Twisted Page 3

  Now he was closer. He could hear her breathing, harsh in the night. But he could hear Jed, too, moving in from the side. He’d obviously spotted her with his thermal imaging goggles.

  She’d changed direction and was headed for the road; in another few minutes, she might have reached it. Not that anyone traveled the byways of Adams County in the middle of the night, but anything was possible.

  No need to concern themselves with that now, though. Eric circled around to cut off her escape and, they converged on her mere yards from the blacktop. In daylight, she might even have been able to make out the end of the forest. But tonight she saw only Eric as he stepped out in front of her, blocking her path. She jerked to a stop, freezing like the deer he’d first thought her, and let out a little yelp. She’d removed the duct tape somewhere. He’d have to go back along the trail and find it—Jed would have left fingerprints when putting it on her.

  He grinned, and she spun on her toes, only to run smack into Jed, who’d come up behind her. She screamed in earnest then, and Jed clocked her. The woods went silent once more.

  Chapter Three

  It has been twenty-four years since Janie Talbot’s murder, twenty-two since her father was convicted of raping her and strangling her with her own jump rope, eight since he was stabbed to death in prison, and four since he was exonerated. Tilly Watkins, Janie Talbot’s best friend, has three girls of her own. They are the only children in their neighborhood who don’t skip rope.

  from Seven, Eight, Shut the Gate: The Janie Talbot Story by Lucy Caldwell

  LUCY ROLLED OVER, watching the lights pass her bedroom window once again. Every time she managed to doze off, a noise or a light would startle her awake. Was someone out there, watching? Or was she just so unused to the country that its once-familiar rhythms now set her on edge? The stress of the day had taken its toll. She was exhausted, but sleep eluded her.

  Giving up, she hauled her body out of bed and slipped downstairs. A light still shone under Tim’s door, and the clatter of keys gave away his occupation. Video games, online chatting sites, and instant messages opened a world to him that remained opaque to her. He had a Facebook page, but when she’d asked whether she could be his friend, his horrified look had said it all. And his studies . . .he’d gone to college to get, of all things, a business degree. Nothing could be more foreign to Lucy.

  So she slipped past his door, leaving him to his late-night journeys, and tiptoed down the creaky stairs to study her mother’s case file.

  She still couldn’t get over the ease of its acquisition. She’d been prepared to fight to get her hands on the information, not to have it handed over. Had it been sanitized? Was that why Donovan had turned it over so lightly? If so, it had likely happened long before his arrival. But no, chances were better that the investigation had simply been shoddy from the beginning. Al Pike never worked harder than absolutely necessary, and a prostitute’s death wouldn’t have merited missing his golf game.

  She flipped on a lamp and opened the folder. The pictures were on top, curiously flat against the vibrancy of her own memories and dreams. She would study them by day, though, since the living room lights didn’t provide a great deal of illumination.

  Next up, the autopsy report. She tried, really tried to see her mother as just another victim. But the clinical words defeated her. Cecile had suffered defensive wounds on her arms and hands and four shallow stab wounds on her back before the final coup de grâce. Bruising on her face indicated she’d been beaten. The medical examiner hadn’t bothered with a sexual-assault exam. Lucy didn’t recognize the man’s name, but she wrote it down. Maybe she could dig him up and talk to him about the exam, see if there was anything he hadn’t put in his notes because he hadn’t believed it to be relevant.

  As she scribbled questions she wanted to ask, she realized her eyes had filled with tears. She rubbed them away. She couldn’t afford side trips into sentimentality. If she wanted to find her mother’s killer, she had to stay calm, professional, and alert. She’d no sooner reminded herself to stay cool than a car passed by, the moron behind the wheel leaning on the horn and practically scaring her out of her skin.

  Fury shut off the tears. Two in the morning, there was nothing for the guy to honk at. Probably no real reason for him to be on the road. Just some idiot with an axe to grind. Still, he’d gotten her adrenaline flowing, and now it was even less likely she’d manage any sleep. She turned the page and began to examine the names of the men Al Pike had interviewed in her mother’s case.

