“Anne said that you’re Laura’s best friend,” I said.
“I was,” he said.
“Was?” I asked.
“‘Til you came along again,” he said.
“Then what the fuck you stalkin’ her for?” Merrill asked.
“Stalking?” he said, then looked from Merrill back to me. “You really should talk to Laura,” he said.
“She’s missing,” I said.
“Missing?”
“Fritz,” I said. “This gonna take twice as long if you repeat everything I say.”
“Are you sure?’ he asked. “Have you checked—”
“We’ve checked,” I said.
“Tell us what you were doing in her backyard last night,” I said. “Or tell the police.”
He hesitated a moment, then sighed heavily. “This is embarrassing,” he said.
“Fritz,” Merrill said. “You’re among friends.”
Fritz nodded as if he really were. “I was doing Laura a favor,” he said.
“Bet you do lots of women favors, don’t you?” I said.
“It’s not like that,” he said. “She asked me to come over and hang out in the back, then take off running when you approached me. She knew y’all couldn’t catch me. She wanted to get your attention again. She thought you were getting distracted—maybe even thought she had never been followed in the first place. She knew if she told you someone was actually at her apartment, you’d come running and,” he jerked his head toward Merrill, “bring the cavalry.”
He paused and I considered what he had said. In the silence, the constant sound of dripping water seemed magnified, each drop echoing through the room, bouncing from tile surface to tile surface.
“I swear it’s the truth,” he said. “You can ask her when you talk to her. She told me she was going to tell you eventually.”
“Let’s say for the moment that what you’re telling us is true,” I said. “Why would you do that?”
He hesitated, then said, “Honestly, because I know what it’s like to feel like you’re losing the person that you love. Truth is, I’d do anything for her. Plus, this gave me the chance to see her, to spend a little time with her. I haven’t gotten to much lately.”
“You say you know what it’s like to feel like you’re losing the person you love, but we just started seeing each other again.”
“Dude, she’s been carrying a torch for you since the first time you dated.”
“Was there really ever anyone harassing her?” I asked.
He nodded. “That prick, Taylor Price,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t think there was much to it. I mean, I think she saw it as an opportunity to ask for your help, but the guy’s an asshole, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he fucked with her some once he was finished fuckin’ her.”
I nodded.
“From what I hear, he’s had a hard on to hurt somebody ever since you two made him piss his pants. Fact, he’s probably more danger to her now than he was before. It’s part of why I was willing to play decoy for her. Somebody needs to be watching over her.”
“Bastard may want to take out his frustration on someone, but I doubt it’ll be Laura,” Merrill said.
The way we were talking, I could almost imagine that she was alive.
“You gonna keep an eye out for her this time?” Fritz asked. “Not get distracted or whatever?”
“We gonna take care of everything,” Merrill said. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that.”
He held up his hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, I’m not the problem here,” he said. “And the first thing you need to do is find her. Where do you think she is?”
“We were hoping you could tell us that,” I said.
“Wish I could,” he said.
“Where’d you go after you smoked our asses in the eight-hundred meters?” Merrill asked.
“Actually did some more running,” he said. “My roommates and I are training for a marathon. We met here, ran for several hours, went to Waffle House for a very late snack, then went home and crashed. If Laura really is missing, I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“It’s about to go public,” Dad said.
Merrill and I were in his office, each of us holding stacks of glossy 8 x 10 prints.
The crime scene and autopsy photographs were graphic, every detail captured from every possible angle. Wide shots establishing context, showing everything in relation to everything else, while close-ups provided the specific horrors.
Laura’s once beautiful body, now beaten bloody and disfigured, sat rigid behind the steering wheel of her car. Streaked with dark red and black blood, the strands of her light brown hair were dirty and matted.
As I looked, I found it hard to breathe. Had I done this? Was I capable of such savagery?
I could only look at the pain-filled pictures a moment at a time. Her sweet deer-like face was now purple and puffy, her right eye black and swollen shut.
“No way you did that,” Merrill said. “I’d bet my life on it.”
Dad nodded. “But we’ve got to find out who did,” he said. “As soon as it comes out that you were with her last night, FDLE will take over the investigation.”
I nodded.
Dad’s office looked like it had for as long as I could remember, perhaps a little more cluttered, a little more dusty, but not much else had changed in the thirty years he had been on the job. Not one for change, he even had the same desk and filing cabinets.
