“That’s right,” she agreed, wondering how in heaven’s name he could remember the morning forecast but couldn’t remember to wear clothes outside.
He shuffled beside her, their progress impeded by his hunched posture, sometimes prominent, sometimes not, for which doctors could give no real explanation. It was all part of the disease, she had been told.
“Up to twelve inches of snow expected in Butte.”
“It’s cold in Butte, Dad. Glad we don’t live there, right?”
He halted and stared at her with gray eyes that had, years ago, been blue. Confusion lined his once handsome face. “We live in Butte?”
She smiled, a lump rising in her throat. This was so hard, still so hard. Ed McDaniel had once been a brilliant man, a renaissance man, able to carry on a lively discussion on nineteenth-century French and American poets. He had known about the flora and fauna of the Amazon River, the history of the Italian government, the genetic makeup of a common housefly. And now…“No, Daddy. We don’t live in Montana. We live in Delaware, remember? You used to live in College Park in Maryland, but now we live in Delaware. I work here. I work at the hospital.”
“Frazier?” Ed glanced around in sudden concern. “Where’s that dog gotten to?”
The dog barked in response to his master’s voice as he ran up and down the porch steps, waiting for them.
“He’s here. He’s fine. Come on. Up the steps.” She waited as her father took each red brick step with caution and shuffled across the porch. She reached the front door of the quaint Cape Cod to find it locked.
“Great,” she muttered. Her teeth were chattering again.
He must have gone out the back door. “Dad, you stay here.” She tugged on his hand. “You stand right here on the porch and wait while I go around and let you in.” She hurried down the steps, pointing toward her father. “Frazier, keep him there. Stay, boy.”
The dog studied Casey with big dark eyes for a moment and then plopped down on the top step, successfully blocking the none-too-spry man’s way.
Casey hurried into the garage, through the side door into the laundry room, down the hall past the kitchen, into the living room to the front door. When she turned the dead bolt and opened the door, thankfully, Ed was standing right where she’d left him. The tie on the robe had loosened and, once again, knobby knees were poking out from the pink, fluffy robe.
Casey grabbed him and pulled him through the doorway. “Your hands are like ice.” She held open the door for the dog. “Come on, boy.”
“Don’t forget the mums,” her father told her.
“The hose. Right. I’ll get it; you’re getting into a hot shower.” She led him halfway across the living room and then thought of Charles Gaitlin again.
Charles had seen her car. He knew what she drove. Her car was still in the driveway and needed to be put in the garage.
Was she being paranoid?
No, just safe. She practiced the safety steps she taught other women. Lock your doors after dark. If you have an attached garage, use it.
She looked into her father’s eyes, getting his attention. “You go on into your bathroom and get into the shower, okay? Can you do that for me?”
“I can certainly take a shower on my own, Daughter,” he snapped, drawing himself up to his full height, tightening the tie on the pink bathrobe.
It was good to see her father still had a little fire in him. “Fine. I’ll have hot tea ready in the kitchen in a couple of minutes.” She was already on her way toward the garage. She probably was being paranoid, but she would feel better when her car was in the garage and the doors were locked.
Sunday afternoon, Casey and her father had dinner at her sister’s house. When their father moved in with Casey eight weeks ago, Jayne had promised to have a weekly family dinner, but Jayne made a lot of promises. She was one of those women trying to work full-time, be a mother and a wife, and serve on various community boards. She often fell short of her commitments, especially when it came to Casey and their father, but so far, she’d kept her word about having them over. Usually, though she lived only twenty minutes away, it was the only time each week that Jayne saw Ed.
As Casey and Jayne began to clear the table after dinner, Jayne’s husband excused himself on the premise of getting the kids out of their hair. He took his and Jayne’s two children and Ed into the family room.