  • • •

  ETHAN RUBBED HIS eyes and winced as the grit beneath his lids scratched against his corneas. Two thirty in the morning. Not the time to call his sister and force her to be certain his nieces—Allison, age eight, and Emily, age five—were safe in their beds, no matter how much he might want to. Artie Buck, however, was fair game.

  “Been waiting,” he said when Ethan identified himself. “Which one did you choose?”

  “I read the Talbot book. Skimmed the others.”

  “You like them?”

  “Not particularly, no. Why would anyone spend her life immersing herself in other people’s pain and misery?”

  “You do. I do.”

  “We’re cops. We have to.”

  “She’s a victim. Maybe she has to, too. And she’s good. If something happened to me, I’d want her to tell my story.”

  “I’ll give you that.” Ethan rubbed his hands over his arms where goose bumps had risen. “Those books were creepy as hell. So what can you tell me about her?”

  “Not much, given how long I’ve known her. She was just a kid first time I saw her. Scrawny, but scrappy. My partner, Todd Caldwell, he caught Lucy stealing stuff for her little brother. More than fifteen years ago now. Todd and Karen, they couldn’t have children, so just like that he took those two home and made them his own. Probably wasn’t legal, but who was gonna complain with the system overloaded as it is? Karen got sick. Died a couple years later. Tim was still a kid, and Todd wouldn’t leave him with anyone, so he pretty much grew up in the house.”

  “She watches him too carefully. There’s something off there. At his age, he should be spending the summer with his buddies, not his sister.”

  A scratchy sound, then a long inhalation told Ethan that Buck had lit a cigarette.

  “Observant bastard, aren’t you? I’d heard that, but it’s good to have it confirmed.

  “It’s not my business to say what’s between Lucy and Tim. I doubt he’s happy she’s hunting a murderer, since he’s lost three parents already. Probably went along because he figured he could protect her. Hell, he might be right. Fact is, Lucy worries more about him than she needs to. He couldn’t pass the academy physical, but he’s not going to drop dead any minute, either.”

  Some people have bad luck and others have no luck at all. Lucy fell into the latter category.

  “And your partner? You said three parents.”

  “Punk stabbed him in the kidney one night a couple months back when he was buying cat food. Dumb fuck shoulda gone to the grocery store, not the damned gas station.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too.” Silence fell between them. On the job or off, cops’ lives always seemed to end badly.

  “When we caught the three-time loser who killed Todd, we told Lucy. Wanted her to know we were bringing him in. It was courtesy, you understand?” He did. “She walked right up to him in booking—no one thought twice about her being there—and told him he had two choices: he could make a deal with the DA to plead guilty if they took the death penalty off the table, and he’d have a chance at getting out before he hit fifty, or she’d save the state the cost of a trial and kill him before he saw twenty-five.”

  “Surely he complained?”

  “Not a peep. He believed every word she said. I did, too. She doesn’t much care what happens to herself, which makes
her a damned effective investigator but gives me heartburn.” And more, Ethan guessed. Artie Buck might sound casually disinterested about Lucy and Tim, but they were his partner’s kids, which made them his.

  “She got the estate settled—Todd had a solid life insurance policy, so they should be doing okay in that respect anyway—and then took off. Didn’t tell me where she was headed. She decided it was time to go home, huh?”

  “Seems like.”

  “You gonna watch out for her?”

  “With all due respect, sir, the woman travels with an arsenal. She can watch out for herself.” But it couldn’t hurt to be sure.

  • • •

  ETHAN’S PHONE RANG at seven, a scant four hours after he’d crawled into bed, and he debated the wisdom of answering it. Keith Arlen had the morning shift, so Ethan didn’t have to be at the station until one, but in Dobbs Hollow “working hours” didn’t seem to apply to the chief of police. If folks couldn’t find him at the station, they just called him at home.

  A glance at the caller ID, though, showed TJ’s cell.

