Touch of Evil (25 page)

The Oct. 22 shooting death of Preston County Sheriff’s Department Deputy Roger Savoy, 53, may be linked to the recent rash of hangings involving area musicians, according to a member of the department who spoke on the condition of anonymity. According to the source, beleaguered Sheriff Justine Wofford was reluctant to reopen the investigations into the deaths, formerly ruled suicides, of Dogwood residents Hart Tyson, 33, Jacob Willets, 32, and Caleb LeJeune, 30, all members of a popular local zydeco band. The source also stated that a noose found on the person of Chief Deputy Savoy raises questions as to whether his death could have been prevented had the sheriff seriously considered several more experienced deputies’ assertions that the hangings should be investigated as homicides.

—From a front-page news item in the
Dogwood Sentinel,
Sunday Edition, October 25

If you ask me, the real issue dragging down this country is the death of pride. Individuals and
co
mpanies putting their names behind shit work, sloppy craftsmanship.

Or worse yet, slapping two-bit nameplates on the superior work of others, trying to steal credit while muddying the genius of the true professional.

Those guilty of such crimes deserve to have the flesh flayed from their bodies before being forced to watch it fed to fire ants and black crows. But as pleasant a fantasy as that makes, it lacks a certain poetry…

The poetry of dying by the same sword the impostor has unsheathed.

“What’s up with Kenneth?” Laney demanded the moment Ross hung up.

Moments before the call, Ross had been telling her about the gun found inside her car, the gun that had allegedly killed Chief Deputy Savoy. Though she’d gone along with the idea of talking to Dan Henderson about the legal ramifications, she’d been far more eager to discuss the offer Simon Cordero had brought her, an offer she seemed to be quickly talking herself into.

Now he hurried to fill her in on Justine’s phone call about Fleming.

“He wants to
kill
himself?” Laney echoed, worry wiping all other emotion from her face. “You have to let me come, too. I’ll talk to him. I can. I know he’ll listen to me.”

“But what if he’s the one who hurt you?” Ross asked. Though Laney looked a lot better today, her hair clean and brushed, her jeans and light sweater unwrinkled, he knew she was still fragile, that she would be for a long time.

Scowling, she scratched at her nose, her gaze skating from his. “I don’t believe that for a minute. He was so kind to me, in spite of how sad he felt about his family leaving.”

Ross stared at her, thinking of the drug seekers who sometimes came into the ER, for Laney had that same air of evasiveness about her. But there was no time to grill her, not with Kenneth’s life at risk—along with the answers only he could offer.

Ross took the keys to Trudy’s minivan off the hook where she’d left them and jotted a quick note on the message board she kept on the refrigerator.

“Come on then,” he told Laney. He couldn’t leave her alone anyway, and seeing her interact with Kenneth might give him more information.

The problem was, Justine would be there as well, watching Laney’s every move with the keenest interest…and Justine’s liar’s radar was even better developed than his own.

Parking on the street behind another department SUV, Justine saw that Larry and Paul Miller had called in two deputies and placed them on crowd control at a safe distance from the Fleming house. As she had half expected, the neighbors not only hadn’t been dissuaded by the warning that they could be in danger, but they’d called friends, relatives, and other neighbors to clue them in on what amounted to big doings in the little town of Dogwood.

Already, there must be twenty or thirty, looking more excited than concerned, milling around behind the lines. A beak-nosed man with thinning gray hair was running around screaming for everyone to quit trampling his lawn, and Beau Castille, the editor of the
Sentinel,
stood with his pen poised and his beady eyes watching for some evidence that the sheriff he had once endorsed ought to be tarred, feathered, and run out of the county.

Some days, Justine’s job seriously sucked. A lot of days, just lately. Too bad for her detractors that she found the evershifting challenges and occasional victories so rewarding.

Ignoring the crowd, she joined Larry and Paul Miller across the street from Fleming’s front door, where the deputies were shielding themselves behind the bulk of a department SUV.

With Larry busy on the phone, she asked Miller, “He talking to Fleming?”

“We can’t get him to answer, but we know the guy’s still breathing.” He might be one of her loudest detractors, but on the scene, Paul Miller was all business. “No shots fired yet, for one thing, and I’ve seen the living room curtains twitch a few times.”

“Larry on the phone with the ex-wife, then?”

Miller shook his head. “Left a message for her. Called the local authorities and asked a deputy to run her address and try to track her down.”

