Seeing Red (2 page)

Angry sleet clattered against the courthouse windows—a freakish occurrence even in February around here. It seemed Mother Nature didn’t think it was right for everything to bloom when beautiful, perfect Laura lay pale and shrinking in her bed instead of finishing her senior year of high school.

Ellis shivered.

She couldn’t look at Hollis Alexander, the man sitting at the defense table. After a minute, she couldn’t even look at the jury. This was nothing like what she’d seen on TV.

This was the first day she’d been allowed in the courtroom, except when she’d testified. It was because she was a witness, but her dad wouldn’t have let her come anyway. She’d had to beg to come today.

Her dad took her hand and squeezed it. She felt his breath on her ear when he whispered, “You should be proud of yourself, Ellis. No matter what they say, you acted bravely and did right by Laura.”

Ellis didn’t feel brave; just the opposite. Fear had crept into her life, and she had a feeling it had moved in permanently. She shuddered, thinking what her life would be like if the jury let Hollis Alexander go free.

The prosecutor, Mr. Buckley, had warned them that the case was thin, that the jury was going to have to believe all the circumstantial evidence. He’d tried to keep Ellis from feeling pressured as she’d testified. But she knew exactly where things stood. Without her identifying Alexander in the first place, there would have been no arrest. Without her testimony, without the jury believing her every word, he would likely go free.

Of course, everyone had been careful not to say that straight out. But she saw it in the nervous uncertainty in Mr. Buckley’s eyes, in her uncle’s heavy sad stare each time he looked at her. And her dad . . . He sometimes looked at her with so much fear in his eyes—like she was the one on trial, and might be hauled off to prison. He hadn’t wanted her to testify at all. And if there had been any other way for the prosecutor to have made his case, Ellis was certain her father would have forbidden it. The fact that he allowed her to testify told her exactly how much of this case depended on her.

She’d told her story, just like Mr. Buckley had instructed. But what if the jury didn’t believe her? The man who attacked Laura would go free, and it would be all Ellis’s fault.

She closed her eyes and swallowed hard, but her stomach wouldn’t go back where it belonged.

The bailiff looked serious, bordering on grouchy, when he announced the judge in a flat voice.

The courtroom was so quiet, she could hear her father breathing next to her.

She lifted her eyes and looked at the back of Aunt Jodi’s head. Her hair was the same beautiful blond as Laura’s; Ellis wondered if Uncle Greg felt as sad when he looked at Aunt Jodi’s hair as Ellis did. She didn’t think her aunt had stopped crying since the trial began. Her head was bent, and Ellis heard her sniffles. Uncle Greg put an arm around her.

At first, Uncle Greg had been certain that Nate Vance had done this horrible thing to Laura. Sometimes, even with Hollis Alexander on trial, Ellis thought her uncle still believed it, or at least that Nate was in some way responsible for Hollis Alexander finding his way to Belle Island in the first place, which was ridiculous. Uncle Greg had never liked Nate, even before; he said Nate came from trash, so he could never be anything better. Laura was too good for “the likes of Nate Vance.”

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

Nate was great. He loved horses. He loved Laura. He would never have hurt her.

Ellis looked across the courtroom aisle. Nate sat on a bench entirely empty of anyone else, despite the crowded courtroom. His mom worked in the hospital cafeteria and couldn’t get off—at least that’s what Ellis wanted to think. She was pretty sure Nate’s mom had never said “family first.” From what Ellis had heard about the woman, she probably wouldn’t be here with him anyway. Nate’s dad . . . Well, Ellis didn’t know anything about him, other than it had been so long since Nate had seen him that he didn’t remember what he looked like. Uncle Greg said Nate’s dad was in prison somewhere, but Ellis didn’t believe it.

Nate was wearing a shirt and tie, just as he had each day of the trial. Ellis knew because she’d stood outside the courthouse and watched him go in every day when her dad thought she was at school. It was always the same tie; he probably had only one. She thought his daily presence was a real show of respect, because, like her, he hadn’t been allowed inside the courtroom except when he’d testified.

