Shocking Pink (37 page)

D
avid sat across the table from Andie. He wore a bright orange prison jumpsuit; his hands, folded on the table in front of him, were cuffed. A dark, purpling bruise marred the side of his neck. She didn’t ask where he had gotten it. She didn’t care.

Everything had been prearranged. David hadn’t wanted anyone present, not even his lawyer. Just outside the room’s locked steel door Nick and a guard waited. The door had a small barred window; all she need do was glance over her shoulder and she would see them. She found that knowledge infinitely reassuring.

Screwing up her resolve, Andie looked David dead in the eyes. Something there, an eagerness, a hopefulness, reminded her more of a lost little boy than a man accused of two murders.

An illusion perfected over the years by a man who was a master manipulator. A cold-blooded killer.

“Thank you for coming, Dr. Bennett.”

“Don’t thank me,” she said stiffly. “I’m not your psychologist anymore. Nothing you say is confidential. I’m not bound by any doctor-patient oath. Do you understand?”

He said he did and laid his hands flat against the table; the metal cuffs clicked against the wood. “Interesting twist of fate,” she said. “Now you’re the one whose wrists are bound.”

The blood seemed to drain from his face. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I know you’re angry with me, but—”

She cut him off, so furious suddenly she could taste the emotion. “You know nothing about me or the way I feel. You’re the slime of the earth, David, and the only reason I’m sitting here is in the hopes of learning something that will incriminate you. If I can help them fry you, I will. Do you get that?”

“Yes.” His voice shook. “I get that.”

“Then why do you want to talk to me?”

“Because I’m innocent, Dr. Bennett. Because I want to tell you my side of the story, I want you to believe me.”

“But why?” She clenched her hands into fists. “What difference would it make if I believed you?”

“You’d stand up for me. I know you would.”

Her stomach rose to her throat. No wonder he thought that, he had manipulated her to his will for weeks now.
She had made so many mistakes.
“I won’t believe you,” she said. “You killed one of my best friends. You lied to me, terrorized me—”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. You have to believe that. I only wanted—”

“Don’t say ‘only’ to me! Don’t you dare!”

Andie jumped to her feet. She swung away from him, fighting to catch her breath. What was she doing here? she wondered. Why was she subjecting herself to this?

She wasn’t, not anymore.

“I’m leaving. I’ve heard enough.”

“No! Dr. Bennett!” She heard him launch to his feet and she swung around, afraid. She saw that his ankles, like his wrists, were shackled. She needn’t fear his sneaking up on her and overpowering her. She could escape easily, anytime she chose.

If only her thoughts, her self-recriminations, were so easy to escape.

“Please,” he said again. “Let me start at the beginning. Then, if you don’t believe me, use anything I say, I won’t care.”

She hesitated, then nodded. They returned to their seats. And he began. “Yes, I was having an affair with Leah Robertson. Yes, we were into unusual, kinky sex.” He cleared his throat. “We met at a charity event, one for the library.” A hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Our eyes met and we both knew immediately. We were kindred spirits. She needed what I had to offer, I needed what she was willing to give me.”

Leah had been one of the special ones. The ones he had described during their sessions.

So had Julie.

Andie looked away, repulsed.

“We began to meet,” he continued. “It was dangerous. She was the wife of a public figure, I was prominent in the community. We could go few places without being recognized. Her place was out of the question. So was mine.

“So, we came up with a plan. She rented one of Sadler Construction’s empty houses. There were so many then. We chose carefully, one on a nearly deserted street, one surrounded by other vacant houses and an undeveloped lot. One far away from our everyday lives. Leah made all the arrangements, directly through Sadler Construction. I was never involved.”

He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “We felt so free then. We became more daring. Bolder. More unconventional. We lived out things we had only been able to fantasize before, and our involvement with bondage, submission and dominance grew.”

He drew a deep breath. “She was always a willing partner, Dr. Bennett. She got off on everything I did to her. I know you watched, so you know, I never forced her to participate.”

Like Julie.
Andie’s eyes filled with tears.
Oh, Julie, why didn’t you let me help you?

“That…last day, we took the game further than ever before. I strung Leah up, then brought her to the brink of orgasm, but kept release just beyond her grasp. The waiting, the denial, she liked that. Then I left her there. Alone. And alive.”

