Seeing Red (10 page)

Wayne Carr drove into Charleston in the midst of rushhour traffic. Half of him wanted to do a U-turn and head back to Belle Island. He didn’t relish breathing the same air as Hollis Alexander, even in a public place. But the practical half of him knew this meeting was unavoidable.

Shortly after crossing the Cooper River, Carr exited to surface streets. He followed the directions Alexander had given him and found Beulah’s Pigs ’n Grits, the holein-the-wall where they were to meet for breakfast. Carr’s stomach rolled at the dirty-windowed sight of the place.

After parking on the street and hoping all the pieces of his Jaguar would still be there when he returned, he entered the cafe. The lighting was dim. A cursory glance at the torn vinyl floor and the yellowed walls told him he should be glad for the lack of illumination. There was a long counter with stools on the right, booths on the left. Alexander sat in the one nearest the door. He smiled, not looking a bit older than the day he was convicted.

Carr’s hand went to the gray at his temples, wondering at Alexander’s secret to youth.

As Carr sat down, Alexander said, “I recommend the pecan waffles.”

The waitress shuffled up to the table and looked down over her considerable bosom.

Carr handed her the menu. “Just coffee.” And he wasn’t going to touch that.

Alexander raised a brow. “Clear you ain’t ever been denied good food. That’s one of the things you don’t get in prison, you know—pecan waffles.”

Had Alexander’s eyes been this cold before? Carr looked away, drawing a sweetener packet from the holder.

“So,” he prompted, anxious to get out of here. “Your proposition?”

Alexander leaned back in his seat. He pulled up the sleeve of his T-shirt. “Got me a new tattoo.”

The word
justice
was written inside a lightning bolt that shot down from the crest of Alexander’s left shoulder.

Carr took a deep breath.

“Got it high.” Alexander smiled. “Don’t like to ruin the image for the ladies.”

The waitress delivered the coffee and Alexander’s waffles. Alexander dug right in. Carr took his time adding cream and sweetener to his coffee and stirring it.

Finally, Alexander said, “Here’s the deal. You write your stories in the paper, like the ones you did back then, the ones that told the
truth.
” He hissed the word
truth
through gritted teeth. “Help me get a lawyer to prove I was sent up for somethin’ I didn’t do. And you can write my story—
beginning to end.
”

The way he said those last words made Carr’s neck hairs stand on end. He pushed his coffee cup away. “You’re saying Nate Vance raped and beat Laura Reinhardt?”

“Yeah. I’d seen him plenty of nights on the beach with that girl. And
I
went to prison for the little prick.”

“I don’t see why you want to do this now,” Carr said. “No one’s seen Vance since your trial. Who knows where he is? Just move on. You won’t get those years back. Don’t waste your next ones chasing this.”

Alexander dropped his fork. Syrup splattered and the handle clattered against the plate. “It don’t matter to you what I do with my ’next ones.’ Just write the damn articles.”

With a shake of his head, Carr said, “I can’t see what good my articles will do. I have a responsibility to my community; opening this up will upset a lot of innocent people. And I don’t have any connections with criminal attorneys. I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.” With a feeling of relief, he started to get up.

Alexander grabbed Carr’s hand. His grip was that of a man who worked out. “Sit. Down.”

The venom in Alexander’s voice made Carr do just that.

After a moment, Alexander reached onto the seat next to him and brought up a large manila envelope. Without a word, he slid it across the table. Then he leaned back and rested his arm on the back of the booth.

Carr didn’t like the look in the man’s eyes.

Sweat beaded on Carr’s forehead as he opened the flap and peeked inside.

Christ almighty
.

He closed his eyes and the envelope. If this got out, he could kiss life as he knew it good-bye.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

H
ollis Alexander had cost Prosecutor Buckley yet another night’s sleep. He sat in his office with a pounding head and burning eyes. Today he felt every day of his fifty-eight years.

He tipped his chair back as far as it would go and stared at the ceiling, trying to separate his emotions from his perspective on Hollis Alexander’s newfound freedom.

Buckley had been a widower for nine years. He missed Helen every night, but none so much as last night. She’d been his sounding board and his strength when the case he’d been putting together against Alexander—the hardest and most frustrating experience of his career—hadn’t seemed to have two steady legs to stand on.

In fact, she’d been the first to make him see—when he’d been having trouble making a case against the most likely suspect, Laura Reinhardt’s boyfriend—that maybe, just maybe, the Greene girl was right and the perpetrator
had
been the mystery man she’d seen outside on the path that night. Not that that belief had done him much good. They had no way to ID the man, no way to compare him to the evidence found at the scene.

But shortly after that, Ellis Greene had identified him in a bizarre twist of fate.

Once they had Hollis Alexander in custody, they discovered a previous arrest for rape and several accusations of window-peeping in his past. The rape case had resulted in acquittal, so it wasn’t admissible in court. But it certainly had helped cement the Reinhardt case in Buckley’s mind.

Alexander had been slick and organized and patient. He’d even come up with a defense when the fingerprint and hair samples confirmed he’d been on the scene; he admitted to peeping in Laura’s window but had sworn he’d done nothing else.

Buckley’s case had relied on circumstantial evidence and a fourteen-year-old girl’s testimony. It had been traumatic enough for Ellis Greene, losing her cousin, having been sleeping right there in the room with her the night she’d been kidnapped. How long could he expect the girl to hold up? He’d feared, when in the courtroom, Ellis would collapse under the pressure of testifying in front of Alexander, that her story would become confused and muddled under cross-examination. But she’d been strong and steady and completely believable. And so they’d won.

Helen had said they would.

Right now, Buckley would give his eyeteeth to hear Helen say Hollis Alexander was a changed man, that his soul had been cleansed by his time in prison, and he wasn’t a danger to anyone’s daughter.