Justine’s thoughts returned to that bluff near Lake Whitney, about an hour south of Fort Worth, and her stomach cinched tight. Had Fleming started on his own estranged wife before picking off men he saw as impediments to the affections of a new love interest?

And what about the children?
Would their small, decomposing bodies be found next?

As Ross drove toward his coworker’s lakeside subdivision, Laney suddenly offered, “The gun was Kenneth’s—the gun in my car. He gave it to me a few weeks ago, after I showed him those notes I’d been getting. He said it was probably nothing, but just in case, I ought to have protection.”

If Fleming had been worried enough to loan his cousin a gun, why wouldn’t he have said something to Ross about it? Unless his concern had been more about building intimacy with a beautiful young singer than her safety.

Ross could wring Kenneth’s damned neck. Slowing for a stop sign, he asked, “Did you ever use it, Laney? Did Deputy Savoy ever—”

“No, Ross.”
Shock and hurt rang through her denial. “I would
never
—I hate guns. They really scare me. I only took it to make Kenneth feel better. Took it as far as my trunk—and that’s where I left it.”

Which would explain how her fingerprints had gotten on the weapon. And if the man who’d abducted her had found it in her car’s trunk and then worn gloves to kill Savoy…Ross felt a weight lift, yet without evidence or another suspect in custody, Laney could easily end up charged with the crime. Especially if she kept acting so evasive.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he said, “but I need you to tell me one thing, Laney, and I need you to be honest. Who’s the father
of your baby? And don’t try to sell me any story about Jake, because I know better. We both know, and this is your life, your future we’re trying to defend. You want to be a star? Want it to be the way your agent’s telling you it could be? You’re going to have to trust me. You’re going to have to own up to—”

“Kenneth could be killing himself right now, and you expect me to have this conversation?”

“I’ll ask you one more time. Is Fleming the father of—”

“You know what, Ross? You can just go to hell.”

Ross pulled over on the tree-lined shoulder and shifted into park, allowing two other vehicles to pass him.

“What are you
doing
?” she asked.

“Trying to save
you.
Because you’re my responsibility, not Kenneth. So are you going to tell me, Laney? Or are you going to walk the last couple of miles and hope your ‘good friend’ makes it?”

“Stop it, stop it, Ross. Why are you doing this? Don’t you care about him? About
me
?” Weeping, Laney made a grab for the gearshift in an attempt to jam the van back into drive.

Swamped with guilt and feeling like a bully, Ross was ready to relent when Laney burst out, “All right. If that’s what you want—it
was
Kenneth. We were just together once—okay, two or three times, tops. But it wasn’t right for either of us, you know? He was still hung up on Connie, and I was worried—Jake was so sick. This was before they found him by the lake.”

Ross stared at her, not comprehending. “You started sleeping with Kenneth
before
Jake died?”

Swiping away tears, Laney said, “You don’t understand how hard it was, Ross. Jake was going downhill so fast, and he was so angry all the time. Mad at God, mad at his disease and the fact that he had no money—mad at me for being healthy. One day he took a swing at me, and I was so upset, I went to
Kenneth for advice on what I could do to help Jake. Because I loved him. I swear I did.”

“You went to Kenneth for
advice
? Come on, Laney, I know better. You wouldn’t ask a stranger to tell you what to do. You were going for drugs, weren’t you? Drugs you thought he might get you, because you must have heard about his—”

“There was no insurance,” Laney shouted. “What was I supposed to do? Jake needed…He was suffering.”

“And Kenneth took advantage of you,” Ross said flatly, though he was thinking,
She’s still lying about something. This can’t be the whole story.

Avoiding his eyes, she stared out the passenger window. But he saw her reflection, marked the anger and resentment in it. “I swear, it wasn’t like that. I wasn’t trading sex for…I only…We both needed…It was terrible.”

Ross didn’t know whether she meant the situation or the sex, and he didn’t want to ask, especially with his thoughts focused on Fleming, who was showing every sign of emotional instability. Had he fixated on Laney enough to want to rid himself of the “problem” of Jake Willets?

Though it was possible the other “suicides” could have been staged to cloud the issue and cover Fleming’s tracks, he still couldn’t imagine such a cold act from a man now cracking under pressure and threatening to shoot himself.

“Who broke it off?” he asked her.