He leaned toward Andie, pleading, his expression as earnest as an altar boy’s. “Don’t you see? That was exciting for us. To leave her that way, alone and completely vulnerable. I could do anything to her, and she knew it. She found the knowledge, the fear, exciting. The ultimate aphrodisiac.”

A sound escaped Andie. One of terror and disgust. She slid her chair farther back from the table.

“I know I make you sick,” he said. “I know you can’t understand the way I am. That I disgust you. You aren’t the first.” He cleared his throat again, this time sounding almost choked with emotion. “But the point is, she was alive when I left her. I swear, Dr. Bennett, she was alive.”

When Andie didn’t respond, he went on. “When I returned two hours later, the house was surrounded by police. I didn’t know what had happened. And considering who her husband was, I wasn’t about to stroll up and ask. It wasn’t until hours later, when I heard it on the news…that I learned Leah was dead.”

“Great story,” Andie said softly, sarcastically. “Wonderful work of fiction. But if you were so innocent, why did you run away? If you didn’t have anything to hide, why didn’t you go to the police?”

“Get real.” David made a sound that was a cross between a laugh and a curse. “I was innocent of murder, but not of fucking the police commissioner’s wife. Even if all the evidence hadn’t pointed toward me, I was as good as convicted.”

“So you just disappeared.” She snapped her fingers. “Just like that. Like a coward dog.”

“My father knew about me and Leah. He sent me to St. Louis to run that arm of the company.”

The rift between him and his father, the one he had spoken of during their sessions.

His family had covered for him anyway.

She wasn’t about to.

He looked her in the eyes. “I didn’t kill Leah,” he said softly. “I didn’t kill Julie. I loved them both.”

“You didn’t kill Leah,” she all but spit at him, “but as soon as you returned to Thistledown, you not only looked me and my friends up, but you insinuated yourself into all our lives.”

She swallowed past the emotion that welled up in her. “Then you began to terrorize us. The clippings and calls, the music, the…noose and—” She nearly choked on the words.

“I didn’t do that! I told the police.”

“But why should I believe that? Why should they? You’re a liar, David.”

“I’m not, not about that. Whoever left that is the real killer.”

She made a sound of disdain. Of course.
The real killer.
“Fine. Tell me, David, what did you hope to gain with your little campaign of terror?”

“After Leah died and all your pictures were splashed across the papers, I was certain one or all of you knew more than you had told the police. Something you were afraid to say. I thought maybe it was the cops who did it. Or someone whose face you’d recognized from TV or the newspaper.”

“Like the police commissioner?”

“Yes. Like the police commissioner. At first, it seemed simple. I thought, if I frightened you, made you think that someone, the person who really killed Leah, was after you, that you would come clean and tell what you really saw that summer.” Urgency colored his words. “I thought one of you would crack and tell the truth. I focused on you because I figured out pretty quickly that you were the one most likely to do something. Just like that summer.”

“The truth,” Andie repeated, furious. “We told the police the truth. You’re the one who lied, the only one with a reason to lie!”

“No! Please.” He reached out with his bound hands, imploring. “One of you did lie! You all said you’d only been in the house twice. But one of you was there at least one more time. A couple of days before…before Leah…I found a hair ornament, the kind a teenager might wear. It was in the bedroom, peeking out from underneath the closet door. It was mother of pearl, shaped into a bo—”

“Shut up.”

“It’s true. I saved it all these years, in the hopes that it would help me find Leah’s killer. I can show it to you.”

Raven used to wear barrettes. Her father had liked her to wear them.

“No!” she shouted, standing. “You’re Leah’s killer. You killed Julie, too. You’re a murderer and this time you’re going to pay for your crimes.”

“Don’t you see! Whoever killed Leah and Julie left you the noose and scarf. I did the others things, but not that.” He broke down, blubbering like a baby. “The game got control of me again, Dr. Bennett. I promised it wouldn’t, I thought I could control it. With Julie, with all of you, it… I didn’t mean for any of it to go this far. Please help me, Dr. Bennett. I didn’t kill Julie. I loved her.”

She shook her head. “You don’t know what love is, David. You can’t.”