  “Hey, boss,” she said when he picked up. “I’m parked outside the Sadler place. I stopped by to bring them muffins this morning. Thing is, someone beat me here.”

  Ethan paused, unable to speak as he pulled his T-shirt over his head. “What happened?”

  “A couple hours ago, someone tossed a couple bricks through the front window, wrapped in paper with explicit instructions to get out of town.”

  “They okay?”

  “Yeah. Pissed off, but not hurt. According to Lucy, she swept up the glass, reboarded the window and went back to bed.”

  “Why the hell didn’t they call it in?”

  TJ’s silence answered for her, and he blew out a deep breath to ease his frustration. Okay, so Lucy’s distrust of the Dobbs Hollow residents included him. He’d led plenty of investigations where suspects, witnesses and even victims didn’t trust him. “Fine. I’ll be there in a couple minutes.”

  Ethan elected to forgo the lights and siren, not wanting to draw attention, but he drove as if using them, ignoring most of the stop signs, as he was alone on the road. When he skidded to a stop, he saw Lucy—standing on the porch with TJ, surveying the damage—jump. TJ put her arm over her friend’s shoulders, and Lucy relaxed a bit.

  Ethan, on the other hand, found every muscle in his body frozen into place. He’d seen Lucy in a business suit and he’d seen her in shorts, but this morning she appeared to be wearing nothing but an oversized Cowboys football jersey. Her hair fell about her shoulders in a golden tangle, shimmering in the morning sun. Christ on a crutch. How was he supposed to concentrate on a crime scene with her looking like she’d just crawled out of bed? Which, come to think of it, she probably had. He hadn’t had such an immediate physical reaction to the sight of a woman since . . . well . . . since Betty Ramsey had invited him into her room while her parents were away when they were in high school.

  Just then, Lucy noticed his gaze. She glanced down, and a hot blush swept up from her ankles all the way up to her face. In a flash, she disappeared inside the house, freeing Ethan to climb from his car.

  The front window, from which Lucy and Tim had removed the plywood only the day before, was once again boarded up. In addition, two red paint bombs had been tossed at the house, exploding against the wall and dripping down the white siding like blood. Lucy couldn’t have missed the similarity. Ethan walked over to check out the source of the paint, expecting paintball shells or balloons. Instead, two broken condoms rested below the red streaks. Lucy couldn’t have missed that, either.

  “I’m sure it was just kids,” she said, coming back out to the porch. She’d donned jeans along with a T-shirt, and pulled her thick, honey-colored hair up into a high ponytail. Her feet were still bare, however, her toenails polished a pale pink.

  Ethan dragged his gaze from the fascinating glimpse of feminine softness provided by those touches of pink back up to her face. “No, ma’am, I don’t think so. Kids, they might TP your house, or spray random slogans, or even go for the shock value of an inverted pentagram or two, but the kids around here don’t know you. They’ve got no reason to bust out your windows and send notes telling you to go home.”

  Lucy’s eyes closed for a minute, and she took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “My mother wasn’t liked in this town. I don’t aim to be liked, either. You don’t need to come out here every time some fool gets it into his head to try to aggravate me into leaving, or you won’t have time to help anyone else.”

  He shrugged. “Not much crime around here, anyway. So go on and call when things like this happen. I get too busy to pay attention, you’ll be the first to know.” He could see her getting ready to argue, so he turned away and spoke to TJ.

  “Drive over to Redmond’s and see if anyone’s been buying red paint the last couple days. Check Dumpsters, too, in case any of the dimmer bulbs threw away empty cans with prints on ’em. Anyone still owe on com serve hours?”

  TJ thought for a minute, then smiled. “Yeah. Tommy Jenkins and Roy Lighter still owe ten hours apiece for destruction of school property.” She turned to Lucy. “They made good on generations’ of kids promises to burn the Dobbs Hollow Dragon costume.”

  Lucy laughed, and Ethan felt as if someone had thrown one of the window bricks at him, knocking all the air from his lungs.

  “I’d think that would be considered a good deed, not a crime.”

