Just Evil (31 page)

 “No. Do you want to get away from me now?”

“I don’t understand?”

“Leave. Do you want to leave?”

He started closing the distance to where the Jeep was
parked, walking her toward the car once again with his arms wrapped around her.
As they got closer to the car, however, she stopped and said, “No, I mean
hearing all that—don’t you want to leave me? You can’t possibly want to be with
someone like me.”

He stood there smiling, and tucked several strands of hair
behind her ear. “Honey, I want to be with you for as long as you’ll have me.
Hearing all that stuff once, we never have to talk about it again unless you
want to.”

“Okay.”

She’d thought once he found out he wouldn’t want her. Her
revelation had shaken him right down to his soul, but for her sake, he tried to
appear outwardly unaffected.

For a long time, he simply held her, trying to get his
bearings. He wanted to ask the question, but fear had him holding his tongue.
He wanted to ask the question that nagged at him. Was there more? What else had
she suffered in this house, at the hands of Alana or rather, at the hands of
one of Alana’s special friends? He wanted to ask the question, but didn’t dare,
couldn’t.

He’d wanted her to tell him, confide in him, hadn’t he? Was
he really prepared to hear the answer? And what would he do, could he do, if
there was more? But now he racked his brain to think of some way to get her to
switch gears, get her mind off the humiliation of what she’d told him, if only
briefly.

He picked the silliest and most stupid thing he’d ever done
as a child and gave it life, hoping it was enough. “Now it’s my turn to tell
you something about my childhood, something embarrassing, something no other
living soul knows.

“One summer night when I was nine, I was bored with nothing
much to do. So I got on my bike, rode down to the square in this little town
where we lived at the time. I ended up behind Chang’s Cleaners & Laundry.
There was this mass of lint behind the building. I mean a huge ball of this
stuff just sitting there waiting for a dense kid like me to come along with
matches. Yeah, I was carrying matches—had considered I might try cigarettes at
some point, but anyway, I had matches on me. I got curious wondering if this
huge ball of lint would catch on fire. So, being the inquisitive and slightly
stupid kid I was, I lit a match and threw it into this enormous ball of lint. I
waited around but nothing happened so I lit another one and then another. After
I’d tossed in close to six matches I waited around, but still nothing. I
thought, okay, lint doesn’t burn. Bored, I hopped back on my bike and rode down
the alley the way I’d come and the next thing I knew, I heard sirens, fire
engines approaching from several different directions. The police showed up and
everyone was rushing over to the dry cleaners. I rode my bike back up the
street and watched as the firemen donned their equipment, pulled out their hoses
to fight the fire that I’d started. It took three engines to put out that fire.
Lucky for me, no one got hurt because Chang’s had been closed for several hours.
I set fire to a dry cleaners, almost burned the place down. It was the last
time I ever set fire to a bunch of lint and the last time I ever played with
matches.”

Kit grinned at the stupid story. “No one found out it was
you?”

“Nope. I was so ashamed I never confessed. You’re the first.
And now you know I was an arsonist at nine.”

His story had gone a long way to take the edge off her
abysmal tale. Grateful, she said simply, “Thanks Jake. I needed that.”

He kissed the top of her head; let his hands wander down to
her waist and up her back before bringing her mouth up to meet his. Her lips
parted, and he felt her melt into him. His body reacted as it always did. “I
like you better naked.”

Kit pushed back long enough to catch her breath and look
into his eyes. “Your car or mine?”

His eyebrows went up in mock surprise. “I liked it when I
woke up this morning and you were exploring my body. Anytime you decide to
ravage me in my sleep, or get carried away, which brings up…We haven’t talked
about birth control...”

He saw her visibly pale.

“Oh. Well. I can’t be a mother.”

Jake’s heart skipped a beat. He wanted to make sure he’d
heard her right. “You can’t get pregnant?”

“No. Well. No. Not that. Well. I don’t know. I mean...I just
can’t be a mother.”

He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. “Why do
you say that, Kit? I’ve seen you with Sarah. You look at her as if you want one
of your own.”

“Well…I…just because I want a baby…doesn’t mean… Sarah goes
home at night…and I…I just don’t think…I just can’t…be a mother.”

