Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (10 page)

With the drapes drawn, the two lamps burning on the end tables by the sofa cast more shadows than light. The room looked clean and neat, but Sonya roamed around, flicking her fingertips across tabletops, straightening a country print on a wall, tugging the curtains more tightly together. A photo of the Lankfords’ only child, Vance, stood on the mantel. A high school picture, from the look of it, a reminder of better times. Tom wondered what the fresh-faced, smiling boy in the photo, ordinary but pleasant, looked like after a few years in state prison.

“I figured Shelley’s body turning up yesterday might set things off again,” Tom said. “I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what gets into people.”

“It’s nothing new.” Sonya paused by the sofa, her lips twisted in a sour imitation of a smile. “This has been our life since the day Vance was arrested.”

“Nobody should have to get used to being harassed,” Tom said. “I’ve told you before, get me some license plate numbers and I’ll put a stop to it.”

“We’d have to go outside to get the plate numbers,” Jesse said. “We don’t open our door at night.”

“We know who’s doing it, though,” Sonya said. “Some of them are our own students. I see them smirking at me in class. I hear them whispering when my back’s turned.”

“Who are they?” Tom asked.

Jesse shook his head. “If we started accusing people, our lives wouldn’t be worth living.”

Are they worth living now?
Underneath the pungent pine scent Tom detected layers of stale odors, as if the house had been shut up tight for years, the door never open long enough for fresh air to get in.

Fagan, who had been listening with a frown, now asked, “Why do you put up with it? Why do you stay here?”

Tom winced. The Lankfords focused twin glares on the detective.

“This is our home,” Sonya said. “We were both born and raised in Mason County. We’ve got old people in our families that need us, our parents and aunts and uncles. We’ve been teaching here since we got out of college. We’re not letting anybody run us out of our jobs and our home.”

“But if your own students are harassing—”

“I taught Brian Hadley in my music class,” Jesse broke in. “Coached him in the school band. Sonya had him for English. He was a good kid, and he had a lot of talent. We both encouraged him to go after what he wanted. Now everybody acts like we’re to blame for him being dead.”

“How closely were you working with Shelley on getting your son out of prison?” Tom asked.

“We weren’t
working with
her,” Sonya said.

“She talked to us a few times, that’s all,” Jesse said. “We couldn’t tell her much. Hell, if we could prove our boy didn’t kill Brian, we would’ve done it before he was convicted. Everybody thought we put Shelley up to what she was doing, but Vance was the one who got in touch with the innocence project and asked them to help him.”

“Everybody hated us already because we wouldn’t disown our son,” Sonya said. “They thought we should be walking around in sackcloth and ashes, begging everybody to forgive us for raising a murderer. Then when Shelley started trying to get him out, that just made them madder.”

A loud pop from the blazing wood in the fireplace made all of them jump. Jesse brushed past his wife, grabbed the poker, and stabbed the logs to settle them in the grate.

“Don’t you believe your son is innocent?” Fagan asked.

Tom groaned inwardly. The detective was ripping into unhealed wounds.

“Yes, sir, we believe our son is innocent,” Sonya snapped. She raked a hand through her hair on one side as if she wanted to tear it out by the roots. “We didn’t raise a killer. And we didn’t raise a fool. Any man would have to be a fool to murder somebody over that little slut.”

Fagan looked at Tom, eyebrows raised inquiringly.

“I’ll fill you in later.” Before Fagan could say anything more, Tom asked the Lankfords, “Did Shelley ever tell you she had some information that might get Vance out of prison?”

“She believed he was innocent,” Jesse said. He returned to the couch and tugged his wife’s arm to make her sit beside him. “She said she was going to do everything she could to prove it. But she never gave us any details about what she was doing. We don’t know if she really had anything or not.”

“We didn’t have any expectations.” Sonya sat upright and stiff, her hands pressed together in her lap, palm to palm and fingers to fingers. “What could a first-year law student do that Vance’s own attorney couldn’t?”

