Seeing Red (5 page)

Her father was firmly of the biblical eye-for-an-eye mind-set. And Ellis had to admit that what her mind said was right and humane, her heart thought was a bunch of bullshit. Laura was dead, having never awakened from her coma. Uncle Greg and Aunt Jodi were ruined people. Nate Vance’s life had been marked by the shadow of this crime, driving him away from his home.

She noticed her dad was trying to pry the broken half of his Pop-Tart out of the toaster with a butter knife. “Unplug that thing before you electrocute yourself.”

He kept poking.

“If you fry yourself, Mom’ll know you’ve been sneaking junk food.”

The phone rang.

“That’s probably the food police right now,” Ellis said as she picked up the phone.

“Send Daddy to Aunt Jodi’s right away!” The panic in her mother’s voice arced through Ellis’s body.

“What’s wrong?”

“Greg’s lost his mind—” Something crashed in the background.

Ellis remembered the last time Uncle Greg had lost his mind: when the police had come with the news that Laura’s naked, unconscious body had been pulled out of a breakwater.

“Maybe you should call the police.”

“Just send Dad!” The line went dead.

The wild ride as Ellis’s dad drove them to Aunt Jodi’s felt much longer than its actual four miles.

Greg’s Corvette sat in the front yard, stopped at an angle to the front steps. The car’s spinning tires had kicked the St. Augustine grass out of its sandy bed, leaving a swerving outline of his route from the driveway to the porch. The driver’s door stood open.

Her father was out of the car before Ellis had even reached for the passenger door handle. He sprinted toward the front door, calling for her mother. “Marsha!”

By the time Ellis got inside, her dad had joined her mother in attempting to quiet Greg. Her uncle’s face was an unnatural purple, his eyes wild. He leaned forward, straining against her dad’s grip on his shoulders. Ellis’s mother stood between Greg and Jodi, calling his name in a voice so quiet that Ellis wondered why she bothered.

The room looked like the aftermath of a raucous teen party. Books were splayed on the floor. One of the toss pillows lay in the cold ash of the fireplace. Two lamps sat ready to topple off the edges of their tables, shades askew. The collectibles Jodi kept on her fireplace mantel lay shattered on the hearth. The bricks were littered with tiny arms and legs, porcelain hands gripping clusters of flowers, cherub faces split in half.

Jodi sat hugging herself on the sofa, withdrawn like a terrified child. Her face was wet with unnoticed tears, her eyes unfocused.

Ellis shot another glance at Greg. Her mother and father now stood shoulder to shoulder, facing him, inching him backward out of the living room.

He reached around her father and punched a finger in the air. “I will never,
never
forgive you for this!”

Ellis hurried to her aunt and knelt on the floor. “Aunt Jodi?” she said softly, her voice sliding beneath Greg’s angry words: “
You have no respect for our daughter . . . goddammit . . . you went behind my back . . .
”

Jodi rocked slightly.

Greg’s voice became more diffuse; her parents must have gotten him into the kitchen. Underneath Greg’s rants, Ellis could hear her father’s deep voice, low and lulling. It reminded her of how, when she’d been a child, he used to coax her back from a nightmare. Somewhere in the mix were the light strains of her mother’s voice, urging her brother away from hysteria.

Slowly, Ellis reached out and laid her hand on Jodi’s knee. “Aunt Jodi,” she said softly, “it’s me, Ellis.”

Jodi blinked.

“Are you hurt?” Ellis asked.

She couldn’t tell if Jodi shivered or shook her head. Her aunt kept her arms wrapped around herself.

The voices in the kitchen dropped another notch.

“Are you hurt?” Ellis asked again.

Jodi’s voice was shaking when she said softly, “He didn’t touch me. Just”—she waved her hand around the room—“did this.” Her forehead furrowed and her mouth twisted. She sobbed, “He doesn’t understand what it’s like f-f-for me. He doesn’t know . . . I h-had to do it. I couldn’t bear to hear that man’s name ever again.”

“Had to do what, Aunt Jodi?”

Jodi unfolded a crumpled tissue in her hand and blew her nose.

“What did you have to do?” Ellis asked. “Why is Uncle Greg so mad?”

“I had us taken off the list.”

“What list?” Even as she asked it, Ellis began to assemble the pieces.

“For notification of the parole hearing.” Fresh tears slipped from her eyes. “I just want to f-forget.” The last words rode out on a choked sob.

After all they’d been through, how could Jodi have done such a thing? Ellis felt a fraction of her uncle’s rage. It took all of her compassion, all of her self-control, not to leap to her feet and carry on just as Greg had.

Right then, her mother entered the room with a tall glass of water. She held it in front of Jodi’s face and said gently, “Drink this.”

“Did you know?” Ellis asked her mother.

“Not until now.”

As Ellis watched her mom sit down beside Jodi and slide a comforting arm around her, it struck her—maybe for the first time—the unusual nature of the relationship between these two women. They hadn’t been friends before Greg and Jodi were married; their relationship had been born solely of that marital bond. Even though Greg was Marsha’s brother, Marsha had somehow managed to balance that fact with her sustained friendship with his exwife.

Momma’s words when she had told Ellis her aunt and uncle were getting a divorce came back to her: “
It’s not Aunt Jodi’s fault, and it’s not Uncle Greg’s. Their marriage is another of Hollis Alexander’s victims—he killed it just the same as he took away our poor Laura. Greg and Jodi both need our love and support.
”

And her mother lived up to that commitment, even now.

Ellis looked at the aftermath of this most recent storm, at the shattered belongings, the broken woman.

Alexander was still hurting his victims, even without setting foot on Belle Island.

Hollis Alexander stood on a Charleston sidewalk that had been broken and heaved by the gnarled roots of the live oak that grew between it and Logan Street. He took a satisfied breath of free air and studied the black lacquered sixpanel door and the four steps that led up to it.