He set her back from him to look directly into her eyes, but
she dropped her head, wouldn’t meet his. He lifted her chin up, forcing her to
look at him. He kept his gaze locked on hers, until she finally said, “Okay.
What if I…I might…I might turn out…I might be mean like Alana. Abuse usually
cycles. And I’d rather die than be like that.”

“Oh, honey.” Pulling her back into his chest, he told her,
“Stop that. You’re nothing like Alana. You couldn’t hurt a child. I’ve watched
you with Sarah. I’ve only seen two other women, my sisters, care for a baby as
well as you care for Sarah. And Kit, they’ve both been mothers a long time.”

He thought of something and asked, “Kit, how long have you
had Pepper?”

Puzzled at the change of subject, Kit tightened her brow.
“What? How long? Well. Almost six years. I took him from a puppy mill when I
was a sophomore in college. I don’t mean I stole him or anything. The SPCA
busted this puppy mill and they had all these different kinds of puppies that
were in really bad shape. It was on the news. Pepper was one of the puppies
that almost didn’t make it. He was really sick. That’s why he isn’t exactly the
brightest bulb on the tree. We weren’t even supposed to have dogs in our
apartment, but I wanted Pepper so much that Baylee helped me sneak him in, and
when Pepper needed to go out, we’d wrap him up in this old blanket we had and
take turns carrying him up and down the stairs so the neighbors wouldn’t know
we had a dog. But then the apartments got new owners and…”

Jake listened patiently letting her rattle on in typical
Kit-fashion until she’d finished with her story, and then said, “See Kit, you
can’t even stand to see a dog mistreated. In the six years you’ve had Pepper,
how many times has he peed on the carpet and you beat him for it.”

Appalled, Kit put her hand to her mouth. “I’ve never hit
Pepper; not once, not even when he did worse than pee on the carpet. And it was
quite a challenge getting him housebroken since he isn’t the smartest dog. I
never…I wouldn’t do that.”  

 “See, you treat your dog better than Alana treated you. And
let’s not forget about Baylee. Her childhood was abusive, maybe not like yours,
and yet it didn’t stop her from having a child. She has Sarah now. She’s a good
mother from what I’ve seen. You’d be a great mother, Kit, and don’t you believe
otherwise.”

“You’d trust me to care for a child.”

“In a heartbeat.” And then he brought her into him and
crushed his mouth to hers, gave her a searing kiss. As his hands moved from her
waist, down to her rear end, more solemnly, he whispered, “I love having my
hands on you.”

“I love feeling your body on top of mine, feeling the weight
of it on me.”

Getting seriously aroused now, he countered with, “I love
being inside you.”

“I love having you inside me, coming inside me.”

Hot. It was suddenly very hot.

Just as he unbuttoned her jeans, a car pulled into the
driveway, parked behind his Mercedes, putting an end to the moment.

Reluctantly, quickly, he buttoned her up, and stared down
Connor Boyd, who looked like a late-thirties carbon copy of his younger
brother, Collin.

Even when the man walked up to where they were standing
beside Kit’s Jeep, Jake never dropped his arm from around Kit’s waist, and she
didn’t bother stepping back.

 “I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Connor lied.

“Yeah, we get that a lot,” Kit said to Connor in an amused
tone, though her eyes never left Jake’s. 

Still staring at Connor, Jake said flatly, “You shouldn’t
have suggested Kit come back here, Boyd. What I can’t figure out is why you
wanted to meet with her, here of all places, specifically today. What did you
want?”

A sheepish look crossed his face. “She needed to check the
place out, protect her investment. Think ahead about what needs to be done to
put the house on the market. I am, after all, the attorney of record handling
Alana’s probate.”

“Screw this house, screw probate. You sent her to a recent
crime scene by herself without so much as preparing her for what she might find
inside.” He finally let go of Kit long enough to open the Jeep’s door, called
to the dog to jump into the front seat ahead of her, and said to Kit, “Are you
okay to drive?”

As if given a precious gift, she looked at Jake and said,
“I’m great.”