Casey could hear a football commentator talking on the TV about the Eagles’s winning record. She was surprised Ed hadn’t protested. He hated the Eagles, loved the Redskins. Maybe today he didn’t know that. Ed didn’t like Joaquin, either, and that he seemed to remember. Every Sunday, there was always the question as to whether or not Ed would be civil to Joaquin. Luckily, Joaquin was easygoing and let Ed’s sometimes sharp comments roll right off his back.
“I’m really sorry about your case.” Jayne stacked plates smeared with marinara sauce on the end of the table. “I know it was important to you.”
Casey held glasses and cups in each hand. Reflecting her personal life, Jayne’s dining room was a mess. The dishes were mismatched, the tablecloth was stained, and stacked around the perimeter of the walls were piles of papers, magazines, boxes of toys, and God knew what else.
“It’s just so absurd,” Casey said. “How can he be set free when everyone knows he did it?”
Jayne followed her through the swinging door, into the kitchen. “Lucky for us, we can’t be convicted for looking guilty.”
Casey frowned, setting the glasses on the crowded counter so she could open the dishwasher. There was that tone of her sister’s that Casey hated. That high-and-mighty, righteous tone.
Jayne, a psychologist, always seemed to believe that the government, the rich, the white, the Republicans, you name the enemy of the week, was taking advantage of the poor, the uneducated, the minority. She belonged and contributed financially to several citizens’ groups with names like Rights for the People and American Coalition of Citizens for the Constitution. Casey, however, didn’t see life that simply; her job had a way of stripping away all those labels. She knew that death and injury, blame and innocence crossed all social and economic lines in the ER. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe injustices were committed, only that she didn’t think being impoverished or uneducated automatically made you innocent.
But that was not a fight Casey wanted to pick this evening. “I was there the night Linda came into the emergency room. She was terrified of the boyfriend. There was no way she was faking that.”
“Okay, so maybe he is guilty of assault. Uneducated men working jobs that can’t support their families sometimes strike out at those they love. Sometimes physically. Maybe he did hit her, even though you said yourself that she told the police at the time that he didn’t.” Her sister stacked the plates in the sink and began to rinse them off under the faucet. “That doesn’t make him a killer.”
Casey worked her jaw as she lined the glasses up in a row in the top rack of the dishwasher. “You can’t imagine how scared she was the night she called me. The night she died.”
“You said yourself that no one saw her boyfriend break in the back door. You know what kind of neighborhood that is. They have break-ins all the time.”
Finding a meatball in the bottom of a plastic kid’s cup, Casey dumped it into the garbage disposal and grabbed the sprayer. The faucet immediately cut off.
“Hey, hey.”
“Sorry,” Casey mumbled, releasing the handle on the sprayer and restoring her sister’s stream of water. “But he had a knife just like the one used in the murder.”
“From Wal-Mart, probably. There have to be thousands of them manufactured each year. Who knows, Joaquin may have one. That’s not enough evidence to convict him. Thank God.”
Casey groaned in frustration, wishing she could somehow make her sister understand. “I don’t know how to explain how I know, but I’m telling you, this man is dangerous. He killed Linda and this was not a onetime thing. He has a history of beatin
g his girlfriends, even before Linda came along. I’m telling you, he killed her and I’m afraid he could kill again.”
Jayne glanced at her older sister. “A little overly dramatic, don’t you think?”
“He stabbed her eleven times. I would say that’s pretty dramatic.”
“Someone stabbed her eleven times. You said yourself that the initial fingerprinting on the knife came back inconclusive. The district attorney’s office did the right thing in nol prossing. They did the only fair thing. That poor guy had already been in jail for months for something he really might not have done.”
Casey held Annabelle’s blue cup in her hand staring at it. She looked up at her sister. “Jayne, he threatened me.”
Jayne was leaning down to load the plates in the dishwasher, but she straightened up to look at Casey. “The boyfriend?”
“His name is Charles Gaitlin. He was released from custody as soon as the preliminary hearing was adjourned. He came up to me in the parking lot as I was getting in my car.”
“What did he say?” Jayne placed the two plates in the dishwasher and reached for a dish towel.