Now, waiting for the verdict, there wasn’t any shame or guilt in the way he held his head. Even though there were plenty of people who whispered behind his back and thought like Uncle Greg—that Nate still might have been involved some way in Laura’s “ordeal.”

Nate looked over at Uncle Greg. And Uncle Greg stared back—almost as hatefully as Hollis Alexander had stared at Ellis when she’d been on the witness stand. Nate didn’t look away from her uncle, though, like she had from Alexander. Nate kept his face calm and held Uncle Greg’s gaze until Uncle Greg finally turned away.

Ellis sat up straighter and tried to look as confident as Nate.

As she waited, things crept into her mind, things she tried to keep locked out. Laura’s stiff fingers curled against the braces they’d put on her to keep her hands from closing. The sound of the respirator hissing in and out, in and out.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” The judge’s voice sounded like gravel hitting pavement.

One of the jurors stood up. “We have, Your Honor.”

The judge ordered, “Please rise, Mr. Alexander.”

Ellis looked then at the man who’d hurt Laura. She didn’t want to, not after the way he’d looked at her when she’d testified, like he was a snake and she was a mouse with two broken legs. But it was the right thing to do.

She was glad he didn’t turn around and look at her. She could hardly breathe as it was.

Her dad’s arm went around her shoulder, and he held her close to his side. She saw he was holding her mother on his other side.

The judge asked the man in the jury box, “On the count of kidnapping, how do you find?”

“Guilty.” The man in the jury box looked right at Hollis Alexander when he said it, as if he wasn’t afraid.

Aunt Jodi’s sob sounded over the rest of the whispers in the room.

“On the count of criminal sexual conduct in the first degree?”

“Guilty.”

“On the count of assault and battery with intent to kill?”

“Guilty.”

Her dad let go of her and leaned forward, wrapping his arms around Aunt Jodi and Uncle Greg. Her mother joined them, putting her forehead against Aunt Jodi’s. Everyone was crying.

Ellis stood rigid, feeling like an island in a sea of movement.

Those words. Those charges. They brought pictures to her mind that she wished would disappear. They brought alive the pain and fear of Laura’s “ordeal.” Everyone had been so careful when they spoke about what happened when Ellis was within earshot. But she knew it had been bad—just look at what was left of her cousin. But hearing those words . . .

Her stomach rolled. She couldn’t cry. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t speak.

Right then, Hollis Alexander turned around and looked at her with those nearly colorless eyes. His lips moved, but she couldn’t figure out what he was saying.

Then, suddenly, she couldn’t see him anymore. All she could see was Nate’s blue tie as he stepped in front of her.

“Don’t look at him, Ellis,” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders. “He can’t hurt you now.”

She realized then what Hollis Alexander had said:

“
You’ll pay.
”

C
HAPTER
O
NE

S
ometimes, in the dark hours before dawn when sleep crept away like a scolded dog and left only unwanted restlessness behind, when memories clogged her throat and sucked the air from her room, Ellis broke her ironclad rule and opened her balcony door. But never, never did she do it without studying the darkness three stories below to ensure there was no unfamiliar movement, no human-shaped shadows among the palmettos and overgrown azaleas.

She went through the familiar routine of shutting off the alarm, removing the safety bar, unlocking the double locks, and opening the sliding door. Then she stepped out onto the balcony.

She wanted to blame her sleeplessness on a normal thing like the disintegration of her long relationship with Rory. She knew she’d broken his heart. As soft as she’d tried to make it, she’d hurt him deeply. Dear, sweet Rory. It wore on her like windblown sand on stone.

But that wasn’t the true reason for her insomnia—she wasn’t a normal person, with normal issues.

