The Second Lie (28 page)

The only guard, an off-duty deputy, raced in with a chair. While Sam held Glenna's feet, the man stood on the chair and freed the cord from the sprinkler.

But Sam already knew the girl was dead. The bodily waste that flowed upon death was all over Glenna's jail-issue pants.

Chandler, Ohio
Thursday, September 30, 2010

Deb had been gone awhile but I wasn't ready to face the long hours of quiet awaiting me at home. Deb was so confused, so scared, she didn't know what to do with herself.

I didn't know what to do with her, either. Except to help her draw on personal strength as she waited to see what the future would bring.

Considering how the day had gone, I wasn't surprised when Sam showed up just after five. I was at my desk, supposedly going over files for the next morning's appointments, but mostly just chewing on a pen and staring into space when I heard the bell chime out front.

I jumped up to see who was there.

The sleeves and front of Sam's uniform shirt were stained. Tendrils of her long hair had worked out of her bun and were hanging half in her face and half down her back. Her shoulders were rounded in, as though she could no longer bear the weight of them.

"What happened?" I went to her immediately, an arm around her back as I ushered her to a seat in the reception area, then sat down next to her. I tried to ignore the putrid smell, even while I was trying to place it.

"I just..." Sam's face turned white. "Do you have a restroom?"

"Yeah, first door on the right..."

My words followed Sam as she ran. She made it to the toilet, but didn't get the door closed. I stood just outside and listened while the toughest woman I knew lost her cookies.

And then I went into action. Cool towel first, and then a warm one. The first I handed to Sam, who cleaned her mouth. The other I held as I wiped her face, her eyes, her neck.

Like a child, she stood there and let me tend to her. And that scared me.

I helped her out of her clothes and into sweat shorts and a T-shirt--an extra skating outfit I kept around just in case I had an hour to get away.

We went to my office and sat on the couch, the stench still with us.

And when Sam glanced up at me, I knew that she had information I absolutely did not want.

"What?" I asked.

"Glenna Reynolds."

"Maggie's friend?"

She nodded.

"What about her?"

"She was the girl who met Nicole Hatch at her locker." Sam's words registered. I heard them. I just didn't know what they meant. "She's the one who set up the deal between Shane and Nicole."

"Who are Shane and Nicole? What deal?"

"The meth bust I made at the high school a few weeks ago. Shane was the seller. He's the one in Maggie's tennis club."

Right. I knew all about that. Fine. And the girl. Glenna. Maggie's friend, her mentor, was older. Into things that weren't good for Maggie. We could fix that.

"Shane's the one who said he got his drugs from a dealer in Indiana."

I knew what Sam was telling me. That she thought Maggie was like these other two. Into drugs.

"Maggie Winston would never be involved with illegal drug distribution," I said aloud. "Especially among kids. If you could hear her talk about sick kids her age whose parents can't afford treatment for them, about the pain and suffering. And she lectures her mother about her cigarette smoking..."

"We can't ignore what we know."

"Maggie is adamantly opposed to substance abuse. She just wouldn't do this. You're making her guilty by association."

I got the picture. I just didn't want to look at it. That was my prerogative.

Sam sat there trembling on my couch. Why was this one arrest tearing her apart?

"Sam? What's really going on?"

Her eyes filled with tears. "She's dead, Kel. Glenna's dead."

"What?" I tried to focus. To think. An overdose? "What happened?"

That would make two dead in Chandler in less than a week and--

"Suicide." Sam swallowed. "She hung herself. In her cell. I..."

And that's when I knew that Sam had been the one to find her. I knew where the terrible stink was coming from. I knew what the stains on her uniform meant.

And I knew that as soon as I got my friend settled, I had to get to Maggie.

It had been a long couple of days. A long week.

Kyle had been home less than half an hour when he heard a car in the drive. Zodiac, at his side, he went out to shoo away whoever had come.

He couldn't be sociable.

Not tonight.

He didn't recognize the car and thought for a second that they were coming to pick him up. That Sam had finally convinced someone to issue a warrant for his arrest.