There had been a recent repair where the edge of a concrete step had chipped—smooth and white, bleached bone against weather-pitted gray.

The brass knocker had dulled. The windows were clouded with rain spots and dust. Vegetation threatened to swallow up the house.

Hollis pulled a comb from his pocket and ran it through his hair. Then he climbed the steps and sounded the heavy knocker.

Even though fifteen years locked up like an animal had marked his soul, his body had weathered it well; the image in the mirror told him he hadn’t changed all that much on the outside. Good. She would see him as she always had, as the boy who had befriended her, the boy she trusted.

It was taking a long time for her to answer. But that was to be expected.

Finally, the door opened. Justine Adams looked up at him from her wheelchair.

The instant her faded gray eyes met his, he knew just how easy this was going to be.

Ellis’s father walked her up the outside staircase and waited until she unlocked her front door.

“You sure you’ll be all right?” he asked.

“Of course.” Her dad had promised to drive Uncle Greg to Charleston to see Prosecutor Buckley. Greg was hoping to get some sort of electronic monitoring added to Alexander’s parole. That way they’d be able to check on the DPPPS Web site at any time and know right where he was.

Ellis thought it a fool’s errand. But it did give them something proactive to do.

Her dad turned to leave, then looked back over his shoulder at her.

“Seriously, Dad. Alexander has his freedom again. I doubt he’ll be stupid enough to come here and risk losing it.”

He gave her a look she hadn’t seen in years, one full of apology for the carefree youth that had been taken from her. With a nod, he went on.

If she didn’t work off some of this tension, she’d go mad. She decided to take a long, control-affirming, soulcleansing run.

Normally she kept a moderate, steady pace, managing her cardiac rate for maximum endurance. Today she pushed herself as if she were being pursued, running blindly on familiar rural roads, lost completely in the rhythm of her footfalls and the rasp of her strained breathing.

The thick humidity clung to her like an impregnable layer of plastic. Sweat slicked her body, matting her hair against her skull. Still she ran.

Finally, light-headedness began to nibble at her vision, and her leg muscles cramped. She slowed to a walk, gasping against the suffocating grip of exhaustion.

When she looked around, she realized just how far she’d run. She was on the rural road front of Belle Creek Stables, where she and Laura had spent so much of their time—where Laura had fallen in love with Nate Vance.

Ellis stilled, staring at the shaded pastures lining the road, the red metal roofs of the stables and outbuildings. Several horses grazed lazily in the heat, swatting bothersome insects with well-groomed tails. Her feet had brought her to the place she’d patently avoided for over fifteen years. It was only a little over six miles from her house but might as well have been a continent away.

For an instant, Ellis thought she heard Laura’s voice floating across the pasture, coaxing General Lee, her favorite mount, to accept the bridle. It was a scene Ellis had lived more times than she could count, and recalling it struck a fresh slash of grief across her heart.

Dizzy and nauseous, she stumbled to the fence. She slung her forearms over the top rail and laid her forehead on them, closing her eyes.

But closing her eyes was no defense against the memories that came to her like whispers and shadows. The pain was as wicked and raw as it had been years ago.

Maybe Aunt Jodi was right to want to forget. Maybe it was the only way she could stand to go on living.

Ellis and Uncle Greg had devoted the past fifteen years to making sure that no one forgot Laura and what had happened to her, that the horrible circumstances remained in the forefront of every parent’s mind, keeping them vigilant against predators like Hollis Alexander. And during the past six years, they’d extended that effort to making certain Alexander remained where he belonged—locked away from everyone’s innocent daughters.

But maybe that remembering was taking its own toll. Here they were all these years later, her with her locks and alarms, and teaching her yearly self-defense class, and Uncle Greg living alone, looking for happiness in shiny red Corvettes and badass speedboats.

Laura was still dead and the hole she’d left in their lives as big as ever.

Ellis squeezed her eyes tighter and willed the past to go away.

Then a hand fell heavily on her shoulder.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

M
iss—”

Ellis jerked upright, swung around, and landed a blow with her elbow in the center of the man’s chest. Then she jumped out of his reach, ready to fend off further attack.

She gasped in horror when she saw the slight, elderly man lying sprawled on his back in the tall grass. His straw cowboy hat had landed in the road, revealing thinning silver-white hair. He wheezed, eyes wide, palms raised in defense.

“Oh, dear God! Mr. J!” Ellis fell to her knees next to him. When she reached for him, he flinched. “I’m so sorry!” she said.

Old as Mr. Jacobson appeared, he still didn’t look a day older than when she and Laura had been girls. He still managed the stable, even though he had to be about a hundred.

He looked at her through tearing eyes.

“It’s me, Ellis Greene.” She saw him often enough around town that he should recognize her, but she might have knocked that recognition right out of him. “Just try to relax,” she said. “Your breath should come back.”

It did. Several minutes later.

He lifted himself onto one elbow. Ellis supported him from behind.

His voice was frail and thready when he said, “You got a kick like old General Lee.”

“Now that’s saying something.” Thank God, the man was recovering.

Winded though he was, Mr. J managed to sound wistful when he said, “General Lee, I miss that old bastard.” He gave a respectful pause. “That cousin of yours was the only one ’sides me that could ride him.”

General Lee was nothing like the dignified, silverhaired man after whom he had been named. He was hell on hooves. Laura had been fearless when it came to riding him.

Mr. J said, “Miz Von der Embse always thought she’d work up the courage to try; that’s why she kept him.”

Helaina Von der Embse was the heiress whose daddy had left her this old rice plantation some forty years ago. She’d turned it into a breeding stable and visited occasionally from New York or California, or wherever the hell she lived.