Act of Betrayal (22 page)

Libby seemed lost in thought for a moment, and in that unguarded moment her face showed something frightening. Jealousy? Hatred? Anger? PJ couldn’t say for sure, but whatever it was caused her to recoil from the intensity of emotion that Libby was radiating. Then the mask slipped back onto Libby’s face, and PJ had the sinking feeling that everything she had seen and heard up until then had been a performance.

To what end? Normal caution with a reporter? Or something deeper?

The emotions had been revealed when Libby talked about Jeremiah getting married. PJ remembered Dave’s report that Jeremiah was a bachelor. Either Libby had resented the fact that he wasn’t married yet, or she hadn’t wanted him to marry. PJ couldn’t make sense of that, but marked it “raw data” and filed it away.

“And what about your husband? How did he feel about Eleanor?” PJ asked without missing a beat.

“Oh, you know. Another mouth to feed.”

“Let’s move forward,” PJ said, consulting her notes. “During the trial, you said you were with Jeremiah at the time of Eleanor’s death, so you were his alibi. What effect did it have on you when the jury didn’t believe you?”

“Honey, it doesn’t make any difference what I think of the jury. They’re already damned and going to hell.”

PJ blinked. She was getting somewhere now. She hoped the microphone in her purse was recording it all.

“That’s the Lord’s judgment, not mine,” Libby said. “They knew in their hearts that my son was innocent, but they didn’t listen to their hearts. They listened to the lies of the police and the lawyers. They know what’s waiting for them, and they should be afraid. Damned afraid.”

“Do you think they deserve to die?” PJ asked. Her voice trembled. It had occurred to her that things could get dangerous. She was starting to become afraid, herself. “I’m asking for the article, I mean.”

Libby gave her an odd look. “Of course not. The Lord will get around to them in His own sweet time. Aren’t you a believer in the day of judgment, honey?” She smiled, and her pumpkin face lit up as though a candle had been lighted inside it. There was nothing but sincerity in her face and voice. Or was that part of a superb performance?

“Um, how did Elijah take the guilty verdict? His own son convicted of murdering a family member?”

“Makes a great headline, don’t it? I think Elijah kind of died that day. Inside someplace. He’s been a broken man since then.”

PJ nodded. “Doesn’t he feel an injustice was done?”

“Hard to say. He didn’t talk much about it. I always had the feeling he thought Jeremiah actually did it. He loved the boy dearly, so it’s beyond me how he could have thought such a thing of him. It broke us apart, too. We’re divorced now, you know. I haven’t seen him in years.”

PJ was taken by surprise. “No, I didn’t know that.” She almost said,
That wasn’t in the case file.

“It’s been hard on me. I lost Eleanor, then my business. The day care centers. Parents wouldn’t bring their kids. They thought the whole family was tainted and we were a bunch of killers, I guess. Then Elijah couldn’t stand it anymore and moved out. Darla turned her back on the whole thing. When Jeremiah was murdered by the state, it was the last straw for me. I got out, moved away from St. Louis. I didn’t have anything there.” She sank back in her chair as if she didn’t have the strength to sit up.

“So what’s happened to you since? This is great stuff, if you don’t mind my saying so.”
Spoken like a true reporter.

“I had a little money from the sale of the Wee Belong centers. I bought this house with it,” Libby said, gesturing vaguely around her. “For my living expenses, I work in a Burger King. Do you want fries with that, Ma’am?” The last part she said in a flat singsong voice that would have been comical if it weren’t for the context.

PJ drank some of her tea, and took the opportunity to look quickly down at her purse. She could see the tiny reel on the recorder spinning. So far so good.

She felt sorry for Libby, and was beginning to think of that bit about the jury being damned as nothing but a despairing woman looking to religion for comfort. PJ searched her face carefully, and saw no trace of the deep emotion glimpsed earlier. Libby had suffered so many losses.

If Thomas was brutally killed—PJ didn’t allow herself to think of the way Rick Schultz had looked—there was no telling how she would react herself. Perhaps she’d turn to religion too, consoling herself with thoughts of the kind of final justice that wasn’t available on earth.

“So you don’t know where Elijah is?” PJ asked. “I was hoping to interview him also.”

