Last Look (24 page)

“So you picked her up and drove someplace where no one could see what you were going to do to her.” Andrew closed the door behind him as Paula Rose appeared to be inching in that direction. He leaned back against the frame, his hands in the pockets of his jacket. “When did she realize what you were going to do, Paula Rose? Did she cry? Did Shannon plead for her life? Beg you not to kill her?”

Natalie hid her face in her hands and wept.

“She was going to tell everything. She thought she’d be on some TV show.
Larry King
or
Oprah,
maybe. The woman who returned from the dead.” Paula Rose grabbed Natalie’s arm to force her hand from her face. “Do you understand what I’m saying? She was going to tell everything.”

“You mean about your grandfather raping her?” Dorsey asked. “And I suspect you, too, Natalie? And Aubrey…and Paula Rose?”

“This is all my fault.” Natalie’s voice was heavy with pain. “My fault. If I’d told…if I’d spoken up, that first time, I could have stopped him. It could have stopped with me.” She held her hands over her stomach as if holding in a horrible pain. “I was such a coward. If I hadn’t been such a coward—”

“I could have stopped it, too, Nat. I’m just as guilty,” Aubrey told her.

Natalie looked up at Paula Rose. “How could you have thought of protecting him, even now, after he’s been gone for so many years, after everything he did to us?”

“You want to be known around the capital as the senator who was screwed by her grandfather? The senator whose sister liked it enough to make it her life’s work?” Paula Rose taunted her.

“Surely you don’t believe that.” Natalie looked up at her. “Any fool can see that Shannon was running from him. And if she turned to a life of sin, it was because he set her on that path.”

“She was a whore at heart,” Paula Rose said calmly. “She tempted him.”

“Oh, for the love of God,” Natalie whispered. “You just don’t get it, do you?”

She stood and faced her youngest sister. “He
raped
us. Do you understand what that means? To have someone you love and trust force you to do things that hurt you, things you don’t understand, terrifying things you know are wrong and shameful?” She stared at Paula Rose. “No, you don’t. You were the lucky one. He stopped after Shannon. She did you a big favor, you know that? Running away when she did? Maybe that scared him into stopping. Maybe he left you alone because of what he thought had happened to her.”

“Y’all are going to burn in hell,” Paula Rose said, staring at Aubrey and Natalie. “Sullying the name of that righteous man. Sticking up for that whore who was setting out to ruin all of us. I saved us all, can’t you see that? I did what I did for all of us.”

“Her blood is on your hands, not mine.” Natalie took Aubrey’s hand. “Not Aubrey’s. Only yours.”

“One thing I don’t understand,” Dorsey asked Aubrey. “Why try to hide the gunshot wound?”

“She wasn’t trying to hide it. She wanted me to do it. She said we were both there, we were both responsible, we both killed her.” She began to sob. “She walked right up to her. Shannon thought she was going to hug her. She put her arms out to hug Paula Rose back,” Aubrey said, spreading her arms open as if embracing someone the others couldn’t see. “But instead, she put the gun right to Shannon’s chest and pulled the trigger. Just like that…”

Natalie dropped her sister’s hand and crumpled into her chair.

Aubrey gasped and her body shook, but she continued. “She gave me the knife and told me to stab her. Shannon was there on the ground and she wasn’t breathing. I said,
‘For God’s sake, Paula Rose, you killed her.’
She said I had to do it, but I couldn’t. She took the knife and stuck it in Shannon’s chest to show me what she wanted me to do, but I started to throw up, and she got mad and started stabbing Shannon, over and over….”

The imaginary knife in Aubrey’s hand pumped up and down, stabbing at the air.

“Then you put the body in what, plastic, Paula Rose? Wrapped it up, drove it to Shelter Island so you could dump it?” Andrew asked. “You drive that church van yourself, or did you get the church gofer to do that for you?”

“I don’t need anyone to do for me. I can do what has to be done.” Paula Rose turned to Aubrey. “I never suspected you’d be so weak. I never should have trusted you. I should have just taken care of everything myself. No one would have known. She would have been just another dead whore.”

