The Second Lie (29 page)

"And instead of protecting her, they've wasted her life," Sam continued. "My mother loves flowers, did you know that?"

He hadn't.

"She talks about flowers all the time. She watches television shows about them. She knows every variety, every scientific name and growing season and method. She knows which plants come back year after year and which ones need direct sunshine. But she's never grown any of her own. She's had indoor plants that my father brought her. And ones Pierce and I have brought her. Her entire apartment upstairs is filled with pictures of flowers. But she's never had her own garden. And do you know why?"

He shook his head.

"Because she was afraid to spend time outside alone. My father didn't want her to. He wanted her protected. And with the hours he worked, he didn't have time to help her with a garden."

This was a far different picture of her family. And yet he couldn't think of a time he'd ever seen her mother out and about without her father. Or Pierce. Or Pappy.

"You know why Pierce is a chef?"

"No."

"Because the only things of original beauty my mother could create in the house were meals. Her outlet was cooking. It was safe. And she could lose herself in her recipes. She couldn't grow flowers, but she could create wonderful dishes in the kitchen, with gorgeous presentation. The entire time I was growing up, the only place I really remember spending time with my mother was in the kitchen. She was there when we left for school and when we came home."

How could he have known Sam for most of their lives and not seen any of this?

"Pierce was fine with it all. He inherited her love of cooking, while I was more interested in the fire extinguisher on the kitchen wall, or my grandfather's scanner."

"You're a great cook."

"Yeah, well, with the number of hours I had to spend in front of a stove I kind of learned by default."

"But you hate it."

"Not really. Not anymore. But I resent it. I guess that's why I'm so finicky about my coffee. It's my creative culinary expression. It's the part of me that's my mother--in spite of myself."

Why had she never talked with him like this before?

And even as he wondered, he knew the answer. Because he'd never provided the space for her to talk to him like this.

"You know the greatest tragedy of all?"

"What?"

"My dad and now my brother have always thought that they've been protecting my mother, but they've really enacted the greatest crime against her."

"How's that?"

"By enabling her fear, they've robbed her of her life."

Kyle would have liked to argue. But how could he? He was a victim of the same crime. Only in his case, he was the perpetrator, too.

26

Chandler, Ohio
Thursday, September 30, 2010

I
t was the day that wouldn't end. I'd been by Maggie's place twice since dropping Sam off at Kyle's. Sam had said that Maggie had been in the trailer when Chuck arrested Glenna, but no one was there now. I suppose I could have gone on home. Had a bath and a read and done something that would in some way resemble having a life of my own.

But I couldn't just walk away from Maggie Winston. I had no idea if she knew about Glenna yet.

What I did know was that her mother had been out all night Tuesday and I couldn't take a chance that it would happen again. Maggie couldn't be alone tonight.

I didn't hang out in the trailer complex. That wouldn't have been smart. Not in my car. But I stayed close enough that when a car pulled in next to Maggie's place, I could see the headlights. And I was right behind it. A woman was driving. About my age. I didn't recognize her.

She handed Maggie some money and I watched as the woman saw her safely to her door.

Babysitting, I guessed.

A minute later, when lights came on inside the trailer, the woman pulled away.

And I pulled in.

"Your clothes are ready if you'd like me to take you home."

Sam sat in this man's house, completely naked beneath his robe, and she didn't really even know him.

At least, not the version he'd given her tonight.

But she wasn't sure she was complaining. She might like this new Kyle even better than the one she'd always known. If she were in a mind to like anything.

"I have to find that lab, Kyle."

"I know."

"Bob can't tell me anything. And neither can Glenna. Shane won't. Kelly insists that Maggie isn't involved in anything and I don't have any legitimate reason to access her, unless it's to question her about her dead friend, but if Kelly hasn't been able to get anything out of her, there's little chance I will. Assuming she even knows something."

