Price of Innocence

by Patricia McLinn

  “You could do that at home, without—”

  “No, you could do it at home. You’re good at blocking out the rest of the world. Blocking out people. You’re the champion at it. I’m not.”

  Jamison Chancellor had a stronger bite behind her bark than you’d expect. She’d hit a bull’s-eye with Maggie and shut her up. No small feat.

  But now she rubbed her eyes, trying to remove the regret.

  “I’m not as good at concentration as you,” Jamie said to her cousin. That wasn’t what she meant, but it clothed her already-spoken words in softer fabric. “I don’t have the discipline. So, I use crutches. Like going away to a cabin.”

  “Hendrickson York’s,” Maggie said with disdain.

  Jamie went right past that. “Like not letting people know where I am. Like not connecting while I’m there — not having the ability to connect, so I don’t give into any temptation.”

  Belichek asked, “The temptation to let people contact you? Or the temptation to contact them?”

  Her gaze shifted to him. “Both.”

  A lie. The temptation was to let people contact her. She wasn’t tempted to do the contacting herself.

  But did she know it was a lie?

  Belichek repeated to the others what she’d said about leaving her regular phone at home.

  “You’re wandering around in the mountains without a cell phone?”

  “There’s not good reception there, anyway, but no. I take my pay-by-the-minute cabin phone.”

  “You didn’t have your main phone with you?” When Jamie shook her head. Maggie jumped on it, turning to him. “So it was stolen. The SIM card’s out of it or we’d have it by now, but tracking the phone’s IMEI should get us to who has it, then we can backtrack to the thief.”

  “They were already on it, Mags.”

  Carson pushed off from the stone fireplace. “Coffee.”

  It wasn’t an invitation, but a statement of intention.

  Leaving a silence behind, he went into the light-colored kitchen under a loft area, poured mugs of previously made coffee and returned.

  “Caffeine delivered. We’re all short on sleep.”

  Jamie wrapped both hands around the mug like a kid with hot chocolate. “This is good.”

  * * * *

  Jamie drank the coffee gratefully.

  Also grateful for the lowered emotional temperature in the room.

  More light slid into the large room, the morning advancing toward day. It gilded the wood floor, the stairway rising to a loft over the back half, and bookcases across the front wall.

  It was beautiful in its spareness.

  “You look tired, Jamie,” Maggie said.

  She almost smiled at Maggie’s trademark lack of tact. “I am tired. I started traveling… I don’t know how many hours ago and I’m too tired to figure it out now. You look tired, too.”

  “I look like I’m half dead,” Maggie corrected. “I’ve been investigating your murder since— Oh, shit. Now I cry.” With impatient fingertips, she pushed at tears daring to escape onto her cheeks. “Your parents are going to—”

  “No.”

  They both swung around to face Belichek at the single word. He directed his next words to Maggie.

  “We’re not telling her parents. Or anybody outside this room. Somebody out there thinks they’ve killed your cousin. They have to keep thinking that. They have to keep thinking they got the job done so they’re not thinking about how to finish it.”

  Jamie protested, “Detective Belichek, you didn’t have to be so harsh—”

  “Yes, yes he did.” Maggie straightened. “I was thinking like a family member. He’s thinking like an investigator.”

  “Of course, you were thinking like a family member. That’s what you are. And the rest of the family and everyone at Sunshine will—”

  “No,” Belichek said again.

  “—feel the same … What?”

  “No one else will know you’re alive. Not yet. Maybe not—”

  “That’s impossible. Of course, they have to be told. My parents, my brothers and their families, Ally.” She saw no give in Belichek’s face, and turned to Maggie. “I let him bring me to you first, but we can’t let them go on thinking—”

  Maggie wasn’t looking at her, didn’t seem to hear her.

  “How long?” Maggie asked Belichek.

  “As long as it takes,” he said.

  “That might be—” Maggie started.

  “I know.”

  Jamie looked from one to the other.

  She knew her brain was foggy from lack of sleep and shock, but this was more. They seemed to speak shorthand with no need to complete thoughts or spell out implications, while she mentally scrambled to keep up with even the spoken words.

  “And the logistics,” Maggie said.

  “An issue. But it can be done. Has to be done.”

  “Are you saying off the books? No support. No approval.”

  “Entirely off the books. No support. No approval.”

  “God, Bel. Does Landis—?”

  “No.”

  “Because you’re being an ass who’s going to protect his partner while you jump onto the railroad tracks with the train speeding directly at you.”

  “It’s the only way. You know it, with the leaks at the department — especially around homicide.”

  “The leaks. God. You’re right. But if anybody finds out—” Repercussions Jamie could only guess at echoed in the silence between them. “What if we come up empty?”

  “We can’t be much emptier than we are now with no idea who the victim was. And Jamie — your cousin — is still alive. She could start a new life in our own private would-be-victim protection program.”

  “You’re serious?” Maggie drove her hands through her hair. “My God, you are. I can’t even begin to think how many regulations this breaks. Not to mention—”

  “I know. If you say pull the plug, I’d go along with you.”

  Maggie grimaced scornfully. “No, you wouldn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t want to,” Belichek said immediately. “I’d grab her up and put her so deep under wraps nobody’d ever find her. Including you.”