Andrew took his phone from his pocket and held it to the side of his face. “You heard enough?” he asked.

“You’re forgetting Edith,” Dorsey said to Paula Rose as the police chief and two officers came through the door. “Shannon’s roommate—she knew who Shannon really was, and there was no way she’d let her be a Jane Doe.”

“Who’d have thought she’d have kept on the cops like that,” a suddenly docile Paula Rose murmured. She stared at Chief Bowden as if he were a stranger.

She said nothing more as she was led from the room.

Aubrey sat still as a stone on her bed, Natalie motionless beside her. Both appeared shell-shocked.

“I’m sorry, Nat, I couldn’t live with myself anymore,” Aubrey told her sister, but Dorsey couldn’t tell if she was apologizing for admitting Shannon had been murdered, or for her attempted suicide.

“I know, honey. You did the right thing.” Natalie got out of her chair and patted her sister on the head.

“Where are you going?” Aubrey asked.

“Someone’s going to have to tell Momma.” Natalie stopped in front of Dorsey, who now stood. “Am I free to leave?”

“What was your role in this?” Dorsey asked.

“Aubrey came to me the day after Shannon…the day after. She told me everything,” Natalie admitted.

“You’ll be held for withholding information, obstructing justice. We’ll need to send an officer with you now.”

Natalie nodded. “I understand.”

“You went to Deptford to identify her because you were the only one who wasn’t there when she died.” Dorsey touched Natalie’s arm as she passed by.

“Paula Rose…I didn’t want her to go. And Aubrey, she could never have handled it. It was the least I could do for Shannon. Someone who cared for her had to be there for her,” Natalie told her. “Someone had to say good-bye.”

She turned to Andrew. “What’s going to happen to Aubrey?”

“She’s cooperating. If it weren’t for her, we’d still be wondering what the hell happened. I doubt Paula Rose would have confessed on her own. I think it’s pretty clear Aubrey didn’t have any part in the murder,” Andrew told her. “I’ll speak with the prosecutor on her behalf. I promise to do the best I can for you and Aubrey.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. But Paula Rose? Y’all can let her fry.” Natalie shook her head as if it were beyond understanding. “How do you do such a thing to your own flesh and blood?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” Andrew replied. “That’s a question I ask myself every day.”

22

“So where to now?” Andrew eased the car into the parking spot in front of his motel room.

“I guess back to Florida, as I’d planned before you hijacked me this morning,” Dorsey replied.

“Hey, it was worth missing the plane—admit it.” Andrew grinned. “Seeing the look on Paula Rose’s face when she realized there was no way out, that was worth a missed flight any day, right?”

“Absolutely.” Dorsey nodded.

“By the way, I asked Chief Bowden to talk to the handyman at Paula Rose’s church about that van. It bothered me that the van was blue, when the witness swore it was a light color.”

“And?”

“And the man was telling the truth. The van we were looking at had always been blue. What he hadn’t said was that the church had only had it for about two weeks. They’d traded in the old one.” He shook his head. “I could kick myself for not grilling him better.”

“It didn’t occur to me to ask him how long they’d had it, either.”

She stared out the window.

“I really feel for this family, you know? Aubrey having to live with that scene in her head; that moment when she realized what Paula Rose was going to do must haunt her. Watching one sister murder the other. And Natalie, caught in the middle like that. I guess blood really is thicker than I’d realized.”

“What do you mean?” Andrew asked.

“At some level, I just don’t understand why Aubrey or Natalie didn’t blow the whistle on Paula Rose. Then on another, I understand the whole self-preservation thing.”

“Everyone suffers when one member of the family turns on another. You never stop asking why,” Andrew said, “even when you know you’ll never find the answer.”

“Sometimes, there isn’t a credible answer, Andrew. Paula Rose’s excuse was that she didn’t want to deal with all the ugly truths Shannon’s return would have made public. Superficial, yeah, but that was the bottom line with her,” Dorsey told him. “Maybe in your brother’s case, it was something deeper than that. Then again, maybe even Brendan didn’t know why he did what he did.”

