Twisted Justice (10 page)

“Actually, George, I do need a favor. Steve asked me to call Kim and ask her to drop off some photographic equipment she'd borrowed.” Laura felt her body stiffen, a reaction to the blatant lie. “He's away for the weekend and I thought I'd get on this. Could you give me her home phone?”

“You just hang on while I get it,” George said. A few moments later, he read off the seven digits. “She's moving, as you know. It might be this weekend.”

“Great. Thanks, George, and give my love to the family. See
you at softball one of these days. Your Melanie and my Nicole take the game much more seriously than my Natalie.”

He chuckled. “I know what you mean. Okay, Laura. Nice talking to you.”

“Same here. Good night now.”

Laura took a breath and dialed the number. It was seven fifteen. Could Steve actually be at that woman's house with her children? It's not possible, she thought. Laura assumed that Kim had no use for kids, but she might act like she did if she wanted Steve badly enough.

“God, I just don't know what else to do,” she said aloud.

Three rings. A click. Of course. Like Steve, Kim would have an answering machine too.

“Hi there. Sorry I can't take your call right now, but please leave a message and I'll get back to you just as soon as I can.” No identification, but it was Kim's voice all right, her sexy public voice.

“Kim, this is Laura Nelson. I'm looking for my husband.” Laura didn't know what else to say. “Listen, I don't want you anywhere near my children. I'm warning you. Stay away from them.”

She hung up, glancing for the hundredth time out the front window. There was still plenty of light for the late June evening as Marcy's car pulled into the driveway and headed toward the garage. Should she tell Marcy the kids still weren't home? No, she decided. Surely they'd be home soon. She called Steve's again. The damn answering machine. She slammed down the phone.

That was it. She was going over. Marcy could keep an eye out for them in the meantime. She picked up the receiver and dialed the phone once more. “Hi, Marcy.” She struggled to sound cheerful. “Have a nice day in St. Pete?”

“I did, but I'm ready to get into my robe and plunk down in front of the TV.”

“Sounds good. Listen, can I ask a favor? I have a little emergency in the ER that should just take a few minutes.” Another outright lie. “Would you watch out for Steve and the kids and tell them I'll be right back?”

After Marcy agreed, Laura hung up before the housekeeper could ask any questions. Hot angry tears spilled down her cheeks as she backed the Olds wagon out of the garage. She hadn't bothered to touch up her hair or lipstick. Trance-like, she drove past Tampa City Hospital and across the bridge that connected Davis Island to Tampa's mainland. An ache in her throat, she noted that Steve's billboard had been replaced with a car dealer's ad. The thermometer near the bridge registered eighty-one, and it had started to drizzle. Before reaching Steve's downstairs apartment on Oregon, she pulled over to dab at her eyes, blow her nose, and wipe the sweat off her brow. If the kids were there, she didn't want them to see her such a mess.

It was eight ten, still plenty of light outside as Laura approached Steve's place. Parking behind a late-model yellow Firebird she found vaguely familiar, she silently advised herself to remain calm. Once she got the kids home safely, she would figure out what to do about Steve.

Despair and panic eclipsed anticipation as she walked to the front door and pushed the doorbell. Did it even work? This was not exactly the high-rent district. The house needed a lot of work. The roof was sagging on one side and the cement stairs had begun to crumble. The houses on the block were built close together and she noticed that they were in much better repair than the one Steve occupied, which needed a paint job badly. Two stories high, these were much older than the homes on Davis Island. As she glanced around, she saw a child in an upstairs window next door looking at her. A girl with pigtails and a cute, inquisitive face. About the age of the twins, Laura guessed. She did not want to embarrass the child by waving, so she proceeded to knock on Steve's door. No response. She knocked again before trying the doorknob, which turned easily. Stepping inside, she walked across the empty living room. There was a sofa and two matching chairs in a faded plaid pattern. Newspapers, dirty dishes, and empty beer cans were scattered about.

Disgusting, she thought. How could a person so meticulous about his personal appearance be such a slob? What a bad influence on the kids. The last month must have been much easier on Marcy without him around. One less person to pick up after.

“Hello?” she called.