He got to his feet, hands out, pleading. “Ask yourself why Julie was killed. To get me. The same person must have done it, and he’s still free. He could do it again.”

“No.” She backed toward the door. “You did it, you’re going to pay.” She reached the door; she turned and rapped on it. She saw Nick, his concern; the guard inserted the key.

“People lie,” he called from behind her. “You have to listen to me! They hide their true selves to protect themselves or others they love. They have agendas. Secrets that have nothing to do with the appearance of things. Dr. Bennett, please, you have to listen.”

“No.” The guard swung the door open, but instead of stepping through she looked over her shoulder at David. “No,” she said again. “I don’t have to listen. And I won’t.”

D
espite her avowals to David Sadler, Andie couldn’t stop thinking about the things he had said to her. In the days that passed, his words, the conviction behind them, gnawed at her. She believed he was guilty. She knew he was a master manipulator and a sociopath who cared for no one but himself.

But even knowing those things, she couldn’t put her meeting with him out of her mind.

If one of them had been in the house days before Leah Robertson’s murder, that meant one of them had lied—to her friends and family, to the police.

It hadn’t been her. Nor Julie, obviously.

That left Raven.

I found a hair ornament, the kind a teenager might wear. Mother of pearl, shaped into a bow.

Andie brought the heels of her hands to her eyes. Raven’s father had loved his daughter’s hair pulled back; he had bought her many fine, expensive clips for her hair. Too many times to count, Raven had laughed about it to her friends; he wanted her to stay a baby, she had said. A little girl, totally dependent on him.

But, why would Raven have lied about being in the house? And what about the noose and scarf? If David hadn’t left it, who had?

Andie made a sound of frustration, pushed away from the desk, stood and crossed to her office window. She gazed out at the waning day. Fall was coming, she thought. Its colors had begun to creep across the landscape, brushing it with hints of gold and rust.

She had seen her last patient over an hour ago and had let Missy go home early, preferring to be completely alone with her thoughts. She touched the warm glass, thinking of the past, of her friend, and of what she knew of both. Raven wouldn’t lie to her. Period. She trusted and believed in her.

David Sadler, on the other hand, was a proven liar. She didn’t trust him and never had. But she had allowed him to get to her. She had allowed him to manipulate her.

She was still doing it. She stopped now.

Andie turned away from the window and returned to her desk. Spread across it were patient files, correspondence from several civic organizations and a lengthy memo from Robert Fulton, detailing the status of Martha’s case.

Robert had decided that Patti would testify, that the positives of her doing so far outweighed the negatives. He also felt that, in terms of their defense, Martha’s fear for her daughter’s safety added to state of mind and helped them. Martha had lived under terrible psychological duress for years; the events of the last months had provided the final straw.

Andie lowered her gaze to the memo and frowned.
Things, people, were sometimes not what they seemed.

That statement had been niggling at her for weeks now. Ever since David had first uttered it, then Julie had repeated it. Andie caught her bottom lip between her teeth. What had he said yesterday? That people would go to great lengths to protect themselves or the ones they loved. That they had unexpected agendas, secrets that had nothing to do with the appearance of things.

Andie caught her breath, her mind suddenly whirling with snippets of conversations, with recollections of small, seemingly insignificant things. Martha at the benefit, looking effervescent in her sexy red dress. Stopping and chatting with the president of the chamber of commerce, the district attorney, the chief of police. All men. Touching this one on the arm or hand, smiling up at that one, laughing, flirty.

In her sexy red dress.

Andie frowned. Hadn’t Martha told Andie many times how Edward insisted she wear dark colors or neutrals? Hadn’t she told Andie that wearing the wrong thing would, and had, thrown him into a rage? Hadn’t Martha, during their sessions, shared Edward’s irrational, insane jealousy? That so much as her meeting another man’s eyes had provoked him to violence.

So, why would Martha have worn that dress? Why would she have behaved so flirtatiously? Why, when she knew how jealous Edward was, how easily angered?

I know the things that incite him, Dr. Bennett.

Andie’s heart began to pound, her palms to sweat. Edward’s gaze had followed his wife. Andie had noted that. He had watched her move from one party patron to the next, smiling and laughing. Perfectly innocent behavior. Nothing to get riled up about.

Unless you were an abusive husband, a husband twisted by jealousy and possessiveness.

