Price of Innocence

by Patricia McLinn

  She’d told people about her missing records. Somebody could have remembered.

  Was it only people at work she’d told? Other friends? Neighbors? She’d been dating Carl Arbendroth at the time of the fire. It wasn’t unreasonable to think she told him, too.

  How that fit in with an unknown woman being killed in this house? That required a lot more pieces to figure out.

  “We’ll have to start over with identification. It won’t be any easier.”

  He wished he hadn’t added that, because he could see a layer of numbness peeling away from her. He saw her recognition that the first try at identification had been when they’d thought the victim was Jamison Chancellor — not as an abstract concept, but as reality.

  He saw the impact, the implosion of realization shudder through her. No screaming, no shouting, she took the force of this first layer inside.

  “Oh, my God. Oh, my God. They think I’m dead. They all think I’m dead. I have to call—”

  “No.” His hold on her hand stopped hers from moving, but he would have used more force if he had to. “You’re not calling anyone. Not until we know who tried to kill you.”

  She got it almost immediately, and it shook her in a new way.

  “You suspect one of my friends?” Her hands loosened. He slipped the phone away. “No.” She shook her head. “You’ve got that wrong. You can’t suspect my friends. You don’t know them. Not one of them is capable—”

  “I suspect all of your friends. Anybody’s capable.”

  “But—”

  “Look, the one advantage we have going now is you. The biggest clue to most murders is the victim. We spend hours, days, weeks digging into the victim’s life. But this time we don’t just have bank accounts and phone records and friends and families — we’ve got the real thing.”

  “But I have no idea who could have done this. I don’t even know who was killed.”

  “Maybe not, but you’re our best clue. There’s a chance you’ll tell us who did it without knowing it. And we’ll recognize it, because that’s what we do. But we need time. Time away from all the shit that’s going to hit the fan when it comes out you’re alive. You have no idea what it will be like.”

  “I can’t stay hidden forever, Detective Belichek. I won’t.”

  He ignored that. “We’ll go someplace where we won’t stumble across anybody you know for a few days.”

  He knew he was taking advantage of her shock. He knew it and he didn’t care. He’d do more than that to keep her alive.

  “A few days?”

  He had to get her out of here. They could deal with the rest of it later. “I’ve got a lot of questions.”

  She looked at him, at his eyes, at his hands, at his mouth, then back to his eyes. “I have to let my parents know I’m alive.”

  “No,” he said automatically. “No one can—”

  “I won’t give you seconds, much less days unless—”

  “It’s for your safety—”

  “—I see my parents and — Oh. They’re asleep. I don’t want to disturb them.”

  “That’s right. Not your parents. But there is one person. Maggie. Your cousin.”

  “Maggie.” Her eyes widened, seeing him, perhaps for the first time. “You— You said your name before. Your name’s…”

  “Belichek,” he prompted after she faded to silence.

  “Belichek. You’re Bel. You’re Maggie’s Bel, the detective.”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “She’s talked about you — as much as she’ll talk about anything.”

  He knew he had it then, even though knowing his connection to her cousin didn’t make even a small dent in Jamie’s mountain of concerns.

  What he had going for him was she was still in shock.

  He’d use every advantage he had.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  After a quick run upstairs for her to swap out clean clothes in her tote and for him to grab the journal he hadn’t finished, keeping it out of her sight, he hustled her out the back, holding onto her with one hand, and using the other to sling the tote over his shoulder.

  They passed a battered pickup he hadn’t seen before. He mentally noted the Virginia license plate, the description.

  But mostly, he concentrated on getting her out of there before any neighbors saw her. Or, for that matter, a patrol car. Especially one who’d share the news with Roy Isaacson.

  At the same time, his mind was working.

  Only when she was in his car and they were moving did he breathe a bit easier.

  This time of night, the traffic was relatively light. They made good time.

  She stared straight ahead without seeming to focus.

  He didn’t hit her with the questions piling up in his head. He didn’t want her thinking right now. Not until he had her squared away.

  She roused as he brought his car to a stop. “This is Maggie’s place.”

  “Yeah.” He hit the speed dial on his phone. He had a feeling…

  A bad feeling.

  After six, long rings she answered. But no light went on in the building in front of them.

  Could be answering in the dark.

  “What?” Alert, to-the-point. Not unlike J.D. Carson had been. Maggie, too, was accustomed to calls in the night.

  “It’s me. Belichek. I’m at your place, out front.”

  “I’m not there.” Damn. He hated when his bad feelings were right. Which was almost always. “I’m in Bedhurst.”

  With J.D. Carson, in the mountains.

  He started another internal swear word, but didn’t finish it.

  This might be good.

  “I’m coming there.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s going on?” She knew it was something big. She feared it was something bad.

  Leaving her thinking about the possible bads for the hours it would take him to drive up there might seem cruel. But he couldn’t afford the time to hash it out now. The eastern sky would be peeling back layers of darkness before they got there as it was.

