Indelible (14 page)

“Oh, no,” Molly said. “You don't think . . .”

Wagner's tone said her patience was running low. “Let's cut the suspense, folks.”

“Jennings,” Lena finally said, the name bringing the taste of bile to the back of her throat. “A pedophile who's good at getting young men to do all the dirty work.”

Monday

J
effrey helped the paramedics carry Robert down the front steps. He was still refusing to get onto a stretcher for his own hardheaded reasons, and every time Jeffrey tried to talk to him, Robert just shook his head, as if he could not speak.

Jeffrey offered, “I'll be by the hospital as soon as Hoss gets here.”

Robert shook his head for the hundredth time. “No, man. I'm okay. Just make sure Jessie gets to her mama's.”

Jeffrey patted his shoulder. “We'll talk tomorrow when you're more up to it.”

“I'm okay,” Robert insisted. Even when they loaded him into the back of the ambulance, he only said, “Make sure you look after Jess.”

Jeffrey walked back to the house, but he did not go in. Instead, he sat on the front steps, waiting for Hoss to show up. Clayton Hollister was the town's sheriff—had been as long as Jeffrey could
remember—and when he'd called about the shooting, Jeffrey had learned that the old man had literally gone fishing. Hoss was heading back from Lake Martin, which was about half an hour's drive away. When Jeffrey had offered to go ahead and help process the scene, his old mentor had told him to hold up. “He'll still be dead when I get there.”

Two sheriff's deputies stood outside talking to Robert's neighbors, both of them knowing better than to go inside the house until the boss arrived. Hoss ran his force with an iron fist, a management style Jeffrey had never taken to. Jeffrey knew the old man would be doubly attentive on this one; Robert and Jeffrey would likely be career criminals right now except for Hoss's early intervention. He had ridden them hard when they were teenagers, hawking their every move. Even when Hoss wasn't around, his deputies knew that the two boys were his special project, and they were just as vigilant as the sheriff, maybe even more so.

At the time, Jeffrey had resented the man's prying—he already had a father, even if Jimmy Tolliver spent more time in jail than he did at home—but now that he was a cop himself, Jeffrey understood the favor Hoss had done him as a kid. There was a reason both Jeffrey and Robert had chosen law enforcement as their careers. In his own way, Hoss had led by example. Though who knew what the hell Robert was up to now.

Sitting on the front porch watching the deputies, Jeffrey kept running back over Robert's story, trying to make sense of what he and Jessie had said. Something wasn't adding up, but that shouldn't have
been surprising, considering Jeffrey was back in Sylacauga. He hated this Podunk town, hated the way every second that passed here seemed to be sucking the life out of him. He had been an idiot for coming back, and even more stupid for dragging Sara along with him. Nothing here had changed in the last six years. Possum and Bobby were still spending every Sunday together, waxing nostalgic by the pool while Jessie got drunk off her ass and Nell added her bitter quips to the mix. Sara being here had made things worse than he could have imagined.

Despite his idiotic admission last night, Jeffrey could not decide exactly how he felt about Sara. She had managed somehow to get under his skin, and part of him had asked her to go to Florida in the hopes that he would be able to fuck her out of his system once and for all. Normally, the women he dated bent over backward to please him, which generally got old after a few months and became a good justification for moving on to the next one in line. Sara was not like that. On the surface, she was the kind of woman he always thought he would end up settling down with: a perfect combination of sexuality and self-confidence that made it impossible for him to get bored. It was a case of being careful what you wished for, though, because underneath it all, she was a lot of work. She had her own opinions about things and her mind was not easily changed. To make matters worse, her mother obviously thought he was the Devil incarnate and her sister had pegged him instantly for the kind of player he'd been all his life. She had actually laughed in his face when she opened the door to Sara's house yesterday,
giving him a knowing up-and-down look, telling Jeffrey his reputation preceded him.