Andie caught her breath. What she was thinking, speculating, was ridiculous. Preposterous. Why would Martha have deliberately incited her husband to violence?

So she could kill him. In self-defense.

Andie shook her head. That was crazy. She was letting David, her grief over Julie’s death, Raven’s strangeness of late, all of it, she was letting all of it get to her.

Don’t you think it’s odd that Martha Pierpont encouraged her husband to buy a gun, despite the fact that he was a violent man?

That snippet of conversation with Nick had gone into her head, then immediately out. She remembered being surprised by it, remembering mentally denying it and tucking it away to mention to Martha or Robert. But she hadn’t thought about it since. Until now.

Don’t you think it’s odd that Edward Pierpont died by his own gun, only a week or so after having bought it?

Andie brought the heels of her hands to her eyes. Yes, she did. She thought it very odd. Martha had told her that she had begged—
begged
—Edward not to buy the gun. She had suggested a bodyguard instead.

Who was telling the truth? She wanted to believe that her patient was. Just as she had wanted to believe David. But, why would the sales clerk lie? He had nothing to gain or lose in this situation.

Martha did.

Andie thought of the threatening letters Edward had been receiving. The first one had come around the time Martha had learned her husband had been abusing their daughter. A coincidence. Maybe.

Martha could have sent them. She might have. Even if she hadn’t, she had used her husband’s fear to encourage him to buy a gun.

Andie remembered then. Martha had been packing her grandmother’s china for storage in the attic. Edward hadn’t liked it. Too old-fashioned, he’d said. Too flowery. Martha had come to one of her sessions with black stains on her fingers. From newsprint, she’d said.

If Andie went to Martha’s attic, if she found that boxed china and unwrapped it, would she find newspaper pages with holes cut out? Headlines with letters missing? Letters used to piece together threatening words, words aimed at frightening a man into buying a gun?

Andie stood. What she was thinking was preposterous. But she had to ask. She would go see Martha, she would ask her—about what the clerk had said, about the dress, about everything. She had to know.

Andie grabbed her handbag and headed out.

When Andie arrived at Rose Turpin’s house, she found Patti sitting on the front-porch swing. Andie lifted a hand in greeting and started up the flower-lined walk.

The girl smiled. “Hi, Dr. Bennett. What’s up?”

“Not much.” Andie took a seat beside her on the swing. “I just thought I’d stop by.”

“It’s pretty, isn’t it. The night, I mean.” She breathed deeply. “The quiet.”

“It is nice.” The swing swayed; every so often one or the other of them would push off with their toe to keep it in motion.

“I never knew quiet could be like this. So…empty.” Patti looked at her. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Not really.” Andie smiled, deciding she liked this girl very much. “Why don’t you tell me?”

“At home the quiet was loud. Full.” She searched for the right words, Andie could tell, to describe what she had felt. “Full of stuff. Anger. Fear.” She looked down at her hands. “Unhappiness.”

Her unhappiness. Her mother’s.
“I’m sorry.”

She looked back up, her eyes swimming with tears. “I didn’t always hate my father, Dr. Bennett. Once upon a time I loved him a lot. That was before I realized what…before I saw what he was.”

She cleared her throat. “He was an awful person, Dr. Bennett. He was mean, you know? The kind of person who actually…
likes
hurting people.

“He especially liked to hurt Mom.” Patti flexed her fingers, struggling, Andie saw, to go on. “I couldn’t understand why she let him treat her that way, and I used to pray that she would fight back. Or that she would take me and we would run away together.”

She smiled to herself, remembering. “I used to fantasize about places we’d go, how we’d escape. We would have had such fun. I bet you think that’s silly.”

“Quite the contrary,” Andie said softly. “I think it’s nice. Very nice.”

“In a way, for a long time, I was angry at my mom, you know, for taking it. For not fighting back. And then he…I—” Patti drew in a shuddering breath, her tears brimming, spilling over. “Then I did the same thing. He came after me, he called me…called me those awful names, the ones he always called Mom, and I just tried to ignore him. I thought, maybe, if I just…pretended it wasn’t happening, he’d stop.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No,” she whispered, bowing her head. Andie saw the girl’s tears dripping off the end of her nose and falling onto her hands, clenched into fists in her lap. “It hurts so bad, Dr. Bennett. Can you…make it go away? Can you help me forget?”