“Any progress?” he asked.
“Guy I thought most likely is a good friend of hers and was just helping her out.”
“Whatta you mean?”
I told him.
“What about the canvas?” Merrill asked.
“Nothing so far,” he said.
“Everything we’re learning makes it look more and more like it was me,” I said.
Merrill shook his head. “All the evidence in the world could point to that, and I still wouldn’t believe it.”
My eyes stung and I blinked several times. His belief and support were keeping me going. I nodded my thanks to him, not trusting myself to speak.
We were all quiet a few moments.
“You got the prelim?” I asked Dad.
He nodded. “But you don’t want to hear it.”
Dad looked older already, as if realizing he had raised a murderer had aged him even more.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t,” I said.
“She was raped and beaten,” he said. “It looks like she was choked and took a hard blow to the head. They’re not saying for certain yet which one killed her.”
I shook my head, picturing what she went through, imagining myself as the one who put her through it.
“Raped as opposed to had intercourse recently?” I asked.
He nodded.
“So there was evidence of violence?”
Dad nodded again, and I could tell he was holding back, careful not to reveal everything the prelim contained, and since what he had told me already was so horrific I was inclined not to press him.
“He raped her,” Merrill said, “DNA’ll catch his ass and clear yours.”
“Only two different types of blood on the body,” Dad said. “Hers and another.”
I reached up and touched the scratches on my neck. They didn’t seem very deep, but I had certainly bled, and if Laura had scratched me, at the very least my blood was beneath her nails.
“They say how much of the foreign blood they found?” I asked.
He shook his head, but he seemed to know more than he was saying.
“Whether I actually killed her or not,” I said, “I should’ve never been in the condition I was, which has put you two in the position you’re in now.”
They both began to wave off my apology, but my phone rang before they could say anything.
“Hello.”
“John?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s Fritz,” he said, sniffl
ing. “I just heard about Laura. Is it true?”
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I’m very sorry.”
He broke down, but quickly regained his composure.
“Do they know who did it?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said.
“Swear to me you didn’t have anything to do with it,” he said.
“What?”
“Did you kill her?”
“No,” I said. It came out before I realized what I was saying, and I wondered how convincing it was.
“No, I know you didn’t,” he said. “I know enough about you from what Laura told me. Sorry I even mentioned it.”
“It’s okay.”
We were quiet a moment.
“I’d bet my life on it being one of two people,” he said. “I knew it the minute I heard something had happened.”
“Who?”
“That Taylor bastard or her dad.”
“Her dad?”
“Ever wonder why she was a virgin until her early thirties, then became like this major nympho?”
“He molested her?” I asked, not surprised, but disappointed I hadn’t been more aware of all the signs.
Deep down I knew she was acting like an addict more than someone who just really loved sex, but I didn’t want to believe it. I ignored the warnings, suppressed the signs, and exploited her weakness.
“Most of her childhood,” he said. “Now he’s like this raving, jealous lunatic, like he’s a spurned lover or something.”
“She was an addict,” I said, “but instead of helping her, I exploited her.”
“From where I sit in the cheap seats,” Merrill said, “you had sex with a consenting adult who pursued you.”
I didn’t say anything.
We were in Merrill’s truck heading back toward Tallahassee to talk to Taylor Price while Dad and his department searched for Laura’s father.
“She tell you she’s a sex addict?” he asked.
I shook my head. “But I knew something wasn’t right.”
“She ask for your help?”
“Still,” I said, “exploiting someone with a weakness makes me a predator.”
“You sure you weren’t the prey?”
I turned in the seat and looked at him.
“She try to get you to stop drinking?” he asked. “Or encourage you to?”
I thought about it. She certainly hadn’t discouraged me. “She’s not responsible for my actions,” I said.
“But you responsible for hers?”
“Guess who didn’t show up for work this morning?” Dad asked.
“Besides me?” I said.
Merrill and I were outside a warehouse in Railroad Square Art Park not far from FAMU when Dad called. Taylor Price was inside the warehouse, rock climbing.
“Teddy Matthers,” he said. “Laura’s father.”
“You think it’s because he was up late killing his daughter and framing me?”
“It crossed my mind,” he said.
