Chasing The Dead (An Alex Stone Thriller) (11 page)

“I know a few lawyers who do probate work. I’d be happy to give you their names.”

“Then you must be a lawyer.”

“Guilty,” Alex said.

“And a good one, if I’m any judge of people.” He stuck out his hand. “Mathew Woodrell.”

“Alex Stone,” she said, shaking his hand.

“A pleasure,” he said. “Nice to know a lawyer if I ever need one.”

“Well, you won’t want it to be me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because I only represent poor people accused of crimes.”

“Then I hope you’re right.”

She watched him walk away, then look back at her and give her a little wave. A westbound bus was stopped on the other side of Twelfth Street. When it left, she saw Rossi standing on the sidewalk. They stared at each other, neither of them moving, waving, or nodding, until Rossi turned his back and walked away.

Chapter Eighteen

ALEX STOPPED AT A PHONE STORE on her way home and bought a new phone, keeping her old number. The salesperson confirmed Rossi’s explanation that her voice mail was stored on the carrier’s server and not on the phone. She’d sync the new phone with her laptop to restore everything else that was on her old phone.

Bonnie was on her hands and knees, wrist deep in dirt, working along the edge of a flower bed that bordered their patio when Alex got home. Alex watched her from the den window that looked out on the backyard. Soil littered the patio’s redbrick pavers behind her. Alex couldn’t tell whether she was digging a trench or digging to China.

Bonnie was the gardener in the family. She delighted in choosing the plantings, putting them in, and nurturing them from one season to the next, taking Alex by the hand for a tour and explaining about annuals and perennials, irises, day lilies, impatiens, and hydrangeas, and junipers and ferns and all the rest. Alex never got past the colors, telling Bonnie she liked the purple and yellow flowers and the green bushes until Bonnie poked her in the arm and called her a moron.

Alex could judge Bonnie’s mood by how she gardened. The more time she took, the more at peace she was. The faster she moved, the harder she dug, the more riled up she was, and at the moment, she was hitting the soil like a jackhammer.

She needed Bonnie’s help dealing with Robin’s death, but she was struggling with how much to tell her, especially since it looked like Bonnie was fighting her own battle. It was the same tightrope she’d been walking for a year, and she felt like one of the Flying Wallendas teetering on a wire suspended over the Grand Canyon, the wind swirling around her.

Grabbing two beers from the refrigerator, Alex went outside. Their dog, Quincy, had been napping in the late-afternoon sun beneath a black wrought-iron table surrounded by matching chairs. He bolted toward Alex, jumping up and planting his paws on her chest, his tail wagging at warp speed, as if he hadn’t seen her in years. Alex stroked his back from head to tail.

“Hi, baby dog! Did you miss me today?”

“Don’t get excited,” Bonnie said over her shoulder. “He did the same thing to the meter reader a while ago.”

“I know. What can I say? We raised a dog that loves everyone. Where did we go wrong?”

She rested a beer bottle against Bonnie’s neck, condensation running off the bottle and mixing with Bonnie’s sweat. Bonnie sighed, stopped digging, and reached for the bottle. She stood, took a drink, and wiped her mouth.

“You always know what this girl needs,” Bonnie said.

“That’s why you’re my girl. How long have you been out here?”

“I got off at three, so I’ve been out here since about three thirty, a couple of hours.”

“That’s a whole lot of digging. You must have had a lousy day.”

They sat in wrought-iron chairs beneath an oak tree that shaded the patio. Bonnie rubbed her bottle against her cheek, closing her eyes for a moment.

“You could say that. From the hangdog look you’re wearing, I’d say yours wasn’t any better.”

“That’s for sure. I don’t know anything about your day, but mine was awful. When I walked in the office this morning, I found out that Robin Norris was killed in a car accident last night.”

Bonnie covered her mouth with her hand. “Oh, dear God! What happened?”

Alex let out a sigh and shook her head. “She lost control of her car and it went off the road, hit a tree, and she was killed.”

Bonnie reached for Alex, hugging her tight, Alex resting her head on Bonnie’s shoulder. “How awful.”

“And it gets worse,” Alex said, sitting up. “She was leaving me a voice message when it happened but I didn’t hear the call come in because my phone was off.”