His gut reaction was to prove them all wrong. Maybe that was the problem—and the root to his attraction. Jeffrey wanted their approval. He wanted people to think he was a good guy, the kind of guy who came from a nice middle-class, God-fearing family that stood on the right side of the law. That seemed like a lost cause now. Sara was looking at him the same way everyone else in Sylacauga did, like he was just as bad as his father.

“Hey,” Sara said, sitting down beside him on the steps.

He moved away from her. “How's Jessie?”

“Passed out on the couch,” Sara told him, folding her arms around her knees. Her tone was reserved, like they were strangers.

“Is she on something?”

“I think her adrenaline gave out and whatever she took earlier finally caught up with her.” She stared at him, seemed to be studying him.

“What?”

“We need to talk.”

Dread washed over Jeffrey, but of the thousand things that came to his mind, what she actually said was more shocking than any of them.

“You changed the crime scene.”

“What?” He stood up, putting himself between Sara and the crowd on the street. He knew he had done nothing wrong, but still he felt defensive. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You left the door open.”

“The back door? How else were you supposed to get in?”

Sara tucked her chin into her chest, the way she did when she was trying to keep her calm. “The armoire,” she said. “You opened the door. You put the shirt back in.”

He remembered now, and for the life of him he could not understand his own actions. “I just—” He couldn't find an answer. “I don't know what I was doing. I was upset. It doesn't mean anything.”

Sara spoke matter-of-factly. “A man holds a gun to his wife's head, shoots at him, and Robert runs to the armoire, grabs his gun, and shuts the door?”

Jeffrey tried to think of a logical explanation. “He probably shut it without thinking.” Even as he spoke, Jeffrey knew he was grasping at straws. The timing didn't work.

Sara stood up, brushing dirt off the back of her pajamas. “I'm not going to be an accomplice to this,” she told him, and it sounded like a warning.

“An accomplice?” he repeated, thinking he had heard wrong.

“Changing the crime scene.”

“That's ridiculous,” he said, heading back inside.

She followed him like she did not trust him alone in the house. “Where are you going?”

“I'll close it back,” he answered, walking into the bedroom. He stopped in front of the armoire. The door was already closed.

When he looked at Sara for an explanation, she said, “I didn't close it.”

Jeffrey opened the door again and stood back. He
took another step back and as they both watched, it closed. He laughed with relief. “See?” He duplicated his actions with the same result. “The floor must be uneven,” he explained, testing the floorboards. “When you step back here, it closes.”

A flicker of doubt crossed Sara's eyes. “Okay,” she said, like she still was not sure.

“What?”

“Was the safe locked?”

He opened the door again, finding a black gun safe on the top shelf. “Combination lock,” he said. “He could have left it open. They don't have kids.”

She was staring at the dead man on the floor. “I want to sit in on the autopsy.”

Jeffrey had somehow forgotten about the body in the room. He turned now, and looked at the corpse. The man's blond hair was matted with blood, partially concealing his face. His bare back was riddled with blood and brain, the laces of his untied tennis shoes stringing across the floor. Jeffrey never understood how people could think a dead person was just sleeping. Death changed the air, charged it with something thick and unsettling. Even with his half-opened eye and slackened jaw, there was no mistaking that the man was dead.

Jeffrey said, “Let's get out of here,” leaving the room.

Sara stopped him in the hallway. “Did you hear me?” she said. “I want to sit in—”

“Why don't you do it yourself?” he interrupted, thinking this would be the only way to shut her up. “They don't have a coroner here. The guy who runs the funeral home does it for a hundred bucks a pop.”

“All right,” she said, but the guarded look on her face was far from reassuring. Jeffrey knew if she found anything out of place, from a pattern wound to an ingrown toenail, she'd throw it back at him that she was right.

“What do you think you're going to find?” he demanded, then remembering Jessie was in the next room, he lowered his voice. “You think my best friend's a murderer?”

“He already admitted to shooting that man.”

Jeffrey walked toward the front door, wanting to get out of the house and away from Sara. Typically, she followed him, unable to let it go.

She put her hands on her hips, her tone the same she probably used to talk to her patients. “Think about their story, Jeffrey.”

