” She pulled the door shut behind her.

  I wanted to call her back, remind her that it was her family that kept us apart in the first place. That she and I were one of those family secrets her mother kept hidden away. That truth was good no matter how it hurt.

  But I just let her go. I’d win her back not with pleading, but with results. If I solved this mystery, she’d come back to me. I knew it.

  Or hoped it, anyway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  After Laura left, I spent an hour online, using Nexis to track down Tom O’Connor. He was filing stories from Europe during the week of Cathy’s death. I had to admit to a certain relief. My instincts told me the man wasn’t a killer. And clearing him meant clearing away one of Laura’s objections to my investigation.

  Then I packed up the forgotten laptop and headed over to the hospital to visit Margaret Wakefield.

  Her room was in the new wing, through a shiny, fluorescent-lighted corridor and past a silver and pink nurses’ station. The orderly was just leaving with the dinner tray as I entered her room. She sat there, propped against the pillows, reading away at some thick hardback book. Not for her the easy diversion of a TV show, I guessed. There was an IV in her left arm, but the telemetry machine stood in the corner, turned off.

  “Mrs. Wakefield,” I said, and she looked up.

  She was pale, and her hand trembled as she set the book down on the coverlet. But her voice was strong enough. “Chief McCain. How . . . kind of you to visit me.”

  It was barbed just enough to remind me that she was no one’s fool. “I brought your laptop. And I have a few questions.”

  “I’m very tired,” she said, her gaze sliding away.

  “I won’t take very long.” I set the computer on the side table and took a seat in the chair near the window. I didn’t take out my notepad. This was a conversation, not an interrogation. At least that’s what I wanted Laura to think if she happened to come in. “Tell me what you’re looking for. What the DNA was about. Why you’re worried about Internet predators.”

  She looked over my shoulder, out the window, at the fading evening light. “I have a granddaughter. Your mention of predators worried me. That’s all.”

  “And the DNA?”

  She sighed. “A silly notion.”

  “You’re not a silly woman.”

  She smiled. In another woman, it might have been coquettish. On her, it looked grim. “I can be. I have been.”

  “I have something to show you.” I took my time plugging in the laptop and loading up the CD of photos. Then I set it on the bed beside her and waited till the first photo appeared on the screen. “That’s an accident scene from 17 years ago. Do you recognize it?”

  “The beach. Under the Kaskco bridge,” she whispered. She couldn’t take her eyes off the picture, and I was glad I’d cropped out the body.

  I hit the mouse key and zoomed in. “There—see that? A shoeprint. And it doesn’t belong to any cop. Someone else was down there on the beach, before the police arrived.”

  She just kept looking at the screen. Finally I said, “No one noticed it at the time. But I’ve gone through the file, and I’ve been out to the bridge.” When she didn’t respond, I added, “Here’s what I learned from the report. At about s
even that evening, someone stopped at the Shell station on Croak Mountain Road and called the police from the pay phone there. It was a man. He said that a Ford pickup was abandoned along the bridge and someone should come tow it away before dark. The chief sent a wrecker there, and the driver saw the rope dangling from the guardrail. And then the body. One of the officers recognized your daughter, and—”

  “And I was called to identify the body.” She said this with a strange sort of determination. “My nephew said he would do it. But it was my duty.”

  “The report says that she buckled the harness wrong. Did you believe that?”

  She sighed and finally looked straight at me. “No. Cathy didn’t make stupid mistakes like that.”

  “So you thought—”

  “I thought she’d done that to disguise her suicide.” Well, Mrs. Wakefield wasn’t one to mince words. She’d kept quiet about this for almost two decades, but when she admitted it finally, she said it straight out.

  “Why did you think that she’d commit suicide?”

  This time she wasn’t so quick to respond. Finally she replied, “She had been . . . behaving erratically, those months before.”

  “Did you know she’d had another child?”

  “No.” This she said firmly. “I didn’t. She told me the first time. But the second time, she hid it. She stayed away from home for months, and arranged the adoption herself.”

  I didn’t ask what Mrs. Wakefield would have done, if she’d been in charge. Instead I said, “Then a few months later, she went to Europe to visit Ellen and Ellen’s new baby.”

  She didn’t reply, so I continued, “And then she came home. And a few weeks later, she was dead. What happened to make you conclude she’d killed herself?”

  She didn’t flinch from the blunt language. But she wasn’t ready to be candid yet either. “The circumstances of the accident. And the timing. She wouldn’t ordinarily have been climbing that late in the day, when the light is fading.”