Libby shook her head. “Not that he was home much during the marriage either. Always off in some godforsaken jungle, wherever there was a fight going on. I raised those kids alone.”

Libby had been like a single mother even though she was married, PJ thought. Her sympathy went up a notch.

“Too bad,” PJ said, speaking of both Libby’s experience and her own disappointment in not locating Elijah. “How about Darla?”

Libby’s lips narrowed into a tight line. “I don’t know where she is. Haven’t heard from her in ten years. That’s what kind of a grateful daughter I’ve got left.”

PJ imagined what Libby’s life was like. Everything that was important to her, everything she loved, had been yanked out of her life or moved out voluntarily. Most likely all of her friends had edged away from her as well. She lived in a tan brick box, worked at a meaningless job, and had only memories of better times to brighten her existence. PJ shuddered. Would she ever end up like that? Old and alone?

“Eleanor’s friends said that you had a… difficult relationship with her,” PJ said. “They even said that you would kill her if you found out she was pregnant. Is there anything to that?”

“You don’t have a teenage daughter,” Libby said. “You don’t know what it’s like. They fight you every step of the way. Between mother and daughter is the roughest.”

“I know teenagers can be difficult to get along with.”

Libby snorted. “That’s not the half of it. Eleanor had a temper, bless her soul, just like Elijah does. That man has a cruel streak in him. I always thought he had a cold snake curled around his heart. You got to know how to handle him. But Eleanor, she knew which buttons to push on good old Mom. She did love her brother, though. That’s one good thing. But I knew from raising Darla that all that defiance blows over when a girl gets into her twenties. Then she’s ready to listen to Mama again. In the meantime, I came down hard on her. I wanted so much more for her than I had.”

Libby looked away, focused on the photographs on the wall. “Don’t get me wrong. By some people’s standards, I had a good life with Elijah. I mean, he didn’t beat me or drink away the family’s money. But I didn’t want Eleanor pregnant at fifteen, the way I was. I wanted her to make something of herself. Go to college. She was smart, damn it.” When Libby turned back to face PJ, tears moistened her eyes and turned the cool grayness into soft colorless pools.

PJ took it all in, tried to fit the grief against the earlier violent emotions that had peeped through the mask. It didn’t make a coherent picture.

While Libby was distracted reaching for a tissue, PJ leaned over, dropped her pen into her purse, and snapped the purse shut.

“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Ramsey. I know it was difficult for you.”

“I want you to make it clear in your article how much this whole thing has hurt us. We’re all victims, including my innocent son. Our lives were shattered on the day I found Eleanor’s body.”

“I’ll tell your story just the way you want it,” PJ said. “It’s good copy.”

The heat was like a visible barrier outside Libby’s front door. PJ steeled herself and returned to her car, clutching her purse. She had pulled it off. She had tracked down Libby Ramsey and gotten an update, of sorts, on the rest of the family.

She started the car and moved off to a parking lot a few blocks away, then opened her purse and turned off the tape recorder. The air-conditioner was beginning to cool the car down. She used her cellular phone to call Lieutenant Wall. She told him she was bringing back an interview tape. He berated her for not having authorization to tape, but seemed pleased, nevertheless. She asked if he could contact Dave or Anita to start the search for Darla Ramsey. PJ had two strong impressions about Darla: that she needed to talk to her to learn more about the Ramsey family, and that it wasn’t going to be as easy to find her as it had been to find Libby. From what Libby had said, Darla wanted nothing to do with the rest of her family.

On the drive back to St. Louis, she tried to sort things out. The mysterious Elijah still looked like a good bet for the killer. His whereabouts were unknown. He was a broken man after the trial. He had a bad temper and a cruel streak, and it was likely he blamed the justice system for everything from the loss of his son to the breakup of his marriage. From what Libby had said, Elijah seemed like the type of man to look outside himself when there was blame to be assigned.

A bag of jelly beans from a food mart provided comfort food. She drove along, popping them in her mouth. It was something she did when she was nervous. She didn’t know what her next step should be. It was exactly the kind of thing she wanted to talk over with Schultz.

PJ was discovering that he was an equally hard man to be with, and be without.