"I've been looking around Bob's place. There's this kid he'd taken in, an ex-con. Viola said he'd been stealing from them. She made Bob kick him out this summer. I've been thinking he might be Bob's source. He was living in a shed at the back of Bob's property, but there's been no sign of him."

"Was he at the funeral?"

"Not according to any of the family and staff members I've talked to."

"What was he in for?"

"Tire theft."

"How old is he?"

"Twenty-two."

"How long's he been out?" He'd asked about her clothes. She was still lying on the couch in his robe. He didn't seem to mind.

"Almost a year. Bob took him in as part of his release."

"Is he still on parole?"

"I'm not sure about that."

"You got a name?"

"First only--it's Yale. But he won't be hard to trace. Your friend, Chuck Sewell, set him up with the Bransons."

She'd known Chuck had worked with the Bransons in the past. She hadn't heard about Yale.

"I'll see what I can find in the morning."

Speaking of which, she should get home. It was almost midnight.

"Stay with me tonight?"

In the past five years or so, that invitation meant sex. Sam didn't know what to say. She loved Kyle. But so much had happened.

Sex with him the other night had been different. Desperate. She didn't think she could handle a repeat.

"I just want to hold you. To feel you close. To hear you breathing beside me."

She wanted that, too. So badly.

What she didn't want was to lie sleepless in her bed at home, or more likely on the couch, and feel that girl's body growing cold against her. Didn't want to smell the smell. Or think the thoughts.

She needed to sleep.

"I can't have sex with you, Kyle."

"I'm not asking you to."

"Then I'd like to stay."

Chandler, Ohio
Thursday, September 30, 2010

Watching the lights go on in the trailer, I called Lori Winston's cell phone. Maggie's mom said she was at work. When I told her about Glenna she could hardly speak, but she asked me to be the one to tell Maggie.

She also asked me to stay with her daughter until she got off.

Maybe I should have taken offense at being an unpaid babysitter, but I didn't. I was glad to spend time with my young client, to care for Maggie as I sensed she needed to be cared for.

Maggie was quiet for the first few minutes after I told her about her friend. We were in my car. She hadn't wanted me to come inside their home. I didn't like her reticence. Afraid of what she was hiding.

And at the same time, I understood.

Maggie lived in poverty.

It was hard to share that.

"I'm so sorry, sweetie." The girl's head was bent, her hair just a shadow in the darkness of the car. She'd had on a sweater when she'd come home but had left it inside. The white of her T-shirt and tennis shoes were the only things distinguishable against the Nitro's interior.

"Where's my mom?"

"At work. I just talked to her."

"She was off at ten. She should have been home by now."

I wanted to ask Maggie if she knew her mother had been out all night the other night. If she knew where she had been. But this was not the time. At the moment, Lori Winston was my last concern.

"I just can't believe it. Glenna killing herself? She just wouldn't."

"Did you know she was dealing drugs?"

"Glenna? No way. You've got the wrong girl, Dr. Chapman." Maggie pulled out her phone. "Wait, I'll call her. You'll see."

I stopped her with a hand on her arm. Glenna's mom was terminally ill and facing the loss of her only child. She didn't need a phone call from a distraught teenager at midnight.

"It was Glenna, sweetie. She was alive when they arrested her. She had her driver's license on her. She admitted who she was and what she'd done. And according to a police friend of mine, her mother came in and identified her."

"Glenna wasn't doing drugs. Heck, she wouldn't even drink soda because of what it did to your body. She broke up with the cutest guy in school because he smoked a joint."

I couldn't speak for Glenna, but Sam had Maggie all wrong.

"I didn't say she was doing drugs, I said she was dealing them."

"There's just no way. Why would she do something like that?"

"I don't know. I wasn't told any of that. But maybe she did it for the money. Because her mom was so sick."

Maggie was quiet and I figured I'd hit a nerve.

"She did say her mom needed some new medicine. She was all worried about how to pay for it, and that if she didn't get it she might die. Then a couple of days later, she wasn't worried about it anymore. She said someone gave them the money."

