“I was a witness in a case. A long time ago.” She felt distant, almost dreamy. “I was a witness against my aunt’s murderer.”
“You couldn’t have been. There was no trial.”
“How could you know—? Oh. What Roy said.”
“No. Dallas. Before the trial, he said he needed to know who the opposition was. Kept grumbling there wasn’t enough from studying your cases. Dug back more. The week before the trial, he told me about your aunt’s murder, how the murderer was killed in a shootout with police. There was no trial.”
“Not for murder.”
He looked at her a long moment. She felt it, didn’t return in.
He put it together. “The trial you were a witness in was before he murdered your aunt.”
“Yes.” Stinging tears pooled in her eyes. “He and Aunt Vivian were dating. She was head over heels. And he included us, me and my two younger cousins. You see we’d always spent summers with Aunt Vivian. She’d inherited our grandparents’ house and it was the hub for everybody. My parents traveled all the time, Ally’s broke up… That house, her, us. That was home.
“Then Glenn showed up and swept Aunt Vivian off her feet. But I could see… There was something weird about how he was with Jamie. But nobody believed me. Not even Aunt Vivian. I heard her telling a friend and the friend saying I was making up things against him so he’d go away and I’d have Aunt Vivian’s attention again. And she agreed.
“I stopped saying anything then, but I made sure he wasn’t alone with Jamie. He knew what I was doing, and sometimes, the way he looked at me… Then he said he was going on a business trip, making a big deal of saying good-bye, hugging and kissing Aunt Vivian while he kept looking at Jamie. But he was gone — gone — and it felt great. I relaxed. The next day, we rode our bikes to an ice cream shop, I was racing Ally. Jamie fell behind. The shop door was around the corner from the way we’d come. Ally and I were laughing, shouting she was a slowpoke. We started to go into the shop without her, but something… I walked back around the corner of the building to check for her.
“Jamie was on the ground, tangled up with her bike and this man in a hoodie was trying to lift her and put her in a van. She was trying to scream. I could see that, but no sound came out.
“I yelled to Ally to get help and I ran toward them. He was trying to lift bike and all by then, but she was kicking and I was yelling and then she started screaming.
“If she hadn’t gotten her foot caught in her bike… It delayed him. People started to come out of the building, responding to Ally. He dropped Jamie. Got in the van. Took off. Lots of people got a description, parts of the license plate. They tracked him down after a week. But none of the adults had a clear view of his face. They could say it was the same van, not the same man. Jamie couldn’t do it. She’d break down crying. Ally never saw him. It was up to me. I told everybody it was Glenn, but when it came to the trial…” She sucked in a breath. “I failed. I totally failed. And he walked. Twenty-three days later, he broke into the house when Vivian was alone and beat her to death. He came after me, but he found her.”
She panted, the rush of words ripping at her throat.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know it. I knew him. A neighbor called police. That was the shootout. He died. Too late for Vivian. Too late. It had been too late from the moment I fell apart on cross-examination.”
“And you’ve been blaming yourself ever since. You were a kid and you weren’t certain, nobody can blame you — not even you, Maggie.”
She slowly raised her head. “I was certain. Absolutely certain. He was the man and I knew it.”
He held her gaze, and she let him. Let him see. Perhaps let him understand.
“The defense attorney,” he said.
“Yes, the defense attorney. He chewed me up and spit me out. A masterful construction of reasonable doubt. A masterful destruction of a fifteen-year-old girl.”
“So you became a prosecutor to make sure nothing like that happened again — at least in the cases you handled.”
She shook her head. A single, tight jerk.
“I became a prosecutor to keep from killing the bastards myself.”
* * * *
Her phone rang.
Not looking at J.D. or Caller ID, Maggie grabbed for it, grateful.
“Couldn’t get you last night,” Bel said by way of greeting. “I found her.”
“Found—? Oh. Right. The woman who reported a similar incident in Lynchburg, then disappeared.”
“That’s her. She didn’t want to talk last night on the phone. I’m outside her place now.”
“She’s willing to talk to you in person?”
“Don’t know yet. Have to wait until she comes back.”
“She didn’t know you were coming,” she guessed.
“No sense giving her a chance to say no. I’ll wait. See if my honest face persuades her to talk. One thing I did get out of her last night, she’d consulted a divorce lawyer in Lynchburg—”
“Henry Zales,” they finished together.
J.D. looked up at the name.
“Same as your two victims, right?” Belichek asked.
“Yes. That’s good work, Bel. How long will you stay there?”
“Long as it takes.”
“I appreciate it, but—”
“No buts. Be careful, Mags.”
“You, too.”
“Me? In this area the worst danger is a soccer ball denting my car.”
With his chuckle, they ended the call.
“Maggie—”
“No. I’m going to finish getting ready. We’ll go to the office. We’ll tell Dallas. We’ll figure this out.”
The words that had gushed out of her could not be taken back, but no more would follow.
They would not discuss her past. They would not discuss the photos she kept with her day in and day out.
* * * *
At the sight of Sheriff Gardner on the sofa in Dallas’ office, Maggie stopped short.
J.D. took hold of both her arms to keep from plowing into her. Still, his front pressed against her, the touch and friction popping off explosions in nerve endings that remembered and wanted more.
“Ah, Maggie, J.D., the sheriff here came by to hear more about what we saw in Laurel’s phone records. I’ve filled him in. He’s leaving us Rick’s records, and he’s updated me on what they know about Rick’s death.”
Maggie moved out of J.D.’s hold, took her usual chair, turning it to face the sheriff, avoiding the speculative glint in Dallas’ eyes. J.D. sat beside the sheriff.
Gardner grunted. “What we know about Rick’s death… which is pretty much nothing. Once again, no forensic leads. Nothing helpful from the witnesses. We got his phone records right away, but nothing there, either.”
“Anything useful from Barry?”
“Useful? No. He has an alibi — working at Shenny’s. Seen by a load of people, some of them passably sober. He’s covered for the whole time, not just the narrower window.”
“Narrower window? What do you mean?”
Gardner snorted. “That was a screw-up. Time on the gas station’s video was wrong. Time didn’t change automatically with Daylight Savings a couple weeks back like it should’ve. The manager had his kid change it, only the kid got the time change backward. He made it later, instead of earlier.
“When we thought Rick was pumping gas there at nine-forty-five, it was actually seven-forty-five. We filled in the first half hour — Rick got something at a drive-through, but still, it more than doubles the window when he could have been killed. Autopsy might narrow that some, based on digestion, but still. Why the hell Abner didn’t notice the difference in the light — But he didn’t. And we wasted time…”
Gardner’s words went on, but Maggie didn’t hear.
Seven-forty-five.
Doubles the window.
J.D. could have gone there, killed Rick, and still be back at his place in time.
Could he have also been the person she smacked with the garbage? Maybe not, but what did that matter?
He didn’t have an alibi for Rick Wade’s murder.
He could have done that murder.
And the others.
Every word he’d said, every gesture, every look. Every kiss. Every slide of his body against her. In her.
Shifting, spinning.
You’re a fool. You’ll get sucked in by him just like all the rest.
That’s what Rick Wade had said to her and now he was dead.