  Besides, how could what Maggie imagine now be worse than what she’d already accepted as fact?

  “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  “You know who murdered her.”

  “No.” Hell, now they didn’t even know who’d been murdered. “We’re working on it. You know that. But there’s been a … development that’s changed things. We’re going to have to look at the case from the start again.”

  He heard an uneasy stirring beside him.

  “Bel—” Maggie started.

  “I’ll tell you when I get there.” He hung up.

  He put the car in gear and drove toward I-66, past the turn that would have taken them to the station.

  “You’re… We’re not going to the police station?”

  “No.”

  She was silent for a moment. “Is Maggie with J.D.?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re going there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you both at the same time, when we get there.”

  * * * *

  Celeste Renfro wasn’t sleeping much these past nights.

  She sat in an upholstered chair by a bedroom window that looked out on the star-glinted leaves of an evergreen magnolia. She’d bought this house mostly for that tree’s promise of solace all year round.

  She hardly saw it.

  She’d always thought of herself as one who faced facts and dealt with them. Not one who got bogged down in navel-gazing and second-guessing.

  But now…

  Should she have called the police when Bethany Usher didn’t return to work? Would that have looked better?

  Those two police detectives hadn’t seemed to accept it as a natural consequence of the young woman’s utter unreliability. But then they hadn’t put up with Bethany for several months.

  The tartness of that last thought gave her a spurt of he
r usual energy.

  It faded.

  Especially as she remembered the arrival today of another detective. This one wore his suspicion of everyone and everything like a badge of honor.

  He’d disrupted everybody. Especially with extra volunteers clogging up the offices — odd how so many found time to show up and help with the possibility of sensationalism and gossip as a lure.

  Even before he arrived, that Detective Terrington had the restaurant staff in an uproar of paranoia and drama that wafted upstairs to the Sunshine Foundation with the takeout lunch two volunteers collected for them all. Along with lunch, those two volunteers spread the uneasiness to the other volunteers, Adam, her, and — most of all — Hendrickson.

  Even though the detective wasn’t as sharp as Landis or his nearly silent sidekick Belichek, Hendrickson hadn’t seen that. Of course, he hadn’t. It had taken the rest of the afternoon to soothe Hendrickson’s nerves enough to send him home to a peaceful evening.

  Unlike hers.

  Celeste rubbed at her forehead.

  She missed Jamie.

  * * * *

  The glaze of city lights faded to pin-pricks against the country dark. They drove on in silence.

  Jamison Chancellor curled partially onto her left side in the passenger seat, and watched Detective Ford Belichek of the Fairlington Police Department between slitted eyelids, numbly amazed.

  Unable to absorb what he’d told her, she focused on the one surprising element she could take in.

  She didn’t think she would ever meet this man.

  Detective Belichek. Maggie’s Bel.

  At first, she and Ally joked Maggie made him up to prove that she did have a friend, that she did talk to someone.

  They’d debated whether the details Maggie presented, including his woman-trap partner, meant he could be real or that Maggie knew how to be as incredibly persuasive with this story as they’d seen her be in a courtroom.

  Except then Jamie looked him up and found him mentioned in media accounts of investigations. No photos. Only the name. Ford Belichek.

  But that time she and Ally went to the court when Maggie was trying one of her early big cases. Maggie never even knew they were there, with her tunnel vision zeroed in on the case, ignoring — no, simply not seeing — the gallery.

  This man had seen them, though.

  A glance from him as they entered … she’d never felt more seen.

  He hadn’t turned again to where they sat. Neither had the taller, well-dressed man with him. Had to be the other one. His partner, Landis.

  Jamie had been sure she’d never forget him when he’d turned and looked at her. How had she not recognized him immediately?

  She could arouse no passion for the answer.

  She could arouse no passion for anything.

  It was as if she didn’t exist.

  She glanced down at herself, surprised. She still wore the jeans and yellow shirt she’d had on when she left North Carolina today — no, now it was yesterday.

  It always disconcerted her to move into or out of her self-imposed isolations, a sort of personal culture shock. But she’d been eager yesterday to return to what she called her regular life.

  Now she had no regular life.

  To the world, she had no life at all. She was dead. Mourned.

  Except to this man sitting beside her.

  “You’re the only person on earth who knows I’m alive.”

  She felt awe at the words, yet they came out flat.

  “You know it.” He said it with a fierceness that surprised her, like he was willing her to life.

  She hadn’t been dead, not to herself. Yet it was as if this man had brought her back to life.

  His voice came again.

  “The big question is if the murderer knows it.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  The silence after that was long. He didn’t want to invite a question he didn’t want to answer by looking at her.

  But the silence finally broke him down enough to shoot a glance her way.

  She was asleep.

  He reached one-handed over the seat back and snagged his raincoat.

  She didn’t stir as he awkwardly spread it over her.

  The next time he looked, she’d hooked her hands over the collar and pulled it up to her chin.

  She was out.

  He glanced at her again. Not long, the twisting, dark roads didn’t allow that.