“Where were you?”

“At the Zoo.”

“With that asshole Rossi?”

Alex nodded. “And guess who’s investigating the case?”

“Rossi?”

“Yeah. He and another detective came to my office today because they found Robin’s phone at the scene and the call log showed that her last call was to me. They wanted to know what we talked about. I hadn’t even noticed I had a message until they asked me about the call. We listened to the message together.” She paused and gulped, choking on her memory of the recording. “She said she needed to talk to me and then she screamed and I heard the car hit the tree and then . . . nothing.”

Bonnie rubbed Alex’s back. “Oh, my. I can’t imagine how awful that was. Do you have any idea why she was calling you?”

“I don’t know. She kept saying she had to talk to me, but I have no idea what about. That’s what I told Rossi, and I could tell by the look he gave me that he didn’t believe me. It’s bad enough that Robin is dead, but now I’ve got to put up with his bullshit again.”

“That’s not the only bullshit he’s shoveling at us.”

Alex’s stomach clenched. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

“Me neither, but it is what it is.”

“What’s what it is? What’s going on?”

“Rossi paid me a visit this morning.”

Alex’s jaw dropped and her heart skipped a beat. “What was that about?”

“What do you think? He won’t let the whole Dwayne Reed thing go.”

“What’s that got to do with you?”

“He pretended that he was concerned about how you looked when he saw you at the Zoo. He thinks you feel so guilty about killing that prick that it’s eating you up, but he didn’t fool me. He doesn’t give a shit about you—or me, for that matter.”

“That’s not exactly news.”

“No, but here’s the headline. He doesn’t think you feel bad about killing that douche bag Dwayne. He thinks you feel guilty because it wasn’t self-defense and he’s hoping that you confessed to me and that I’ll rat you out. The guy is un-fucking-believable!”

Alex twisted in her chair, eyes wide, torn between outrage at Rossi and fear that Bonnie might believe him.

“What did you tell him?”

“What do you think I told him? I told him to go fuck himself.”

Alex took a deep breath. “Thanks. I’m sorry he put you through that. I don’t know why he won’t leave us alone.”

Bonnie leaned forward and put her hand on Alex’s knee. “Because, babe, he thinks you’re a badass, stone-cold killer.”

Alex set her beer on the table, forcing her voice to sound matter-of-fact. “And what do you think?”

“I think you killed that son of a bitch because he threatened you and me. I think if you hadn’t killed him, he would have raped and killed me and then gone after you. I think he was a crazy psychopath who wasn’t going to stop unless somebody stopped him, and I give thanks every day that you did. That’s what I think.”

“So you don’t think I’m a badass, stone-cold killer?”

Bonnie cupped Alex’s face with her hands and kissed her deeply. “I’ve known you were a badass since the day we met. And I’ve seen what you’ve gone through since that day, and if you were a stone-cold killer, you wouldn’t have had one nightmare. You’d have just added a notch to your belt. You did what you had to do and you’ve paid the price.”

They cried, hugged, and kissed, coming up for air when Quincy nosed between them, making them laugh.

“What a dog!” Alex said. “He doesn’t want to be left out.” She wrapped her hand in Quincy’s fur. “Is it because you’re an only child?” she asked the dog.

“We can always fix that,” Bonnie said.

“You want another dog?”

“No. I want a child.”

Alex was speechless. Of all the things she expected Bonnie to say, that wasn’t one of them. When they decided to move in together, they talked about having kids one day, Bonnie saying she wanted to carry the baby, but it had never been more than casual conversation.

“You sound serious.”

“Honey, I am serious. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. I was going to bring it up a year ago, but then everything happened, and our lives have been so crazy, there was never a good time. Remember asking me if there was something bothering me? Well, that was it. I didn’t know if it was the right time to bring it up.”

“And after everything that happened today, you think this is a good time?”

“I know. At first I didn’t think it made sense, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. We love each other. We’re going to be together forever, right?”

Alex grinned. “You know it.”

“Well, I’m thirty-six and the clock is ticking. And I’m sick and tired of assholes like Dwayne Reed and Hank Rossi screwing with our lives. If we wait until the rest of the world leaves us alone, we’ll die barren old ladies with drool cups strapped under our chins. It’s our lives and it’s time we started living them. And, besides, I’ll look fabulous pregnant.”

