Touch of Evil (17 page)

Wild, dark times are rumbling toward us, and the prophet who wishes to write a new apocalypse will have to invent entirely new beasts, and beasts so terrible that the ancient animal symbols of St. John will seem like cooing doves and cupids in comparison.

—Heinrich Heine, “Lutetia,” or “Paris,” from
The Augsberg Gazette

Thursday, October 22

By ones and twos or in small clusters, Justine watched Laney’s family members fill the emergency department’s waiting room, though it was already past midnight. Laney’s sisters came first, one plump and already dowdy in her early thirties, the other a tearful, petite woman with long brown hair. Two of Ross’s sisters showed, too, Gwen and a second tall blonde Justine had never met. Others poured in with them, a spouse here, a child there, though the kids were bundled up and sleeping, as heedless of their surroundings as exhausted puppies.

Except for a brief greeting, when she sketched out the few real facts she could share, Justine kept her distance as they waited, some talking quietly, others praying, and still others staring vacantly at a muted TV tuned to CNN. After finding a comfortable chair in a quiet alcove, she settled in to work her phone—and completely lay waste to her depleted overtime budget by keeping her most senior investigators on the clock. But Justine didn’t give a damn about that, not with a
killer on the loose right here, in her county. A murderer who apparently had no qualms about attacking law enforcement officers, who had likely killed one of her own.

Distracted by movement, Justine looked up as a new arrival joined the Bollinger-Thibodeaux clan in the main waiting room. To her utter astonishment, it was the impeccably suited Erik Whatley, who walked straight to Gwen and kissed her on the cheek.

The same Erik Whatley who’d been filling up Justine’s voice mailbox with requests for a short meeting all day.
That must be how he got my cellphone number,
Justine realized, since prior to today, he’d only hounded her at work.

Had Whatley, who was based in Atlanta, simply
happened
to meet Gwen in town during one of his frequent visits over the past few months? Or had he deliberately wormed his way into her life for whatever information he might glean from a woman close to Justine?

A woman who worked with her son, Noah…

Intent on getting answers, Justine put away her phone and made a beeline for the couple. Whatley glanced up, catching her eye and nodding amiably, looking nothing at all like a man guilty of deception.

But before Justine reached the pair, the double doors leading to the exam rooms opened, and Laney’s sisters and their cousins stood, their bodies tense and their faces brimming with fear and hope. Rather than joining them, Justine used the opportunity to pull aside the corporate Casanova.

While Ross spoke in low tones to the women, Justine stared a hole into Erik Whatley’s handsome face. Stared down at him, she realized, though she’d never noticed before that he was a few inches shorter than she. A touch shorter than Gwen as well, but no older than his mid-thirties, despite his early crop of gray.

“Explain,” Justine said, not a request but an order.

“Are you feeling better?” he asked, his smile warm. “I
talked with your father earlier. I hope you received my message. Or any of the messages I’ve left.”

“Great flowers.” Her voice remained flat. “But that’s not what I’m asking and you know it. Tell me how long you’ve been seeing Gwen Bollinger. And why, exactly.”

“About three weeks, I think.” The professionally whitened smile widened. “And do you really have to ask? Just look at her. She’s gorgeous, smart, compassionate. With class to spare. I’m lucky.”

The enthusiasm sounded real, and Justine saw none of the physical tics that indicated subterfuge. “What about that wife you’ve mentioned? The one you said had the same taste in earrings I do?”

He grimaced, his face coloring. “Actually, she’s an ex-wife, from years ago. I was making conversation, you understand, to help establish common gro—”

“To suck up to try to score a sale, right?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“I’ll bet not,” she said. “So you swear you aren’t still married? Won’t take me ten minutes to find out if you’re lying.”

“Absolutely,” he said without the slightest hesitation, then offered the date and county of his divorce decree.