“But Paula Rose was here to face her crime. Here to be prosecuted, here to answer for what she did.” Andrew sat behind the wheel, his hand on the key, still in the ignition. “Brendan wasn’t around to deal with the aftermath. Wasn’t here to see how much pain he caused. Didn’t see our family crumble, didn’t see Grady just fade away.”

He turned to Dorsey. “I told you, right, that it was Brendan who set up Grady’s wife to be killed? The woman his brother loved, the woman he wanted to raise a family with, spend his life with. She was nothing more than a nuisance to Brendan, so he had her removed. And then the bastard died without having to look Grady in the eye and admit what he’d done. Or explain to the rest of us how he could sleep at night, knowing how many children’s lives he’d destroyed. The bastard died without having to answer to anyone for anything.”

“Anyone in this life, anyway.”

“True. If there’s a hell, I know he’s got a little corner all to himself.” He pulled the key from the ignition, tossed it in the air, and caught it in the palm of his hand. “That’s some consolation, however small.”

He opened his door and got out, then waited for her to meet him in front of the car.

“What time was your plane, anyway?” he asked.

“It left about an hour ago.”

“Any chance I could talk you into staying one more night? We could go out for a nice dinner, maybe get some champagne to celebrate having wrapped this up.”

“I could be persuaded. A little celebration does seem to be in order.” She smiled. “I’d just feel better if there weren’t any loose ends.”

“What loose ends?” he asked.

“Who beat up Shannon that night? And how did Shannon get out of Hatton?”

“I doubt we’ll ever know now. I was hoping her diary would tell us, but it appears Shannon never wrote in it again after she left home. Maybe the truth was too ugly for her to put in words. Maybe she just brought it with her to remind her of the good things she was leaving behind—her childhood. Her innocence.” Andrew shrugged, then added, “You know, you can’t help but think that someone in this mix had to have been the one who’d driven her to wherever she went that night.”

“Everyone connected to the case has an alibi,” she reminded him, then paused, thinking. She slapped herself on the forehead. “Not quite everyone.”

She tugged at his arm.

“Come on, back in the car. I know how Shannon got out of town that night. I think I might know what happened….”

Dorsey stood in the doorway and knocked lightly on the wall.

“Mrs. Randall? Do you have a minute?” she asked.

“Well, Agent Collins is it? Or is it Ranieri?” The old woman stared at Dorsey from the opposite end of the sunporch where she sat enjoying the afternoon. She waved Dorsey closer. “You can come in, but I don’t have much to say to you.”

“There’s really only one more thing I have to talk about, Mrs. Randall,” Dorsey said as she walked closer.

“What’s that?”

“You must have known what he’d been doing to your granddaughters. How could you have kept silent all those years? How could you have permitted such a thing to go on?”

The old woman stared at Dorsey but did not respond.

“Shannon told him to leave her alone that day, didn’t she? Said she’d tell her father what he’d done to her if he didn’t, right? So he slapped her around, gave her a black eye, made her lips bleed. And all the while, you knew. When she disappeared, did you think he killed her? Did you ask? If he denied it, did you believe him?” Dorsey leaned down to force the woman to look her in the eye. “How could you ever believe him again, knowing what he’d done to her? Or did you pretend not to know?”

Martha Randall’s eyes narrowed to slits.

“Of course, he couldn’t afford to have the truth come out, you’d have known that. So even though you thought he killed your own granddaughter, you still kept your mouth shut. How long had you known the truth about what he’d done? Did he ever tell you the truth, that he drove her out of town?”

The woman would neither confirm not deny anything. Dorsey suspected she was wasting her time. She started toward the door.

“It was me,” the voice from behind her said.

“What?” Dorsey turned back.

“I did it.” Martha’s chin jutted out defiantly. “I slapped her. I don’t know how many times. I lost count. She was going to tell. I couldn’t let her do that. He was a good man. We had a good life. She was going to ruin it with her filthy lies.”

“So you beat her until she bled?”