It was the kind of crazy logic that did make sense. More than that, it was a commitment to their future and a powerful statement by Bonnie that she’d stand by Alex no matter what. Alex had never loved her more than at that moment.

“Well, I guess we better buy a turkey baster.”

That night as they lay in bed, Alex propped herself up on one elbow and studied Bonnie as she slept, grateful for the gift of her love and scared to death that she would squander it. She fell back on her pillow, closed her eyes, and prayed for sleep.

Chapter Nineteen

FRIDAY MORNING, GRACE CANFIELD met Alex outside the courtroom of Associate Circuit Court Judge Noah Upton, who would preside over Jared Bell’s initial appearance. Grace gave her an up-and-down appraisal, nodding her head and pursing her lips.

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“Uh-huh, what?” Alex asked.

“Since when do you wear your fancy black pantsuit and white ruffled blouse to an initial appearance? That’s what. And am I wrong or are you wearing blush?”

“What on earth are you talking about? I wear black pantsuits all the time,” Alex answered, ignoring the question about her makeup.

“Not the one with the fancy stitched pattern on the jacket lapels that Bonnie gave you for your last birthday, and you were the one who told me that makeup violated your official lesbian dress code.”

Alex folded her arms across her chest, not wanting to admit that Grace was right. When she woke up this morning, she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time—happy. Bonnie loved her and wanted to start a family. Last night’s anxiety about whether she would ruin all of that had given way to a morning filled with images of the two of them pushing a baby stroller down the sidewalk on a warm summer day. She didn’t know how long the feeling would last before harsh reality set in again, but she would ride the wave as long as she could. Getting ready for work had felt more like getting ready for a date, so she dressed up and put on a little blush for Bonnie, who giggled and groped her, nearly making both of them late.

“Do we really have to talk about this now?”

“No, but you start coming to work like this all the time and we’re gonna talk about it, because I’m gonna want some of whatever’s put a skip in your step.”

Alex laughed. “Fair enough. What did you find out about our client?”

Grace shook her head. “Nothing that’ll do you any good this morning. I talked to his mother, Diane. She still lives in Goodland, Kansas. She was so glad to hear he was alive that she couldn’t stop crying. When she finally did, she told me they hadn’t heard from him in a couple of years. Said he came home from the war a mess and they woke up one day and he was gone.”

“Did she know anything about someone named Ali?”

“Only that she heard him calling out her name in his sleep, but when she asked him who that was he said he didn’t know what she was talking about.”

“Anything else?”

“We can find out if Jared’s been treated at the VA hospital if he signs this release.” Grace opened a thin manila folder and handed the form to Alex, who slid it into her case file. “I can request his service records, but that takes a while.”

“Not if we can cut through the red tape.”

“Girl, if you got a pair of them scissors, let me have ’em.”

“I don’t, but I met someone yesterday who might. His name is Mathew Woodrell. He’s a Vietnam vet who helps other vets with their problems.”

“Where do I find him?”

“I don’t know. Check with Veterans Affairs. He was in the Eighty-Second Airborne.”

“You don’t have a phone number or e-mail address?”

“Sorry. I only talked to him for a minute. He said he’d just come from the probate clerk’s office. He was trying to help another vet with something. Maybe they’ve got contact information.”

“Description?”

“He’s a little guy, not more than five-seven, short gray hair, has to be in his early seventies at least, and he was wearing a military pin for having served in Vietnam.”

“And he’s white,” Grace said.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“Because white is the default race for white people. If he’d been black, you would have said so.”

Alex raised her eyebrows, blushing. “I . . . I . . .”

“Never thought about it. I know. Most white folks don’t. Well, that’s a start.” Grace glanced at her watch. “It’s go time.”

“Then let’s go,” Alex said, leading the way into the courtroom and taking her place at the defendant’s counsel table.

Kalena Greene was already seated at the prosecution’s counsel table. She and Alex exchanged good mornings as two deputies escorted Jared into the courtroom, shuffling, his wrists and ankles shackled. He gave her a shy smile. Alex smiled in return, pleased that she’d made a connection, putting her arm around his shoulder for a moment.