  “Yeah, well, Coach Barnes and the school board didn’t see it that way.” TJ switched her attention to Ethan, who’d lost track of the conversation. Damn, Lucy Caldwell was a dangerous woman. “You want me to get Tommy and Roy over here?”

  “Yeah.” He practically shook himself back on track. “Have them scrub this garbage off the wall before the mayor has himself a heart attack about the town’s lack of decorum.”

  TJ grinned, but Lucy stiffened again at the mention of Dobbs’ name and protested. “I can handle this myself.”

  “You want to involve your brother in cleaning up this mess, right after he helped you get the whole yard done yesterday? Because you know he won’t let you do it on your own.”

  A muscle flexed in her jaw.

  “I didn’t think so.” If he’d ever seen two people so determined to protect each other, Ethan couldn’t remember it. But he could, without any guilt whatsoever, use that protective impulse.

  “Why don’t you take him over Maxie’s Diner for breakfast. I’ll have this fixed before you get home.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Well, now, I figure I know that. Being a detective and all.”

  “Give it up, Luce. You’re not going to win. The chief does what he wants to do, not what he’s supposed to do.”

  Lucy didn’t look convinced, so Ethan asked her whether she or her brother could handle a screwdriver. The seeming non sequitur stopped her argument and wrinkled her brow.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “’Cause I have a trade in mind. The kids will deal with your house. You tell Maxie I said to let you and Tim replace the hinges on her door. She has the tools and hardware, but her husband’s a dead loss when it comes to even the simplest home repairs. It’ll keep your brother out of the way for the morning and get Maxie off my back at the same time.”

  Proud, he thought as she nodded slowly. She wouldn’t take charity, but she’d make a deal. He wondered whether she’d even have been willing to go that far if he hadn’t brought up Tim’s name.

  • • •

  HALF AN HOUR later, Lucy found herself seated in the back booth of Maxie’s Diner with Tim opposite her and Maxine Allen next to her. When Ethan had told her to speak to the diner’s owner, Lucy’s imagination had produced a frumpy woman with overly dyed hair, crepe-soled shoes, and more than a few extra pounds. Maxie, however, appeared to be in her late forties, and she dressed to mat
ch her diner’s fifties-chic decor. The cinch-waisted dress she wore suited her height and her narrow, elegant figure, as did her low-heeled pumps.

  “I can’t believe Ethan put y’all to work on your first day here! Or, technically, I guess it’s your second.” Maxie laughed, a throaty, sexy sound Lucy bet brought men from miles around to eat in the restaurant.

  “Oh, it’s not a problem. He’s helping out with some stuff over at our house, and Tim’s very handy.”

  “Which is great,” Maxie said with a wink, “because Buddy certainly isn’t.”

  “This place . . .I don’t remember it.”

  “No, you probably wouldn’t. I only opened it a few years before your mother died. Y’all didn’t spend much time in town.” Now there was an understatement. Cecile didn’t encourage her children to stray far from the house, and the other kids didn’t welcome them in their hangouts.

  “Have you always lived here?” Lucy asked, trying to keep to her usual, calm pace of questioning instead of rushing ahead. Cecile’s ghost seemed to inhabit the booth with them, begging her daughter to hurry, hurry, hurry.

  “Oh, heavens, yes,” Maxie said. “Grew up just down the street at the corner of Willis and Oak. Not that you care about my history. Word is, you’ve come to find out about your momma. So you probably want to talk about her, not me.”

  “Oh no. Well, I mean, yes, of course. But I want to hear about you, too. I love to talk to people about their histories. If I didn’t write true crime, I’d probably be a biographer.”

  “Well, I don’t believe in talking on an empty stomach. So let me get Buddy working on breakfast. We don’t do fancy here. For that, you gotta go up to Barney’s. He’s got a brunch on Sundays so good I close the diner so I can eat it myself.”

  Lucy laughed. “Tim usually does all the cooking. I bet he’s just glad to have a breakfast he didn’t have to make himself for once.”