“Please, Ross, can’t we go now? Just
drive,
and we can talk about this later. I don’t care what you think about me; just go, for Kenneth’s sake. We still might save him.”

“I need to know…was it you?”

“Yes, yes. But we both knew…It was obvious it wasn’t working.”

Maybe not to Kenneth, Ross thought. Maybe instead, her rejection was the straw that broke the recovering addict, the one that had angered him enough to hurt her. Or had it been something else? “Did you tell him about the baby?”

“
No,
Ross—and I’m not answering another question. Please hurry.”

Ross put the van back into gear with emotion packed so tight inside him he could scarcely breathe: sharp regret at the way he had pushed Laney, disappointment that she had chosen to confide in Kenneth rather than the family who loved her, and mostly red, raw anger at the idea of a man who’d not only assaulted Laney but murdered three men to keep her his.

Ross wanted to hit someone, needed it in a way he hadn’t since the wreck that had claimed Anne’s life. He imagined his fists pounding Kenneth Fleming or even that jerk Erik Whatley, who had hurt Gwen so badly. For the moment, he wished he weren’t the kind of man who patched up the results of other people’s temper, but the kind who dealt out violence of his own.

Why couldn’t he be the same man who’d damned consequences by falling for Justine Wofford? The man who’d been willing to do whatever it took to be with her, even when the affair flew in the face of everything he was?

But as Ross, driving in stony silence while his cousin wept, turned into Kenneth’s subdivision, he reflected that if he’d learned nothing else in his life, he’d sorted out the inadvertent outcomes of way too many other people’s thoughtless actions. The kinds of actions that had taught him Justine had been right when she’d said,
There’s no reverse gear on the time line. The only possibility is moving forward.

So for Laney’s sake, for his own, and for the bruised and battered love he still felt for Justine, Ross determined to do everything he could to keep from screwing up the situation even more thoroughly than it was.

“What the…?” Laney stared ahead of them, at a street of beautiful new homes clogged with milling people, flashing lights, and uniforms. A street transformed because of Kenneth
Fleming’s actions. “Does this mean he’s dead? Is Kenneth dead already?”

Before Ross had even come to a full stop, she unhitched her seat belt, flung the door wide, and jumped out of the car at a dead run.

Stand fast, good Fate, to his hanging: make the rope of his destiny our cable, for our own doth little advantage.

—William Shakespeare,
The Tempest,
Act I, Scene 1

Justine spotted Laney slipping past one of the deputies. Moving quickly to intercept her, Justine clamped a firm hand on the tiny singer’s arm. “Back here, behind the vehicle. For your own safety, Miss Thibodeaux.”

“He’ll listen to me. I know he’ll listen.” Laney swatted Justine’s wrist and struggled to pull free.

Though the smaller woman was in no danger of escaping, Justine snapped, “Stop fighting me, Laney, or I’ll have you on the ground and in restraints so fast your head will spin.”

Shocked by her tone, Laney went still, instead staring with tears running down her face. “Please—I can’t be too late this time. Kenneth can’t die, too. Not after Jake and Hart and Caleb…Not after every…everything that’s…”

Laney crumpled, sobbing. Pitying her, Justine wrapped an arm around the younger woman to shepherd her toward safety—

Only to have Paul Miller roughly snatch Laney away, twisting her arm behind her and frog-marching her forward as he pulled a set of handcuffs from his belt. “I saw you resisting,” he snarled. “That’s assault on a law officer, disorderly conduct—”

“That won’t be necessary,” Justine told him. Catching movement from the corner of her eye, she saw Ross running toward them. “Let her go, Deputy. It’s all right.”

Miller’s gaze snapped from Justine to Ross and back again. “I see what it is,” he sneered.

In that moment, Justine wondered if Roger Savoy had told the other deputies about her relationship with Ross, or worse yet, shared those photographs from the motel room. Sick at the thought, she shoved it ruthlessly from her mind.

“Let her go,” Justine repeated, more firmly this time.

As Larry joined them, Miller released Laney, raising his palms and saying, “Sure. Let the little bitch assault an officer. Why the hell not?”

Regardless of the situation, Justine didn’t dare ignore his attitude. “Deputy Crane, please apprise Miss Thibodeaux and Dr. Bollinger of the situation inside. Miller, over this way.”