"Do you think this someone could have been a drug dealer?"

Looking at me through teary eyes, Maggie said, "I would never have thought so. But if she was arrested, and confessed, maybe it was."

"Do you have any idea who that dealer might be?"

"No."

"Have you ever seen anything out at the tennis complex?" I asked, because Sam's suspicions couldn't be ignored with a girl dead.

And because I couldn't bear the thought that Maggie could be next.

"Drugs, you mean?"

"Yeah. Anyone passing anything. Anyone talking about it."

"Not about meth or drug dealing or anything." The girl frowned. "I mean, some of the kids are pretty rough looking, but if they do stuff like that, they don't bring it to the court. We just play tennis. Or try to."

"And you're sure you have no idea who the dealer might be?"

"Yeah. How would I know a drug dealer?"

"I'm not saying you know him. Or her. But you were with Glenna a lot. You might not realize how much you know. Whoever this person is that she was working for, he caused Glenna's death, sweetie. The police are going to want to catch the guy."

"I hope they do. I hope they catch him and he rots in hell...." Her voice broke and then the avalanche I'd been expecting hit. The teenager's shoulders started to shake and I pulled her against me as well as the console allowed.

"It's okay, sweetie, let it out," I encouraged, and sat there, holding her until her mother came home.

The first thing Sam did Friday morning was ask Chuck about Yale. He verified everything Kyle had already told her, plus added the name of his parole officer and a few facts about the charges against him, including a couple of drug-related priors. Chuck said the kid's last name was Conrad. And that he hadn't talked to him since he'd been released.

Chuck did check with Yale's parole officer, who'd said he had been a model parolee.

He'd been released the month before and no one had heard from him since.

Sam wanted to find the guy.

Chuck didn't think Yale had anything to do with Bob's drug use.

She drove by Maggie's trailer and saw Lori Winston's car there, then she turned up Malcolm Hardy's street, spun by the park and out to the tennis complex. She ended up at the local paper and asked to see their customer list. They could refuse her. She didn't have a warrant.

But they didn't.

Still off duty, Sam spent the next couple of hours at work, checking names on the list against a database of known drug users and dealers. Anyone who'd ever been picked up for drugs in the county was recorded. She executed cross-checks between the two lists and came up blank.

While she was there, the sheriff had a visit from the coroner. And because they ran an open ship in Fort County, she heard what the coroner had to say.

"That girl's death wasn't a suicide," she reported stoically. The doctor was an older woman, sixtyish, and had been at her job a long time. "The bruising on her throat, the way her neck broke, she might have been hung, but she didn't kill herself."

"You're sure?" the sheriff said. Sam sat frozen, her hand on the computer mouse, and waited.

"Positive. There's more. Her arms were bruised up pretty badly, too."

"Had she been raped?"

That would have been Sam's question.

"No. She was a virgin, actually."

A child. Who'd barely started to live.

Calling up the county jail prisoner database from the night before, Sam read every profile, looking for someone who had a reason to kill a sixteen-year-old girl.

It took Chuck five minutes to come up with the answer. He'd arrived at the tail end of the coroner's visit and was as upset as Sam about the turn of events.

They'd been responsible for bringing the girl there. Locking her up.

"Hank Long," Chuck said, wheeling his chair over to Sam's and taking the mouse from her hand to scroll down her screen to the man in question. "He made a couple of comments when I walked through with Ms. Reynolds. Apparently she'd stiffed him on a deal a few months back...."

Hank Long.
She looked at the profile on the screen.
Wanted for robbery, attempted robbery, assault...and drug trafficking.

The man was thirty-five years old and had already done ten years for rape.

"Look at this," Chuck said, pointing to the screen. "His career, locksmith. Explains how he could get in and out of Glenna's cell."

Or he could have stolen keys from the deputy on duty. Fort County jail hadn't been updated since the days of
The Andy Griffith Show.
They didn't usually keep hardened criminals there.