Tom held a low opinion of the attorney who had represented Vance and suspected the defense could have been better. But he was also positive his own father’s investigation had been thorough and the evidence had been corroborated. “The innocence project won’t drop the case because of Shelley’s death. If I can find out what she came up with, I’ll let you know, and I’ll make sure the prosecutor knows about it.”

“Right.” Jesse’s face twisted in a sneer. “We’ll pin our hopes on the prosecutor who sent Vance to prison and the son of the cop who arrested him.”

Tom didn’t bother to answer that. He didn’t care what the Lankfords thought of him. He did care about their safety, though. “You’ve got all my phone numbers, don’t you? Home, office, cell? I want you to call me when anybody comes around here harassing you. Day or night. Anytime. Call me.”

They both looked dubious and didn’t reply.

Tom rose and Fagan followed him to the door. Jesse trailed them outside.

After Tom and Fagan walked through the gate, Jesse said, “The Hadley boy’s one of them. Brian’s brother, Skeet.”

“He comes by here at night?” This information didn’t surprise Tom.

“Yeah. He was here last night, throwing rocks and yelling. Just so you know.”

“You need to make a formal complaint.”

“No. We’ll wait it out. We’ve made it this far.” Jesse slammed the gate and clicked the padlock shut. “Nobody’s going to drive us out of our home. We’re not leaving unless we go feet-first.”

That, in a nutshell, was Tom’s greatest fear for these two.

In the cruiser as they drove away, Tom’s thoughts shifted to Rachel. He wished he could have stayed home today so he’d be with her when her sister and brother-in-law arrived. He didn’t like the nervous, almost fearful vibes he’d been getting from her since she told him Michelle was coming. He didn’t think her jitters had much to do with her sister’s stalker story. Michelle herself was the source of Rachel’s anxiety. When anybody needed Rachel, she was there heart and soul, but she wasn’t approaching her sister’s dilemma with her typical passionate abandon.

Fagan broke into his thoughts. “So what’s the story? I’m starting to think the Beecher girl’s murder might have something to do with the innocence project after all. Even the convicted man’s parents didn’t like her poking around.”

“It’s a small community,” Tom said. “Things like that fester because everybody knows everybody else and they run into each other everywhere they go.”

“So what happened? Who’s the slut Mrs. Lankford mentioned?”

Tom slowed at an intersection, paying respect to the four-way sign
without coming to a full stop when he saw no vehicles approaching in any direction. “Brian Hadley had a country music ban
d
, and Vance Lankford was in it. Played electric guitar, I think. He was a little older than Brian, and he was teaching biology at the middle school and playing in Brian’s band in his spare time.”

“And the girl?” Fagan prompted. “Who is she, and how did she figure in it?”

“Rita Jankowski. She was a singer.” Tom drove into Mountainview, past a used car lot and an Exxon station. “She and Brian sang together. Brian was just twenty-one when he died, but he was already married, had one baby, another on the way. And he made the mistake of getting involved with Rita.”

Now Tom realized what was wrong with the picture of Brian’s band he’d seen at the Hadley house the night before. Somebody had cut Rita out of it. Not surprising. The family wouldn’t want a reminder of her part in Brian’s death.

“She was already paired off
with Lankford?”

“She’s never been the type to tie herself down to one man,” Tom said, “but yeah, they’d been seeing each other, then she and Brian started up. Classic story.”

Fagan was about to say something when the squawk of the dispatch radio cut him off. “Unit two?” the young woman’s voice asked. “Are you on the road?”

“Unit two here,” Tom answered, silently wondering,
What now?

“We’ve had a call from Maureen Hadley about Dan Beecher causing a disturbance over there,” the dispatcher said. “I sent Brandon Connolly out, but I figured you’d want to know too.”

“I’m on my way.” The fallout was starting already. Tom swung the cruiser around in a U-turn and sped south again.