Andie covered one of the girl’s hands with one of her own. “I can’t help you forget, but I, or someone like me, can help you learn to go on. We could help you put what your father did to you, and your mom, in a place where it won’t hurt so much.”

The girl nodded and lifted her gaze. “I don’t want to be like my mom. I don’t want to…pretend. I don’t want to live my life hiding the truth from everyone, even myself. Having things look like they’re okay isn’t the same as them being okay.”

She sounded older than her fifteen years, Andie thought. Tragedy had a way of maturing one. Andie knew that to be true from experience.

“It’s funny, but that night I was so proud of her, of Mom. She had been defying him, in small ways, for days. Then she wore that red dress. She looked so beautiful.”

The pulse began to thrum in Andie’s head. “I was there, she did look beautiful.”

A smile touched Patti’s mouth. “I thought it was finally going to happen.”

“What was going to happen?”

“That we were going to go away, just me and Mom. That she was going to leave him.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She told me we were, not that she hadn’t before. But that night she told
him.
She meant it, too. She shouted it again and again.”

He’d kill me if I ever tried to leave him. I tried once and he nearly did it.

Andie fought for an even breath. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t.

Patti shuddered and rubbed her arms, as if chilled by the memory. “He went crazy. I had never heard him that way. He said he was going to kill her. I was so…afraid. I didn’t know what to do. I decided I’d call 911, then I heard the shots.”

Patti’s eyes grew wide at the memory, and Andie knew by her expression that she was seeing, reliving, the events of that night. “The sound reverberated through the house.” She brought a fist to her chest. “Through me. I felt it all the way to…to my bones or soul. I knew that he had done it. That he’d killed her.

“I ran into the hall. Blindly. Screaming her name. I went to their bedroom. The door was open. I saw…him. On the floor. There was lots of blood and… And Mom was…she was holding the gun. Alive. She was alive.”

Patti brought her hands to her mouth, as if holding back some sound or thought, then dropped them and looked at Andie. “I was glad, Dr. Bennett. I was glad that he was dead.”

Silence fell between them. The swing stilled. From a tree somewhere above them, a bird broke into a sweet, evening song.

“Dr. Bennett, what are you doing here?”

Andie looked up. Martha stood in the doorway, her pretty face wreathed in a welcoming smile. Andie returned the smile, though the curving of her lips felt stiff. “I stopped by to say hi. Saw Patti here and she and I have been chatting.”

“How nice.” Martha crossed to the swing, bent and pressed a kiss to the top of her daughter’s head, then lightly stroked her hair. The gesture spoke of a deep, abiding and protective love. The kind of love that weathered any storm, that prompted one to go to unimaginable lengths or acts to keep the loved one safe from harm.

“Can I get you a glass of tea?” she asked. “Something else?”

“No, but thank you for offering.” Andie took a deep breath. “Patti mentioned the red dress you wore to the benefit. I never told you how gorgeous you looked in it.”

Patti beamed at her mother; the woman flushed with pleasure. “Thank you. I bought it special, for that night.”

Because she knew how her husband would react to it?

Leave it alone, Andie.
“Did you?”

“Mmm. That seems a million years ago.” Martha leaned against the gallery railing. “You know, since Edward’s death, all progress on the women’s shelter has ceased.”

Patti stood. “I’m going to get one of Grandma’s chocolate chip cookies. Anyone else want one?”

Neither woman did, though Martha told her to ask the older woman if she wanted to come out and join them.

“I heard that, about the women’s shelter,” Andie said when Patti had left.

“Considering what’s happened and what’s come out about Edward, who knows if it’ll be revived.” She sighed. “I’m sorry about that.”

Sorry. As if she were directly responsible.

Andie opened her mouth to ask her about the sporting-goods-store clerk. About what Nick had said, about her suspicions. About the china, the red dress, the flirting. She opened her mouth to ask if she was right.

What did it matter if she was? Edward Pierpont was a cruel, evil man. He deserved to be dead.

Andie couldn’t believe she had even thought that. If what she suspected was true, Martha had planned her husband’s death. It didn’t matter what kind of man he was, it was wrong to take the law into your own ha—