Summer was coming. She could smell it in the sourness of the low tide marsh, feel it in the sluggish heaviness of the humid air. Even if she could ignore the prompt from her senses, her own internal clock would wake old terrors and bitter recollections. Since that horrible summer sixteen years ago, sleeplessness had become a living, breathing being whose presence haunted her nights.

Ellis filled her lungs with a draught of fresh air and tried to clear her mind. And still nervousness lingered, a sticky spiderweb of memory that she would never be able to completely swipe away.

Her condo was a duplex, over one other residence and a hurricane-mandated breakaway parking garage. Logic told her she was perfectly safe; she’d selected this place, inside a gated community, with great care. Still, she strained her ears for a stray footfall, sniffed the light breeze for the smell of cheap cologne.

The memory of that smell—too strong, too sharp—would taunt her for the rest of her life. If only she’d investigated when she’d been drawn from sleep, when that smell had first teased her senses. If only. The odor hadn’t awakened her. She couldn’t say what had roused her out of her dreams. But the odor was what she remembered of that moment. It had slipped in the bedroom window on the moist night air, distinctive and unpleasant. It had been as if the man had saturated his clothing with a drugstore knockoff of Aramis in an effort to mask his own body odor. But that had been there, too, lying just beneath the artificial fragrance—a souredged blade swaddled in a handful of wildflowers and cloying spice.

Ellis leaned her elbows on the balcony railing and closed her eyes, concentrating on the scent medley of broken pine needles underscored with jasmine and brackish water. The humidity amplified everything, making all smells more pungent, as if decaying South Carolina vegetation, brackish water, and pluff mud weren’t pungent enough.

She’d moved to this side of town, the marsh and river side, away from the beach that had been her childhood home. Away from the house that sat side by side with Laura’s. It hadn’t seemed to make a difference. Maybe she should have left the island altogether. She’d toyed with the idea. And yet, trading the scant security of what was familiar for the complete vulnerability of a place wholly new seemed like trading one fatal disease for another.

Here she had her routine. Here she knew her limitations, had structured her life so she could live within them.
Here
was better than some unknown there.

Her inability to face living in unfamiliar surroundings had cost her two extra semesters in completing her elementary ed degree. She had commuted to the College of Charleston and had always structured her class schedule so she would be back in Belle Island, behind the safety of closed doors, by dark.

Teaching fourth grade in her small hometown had worked out well. No one here questioned when she scheduled all of her parent meetings during daylight hours.

Ellis stood on her balcony, turning her mind away from summer’s arrival, toward next fall’s class. Preparation for the next school year is what had gotten her through the past few summers. Maybe this year she’d add a field trip to—

The ring of her telephone bit into the silence. Ellis jerked away from the railing with her heart rocketing up her throat.

As she hurried back into the bedroom, she looked at the clock. It was nearly five a.m. Pretty late for pranksters. Too early for everything else. That left bad news.

She snatched up the phone. “Hello?”

“I figured you’d be awake.”

“Dad? Is everything all right? Mom . . . ?”

“We’re fine, baby. I know you can’t sleep either this time of year, and since misery loves company, I thought I’d take a chance and call.”

“You know me too well.” She heard the
tappity-tap
of her father’s keyboard and knew he’d been passing his sleepless hours poking around on the Internet.

“When are you leaving for Martha’s Vineyard?” he asked.

“Dad, I told you. Rory and I need some time apart.” Rory’s Grandma Ginny had a place in Martha’s Vineyard. Over the past four years, the annual trip north had been a welcome escape from the demons that rode in on the South Carolina summer humidity.

Her dad sighed. She knew he loved Rory like a son; they sailed and fished together. This was hard on her dad in ways that reached beyond her relationship with Rory. And that made Ellis feel even worse.

Her relationship with Rory had always been like a favorite sweater—warm, comfortable, uncomplicated. But two weeks ago, things had changed. He’d taken the step she’d thought she’d silently and sufficiently discouraged.