She led him a couple of car lengths down the street before glaring down at him. “We’ve got an armed man with a gun and civilians all around us. So the least—the very least—I expect is your professional behavior. Do I make myself—”

“But, Sheriff—”

“I’ve ignored a lot from you, Paul. Your attitude around the station, the broken pencils and the filings dumped in my coffee when I leave it—”

He slapped on a fresh coat of outrage over sullen features. “You think I’d do something like—”

“Button up and listen. I’ve heard you in the break room, I’ve heard you now in public, and I’m putting you on notice. Get your attitude in check. You can start by apologizing for calling Laney Thibodeaux a ‘little bitch.’”

“Hell, Sheriff, Laney Thibodeaux’s got her fucking fingerprints all over the same gun that killed Savoy. And I’m supposed to
apologize
to
that
?”

“We need answers about that gun, answers we can only get from its owner, Kenneth Fleming. So will you help me get him out alive, Paul? Or do I have to send you home and rely on others who aren’t half as competent?”

It was something she’d picked up from her old man, sweetening a bitter truth with the confidence that the employee had what it took to be a valued part of her team. And she wasn’t lying. Like Savoy, Miller had the smarts, the shrewdness to go far in law enforcement…if he could only learn to stifle his resentment of a boss he deemed unworthy.

Paul pursed his lips, his gaze drifting to Laney, who was standing supported by Ross as Larry talked to them both in his usual reassuring tones. Finally, Paul gave a tight nod, and without another word, he turned his back on Justine and stalked toward the group so quickly that she hurried after him in case she needed to avert disaster.

Ross locked eyes with his former classmate as Paul Miller barreled toward them, his expression fiercely focused, his strong jaw set with what looked liked barely controlled fury.

Ross edged partially in front of Laney.

Paul stared right past him. “I apologize, Miss Thibodeaux.” His voice was tight, almost mechanical, his eyes cold as dry ice. “Sometimes…sometimes emotions get a little out of hand at times like these. Mine did, and I’m sorry for it.”

Wincing, Laney surprised Ross by admitting, “I’m pretty sure I started it, and I’m sorry for that, too.” Her gaze shifted to Justine. “And for making your job harder, Sheriff. Deputy Crane was just telling me we’ll try calling Kenneth again.”

“Maybe he’ll answer when he sees it’s a friend calling,” Larry told her.

“I don’t have my phone,” Laney said, glancing briefly at Justine.

Ross knew she had taken it into evidence last Thursday and had found it too damaged by the rain to get much information. Justine had sent it to the state police, she’d told them, and now he wondered if they’d gotten back to her already. Had they found something damning—something
else
she’d withheld from him?

“Let’s try mine,” he said as he opened his cell phone and began scrolling through numbers. “Maybe he’ll take my call.”

He pushed a button to dial and held his free hand over his other ear to better hear. Laney watched expectantly, standing on her tiptoes with her hand poised as if to grab for the phone if Kenneth answered.

He heard Justine whisper to Larry, “Have you seen any more signs of movement inside lately?”

As Larry shook his head, Ross heard a click, and then a murmur in his phone. “Kenneth? Kenneth, this is Ross. And I’ve got Laney here, too. We’re both here. We’re out front—”

On the other end, Kenneth was crying, saying something like, “Don’t wanna talk to ’er,” but after that, the words came out so garbled, Ross couldn’t comprehend them.

“Slow down, please, so I can understand you.”

There were gasps and sobs, and finally, Kenneth said, “
Connie.
I want to be with my wife…I’m ready.”

“You want Connie?” Ross echoed, and looked at Larry, who carefully shook his head. Deciding to put honesty on hold, Ross added, “She’s on her way. Says she’ll be here soon as she can. Meanwhile, what’s this I hear about a gun, Ken? You don’t need that.”

“Let me talk to him,” Laney whispered, reaching up for the phone.

Turning aside, Ross ignored her, focusing on Kenneth’s words. Justine moved in beside Ross, placing her ear along the other side of the phone to try to hear.

“I do, I do need the gun,” said Kenneth. “Because…because I’ve really, really screwed up, Ross. First with Connie and the kids, then Laney. Can you ever forgive me? I never meant it to go so far. I never wanted anybody to get hurt.”

Ross felt a spreading coldness. Was Kenneth admitting he’d hurt Laney? Fingers tightening on the phone, Ross forced words past the icy shards of fury in his throat. “You hurt…
Can we talk about this, Kenneth? Face-to-face and man-to-man?”