She went straight to the headquarters building and gave the tape from her purse to Louie. If anyone could make something of it, he could. His eyes gleamed when he turned it over in his hand. She felt sorry for the poor tape. It was at Louie’s mercy.

Thomas was pleased when she turned up early at the Lakeland’s house to take him to dinner and a movie. She turned the volume down on her jumbled thoughts and enjoyed an evening with her son.

S
CHULTZ DIDN’T HAVE LONG
to wait in Glen Mandoleras’s tiny dark apartment. Fifteen minutes after he finished his search he heard the key in the lock. He gently pushed the cat off his lap in case he had to move fast.

Schultz’s eyes were fully adjusted to the dimness, so he could make out a hand that moved inside the door and groped around on the wall. He tensed and aimed his gun at the door, holding it with both hands, arms raised to slightly below shoulder level. The moving hand found a light switch and flipped it. A small ceiling light came on in the entryway. The light barely reached to Schultz’s feet and outstretched arms.

The door swung open and Mandoleras walked in, carrying a grocery bag with one arm.

“I’m home, O’Brien,” he said. “Gotcha some treats.” Then he stopped abruptly. He had spotted a shadowy figure on his couch and a gun pointed in his direction.

“I’m unarmed,” he said, holding perfectly still.

“Put the bag down on the floor and close the door,” Schultz said.

Mandoleras complied. His back made a nice big target. Schultz could end the chase right then, with no risk to himself. But his search of the apartment had turned up nothing, and he had to be sure.

“Sit down on the floor,” Schultz said.

“My knees hurt. That’d be very hard for me.”

“Do it.”

Mandoleras slowly lowered himself to the floor. It was clear that he was in pain doing so. He kept his legs spread out in front of him, not folded in a pretzel shape. The moment he was settled, the cat was between his knees, kneading on his thigh and purring noisily. Mandoleras began to stroke the cat, and it was clear that O’Brien had him well-trained.

Schultz reached over and turned on the lamp on the end table. There was a brief silence as Mandoleras stared first at the gun and then at Schultz’s face. Schultz saw the moment recognition came into his eyes.

“Schultz? What’s going on?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

Mandoleras squinted at him. “Damn, man, you got yourself some sun. You should get something to put on that.”

“I’m looking for the man who killed my son,” Schultz said, his voice barely above a whisper and sharp as a razor. “Would that be you?”

“What?”

“You heard me, Ginger.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? That sun must have fried your brain right through that bald spot of yours.”

“You saying you had nothing to do with that?”

“Shit, yes, that’s what I’m saying. I heard about it. It was in the papers here.”

There was a pause while Schultz examined his quarry. The Glen Mandoleras that Schultz had known was a vigorous, hard man, secretive about his private life but a damn good cop. On the floor in front of him was a man who had aged badly: thin white hair askew, the beginnings of a pot belly, legs splayed out, his shorts displaying knobby knees. There was an unhealthy pallor in his face. The only thing that reminded Schultz of the old Mandoleras was the stubborn gleam in his eyes.

“Can I get up now? The floor is uncomfortable.”

“Yeah. Go sit in that chair.” Schultz gestured with the gun. He had already searched the chair cushions and knew there was no weapon there.

Gathering his legs under him and wincing from the pain, Mandoleras awkwardly got to his feet. He limped over to the chair and sat down with a sigh. “Put that gun away, asshole,” he said, “before you blow a hole in my wall.”

“I haven’t heard any proof yet. And I want to know about the little girl, too. You shithead. A four-year-old girl.”

Mandoleras’s face was getting increasingly red, “Are we just going to sit here and call each other names? What do you want to hear? I didn’t have anything to do with your son’s death. Or this girl you’re talking about. Why should I?”

“Because you blame me for Vince.”

“Oh,” Mandoleras said, sitting back in his chair. “That.” The cat jumped up on his lap and made a bid for attention, but was ignored. “After all this time, you think I got a grudge? Maybe you think I got something against Rheinhardt, too?”

“What?”

“Is there an echo in here?” Sitting in the chair had taken away some of his vulnerability, the same way that wrapping a robe around his body would have if he’d been naked. Mandoleras had regained most of his composure, and he faced the Glock steadily. He clamped his lips together. For a moment the two men glared at each other.