“I don't have to think about it,” he said, but the more Sara talked, the more he did, and he did not like the conclusions his mind was drawing. He finally asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“The time frame doesn't jibe with what we heard in the street.”

Jeffrey shut the front door, not wanting their conversation to be overheard. Through the narrow window, he could see the deputies talking to the ambulance driver who had just pulled up.

Sara said, “There was a lag between the scream and the first shot.”

He tried to remember the sequence, but could not. Still, he said, “That's not how it happened.”

“The shot was a few beats later.”

“What's a few beats?”

“Maybe five seconds.”

“Do you know how long five seconds is?”

“Do you?”

He saw Hoss's cruiser pull into the street. It was the same damn car he had driven when Jeffrey was a teenager, right down to the peeling sheriff's star on the side. Jeffrey and Robert had washed that car every weekend their junior year as penance for duct-taping a hapless freshman to the water fountain at school.

“All right,” Jeffrey told Sara, wanting to get this the hell over with. “Five seconds. That goes with what they said—she screamed, Robert pushed him back, he fired. That could take five seconds.”

Sara stared at him, and he did not know if she was going to call him an idiot or a liar. She surprised him by saying, “I honestly can't remember what they said, whether she screamed first or he pushed the guy first.” Then, probably just to be a bitch, she added, “You might want to help Robert get that straight before he makes his statement.”

Jeffrey watched Hoss talking to his deputies. He was wearing his fishing vest and a beat-up old hat with lures pinned to it. Jeffrey felt a sense of dread overwhelm him.

He said, “We didn't hear the second shot until I caught up with you. That's, what, another ten seconds?”

“I don't know. It wasn't immediate.”

“Robert could have been looking for his gun.”

She surprised him again by conceding, “True.”

“Then the next shot was a few seconds later, right?” When she did not respond, he said, “Maybe two or three seconds later?”

“About.”

“It could fit,” he insisted. “The guy shoots at him, Robert goes to get his gun. It's dark, he can't find it at first. While he's looking for it, he's shot. He's surprised that he's shot, but he still manages to shoot back.”

She nodded, but did not seem convinced. Jeffrey knew in his gut there was something else she was holding back, and he was running out of time.

“What?” he said, wanting to shake it out of her. “What aren't you telling me?”

“Just forget it.”

“I mean it, Sara. There's something you're not saying. What is it?”

She stared out the window, not answering.

Hoss was still standing at the end of the walk. The ambulance made a low beeping noise as it backed into the driveway. Each beep seemed to heighten Jeffrey's frustration, so that when Sara started to leave the house, Jeffrey grabbed her arm and would not let her go.

She gave a surprised “What are you—”

“Not one word to him,” he warned, feeling like the sky was falling down and there was nothing he could do to stop it. If he could just keep Sara quiet for a few more hours, maybe he could get to the bottom of it.

Sara tried to jerk her arm back, a look of shock on her face. “Let go of me.”

“Just promise me.”

“Let go,” she repeated, wrenching her arm away.

Jeffrey felt so angry and helpless that he punched his fist into the wall behind her. Sara flinched, like she thought he meant to hit her. Fear, then sheer hatred flashed in her eyes.

“Sara,” he said, taking a step back, holding up his hands. “I didn't . . .”

Her mouth tightened into a thin line. When she spoke, her tone was deep, like she was fighting to keep from raising her voice. He had never seen her really angry before, and there was something about her stillness that was more threatening than if she held a gun to his head.

“You listen to me, you asshole,” she hissed through clenched teeth. “I will not be intimidated by you.”

He tried to calm her. “I wasn't—”

She jerked away from him. “If you ever touch me again, I'll rip your throat open with my bare hands.”

Jeffrey could feel his heart stop in his chest. The way she was looking at him now made him feel dirty and mean, like a bully. No wonder his father always got loaded to the gills after punching up his mother. The hatred must have felt like it was eating him alive.

Outside, Jeffrey could see Hoss and the deputies starting toward the house. He swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth, trying to reason with Sara.