“Thanks again for all your help with this,” I said. “I’m so sorry I—”
“Don’t thank me or apologize again,” he said.
“Sorry,” I said. “And thank you.”
He laughed. “How are things on your end?”
“Taylor went out and bought himself some security,” I said.
When Taylor Price walked out of the rock climbing gym in his black too-tight silk short shorts and tank top, he did so with the escort of a bodyguard and a bulldog.
The large white bodyguard was wearing black jeans and tennis shoes and a leather jacket over a T-shirt. Given the warm weather, the jacket was no doubt intended to hide his shoulder holster and the semi-automatic it held, but it could be seen when he moved. The huge man, whose neck was the size of a tree trunk, looked like a former NFL linebacker. Obviously a professional, the man moved like money, which Price had to be paying a lot of for the pleasure of his company.
As if the giant wasn’t enough, at the end of Taylor’s leash was an American pit bull terrier of probably twenty-two inches and eighty pounds, trained to be mean, pulling against the taut leather leash, looking for a fight.
As the three creatures neared their black SUV, Merrill and I stepped out and greeted them.
Fear danced across Taylor’s face when he saw us. The pit bull began a low, gravely growl. The bodyguard smiled.
“How can the Fundamentalists look at you two and say that a sacred marriage is only between a man and a woman?” Merrill said.
“The three of you do make a great-looking family,” I said.
“How’d you adopt a child that looks so much like your husband?” Merrill asked Taylor, then to the bodyguard, “Or are you the wife?”
“You’ll find out when he makes you his bitch,” Taylor said. His strained, quivering voice undercutting his threat.
Professional, detached, unflappable, the bodyguard’s expression remained placid. Though he didn’t show it, I was certain he was sizing us up, evaluating the situation, figuring out his best moves should the balloon go up.
“Zippin’ up the bottom of that cool Fonzy jacket probably seemin’ like a bad idea ’bout now, don’t it?” Merrill said.
Amazingly enough, Merrill didn’t seem small next to the man the way the rest of the world did.
“He doesn’t need his gun,” Taylor said. “Won’t be much left for him when Killer gets finished with you.”
“You named your kid Killer?” Merrill asked. “Isn’t having you for a dad stigma enough?”
“Where were you last night?” I asked.
“Nowhere near where you killed Laura,” he said. “Wherever that was.”
“We can do this if you want,” the bodyguard said, “but he’s telling the truth. I wouldn’t lie for anyone—no matter how much they pay me—and I can give you references, but you don’t have to take my word for it. He was in Jacksonville. We drove in very early this morning. There are dozens of witnesses.”
I considered him.
“I protect clients from harm,” he said. “Not while they do harm.” He held up his hands. “I’m going into my right front pocket for one of my cards.” He did, then handed it to me. “I can also give you hotel, restaurant, and gas receipts. You can even ask the keynote speaker—the governor—who had a couple of drinks with Mr. Price following the conference.”
“The more we learn, the more guilty I look,” I said.
With just a few calls, Dad had confirmed that Taylor Price had been at a conference in Jacksonville and had not returned before Laura had been killed.
“Still the father,” Merrill said.
I shook my head. “I’ve got a feeling he’ll be my third strike.”
“Then there’s the random serial killer stumbling on the scene,” he said. “Odds still better than it being you.”
My phone rang and I answered it.
“John,” Dad said, “remember the scenario we talked about earlier.”
“FDLE finding out about me and taking over the investigation?”
“It’s just happened,” he said. “Special Agent Scott wants you here as fast as you can or he says he’s coming after you.”
“I’m on my way now,” I said.
When I stepped out of Merrill’s truck in front of the Potter County Court House, two FDLE agents were waiting for me. I could tell who they were because of their caps and windbreakers, both of which had FDLE printed across them in large block letters.
I walked toward them.
As I did, a man carrying a small revolver jumped out of a car and rushed me. With only a quick glance, I knew it was Teddy Matthers, Laura’s father.
“You murdering cocksucker,” he shouted. “You think you gonna kill my little girl and keep breathing? You sick motherfucker.”
He began firing the gun, rounds ricocheting all around me.
Unable to move, I just stood there. He obviously hadn’t killed his daughter, which meant I had.
The two agents turned and pulled thei
r weapons.
“No,” I yelled, and stepped in front of them.
Flesh and Blood Page 21