“And you aren’t seeing Gwen to get to me? To give yourself a little edge over Hal Smithfield? Because I swear to you, Whatley, if I find out you’ve been—”

“God, no,” he said sharply, his sudden shift in tone causing heads to turn their way. “And I have to tell you, Sheriff, I’m offended, damned offended, you would think that. What I feel for Gwen…I realize it’s only been a few weeks. But she’s become important to me. Important enough that I’d rather pull the bid from SHD than have you thinking I’d be base enough to—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Justine told him, more reassured by the redness of his face than his words. While any garden-variety liar could whip up a little canned outrage,
she’d long ago learned that physiological responses were hard to fake. He bore watching, she decided, but there was no need to break out the blackjacks and rubber hoses quite yet.

“Thanks for the get-well flowers, Erik,” she said, using his given name for the first time, “and thanks for your concern, too. I hope things work out for you and Gwen. You’re right. She’s very special.”

With that, Justine offered her hand. And when he shook it, she took note of the fact that Whatley’s palms were sweating. Before she could decide what, if anything, to make of that, Ross walked toward her, his lean-limbed movements reminding her of what lay beneath the white coat he had borrowed to cover up his muddy clothes.

“Might I have a moment, Sheriff?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Excuse me, Erik.”

“You should take Gwen home,” Ross told Whatley. “There’s really nothing you can do here.”

So Ross knew him, Justine realized. And accepted the man as his sister’s boyfriend.

“I’ll try,” Erik said to Ross before the two of them shook hands and parted.

As she walked toward the double doors with Ross, he said, “My family won’t go until I assure them Laney’s going to make it. They’ll stay all night if they have to, keeping vigil. It’s drilled into us from birth. And besides, my cousin Trudy will report anyone who cuts out early to my aunt and my mother when they get home.”

“Whatley, too?” she asked. “Is he part of the package?”

“Who? Oh, you mean Erik, right? Gwen’s new boyfriend. Seems like an okay guy. You know he’s from here, originally. Went through school with my other sister, Cherie. The one who lives in Houston now.”

Justine shook her head. “Sometimes I’m not sure how you keep the whole clan straight.”

“Most days, it’s worth the effort.” But he didn’t wear the
look of a man counting his blessings. Behind his fatigue, she glimpsed a grimness she’d rarely seen in him before.

“How’s Laney?” Justine asked quickly, fighting a knee-jerk desire to wrap her arms around him and hold on tight, no matter who might be watching.

“I’ll tell you in here.” Ross passed through the heavy doors and pulled her around a corner into a second corridor lined with doorways. An empty corridor, at present.

Justine’s heartbeat picked up speed. If Ross’s cousin died, she could well take the identity of a killer with her. But Justine’s concern went deeper than solving the recent string of crimes, for she knew the anguish Laney’s loss would cost Ross’s family. Justine realized, too, that she’d been wrong to imagine Ross would blame her if his cousin didn’t make it. He would blame himself, instead, turning his wrath inward, just as Justine had done after her brother’s death.

Remembering the agony of her own guilt, the way her father could barely stand to look at her for so long, sent Justine careening back in time with a stomach-jolting lurch. To regain her equilibrium, she reached out for Ross’s hand. “This is going to be all right, I promise.”

“No, it isn’t.” Ignoring her hand, he scrubbed both of his along a jaw that needed shaving. “Laney’s still pretty out of it, but she’ll live. That’s not why I called you back here, though. I needed you in your official capacity. Because Dr. Tremont—he’s the attending in charge tonight—is doing a sexual-assault kit, Justine. He’s already told me he’s seen some evidence of…He believes my cousin was raped.”

“I’m so sorry.” The sadness washing over her was chased by guilt, as if her prayers that Noah hadn’t been molested had somehow deflected that fate onto Laney. Though Justine understood rationally that it was a ridiculous idea, the memory of her eleven-year-old self lay so close to the surface, she wasn’t feeling rational at all.

Except she would have to be—rational and reasonable.
The professional who kept a tight lid on emotion. Because at this point, there were procedures to be followed, photographs to be taken, and evidence to be secured. Although Justine wouldn’t be in the room during the exam itself, she would serve to document, preserving the chain of evidence once the medical professional recovered whatever hair and fluids the assailant might have left behind.

“You should call the hotline,” Justine suggested, referring to the rape crisis volunteers who stood ready to come and act as the victim’s advocate or simply hold her hand through the ordeal.