Bob's death had cut her deeply--because she knew the man, but also because they'd lost one of Chandler's most respected citizens to the meth war she was waging single-handedly. She'd taken responsibility for his death. As though she'd injected the farmer herself.

Not that she'd admit that to Kyle. Or anyone. Probably not even herself.

But you couldn't know a woman, love a woman, for more than half her life and not figure out some things.

A blue Dodge Nitro pulled up to his side door. Kyle knew the driver. He'd graduated from high school with her.

But it wasn't Kelly Chapman that held his attention. It was Sam, in the passenger seat, wearing a T-shirt. She stared straight ahead. Her hair was down--out of its bun.

Something Sam only did when she went to bed.

Kyle almost stopped breathing. The woman's features said she was Sam. But this woman was broken, in shock.

Shit. What had happened? Who got to her? And what had they done?

Kelly Chapman climbed out of the driver side. Kyle knew the two women were friendly. But he couldn't tell if Kelly was there professionally or otherwise.

"She wanted me to take her home," Kelly said, as though Sam wasn't sitting right there. "I didn't think that was a good idea. I have to get back to town. To see...someone. I don't want Sam to be alone, and I figured you were the best shot at getting her to agree to that."

Arms crossed over her chest, Sam looked pissed. But it was the sense of loss in his longtime friend's expression that catapulted him into action.

Opening her door, he almost choked on the stench. But he didn't hesitate as he said, "Come on, Sam. Let Kelly get on her way and I'll take you home."

He wouldn't. Sam probably knew that.

Zodiac pushed in beside Kyle, nudging Sam's elbow, asking for her customary greeting of a rub.

Looking at the dog, and then up at Kyle, Sam got out of the car.

25

"W
here are the drugs coming from, Kyle?" It was late and they were still at his place. She'd agreed to stay when he'd reminded her that if she didn't, he'd have to leave Grandpa alone. "They're taking over the county, just like I knew they would."

She lay back in a corner of the couch, dressed in his robe. He'd told her, straight off, that she had to shower. She hadn't argued but had refused his offer of help washing her hair.

She'd showered on her own with the door firmly shut but not locked.

He wouldn't allow that and she'd agreed. Which made him feel a bit easier. When he'd heard the shower running he'd slipped inside the door for her dirty clothes and walked them straight to the washing machine. They were in the dryer now.

Kelly had disposed of Sam's uniform.

"I told you, Kyle. I told you." He'd tried to interest her in a beer, hoping it would make her sleepy. She'd wanted nothing but water.

Food hadn't been an option. At least, not yet. Kyle wasn't giving up.

"Told me what?" He sat in his dad's chair and watched her.

"That they were going to kill people. I told you I had to find the superlab. I had to stop them or more people were going to die. And they're just going to keep dying, Kyle, do you get that? People we know and care about."

She sat up, holding the bottle of water as though she didn't know what to do with it.

He'd never seen Sam so lost. Not ever. Not even the night he'd told her he was going to marry Amy Wilson.

"Two deaths in one week. Both meth related."

He didn't discount that.

"One was a child, Kyle. Sixteen years old."

The bottle was on the table now. Sam fell back to the corner of the couch, resting her head but propped up so she could look straight at him.

"This is exactly what I've been trying so hard to prevent."

He understood. And didn't have any answers.

"I can't let it continue, Kyle. I don't care if everyone in the whole damn state thinks I'm nuts, I know I'm on to something and I can't just let it go."

Kyle didn't argue. He couldn't. Things had changed since Bob died. Everything had changed.

"I'm not asking you to."

"You aren't?"

"Nope."

She blinked as though waiting for the catch.

"Do you know who's behind all of this?"

She still didn't trust him. Didn't believe in him. And he couldn't blame her. He'd doubted her forever. Right from the start. Doubted that someone as glorious as Sam would ever really be happy to settle for a simple man like him.

That's why he'd accepted her ring back that long-ago Friday. It was his doubt that had led him to find a drunken release in another woman's arms. And that same doubt had led to the secrets that had stood between them ever since.

"No, Sam, I have no idea. But I will do everything I can to help you find out."