When Tom slowed in front of the Hadley house, Blake Hadley and Dan Beecher stood three feet apart in the yard, screaming at each other while Maureen and Skeet watched from the porch. Brandon stood with the two men, gesturing and talking, but they didn’t seem to notice he was there.

“Aw, crap.” Tom braked hard enough to jolt Fagan forward against his seat belt. “Dan’s gone completely off the rails.”

He jumped out and jogged over to the men.

“I was afraid of this,” he said when he reached Brandon. Dan and Blake went on yelling. “We’ll have to babysit Dan when we should to be trying to solve his daughter’s murder.”

“Can we lock him up for disturbing the peace?” Brandon asked. “Keep him where he can’t stir up trouble?”

“I’m tempted, but I don’t have the heart to do that to Sarah and Megan.” Hitching up his gun belt, Tom shoved his way between Dan and Blake. “All right, calm down and back off.”

“How am I supposed to calm down when my daughter’s dead?” Dan demanded. Pressing against Tom’s shoulder, he pointed at Blake. “For months now the Hadleys have been saying somebody ought to make Shelley shut up. How do we know they didn’t take it in their own hands and decide to shut her up themselves?”

“Dan, come on,” Tom said. “You’re not thinking straight.”

“You calling me a murderer?” Blake shouted at Dan, close enough to Tom’s ear to make him wince. “Go ahead and say it. You think I killed your girl?”

“I wouldn’t put it past that boy of yours.” Dan flung an arm toward Skeet on the porch. “The way he talked about her, like she was some kind of pest y’all wanted to get rid of.”

“She was an ignorant little girl who didn’t know what she was doing,” Blake said. “Getting in over her head, acting like she knew better than the police and the courts.”

“Yeah, and you hated her for it, didn’t you?” Dan demanded. “Hated her enough to kill her over it.”

“Stop it!” Tom shouted. “Both of you, shut up right now.”

Blake sputtered, “I’m not going to let him get away with—”

“I said
shut up.
Now you listen to me.” Tom planted one hand on each man’s chest and shoved them a few inches farther apart. Tom noticed that Fagan had stayed with Tom’s cruiser, well clear of the fray, and leaned against the car with his hands stuffed into his pants pockets. Probably jiggling his damned keys. Looking from Dan to Blake, Tom said, “Isn’t this situation bad enough without the two of you going at each other? You’ve both lost children—”

“Yeah,” Blake said, speaking to Dan. “Now maybe you know what we’ve been going through. How’s it feel, huh?”

“You goddamn son of a—” Dan strained against Tom’s hand, trying to get at Blake.

“Quiet!” Tom ordered. “Blake, can you keep your mouth shut long enough for me to get him out of here? Dan, come on, you’re going back home where you belong.”

He caught Dan’s arm and pulled him toward the road. Tom didn’t let go until they reached Dan’s truck. “Are you all right to drive? You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

Staring down at his feet, hands propped on his hips, Dan seemed to be struggling to pull himself together. “No, damn it, I haven’t been drinking. God knows I could use a drink.”

“What got into you, coming over here? What right did you have?”

Dan raised outraged eyes to Tom. “I told you what they’ve put us through. They didn’t leave us alone till Shelley disappeared last month. Then all of a sudden we didn’t hear a peep out of them. And you know why? Because they knew she was dead. They knew their little problem was done with. Skeet did it. I know he did. He killed my daughter.” Dan yanked open the door of his truck. “Now you get him for it, you make him pay, or I’ll do it myself.”

Chapter Ten

Rachel kept an eye on the knife her sister wielded, afraid the blade might miss the mark any second and slice through one of Michelle’s fingers instead of the ripe tomato on the chopping block. Although Michelle had changed into a fresh blouse and slacks, brushed out her hair, and applied pink lipstick, she was still distracted and tense. Letting her help with dinner preparation had been a mistake.

Frank had curled up on a kitchen chair. From the dining room Rachel heard the faint clinks of silverware as Kevin set the table. They all made a deceptively cozy scene, but the cat was the only one not being eaten alive by anxiety.