“Then go back to work. I’ll take Boyd on a tour of the
house. Let him see the damage for himself and meet you back there in about an
hour and a half. Okay?”

Kit didn’t argue, didn’t hesitate, but rather gave him a
quick kiss on the mouth before starting the car. As if they’d been together for
years, she said simply, “Don’t be long.”

As Kit drove out of the circular driveway, Jake hung back,
let Connor Boyd take the lead to the front door.

Jake watched as the man dug into his trouser pocket, pulled
out yet another key ring, and used it to unlock the front door as if he’d done
so before.

A thought ran through Jake’s mind, and he wondered if St.
John had ever bothered to check how many people had keys to Alana’s house.

Going back inside the house, this time with Boyd leading the
way, Jake felt as if he’d stepped back into a time warp when Kit had lived
there as a child. He looked at the house differently than he had before. Now
knowing what she’d endured in this house, unlike earlier, that creepy feeling
had him downright pissed off.

What had it been like for Kit to grow up here, endure here, and
suffer here? 

As he accompanied Boyd through the tour of the downstairs,
Jake nodded politely at the right times, used a civil tone whenever he
responded to the man’s weak attempt at outrage about the condition of the
house, but Jake’s mind was clearly elsewhere.

His thoughts wandered to the upstairs, to the alcove, to the
closet where Kit had been locked up. He’d walked right past it earlier, unaware
of its existence.

As he followed Boyd up the front staircase right off the
foyer, he became more aware of his surroundings. Once he got to the second
floor landing, raw emotion swept over him and his apprehension about the place
grew stronger. He separated from Boyd and continued walking down the long hallway
covered with thick, white Berber carpet that softened his every step. He walked
past several bedrooms and closet doors until he got to the rear of the house.

When he reached the landing that led to the back staircase,
he realized he’d gone too far and backtracked. On the left, tucked away off the
beaten path of the main corridor, was the alcove, a small niche of a space with
a sloped ceiling and a door at the far end. Away from the bedrooms, thought
Jake.

He walked down the small passageway, his heart thudding
faster with every step. He told himself it was probably nothing more than a
poorly-located linen closet. But for some reason he was drawn to the space.
Stopping directly in front of the door, he took several deep breaths before
turning the knob. He noted that unlike the other closets along the main
corridor this one had a deadbolt lock installed on the outside of the door. A
deadbolt lock to keep a little girl locked inside.

This had to be it. Kit’s Closet.

He swallowed hard, opened the door, and peered inside. The
space was no more than three feet by three feet, and with the sloped ceiling,
it was even smaller than a normal closet. For a closet in a house where the
owner had lived for thirty years or more, this space was completely empty. That
seemed strange to Jake.

There was no Berber carpet here, no tile either, but rather
a concrete floor. There was no rod for hanging clothes, no shelves for storage.
He looked around for a light switch, and realized there wasn’t one. A tiny
closet with no light and a deadbolt lock on the door. As he studied the inside,
he thought he saw something on all three walls near the baseboard. He lowered
his head and wished he had a flashlight. Stepping inside the tiny space, his
large frame took up most of it.

He bent down and sat on his heels to get a better look in
the dim light. Just above each baseboard inches off the floor, nicks and holes
and scuff marks lined each of the three walls, as if the walls had received
blows, too many blows to count. The inside of the door contained quite a few
more irregular nicks in the wood and more scuff marks. With his fingertips, he
felt the rough edges of each of the indentations, the holes in the peeling
paint and plaster, and the damage left by a child’s small kicking feet and
hands.

How much time had she spent locked inside this closed up
space? And immediately he understood why she was claustrophobic. Then he
remembered her reaction at Crandall House when she’d opened up that door only
to find that tiny closet.

At that moment, he decided to tear the walls out and make
the space fifty times the size. On instinct, sitting inside on his heels, he
closed the door and blackness descended. As a full grown adult, who had to bend
at the waist to fit in the tiny space, Jake tried to imagine what Kit must have
felt like as a child locked in, unable to get out. But the only feelings he
could manage were the obvious ones: the fear she must have felt at the thought
of not ever getting out, and the anger for being put there in the first place.