But men with that kind of twisted sickness inside them don’t recover, don’t change.

Most likely, Alexander would control himself for a while, until temptation grew too great. Maybe by then he’d have moved on to less conspicuous pastures, leave teenage girls in Charleston County alone. Little consolation.

The thing that made Buckley break out in a cold sweat was his conviction that Alexander
was
going to commit another crime. It was only a matter of time.

He should never have been freed—even conditionally.

But the man had met all criteria for his parole. He’d comported himself with extraordinary decency and diligence to tasks throughout his incarceration, reinforcing his claim of innocence. With all of the glowing reports, it would be easy enough for someone to believe that perhaps Alexander was what he’d always claimed to be—a man wrongly accused, wrongly convicted.

Buckley thought it was all a means to an end. Alexander had carefully cultivated his new self. Patience had been his key to freedom.

When Greg Reinhardt and Bill Greene had been in his office yesterday, Buckley had painted an optimistic picture for them. He’d assured them that Alexander had been deemed worthy of parole and a second chance at life. Buckley had also pledged to personally keep close contact with Alexander’s parole officer. It was the only thing he could offer.

Greg hadn’t been fooled. He’d left here with murder in his eyes. And Buckley couldn’t blame him. Hell, if he’d been Greg Reinhardt, he probably would have killed Alexander with his bare hands before the trial; no court could give a father satisfactory justice for such mistreatment of his child.

God help him if he had to prosecute Greg Reinhardt for assaulting Alexander. How in the hell could any man with a heart do that?

Buckley sat up in his chair and rubbed his hands over his face, his gut heavy with dread. Alexander had suppressed his violent tendencies for fifteen years. Buckley feared an explosion of that pent-up rage was inevitable. This man was going to do something truly horrible again—and there wasn’t a damn thing Buckley could do to prevent it.

Driving to her parents’ house, Ellis’s thoughts were filled not with her father’s mysterious telephone summons of a few minutes ago, but with Nate Vance.

A part of her wished she hadn’t returned to the plantation today. Then Nate could have remained a shadow of a memory, and she could have continued on with her youthful perception and adolescent imaginings. He’d certainly grown into the ruggedly handsome man she’d expected him to. But the shock of actually seeing him with all of the boy stripped away had left her rattled. It had taken hours for her heart to settle back into a slow, steady rhythm and her hands to stop trembling. Her mind, however, still hadn’t calmed.

No matter what she’d tried to do to distract herself, memories of him kept popping up, mingling with the reality of the man he now appeared to be. And the same questions—some new, some fifteen years old—kept nagging: Why had he left without a good-bye? Why hadn’t he ever contacted her? Why hadn’t he come back for Laura’s funeral? Why was he back in Belle Island after all these years? Why had he seemed so happy to see her at first, then withdrawn? And why in God’s name had he asked her not to tell anyone he was here?

All of these answerless questions were brewing a monster headache.

She pulled up in front of her parents’ house and shut off the car. Rubbing her temples, she sat for a moment. As always, she had mixed feelings about being here, which only added to her tension.

The house was a typical story-and-a-half Carolina house, with a metal roof, dormers, deep eves, and a wraparound porch. Its first story was raised five feet above the sand. And it was a mirror image of Laura’s house next door. Ellis’s bedroom window had faced Laura’s.

Uncle Greg and Aunt Jodi sold their house soon after Laura had been moved into long-term care. But Ellis’s parents remained in the house they’d lived in all of their married lives.

Apparently, they’d done a better job of disassociating the place from the crime next door than Ellis had. Or, she thought, maybe it was easier if you didn’t have to look at the dark eye of Laura’s bedroom window the last thing every night and the first thing every morning.

The two houses were separated by a narrow beach access pathway that rose over the low dune and cut through the sea oats. The wraparound porches had steps on all four sides, which had made them perfect for games of flashlight tag and hide-and-seek.

When she and Laura had been little, they’d used their flashlights to send their own secret code from one bedroom window to the other long after they were supposed to be asleep. And when they’d gotten older, Ellis would watch for Laura’s bedroom light to come on at eleven-thirty—Laura’s curfew. Then Ellis would wait. Laura always signaled good night with her flashlight before she went to bed.

And after that awful night, what had once been the best part of living there had become the worst. Ellis never returned home without a knot in her stomach.

Her uncle’s Corvette sat in her parents’ drive. The knot tightened.

She could hear her uncle’s raised voice as she approached the front door. Quietly, she let herself in.

Ellis’s parents were seated in the living room, watching with tired, drawn faces as Uncle Greg paced in front of them.

No one noticed she was here. She remained where she was, watching.

“I’m going to find him,” Greg said, slamming a fist into his palm. “I’m going to drive up and down every street in Charleston. I’m going to question every lowlife, and I’m going to find him.”

“And do what?” her mother asked.

Uncle Greg blinked at her as if she were slow-witted. “He needs to know
someone’s
watching him. He needs to remember.” After a pause, he said, “Maybe I can provoke him into doing something that’ll violate his parole. Send his ass back to prison where he belongs.”

However wrong of her it was, part of Ellis wished he’d just do that.

“Damn Jodi!” Greg turned and stalked back across the living room.

Ellis’s dad said, “It’s not Jodi’s fault—”

Greg spun and glared at her father. “Did they let the bastard out the last two times? No! Because we were there to put a face on the crime. If we’d been there . . . ” He exhaled strongly through his nose and shook his head.

“It might not have made any difference. You heard what the prosecutor said; Alexander’s been a model prisoner—”

“How can you believe that?” Greg shouted. “You
saw
her. You saw what he did to my little girl! He’s a monster. It may not be tomorrow, but he’ll do it again—and again and again.”