"So you believe me?" The skepticism in her voice kicked him. "You don't think I'm nuts?"

"I'm the one who's nuts."

"What do you mean, you? Did you get into something you shouldn't have?"

"Not like you mean. I've done a lot of thinking these past couple of days." He wasn't sure how much to say. "The past week, really."

Years ago, she'd have tried to draw him out. Asked him what he'd been thinking about. He probably wouldn't have told her then. Most of what Sam knew about him she'd had to discover on her own.

Amazing that she'd stuck at it all these years.

Stuck by him.

"I've been angry with you," he said. That came out wrong. Wasn't what he'd meant.

"I know. Because I searched your place. Because I had doubts. But, Kyle, Sherry Mahon aside, I have to look at all of the evidence. I took an oath. I wouldn't have been doing my job if I'd let myself be swayed by the fact that I love you and--"

He held up a hand. "I was angry with you, like you say, for doubting me. For not trusting me. Even though I knew I'd deserved it. I still felt betrayed."

"I know, but--"

"Let me finish. Let me get this out."

Sam watched him, not moving.

Kyle wished he'd helped himself to a beer. He wished a lot of things. But wishing didn't get a man through life. Doing did.

"I didn't believe in you, Sam. I didn't trust you to love me enough to be a cop and a wife, too. And because of that, I betrayed you."

There were so many things to consider, to figure out. That's what happened when a man started to think.

"You never once doubted me back then," he said. "I didn't understand that, not until now, when you finally did doubt me and I realized that it was the first time. You always believed that I could be a farmer and your husband, too. You never once asked me to leave the farm and join you in the city."

"The farm is your life, Kyle. That's just a given."

"This farm is important to me, yes. But it's just land, Sam. It's not life itself. Bob's death showed me that quite clearly. I've been out there on his farm. It's a great property. A great business. And there sits Viola with all of it, just wanting her husband back."

She didn't say anything.

More likely she was probably sitting over there asking herself if she'd ever known him.

"Anyway, the point I was making is that we broke up because of me, and all this time I've been blaming you."

"I didn't blame either one of us."

She wouldn't have. That was so...Sam.

"If I'd had faith in your judgment, instead of being so scared at the idea of you being a cop and me losing you like your mother lost your father, I might have been a little more willing to find a compromise for us. Just as you tried to do."

She shook her head. "It wouldn't have worked. Look at Viola. She's a farmer's wife, Kyle. A great cook. A seamstress. A homemaker. Happy to spend her days out in the country in the same house, ready to take on whatever that life brings. Viola is the kind of woman a farm needs to be successful. Not someone who's out chasing down drug dealers and meth labs."

That's all he'd seen back then. Now he wondered if maybe he should have been looking at what he needed more than at what the farm needed. Because when his life was over, the farm would go on. Even if someone else took over.

"I realized something else this week."

"What's that?" She was tired, her eyes little more than slits.

"When I finally realized that you were really going to leave me to be a cop, I retreated to what I knew, the farm. When my father died, same thing. And through my divorce, the same. Then 9/11 came and the whole country was afraid and I was safe here on my farm. Or so I thought. In the past few years, as the economy suffered and the rest of the world seemed to rock off its moral axis, I retreated more, so smug that I had all the answers. I had what everyone else needed right here, and as long as I stayed put, I would be protected from the world's craziness." She looked...confused.

"But you know what?" he continued. "The craziness found me, anyway. And there wasn't a damned thing I could do about it. Grandpa's stroke. Financial troubles. The missing methane. The fire. Bob's death. Everything. All out of my control. And hitting me right here at home.

"And I realized that I wasn't a hermit out here because it made me happy. I was just running from every damn thing in the world that I couldn't control." He hadn't meant to tell her all this, but it seemed right.

Sam leaned forward, and Kyle thought she was going to get up. Instead, hands clasped around her knees, she stared at the floor and said, "My mother has been running her entire life, too. Locked away in that big house, with my dad, and later Pierce, to care for her and keep her world safe. But she's not safe. The house could go up in flames tonight. Someone could break in with guns and kill Pierce and get to my mom. I always knew that." She understood.