  “Wait a minute.” It sounded more like a plea than an order, so Jamie tried again. “Just wait a minute. What if I don’t want to be put under wraps? What if I—?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Belichek said.

  “I have a right to—”

  “Not to get yourself killed,” he interrupted. “Again.”

  Maggie’s eyes took on that calculating cast Jamie thought of as her lawyer look. “You are officially dead, Jamie. No, maybe not officially, because of the delay in identification. Still, you’re dead as far as the world’s concerned. That puts a big dent in your rights. And in the regulations they could get us on for breaking.”

  “Maggie, this is crazy. You have to tell him it is.”

  “He’s made good points.”

  “My parents—”

  Belichek said, “Would rather have you alive. You tell them now and then get killed, how much better do you think that’ll make them feel?”

  “Geeze, Bel. You can’t talk to her like you do to me.”

  Jamie slid her cousin a look.

  Belichek caught it. J.D. saw it, too, but Maggie didn’t.

  “This is ridiculous,” Jamie said more strongly. “You’re not even considering that whoever was killed in my house might have been the real target, when that’s far more likely. No one would want to kill me. I—”

  “That’s not a bad point that the victim might have been the real target,” Maggie said. “It is possible.”

  “Possible. But operating on that assumption would be criminally optimistic. Stupidly, criminally optimistic.”

  Belichek’s blunt words had the force of a slap to the face. Jamie couldn’t stop herself from meeting Maggie’s gaze. She saw a glimmer of sympathy, along with a hint of I’ve-always-told-you-that. But mostly she saw resolut
ion. The same resolution she’d heard in Ford Belichek’s voice.

  Ford…. Why did that ring a bell somewhere deep in her mind. Sure, his connection to Maggie, but something else…

  Maggie unlocked her phone one-handed.

  “What are you doing?” Belichek demanded.

  “Logistics. We need a place to hide her. Some place where few people go. Some place safe. With somebody we can trust.”

  “Maggie,” J.D. said.

  She stopped punching numbers and turned to him.

  “Here?” Maggie asked. “You’re okay with that? Early in your law career to start breaking rules.”

  He didn’t say anything or make a move, but apparently he answered her questions.

  Maggie turned back to the detective. “It has upsides.”

  “Are you sure?” So Belichek knew what they were talking about — another example of their shorthand.

  “Yeah. And he does know how to keep his own counsel.”

  J.D. said, dryly, “Lawyer jokes?”

  Maggie’s mouth twitched. But it quickly went solemn. “It’s a big favor to ask.”

  “You’re good for it. Besides, I think you’ll find Belichek was planning this all along.”

  Jamie’s gaze jerked to Belichek. He accepted the statement with equanimity. “Not moving her again is a big plus. No visitors expected?”

  “No.”

  “Hoped for that. Security?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Expected that.”

  “Okay. Settled,” Maggie declared. “But not unlimited time. We can finesse this a day or two, but beyond that…”

  Before Belichek could argue, J.D. asked, “How’re you going to use the time?”

  Jamie knew Belichek wasn’t accepting the time limit, but he went along with the topic shift. For now.

  He said, “Since it wasn’t Jamie who died, there are two possibilities. She was the intended victim or she was the killer.”

  Jamie sucked in one breath, then a second one when she saw Maggie and J.D. were not rocked. And she couldn’t honestly say which of those possibilities rocked her more.

  “Not accepting the latter,” Belichek continued without a pause, “that leaves us with two choices. The killer knew it wasn’t Jamie or the killer didn’t. Either way, she’s the best lead. Either way, she’s in danger.”

  “Why is she in danger if the killer knew it wasn’t Jamie?” J.D. asked.

  “Meant to kill her but recognized his mistake after he’d killed. Had to get out fast to avoid being caught at the scene,” Maggie said.

  Belichek nodded once. “Or intends to pin the murder on her.”

  Jamie shuddered.

  His mouth went flat.

  She could hear his thoughts. No time to console her. What she needed most from him — from them was clear-headed logic.

  She looked down at her hands. She was overtired, in shock. She was not hearing a stranger’s thoughts.

  Besides, it was common sense.

  “Either way,” he was saying, “we have an opportunity here where we might know more than the killer. This is a gift. Which we badly need.”

  “It’s also a more important gift.” Maggie reached out and grasped her cousin’s hand.

  At Maggie’s uncharacteristic emotional expression, Jamie’s head came up and she returned the grasp.

  “So, we start with questions,” Belichek said. “The big one first. Who was killed? Was she the target? Or was Jamie?”

  “And Jamie’s our best source. Right.” Maggie leaned back. “So let’s start with—”

  “I’m not starting anything else until I have a shower,” Jamie declared. “I’ve been in cars most of the past twenty-four hours. I need a shower. I really need a shower. And a change of clothes.”

  Also a few minutes to think.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  With exhaustion and shock vying to overload her, Jamie’s mind latched onto a different topic as she took toiletries and clean clothes from her tote.

  J.D. Carson looked much as he had when she’d met him.