“I don’t know exactly. It all happened so quickly.” Casey dropped the kiddy cup into the dishwasher. “He was angry that I had told the police what Linda said about him.”
“Okay.”
Jayne didn’t sound all that concerned to Casey. In fact, she sounded a little as if she didn’t believe her. Déjà vu.
“He warned me that I’d better have eyes in the back of my head.”
Scowling, Jayne tossed the towel on the counter and headed for the dining room again. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know.” Casey followed her. She threw up her hands and let them fall. “You tell me. That he’s going to…be watching me? That he’s going to do something to me? Get revenge for my talking to the police? When the case comes to trial, I could be called as a witness. The assistant deputy attorney, Adam, said he would need my testimony.”
“It’s Adam now, is it?” Jayne questioned, eyebrows arched. “You’re on a first-name basis after one meeting?”
“Jayne, you’re missing the point. I’m talking about Gaitlin.” Casey hesitated. “Should I be concerned?”
Her sister thought for a moment as she walked around to the other side of the dining room table. “The boyfriend didn’t say he was going to hurt you, right?”
“No, not exactly.” Casey balled up dirty napkins. “But you had to be there. You had to see his body language. He acted as if he wanted to hit me. I’ve seen this kind of behavior dozens of times in the hospital. I know how abusive men posture.”
Jayne covered Casey’s hand on the table. Casey scrunched the dirty napkins.
“He probably was angry with you. When people speak out of anger, sometimes they say things they shouldn’t. They don’t mean what they say. He’s been in jail all this time because he couldn’t make bail. What if he didn’t kill her? I don’t know about you, but I’d be pretty angry if I’d been in jail for months for something I didn’t do.”
Casey met Jayne’s gaze. Jayne had their father’s eyes. Pale blue with thick, dark lashes. She didn’t even have to wear mascara, her eyes were so pretty.
“I—” Casey sighed and slipped her hand out from under Jayne’s, beginning to feel a little silly. Maybe Jayne was right, maybe she was making something out of nothing.
But Casey had seen the look in Charles’s eyes. She had heard Linda’s screams.
“You always side against me,” Casey said softly. She gathered the napkins and carried them into the kitchen. The door behind her swung shut.
From the family room, the sounds of a cheering crowd filtered into the kitchen.
“Touchdown!” Joaquin shouted, clapping.
“Touchdown,” little Chad echoed in his baby-boy voice.
Casey was dropping the napkins into the trash can under the sink when Jayne entered the kitchen.
“I’m not taking anyone’s side, Casey.”
“You’re just saying I’m paranoid.”
“I’m just saying you have nothing to worry about.”
Chapter 4
“Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.” Adam walked to the side of the bed, rested both hands on the railing, and leaned over to brush his lips against Adam Thomas Preston Sr.’s cheek. The old man’s skin was as dry and fragile as one of the autumn leaves that had crackled under Adam’s foot as he had entered the nursing home.
“Been at the office. I know. Sunday.” Adam pulled the single chair in the stark room up closer to the bed and picked up the briefcase he’d tossed on the floor on the way in. He sat down and removed a brown paper bag from inside. Tuna on whole wheat from the deli, and a diet green tea. He wasn’t that hungry, but he knew he needed to eat. He often forgot to eat when time got away from him at the office.
“I really screwed up a case this week.” Adam chatted as if his grandfather could understand him. The doctors said he was in a deep coma and probably couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t comprehend, but who knew for sure?
Adam unwrapped the sandwich. “Well, maybe I didn’t really screw it up, but I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been. I ended up having to nol pros.” He took a bite of the sandwich, half expecting the old man to rise up and chastise him.
“Not the kind of results we’re looking for, young man. Not the kind of results that make a state attorney general,” he would have said.
His grandfather gave no response, though. The only sound in the room was the respirator, which made a whooshing sound as it pushed air into the old man’s lungs.