“Not yet,” he said. “Laney’s still so out of it…”

“Call them,” Justine said, in part to give him some excuse to stay clear of the exam room and in part because he might want someone to talk to for his own sake. But even as the thought occurred, she knew he’d insist on slogging through his feelings solo. He would be the rock that the remainder of his family clung to during this ordeal.

Outside the private exam room where Laney and Dr. Tremont were, Justine kissed Ross’s cheek and turned to leave, only to notice one of the nurses in the corridor—Debbie Brown again—giving her the evil eye in passing.

Ignoring her completely, Justine walked into the exam room and focused on what needed to be done.

An hour later Harry Tremont found Ross lingering in the corridor near the exam room. No more than five foot two, Tremont looked up through a pair of steel-framed glasses that magnified his startlingly blue eyes.

“How is she?” Ross asked, worried by his old friend’s grim face.

“Sleeping at the moment, letting her body metabolize whatever she was given. Not much else we can do there. Core temperature’s back up to normal, and I’ve found no indication of significant injury, either internal or external. She’ll be
sore, I expect…and we’ll need to keep an especially close eye on her for a few days.”

“Of course,” Ross said, imagining Laney’s grief when she was able to comprehend what had happened. “Believe me, the family’s not about to let her out of sight again. Not until whoever did this is locked up.”

But Tremont was shaking his head. “I don’t mean that. It’s…there’s no easy way to say this, and I wouldn’t even be telling you if you weren’t taking charge of her care. But I can’t offer your cousin Plan B.”

Also known as the morning-after pill, Plan B was routinely offered to rape victims to prevent the possibility of conception. Unless…“The pregnancy test came back positive?”

“Yes. We’ll want to do a vaginal ultrasound to be sure, but looking at the HCG levels from her blood work, she’s not far along. Four or five weeks, maybe.”

“I don’t…I had no idea.” Ross could scarcely believe it. If it was true—and blood tests were quite accurate—Laney would have to have conceived around the time of Jake’s death, and she had said herself that he had been suffering from sexual dysfunction. Which meant that there was someone else. Someone Laney hadn’t mentioned.

Could the pregnancy explain Laney’s strange behavior before she’d disappeared? Did she even know she was expecting? He had to talk to her, had to get some answers.

And he damned well meant to do so before saying a word about the situation to Justine.

By the time she signed over the kit to the deputy who would be responsible for transporting it to the medical examiner in Dallas, Justine was spent emotionally and aching for her own bed. Leaving Laney resting in a private room, with Ross sitting at her bedside, Justine headed for the exit, intent on getting
home and catching at least a few hours of blessed oblivion before she woke her son to ready him for school.

As she threaded her way through the ER’s waiting room, she saw that the Bollinger-Thibodeaux clan had gone home to rest, knowing Laney’s condition was now stable. As Ross had said, she would live, but what her family didn’t know yet, what no one except Laney had the right to tell them, was that the patterns of bruising, blood, and semen found appeared to confirm Dr. Tremont’s suspicions of sexual assault.

Laney, in her lucid moments, had been perfectly compliant, but as far as answering questions, she’d been of no help whatsoever, singing snatches of song or weeping in response. Maybe she’d do better later, once her body neutralized whatever she had in her system. But Justine didn’t expect that Laney would remember much of anything about this evening, including her attacker. A mercy, perhaps, Justine thought as she crossed the dark lot.

If Laney had been given scopolamine, Dr. Tremont had explained she might well recall earlier events. Justine would interview her as soon as possible about her potential connection with Roger Savoy’s death. Though the singer appeared to be the victim in one crime, Justine could not discount the possibility that Laney had somehow been complicit in another. Her phone, which Justine had taken into evidence, had received a two-minute call from the deputy’s cellular the same night he’d been shot. Though that fact might mean nothing, it was the closest thing to a lead Justine had to go on.

Halfway to her vehicle, Justine noticed a silhouette peeling off from the shadows of some shrubbery, a man who broke into a jog as he headed her way. Facing the approaching person, she tensed reflexively and put her hand on her still-empty holster. Damned if she was letting anyone sneak up on her again.

Seeing her movement, the man drew up short. “Sorry, sorry.” He was huffing with exertion. “Guess a person should know better than to run up on a cop this time of night.”