She picked her way through the hallway and looked into the room on the right, a bedroom. Besides the unmade bed and clothes strewn about, only a bureau filled the room.

Down the hall, she stepped into the kitchen. What a mess there too — it seemed that Steve had not washed a single dish since he'd moved in. Completely repulsed, Laura fumbled in her cluttered purse for her car keys, nearly tripping on the foot before she noticed it.

A human foot. Only inches away.

The body of a woman lay on the kitchen floor. Blank eyes stared at the ceiling and feet — nails painted a fiery red — protruded from spiked high heels. Laura gasped as she took in the black eyes frightfully wide open, the short, dark hair neatly combed behind her ears exposing diamond cluster earrings shaped like starfish. She wore a sleeveless cobalt blue dress above tanned bare legs and the sling-back heels precisely matched the dress's color. But it was her chest that riveted Laura's attention — the gaping wound in her chest, the blood that was everywhere.

At a glance Laura knew the woman — and she
knew
the woman — soaked in a pool of blood on Steve's tiled kitchen floor, was dead.

Kim Connor was dead.

Nevertheless, Laura knelt down beside the body, feeling for the carotid artery with her right hand, trying to find a pulse. She knew she wouldn't find one even though the flesh was warm. Ripping open the top two buttons of the dress with both hands — the blue cloth was warm and sticky, drenched with blood — she reached in. The chest was immobile, no trace of respiration. Should she try manual open-chest cardiac massage? As she inched closer to
make absolutely sure there was no pulse, her left hand, sticky with blood, landed on something cold and metallic nestled against Kim's hip. She ignored it, never taking her eyes from the woman's chest. Finally, she stood up.

Kim was dead. Who had killed her? And here, on Steve's kitchen floor? Steve? Could he have done this? And the kids? Had they been here?

Help. She needed to call for help. That's when Laura heard footsteps behind her.

Two uniformed cops had let themselves in while Laura stood mute and unmoving. They'd been cruising the Hyde Park area when the request came through to respond to a call from a female who had reported hearing a gunshot from upstairs at this Oregon address. The front door had been open and unlocked, and at precisely 8:13 p.m., the officers let themselves in, planning a cautious walk through.

“False alarm,” Belinsky, a big-bellied Tampa veteran, mumbled just before he heard the wheezy voice of Parker, his younger partner: “Freeze. Police.”

Darting toward the kitchen, Belinsky entered a scene that looked like a staged tabloid. Hands bloody, a blonde female stood staring down at her apparent victim: a familiar looking, petite female with short dark hair lying in a pool of blood on the tile floor, a Colt thirty-eight beside her. Parker's .45 was locked on the blonde's back. Belinsky started blankly at his partner for only an instant before drawing his own gun. He felt cold sweat trickle down his neck and down his forehead into his eyes as the blonde started to turn.

“Hands up,” Belinsky barked, his gun taking aim at the center of the blonde's chest. She seemed dazed and disheveled. Maybe a crazy?

“Lady, hands up,” Belinsky repeated more slowly as he inched closer. “Easy now.” Signaling his partner to stay still, he said evenly, “Let's nobody get hurt.” His warning too late for the young woman bathed in blood on the floor.

In slow motion, Laura lifted her hands up into the air.

“I got her,” Parker said in a high-pitched wheeze.

“Okay, man,” Belinsky said as he inched close enough to reach down and grab the piece that lay on the floor with his handkerchief. “I got the weapon.”

Belinsky placed the thirty-eight on the Formica counter, moving quickly to slip the handcuffs off his belt. Clamping them shut over Laura's bare wrists, he was careful not to smear her bloody palms as he pulled her arms behind her back. She had not moved.

“Stay put, lady,” Belinsky grunted, “Parker, keep watching her.”

Kneeling over the bloody body, he carefully checked for a pulse, respiration, any sign of life. “Dead as dead can be,” he announced. “Parker, ambulance first, then the station. There's a phone in the living room.” Belinsky turned toward Laura as Parker walked out. “Name,” he demanded.

“What,” Laura whispered.

“Your name, lady,” Belinsky repeated.

“Laura Nelson,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

“Do you live here?”

“No.” Again almost inaudible.

“Speak up. Do you know who does live here?”