“I went into a prelim hoping for a continuance while I waited on DNA evidence.” The sandwich tasted like sawdust. He was still thoroughly disgusted with himself, even after two days. He knew this kind of thing happened when you were a lawyer; all his colleagues had said so. The good guys didn’t always win in the first round; it happened to everyone. But it didn’t often happen to Adam.
“Who am I kidding? I went into that prelim needing a continuance. It was Judge Trudeau. You know what a ball-buster she can be.” He set the sandwich on the bag in his lap and unscrewed the lid on the bottle of iced tea. “You’d have been better prepared. You’d have gone in there with a plan B.” He chewed the dry crust. Swallowed. “I didn’t have a plan B.”
A nurse stuck her head in the door. She was pretty. Late twenties. He knew from previous observation that she had a nice backside. But more importantly, she was kind to his grandfather. “Mr. Preston, we were beginning to wonder if you were going to make it tonight.”
“I know. I’m late. I got tied up at the office.” He set his dinner on the nightstand and got to his feet. Men no longer stood when women entered or exited a room, but it was one of those things his mother had taught him that he still did out of habit. “How’s he been today?” He lifted his chin in the direction of his grandfather, lying flat on his back in the hospital bed. The old man’s face was as pale as the crisp white sheets.
“Good.” She entered the room and walked to the opposite side of the bed. “Blood pressure’s been steady all day. He had a bit of a temp this morning, but he was ninety-eight-point-seven last vitals check.” She smoothed the already smooth sheets, all the while keeping her eyes on Adam. She was flirting with him. She always did. A lot of women flirted with him.
“I’m so glad you’re on the evening shift this week, Tiffany. You’re a lot more thorough than Diane.”
“Diane’s okay.” She lifted a slender shoulder. Even in her white pants and pale pink scrub top, he could tell she had a knockout figure. “She does her job.”
“Yeah, but you’re better.” He flashed the Preston smile. In old photographs, from the days when his grandfather had been in the state senate, the old man had had the same smile.
Her hands lingered over her patient’s chest, her flirty gaze locked with Adam’s.
“Tiff, can you give me a hand with Mrs. Sorensen?” A nurse halted in the doorway. It was Mar
yanne, queen of the nightshift. “Mr. Preston.” She smiled. “I told Tiff not to worry. That you’d be here.”
Adam looked to Tiffany.
She backed away from the bed. “I wasn’t really worried. I just…I was afraid maybe there was something wrong. A flat tire or something.”
“Mrs. Sorensen is waiting,” Maryanne reminded.
“Call if you need anything.” Tiffany gave him a big smile and hurried out the door after her boss.
Adam sat down again. He took another bite of his sandwich. The respirator continued to whoosh.
“I wish you were awake; I really do.” Adam swallowed the dry bite of sandwich and dug for a napkin in the bag. “I still think I can get a conviction, but I could sure use your help in pointing me in the right direction.” He shook his head. “Because the bastard did it. I know he did.”
His grandfather didn’t respond, of course.
Adam finished his sandwich, balled up the wrapper, and stuffed it in the bag. He thought about Casey. He liked her. She was pretty. Smart. Good at what she did, apparently.
He’d let her down, too.
Someone touched Casey’s arm and she woke immediately, her eyes flying open, her heart pounding. Would Linda ever let her sleep again? “Dad?”
Her father stood over her bed, his face only inches from hers. She could hear the dog snuffing. Pacing in the dark room.
“Dad, what’s wrong?” She rose on her elbows and flipped on the light. Her father never got out of bed. Once she tucked him in and turned on The Weather Channel on his TV, she never heard a peep from him until the next morning.
He straightened slowly. “Someone’s out there,” he whispered.
“Someone’s where?” She checked the bedside clock. It was twelve-sixteen. She’d been in bed only two hours. “Dad, what are you talking about?” She sat up and gave his flannel pajama sleeve a tug. “What are you and Frazier doing out of bed in the middle of the night?”
“Tornados reported near Galveston today,” Ed said. “There should be more on that development in the next hour.”
Don't Turn Around Page 4
