The Defendant (13 page)

The morning sun filtered through clean but tattered curtains that covered a wide window in the front room. A large, faux leather brown sofa, paired with matching armchairs, filled most of the modest space. A low coffee table was stacked with magazines and a flat-screen television hung on the wall.

The next room led into the kitchen where a pile of dirty dishes filled the sink. Stale bread, an opened cereal box and half a dozen empty beer cans littered the counter. After the tidiness of the front room, Josie could only surmise Kelly Logan hadn’t ventured into the kitchen too often since her assault.

Continuing down the hall, she saw a bedroom that contained a set of bunk beds. A motorcycle print hung on one wall. Underneath it, a row of medals on ribbons that looked like they were for running events hung from a handful of nails. Josie stepped closer and turned one of the medals over; the weight of it was heavy in her hand. Her heart skipped a beat at the words inscribed on the back:
Daniel Logan; Watervale Public School; twelve-years boy cross country champion.

A noise behind her snagged her attention and she looked up. Daniel stood in the doorway. He stared at her and at the medal still in her hand. His eyes were huge and shadowed in his pale face. His blond hair was mussed and untidy, like he’d only just climbed out of bed. He still wore his pajamas. Her heart filled with sympathy.

“Daniel, I-I just heard about your mother. I-I’m so sorry.”

He stared and blinked and stared again and then she saw him swallow. Tears glinted in his eyes. With a sudden need to console him, she closed the distance between them and pulled him into her arms. She didn’t care if it crossed professional boundaries; he was a child who was in desperate need of comfort. He’d endured more horror than anyone should and she wasn’t going to stand by and let him deal with his pain alone.

His arms came around her waist and his body shuddered against her. Sobs poured out of his mouth in a torrent of tortured gasps. She held his head against her breasts and blinked back tears of her own.

His obvious pain tore right through her and she groaned at its force. Then, thrusting it aside, she concentrated hard on the boy in her arms and murmured wordless noises of comfort. Her hand brushed through his soft, messy hair over and over again.

“
Shh,
honey. It’s going to be all right.
Shh
. I’m here. I promise everything’s going to be all right.” The words tasted acrid on her lips, but at that moment she meant every word. Her brain might have tried to argue differently, but she refused to listen to reason.

She’d all but completed her report that declared Daniel fit to stand trial. She’d also offered the opinion that he had sufficient capacity to know that his actions were wrong. If her report was accepted by the court, he was going to be tried for murder and she would be instrumental in allowing it to happen.

How could she go through with it?
The very boy at the center of it was distraught and desolate in her arms. The rules of society dictated that he be brought before a court of law to answer for his actions. He’d shot a man dead; a criminal, a man who was raping the boy’s mother. The laws of the society they lived in demanded there be consequences for not conforming to its rules.

But who would it serve if he was sent away to spend months, even years in juvenile detention?
It wouldn’t serve his mother and it sure as hell wouldn’t make a difference to the way Daniel felt about his guilt. He had been convinced his actions were necessary. He did what he had to do to protect his mother; to bring an end to her pain. If he was put in similar circumstances, he’d do the same thing all over again.

Locking him up wouldn’t change his outlook; it wouldn’t make him see the error of his ways. He had to live with his actions every single minute of the rest of his life and that was punishment enough—worse than being imprisoned, as far as Josie was concerned. All she wanted was to take him home and comfort him and promise to make everything better. She wanted to treat him like the young, lost boy he was.

But that choice wasn’t hers to make. Society stated otherwise. Soon, the contents of her report would be argued from both sides of the bar table. She didn’t know what would be contained in the psych report obtained by Daniel’s lawyer, but she hoped it carried some convincing arguments that the boy be left alone. He was now without a mother. He’d suffered way too much.
Surely the judge would see that?
She could only hope that this tragic mess would be sorted out and that Daniel, through some miracle, would be given another chance at life.

* * *

The funeral home was dim and quiet and gave Trevor Logan the shivers, but he forced himself inside the room where he’d been told his wife lay in repose. A moment later, he spied her, or at least the polished wood of her coffin and he moved toward her in a trance, until finally he reached her side.

He’d been told there had been an autopsy, but she still looked just the same. With a trembling hand, he brushed the hair off her beautiful face. Her skin was cold and waxy, but she looked so calm and peaceful—she looked like she was sleeping. The shadows under her eyes were gone and so was the pain of the last month. He was glad she was no longer hurting. He wished he could say the same.

The truth was, he was struggling desperately and he didn’t know what to do. The guilt was slowly eating him from the inside out and every day the blackness grew until it was almost like he no longer existed, and all that was left was a shell: a shell filled with anger and helplessness and more than an ocean of blame—all of it directed at him.

It had taken him nearly a week after the attack to even bring himself to look at his wife. He’d tried so hard, but he couldn’t do it, even when he knew his avoidance was tearing her apart. Each time he went to gaze at her, all he saw was the animal who’d violated her.

It was ludicrous because he hadn’t even set eyes on the perpetrator. The body had been long removed when the police made contact with him and he’d finally made it home, but it didn’t stop him from imagining the scene over and over again and every time he did, the anger and fear and utter helplessness returned tenfold to overwhelm him. If he’d walked in and saw what was happening he would have done exactly what his son did. There was guilt there too, that he hadn’t been there for his family.

Then there were his boys and the toll it had taken on them: Daniel most of all. Another wave of guilt pounded into him from all sides.
He
was the one who’d taught Daniel about guns, about hunting, about safety, and it was he who’d told his eldest son he was the man of the house while his father was away. All Daniel had done was follow his father’s orders. He’d protected his mother and brother, like his father had asked him to. The guilt of the consequences for his son nearly overwhelmed him.