  Not when he and Maggie became involved — first in a murder investigation and then with each other, but later, when he’d been at Maggie’s place.

  That was mid-May, when she and Ally arrived unannounced. It was always hit or miss whether she’d be there, but drop-ins were the only way they’d found to have any chance of seeing her.

  Although, come to think of it, Maggie had agreed to — and kept — three meetings with them over the summer, on the one day each month Ally took off from her years’-long vigil at the bedside of her husband.

  J.D. Carson’s influence on Maggie?

  Jamie considered the man as she brushed her hair.

  Being cleared of suspicion of murder had not noticeably lightened the hard lines of his face.

  Yet there was clearly a connection between him and Maggie.

  A sexual connection and more.

  Jamie hadn’t wanted to like J.D. Carson. She’d always thought Maggie and her detective Belichek would get together. The way Maggie talked about the man…

  But back in May, when she’d seen the way J.D. looked at Maggie and the way she returned the look, she’d wondered…

  And now, seeing Maggie with the two men, Jamie let go of the fantasy pairing in favor of the obvious one in front of her, even as her heart twisted for Maggie’s Bel.

  She pushed aside thoughts of Detective Ford Belichek’s romantic loss.

  She had bigger things to try to absorb.

  She stepped into J.D.’s oversized shower and stuck her head under the flow of water.

  * * * *

  Maggie and J.D. went outside after Jamie went upstairs for a shower.

  Belichek scrubbed his face with water from the half-bath sink and dried off with a towel.

  This wouldn’t be any ordinary interrogation, but the questions that needed answering weren’t that different.

  He stared out the window to the right of the front door, ordering the questions in his mind, mapping approaches depending on responses.

  Clattering on the stairs spun him around.

  Jamie Chancellor stopped the second she saw him. Her hair was wet. She wore a shirt that reached mid-thigh with longer tails front and back. Her legs were bare.

  She showed no sign of awareness of that.

  He forced himself to look up to her face, and was rewarded by seeing she didn’t look as drained. More of the shock was peeling away. He’d have to work fast.

  Words jerked out of her.

  “There were clothes in my closet that weren’t mine. I don’t know how I didn’t see that. I mean, I did see it, but it didn’t register.”

  “Shock.”

  She waved one hand. “Maybe, maybe. But it means someone was staying in my house for— I don’t know how long. I don’t know when the person was killed.”

  “Likely over the Labor Day weekend. Probably Sunday.”

  “Oh. Then the person was there overnight? Was it the woman who was killed? But why didn’t everybody know right away that the dead woman in my house wasn’t me?”

  * * * *

  They walked fast, Maggie appreciating the stretch in her legs, the air sweeping past her face to a rhythm of Jamie’s alive. Alive…

  She knew J.D. had her outside for exactly that reason … and to keep her from pouncing on Jamie with questions.

  The leaf-littered trail through the woods in the rapidly brightening light took them to an old cemetery. She’d had no idea it was this close to J.D.’s place.

  The trail must follow a crow’s flight, while the road she knew circled wide.

  They hadn’t talked getting here and now they separated, walking softly between the markers.

  At the far side, near a tree breaking into its autumn glory, she stopped at a headstone that read Pandora Addington Wade.

  This is what she’d thought awaited Jamie. Not just the grave, but the emotions of those who visited it.

  She’d been spared that. And
that made her feel an intruder, though she would be no less of one if she left now.

  Especially when J.D. came toward her.

  She wouldn’t rush away, but she did wish she could find something to say. Something that didn’t have to do with the woman buried in front of them. Or the one come back to life at his cabin.

  She asked, “Do you come here a lot?”

  “Not a lot. Sometimes.” His voice had a lazy edge, but only on the outside, where he kept most people. She heard deeper now.

  “You should feel like you’re at a family reunion. I came through a thicket of Carsons back there.”

  He looked in the direction she’d tipped her head.

  “Not surprising. One way or another, the Carsons have pretty much killed themselves off.”

  “How did you end up different from the rest?”

  He looked at the headstone. “Anya. The Judge. Pan. All of them together.”

  Anya Nouga had been an older woman living in the woods who’d taught him to survive and thrive in nature, left him the property he’d turned into a home, and gave him acceptance.

  Judge Kimble Blankenship had given him justice — rules of right and wrong, with appropriate consequences for each.

  And Pan…

  He grinned unexpectedly. “Once had an Army instructor say they should sign up whoever’d taught me to give lessons on surviving in the woods. Got a laugh out of that. Anya teaching in the Army. Not sure which would have survived, Anya or the Army, but it was a sure thing they both wouldn’t have.”

  “How’d you come to know her?”

  “I’d run off from the trailer, and stumbled onto her cabin. She took me back, but I remembered the path, and went back. She used to say she decided she better teach me how to survive before I killed myself and she got blamed.”

  “But…” She remembered townspeople saying kids left J.D. alone when he started school because of his connection to the “Witch of the Woods.” “How old were you when you met her?”

  “Five or so.”

  “You ran off when you were five? Your mother must have been…”

  Frantic. She didn’t say it, because everything she’d heard said his mother wouldn’t have been.

  “Nola didn’t know. Didn’t know when Anya brought me back, either.”