“She fell against the side of the table in the kitchen. She was running through the basement of the church when I came in. She ran to me, she was crying, shaking, saying terrible, terrible things.” Martha sat calmly, her hands folded in her lap. “Those horrible things, ugly, ugly lies—she was going to tell, she was going to tell my son.”

“And when she disappeared and everyone thought Eric had killed her, what did you think happened?”

“Oh, I knew what happened,” she replied smugly.

It was Dorsey’s turn to stare.

“When she ran from here, well, I had to find her. I could not let her go home to Franklin. Not ever again, unless she promised never to repeat those ugly things again. But she wouldn’t.” Martha’s face went red, a trace of the anger she must have felt that night resurfacing. “She said she was telling her father and she didn’t care what I said. Well, I just couldn’t let that happen, now, could I?”

“So you drove her someplace?”

“To Calhoun. I gave her some money—”

“The cash from the carnival.” Remembering the envelope, Dorsey pulled it from her bag and held it up. “She’d saved the envelope you gave her, all those years. Her roommate found it.”

“I gave it to Shannon, all of it, plus some money I had of my own. I told her to wait for me in the kitchen while I went to the office, but when I came back, she was gone. I rode around town until I saw her getting out of that boy’s car, then I followed her as far as the woods at the corner. I made her get into the car. I gave her one last chance to repent, but she refused. So I told her to take the money, that she was going to have to leave Hatton and never come back. She was a godless little liar and she didn’t deserve the wonderful family she had. She had no right to be part of our family any longer, and I told her so. I drove her to the bus station and told her she’d never be welcome here again.”

“She was fourteen years old.” Dorsey was almost speechless. “You turned a fourteen-year-old child, your own flesh and blood, out onto the street to protect a pedophile?”

“Don’t you
dare
use that word! My husband was a man of God!”

“You let a young man die for a murder he didn’t commit.”

“Sacrifices must sometimes be made for the greater good. Compared to the many souls my husband brought to the lord, what was one life?” Martha sniffed self-righteously.

“How could you have done such terrible things—”

“How could I let my family be destroyed?” the old woman snapped. “My husband would have gone to prison, we’d have lost everything. Our church, our standing in the community, the respect of our son….” She shook her head. “There was no way I could have permitted Franklin to hear such ugly lies about his father.”

“But you knew they weren’t lies and you protected him. Your son lost his daughter because of you. How do you think he’s going to feel when he hears all this now?”

“I suppose
you’re
going to tell him?” She laughed. “The daughter of the man in charge of the investigation back then? The man who got a big TV career out of it? Looking back, your father was the only one who profited from that mess, wouldn’t you say?” She waved a dismissive hand in Dorsey’s direction. “You don’t really think Franklin would take your word over mine, do you?”

“Maybe not, but there is this.” Dorsey reached into her pocket and pulled out the small tape recorder. She rewound for a second, then hit play.

“There was no way I could have permitted Franklin to hear such lies about his father…”

The woman froze in her seat for a moment, then laughed.

“I know you can’t just record a conversation without me giving permission,” the smug old woman told Dorsey. “I watch all the shows, you know. You can’t use that as any kind of evidence.”

“Sorry, but that’s not quite true,” Andrew said as he stepped into the room. “The law varies, state to state. Here in South Carolina, the law says that only one of the parties has to be aware of the recording.”

He turned to Dorsey. “You were aware that your recorder was on, weren’t you?”

“I sure was.”

“See?” He held up his hand and Dorsey tossed the recorder to him. He caught it midair. “No law broken here.”

“I haven’t broken any law,” the woman reminded him.

“Well, assault on your granddaughter, we’ll probably have to let that one go. The theft of the money from the church, I’m thinking we’ll have to let that one go, too. Statute of limitations has run out. Withholding information? Don’t know where the D.A. would stand on that, all these years later.” He nodded. “So there may be nothing you can be arrested for, that’s true. But facing your son, your daughter-in-law, the rest of your family”—he held up the tape—“well, now, that’s going to be a problem, don’t you think?”

Andrew turned to Dorsey. “Anything else?”

“No, I’d say my work here is done.” Dorsey turned to leave. “Enjoy your old age, Mrs. Randall.”