Daniel, his beautiful boy, was shattered. He moved through the house like a ghost. The worst of it was, Trevor had nothing left to give him. It was all Trevor’s fault that his son had reacted the way he had to defend his family, yet now it was all Trevor could do to keep himself upright and to keep up the appearance that he was still functioning halfway normal.

He scoffed in the silence. He was so far from normal, the mere thought of it was a joke. Still, he did his best to alleviate the concern he saw in the eyes of well-meaning neighbors who dropped by and he tried hard to make it appear that he was coping.

He should have been home when that son of a bitch came calling. It was as plain and simple as that. If Trevor had been home with his family, the nightmare would never have happened. The drug-crazed fuck might have still chosen their house, but he wouldn’t have found a woman and children alone and undefended. Trevor would have been the one to take the gun to the fucker and he would have gladly faced the consequences.

It shouldn’t have fallen to his twelve-year-old boy to take on such a responsibility. The whole nightmare was wrong on so many levels. Even still, with his wife lying there in a coffin, he couldn’t help the surge of pride for his son, a boy who’d managed to do to the scum what he’d imagined doing himself.

Trevor couldn’t believe the police had charged his son.
How fucked up was that?
Daniel had done what any man would have done and now he was the one in trouble.

It was a fucked up world they lived in. Of that, he had no doubt. And now his beloved Kelly was dead. Gone, just like that. Life for him and his boys would never be the same again.

A surge of emotion overwhelmed him and hot tears sprang to his eyes.
How in fuck’s name was he going to live without her?
What the hell was he meant to do?
He leaned over the open coffin and buried his head against her chest. The smell of the embalming fluid burned his nostrils. She was stiff and cold, even through her clothes. She felt like a stranger.

“How could you
leave
me? How could you leave our
boys?”
he sobbed, with all the pain and desolation in his heart.

The stranger remained coldly silent.

He sobbed like he’d never stop.

* * *

Scott Jones stared at the calendar on the wall and marked off another day. Three more weeks and counting before he was out of this shit hole. Three more weeks before he could take the first step toward seeing his plan come to fruition and seek revenge for his mate.

The prison siren wailed in the distance, indicating it was time to eat. Scott gathered the newspaper clippings he had spread across his bunk. After hearing about Neil’s murder, he’d scouted around for anything he could find. A few ciggies here, a pill or two there and he’d managed to gather quite a collection. He’d even gone on the Internet while he was down in the prison library and had Googled Neil’s name and the location:
Watervale.

Within moments, he found what he was looking for and had printed out the map. It would take him about six hours to drive there, longer if he had to take the bus. Still, it would be worth every minute of the wait—of that he had no doubt.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The day of Kelly Logan’s funeral was dreary, wet and gray. It was the kind of day that made you want to linger inside the warmth and comfort of your home, away from the cold and misery outside. But there would be no warmth or comfort today, inside or out, and there was no escaping the feeling of despondency that plagued Chase.

The bleak weather only served as a harsh reminder that soon Kelly Logan would be laid to rest. Her misery was finally over and his own misery came to mind. He accepted that any chance he had of being with Josie, the woman he loved, was as good as buried, too.

It had been three days since he’d spoken to her and it was agony to know that despite her living so close, she couldn’t be further away. For a decade, he’d struggled to forget about her—like a long raging war, the memories advanced and retreated back and forth in the depths of his mind. At those times, even sleep became his enemy and offered him no repose.

While his heart had clung to the hope that things might be different someday, his mind cruelly reminded him that all hope had been extinguished at The Bullet not so long ago.

That she would be at the funeral, he had no doubt. He’d seen her with Daniel at the farmhouse. The boy had clung to her with a poignant desperation that tore at Chase’s heart. It pained him equally to see the despair and sadness etched onto Josie’s face as she’d held the young boy tight.

Neither of them had noticed him, so absorbed in each other they’d been. It only reinforced for him how much she needed to be a mother. It would give her purpose, fulfil her in a way nothing else could. He’d always known that was the way of it, just as he’d known the chance he could give that to her was likely to be zero.

With a sigh, he pushed the depressing thoughts from his mind and shrugged into his coat. Bracing himself against the blast of cold air, he opened the front door of his condo and hurried through the rain to his car.

* * *

Josie drew her jacket around her and bent her head against the wind. Watervale was only a couple of hours inland from the coast, but it was nestled at the base of a mountain range. The town was no stranger to ice and snow. Fall had come and gone and it would be only a matter of time before the quiet of winter would set upon them and the hot, sunny days and pleasant nights would be nothing more than a memory.

With her shoulder, she pushed open the heavy wooden doors that led into the church and took a few moments to get orientated. Rows of wooden pews lined both sides of the generously proportioned church. A crucifix hung from high above the altar. The altar itself was marble inlaid with gold and gleamed in the dull light. The stained glass windows weren’t shown to their advantage because of the overcast day outside, but she could imagine how spectacular they would be in the bright sunshine.

Earlier, waking to the sound of rain, Josie had let out a quiet groan of despair. As if attending the funeral of a loved one wasn’t difficult enough, now the Logan family was going to have to do it on a cold and dismal day. The weather seemed to set the tone of the morning and she’d been on edge ever since, reluctantly admitting that her turmoil not only had to do with Daniel and how he’d cope, but with Chase as well.

Chase would be at the funeral, no doubt, along with many people from the town, including her brother, Riley. The Logans may not have been in Watervale long, but word had quickly gotten around. It would be a very rare person indeed who hadn’t heard about what had happened. First the sexual assault and murder and now, the devastating suicide. There wouldn’t be many in the tight-knit community whose hearts remained untouched.