  He knew her.

  The way he came to know all the victims.

  But now everything he’d thought he knew of the victim, of her home, her heart, her soul. All gone.

  Because she was alive.

  And the actual victim?

  She didn’t belong to the house, the setting — the entire life — he’d come to know.

  He drove.

  There was probably another way to get to Carson’s place, but it would take longer than going through town.

  Isolated as Bedhurst was, he still wasn’t taking chances. He tugged the raincoat higher over Jamie. He put on a ball cap and a pair of sunglasses.

  Eyes followed them as they went through. Thankfully, not a lot of eyes since it was still less light than dark.

  Thanks to the ground work he’d done last spring when Maggie was up here, he found the obscure route to Carson’s isolated home readily.

  He parked under a tree that would obscure the car from view, including from above.

  He called. Maggie answered before the first ring ended.

  “We’re here. Open the door.”

  Jamie sat up at his first words.

  “We—?” Maggie asked.

  He hung up. Stepped out into the sharp chill of the mountain night, went around the car, and helped Jamie out with a hand under her arm. She moved stiffly, groggy. Emotional exhaustion and extended shock, he suspected.

  “I can—”

  Maybe she could have, but he wrapped an arm around her and the raincoat, pushed back to close the car door, and hustled her forward, across the opening, up the steps, onto the porch, past the door J.D. Carson held open — he wasn’t the least surprised Carson opened the door, had Maggie well back from it, and the inside dim. Or that the guy surveyed the surroundings with sharp eyes.

  Maggie kept her sharp gaze for him.

  “What the hell is going on, Belichek? Since when did you go cloak and dagger?”

  Respect dulled the edge of Maggie’s irritation but didn’t sheath it completely.

  He didn’t answer. He looked around at Carson.

  “Shut the door.”

  He did.

  Belichek felt Jamie beside him, letting the raincoat slide away.

  She took a step forward, still in his hold, but revealed now.

  Not making a sound, Maggie swayed.

  Belichek reached toward her, but wasn’t releasing Jamie.

  “Get Maggie,” he ordered.

  Carson had done that before the words were out.

  Maggie steadied herself almost immediately.

  “Jamie? Jamie?”

  “It wasn’t me, Maggie. I’m alive. I’m sorry—”

  “Sorry?”

  “I should have made him break this to you before you saw me— The shock—”

  “Screw the shock.”

  Belichek moved back as Jamie Chancellor and her cousin embraced, giving each other balance.

  “Oh, God. You’re alive. You’re really alive,” he heard Maggie murmur.

  “I’m alive.”

  Maggie made a sound, like what Belichek had heard when somebody who’d been choking took their first clear breath.

  He retreated.

  But only a step. Privacy was great, but he wasn’t letting Jamie out of his sight. Not even to leave her with Maggie.

  “It’s all right, Maggie,” Jamie said. “Everything’s all right.”

  Maggie straightened.

  “Everything is not all right.” She faced Belichek. “What the hell is going on?”

  DAY FOUR<
br />
  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  “Let’s sit down,” Carson said.

  He gestured them toward a soaring stone fireplace.

  Belichek seated Jamie in the solitary upholstered chair and moved its matching ottoman to the side, sitting sideways on it. Maggie took the edge of a rocking chair. Carson remained standing, leaning against the fireplace.

  “Where were you? Where the hell were you?” Maggie’s hands fisted.

  “I went to write my book in a cabin—”

  “No. you didn’t. You weren’t there. We looked.”

  “What are you talking about, Maggie? I was— Oh, you mean Hendrickson’s cabin? The one I’d used before?”

  “Of course. that’s what I mean. Where you’d gone to write your other books. Where—”

  “To finish them. Not to write the whole thing on any of them, because—”

  “I don’t give a damn about the books. Or how much you wrote there or didn’t write there. You were not in that cabin. You hadn’t been in that cabin any time lately. You don’t think when Ally came to your folks’ house that first day, with everybody falling apart, and Ally took me aside and said maybe — maybe — there was the smallest chance you were actually at the cabin and it was all some kind of tragic mistake, you don’t think I drove right up there to Pennsylvania? Walked out the door and drove straight there—”

  “She didn’t drive, Belichek.” Carson said. “I see the horror in your eyes. I drove.”

  “Good to hear.”

  Maggie ignored them both. She was homed in on Jamie and only Jamie. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t pay for that exchange later.

  “—and looked. Looked all over. Looked for any sign someone was staying there. Had been there lately. Checked with the neighbors. Law enforcement. Nothing. Nothing. Nobody had been in that cabin for months. You sure as hell hadn’t been there. So don’t tell us—”

  “I didn’t go there this time. Last time — I was offered a different cabin and I went there. The cabin in North Carolina was ideal.”

  “And you didn’t tell anyone? Didn’t contact anyone—?”

  “That’s the whole idea, Maggie. To not be in contact, to not be reachable. To pare away all the distractions and work on the book.”