“My husband,” Laura answered a little louder this time.

“You don't live with your husband?”

“No — not anymore,” Laura managed. She was shaking now, all traces of color drained from her face.

“Do you know this woman?” Belinsky demanded.

The younger cop returned and started in with his own questions as he pointed to Kim's body. “Do you know who she is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, are you going to tell us or do we book you first?” Parker grabbed Laura's arm.

“Ms. Nelson,” Belinsky said in a conciliatory tone, “why don't you just answer the questions. For starters, who is that woman?”

“Kim Connor,” Laura answered simply.

Belinsky whistled. “Connor? The Channel Eight News lady. Thought I recognized her.”

“Doesn't look so good blood soaked, does she?” Parker commented. He let go of Laura's arm with a little shove. “Wasn't she on with some guy all the time? Both their mugs are plastered all over town.”

“That's my husband,” Laura said quietly.

Heading north on I-75 Sunday night, the kids finally fell asleep. Relieved, Steve drank the silence in. He had to clear his head, come to grips with what was happening. Back when he was a social worker, he would often counsel his clients to simplify their view of whatever situation was troubling them. That small act, he saw again and again, was the first step toward making any terrible reality more manageable. Well, maybe now he could do the same for himself. He had to. Had to think this through, but how? The problem was, he didn't know where to start. With himself? With Kim? No, that was way too much at this moment. Easier to start with Laura.

Both hands drumming the steering wheel, he imagined her reaction to the empty house. She'd be shaken up. One thing anyone would say about Laura was that she was devoted to those kids. He had woken them at dawn on Saturday and hastily packed their duffel bags with clothes and toys, before herding them into a rented station wagon as quietly as he could. Originally, he had only planned an overnight trip to Clearwater Beach while the brakes on his Ford were being replaced, wanting to show Laura not to mess with him, acting like she could just kick him out with no job, no house, no nothing.

But that was before.

And now, after she learned that he'd taken them far away, she'd follow, and then they'd all be back together. That was pretty simple, right? It was a plan, he needed a plan. He and the kids would head for his father's house in Traverse City. Laura would
follow, and they'd have time to work things out. She would have no choice. It was his plan: it could happen.

It really could. It had to. What happened with him and Kim was just that, an unfortunate mistake.

Still, when he and the kids were in the movie theatre, what had possessed him to check his answering machine? He inhaled sharply, sucking in the silence as if it were oxygen. Before the kids had finally fallen asleep in the car, they had peppered him with questions.

“How long are we going to be gone?” Kevin asked.

“We'll see.”

“When are we going to get there? Can we go fishing?”

“Kevin, shut up with all the questions,” Mike demanded.

Steve attempted a smile, though he could not keep his fingers from drumming even then. “Relax, Mike. It'll be an adventure. There's fishing, and hunting —”

“But Mom doesn't even know we're gone,” Mike said. “We were supposed to go to the beach today for Grandpa's birthday. Does she even know that your dad is sick?”

“You let me worry about your mother. Like I said, Grandpa Nelson's got the flu and he lives by himself so it's good that we're headed up there.”

“But we don't even know him,” Mike argued.

“We'll fix that,” Steve said.

“Hey, Dad, Mom always packs our clothes for an overnight,” Kevin added. “She'll be mad that you just threw stuff in a bag.”

“I'm hungry,” Natalie complained.

“We'll eat later,” said Steve. “Can't stop now. Besides, Patrick's sleeping.”

“But Dad —” Natalie tried again.

“I said no, not now. Everybody be quiet — don't wake up your brother.”

“I‘m hungry too,” Nicole complained. “Do you want us to starve to death?”

Steve turned to flash a stern look. “Stop being so sassy.”

One by one, the rest of the kids eventually fell asleep. When Kevin stirred and asked what time it was, Steve told him midnight, though it was really two fifteen. After driving two more hours, Steve finally checked in at the Roadside Motel in Forsyth, Georgia, just north of Macon. There were two double beds in the drab room, which was warm and smelled like mildew, and although Steve adjusted the air-conditioning, it didn't get much better. Steve, Mike, and Kevin crowded into one bed, and Patrick and the twins slept in the other.