“I don’t want to see you, don’t want anyone but Connie. If anyone comes near, I swear I’m going to pull the trigger. I’ll kill myself—I mean it.”

“Please, Kenneth. Calm down. Connie’s coming,” Ross repeated as Justine made hand gestures to her deputies, her finger crooking as she swept it in the direction of the house. “They’re arranging a police escort for her, but it’s still going to be a while. Meantime, keep talking to me, Kenneth. Just keep talking.”

Deputies Crane and Miller started trotting toward a neighbor’s house two doors down from Kenneth’s. Backing up to a lake view as the houses all did, none of them had fences to obscure the natural beauty.

Nor was there anything to obstruct the movements of someone slipping from backyard to backyard.

“Can you see me, Kenneth?” Ross asked quickly. “I’m right here, across the street from your place. Laney’s with me. Look out front. She’ll be waving to you.”

“Don’t want to see her.” Kenneth’s words were choked by tears. “She’ll hate me now. I know it.”

“She won’t, Kenneth. She understands.” The words burned like acid in Ross’s mouth, but he forced himself to keep talking. “Why don’t you let me come in instead? Just put down the gun and I’ll—”

“No. I
told you
, anyone but Connie, and I…I’ll do it. I swear I will. It’s not like I’m doing the world any good alive, anyway.”

“Your kids love you,” Ross insisted, thinking of the school pictures Kenneth kept taped in his locker, the sweet-faced third-grade blonde girl, the kindergarten boy. “And Connie still cares—I’m sure she does. And at the hospital, we all—”

“No, you don’t. I can feel your disappointment, the way
you don’t trust me to do the right thing—double-checking all my patients. And D-Debbie never misses a chance to trash me to the other nurses. Tremont said he’d fire me if…God, he’ll fire me now.”

“Maybe I can help,” Ross said as Justine nodded her encouragement. “If you explain to me what happened, I can tell him. I can talk to Laney, too. Tell her you didn’t mean to hurt her.”

Laney, who had moved to watched him, flinched at Ross’s words, then shook her head and mouthed the word
no.

Still listening to the phone as best as she could, Justine waved another deputy in toward them.

“Connie was the one,” Kenneth insisted. “I really wanted Connie. But she wouldn’t listen to me, wouldn’t take my calls. And Laney needed help while you were away. She needed a man’s advice, she told me. Connie and the nurses might’ve forgotten I was a man, but Laney knew it, all right. She knew and she asked me about those notes she was getting.”

“She told me. She was grateful.”

“Yeah, she was. You weren’t around, and with Jake dead, she needed…She needed me, and you know? I really liked that. Liked the idea that one person in the universe wasn’t looking at me like a giant fuckup.”

“You’re not a fuckup, Kenneth,” Ross lied, noting that Kenneth wasn’t admitting his involvement with Laney before Jake Willets was found hanging. “You’re good at your work. You’re kind to others—look at how you stepped in to help Laney.”
Or help yourself to my cousin, you sniveling bastard.

“It felt so good—I felt so good, that I started writing my own. Got a little carried away with them, a little kinky, like about her—God, Ross. I can’t tell you.”

“
You
were sending Laney those notes? So she would come to you for more advice?”

Still watching, Laney froze, her eyes widening like a snared rabbit’s.

“A lot of ’em. Yeah, I did,” Kenneth admitted, “and the sheriff’s going to find out. She’ll figure out the handwriting sample I gave matches the—”

“Not the DNA, Ken?” Ross pressed. “Will your DNA match the sample from the hospital? The one they took from Laney’s clothes?”

Wiping her eyes, Laney turned away from Ross and Justine, as Kenneth shouted at Ross, “No, that isn’t right, I swear it. I never touched her that way. But don’t you see, it was still my fault. If I’d gotten her to go to the sheriff instead of trying to play the big man, then it could have been stopped.
He
could have.”

“Who could have?” Ross asked him.

“Whoever raped her,” Kenneth said, “the sheriff could’ve caught him. I should’ve known Laney would never use that gun I gave her. So it’s my fault—just another way I’ve screwed everything up. Another reason for Connie to say—”

“You’re wrong,” Ross said quietly, inventing as he went. Because if what Kenneth was telling him was true, Ross owed the man enough compassion to toss him a life raft. And if the man was lying, Ross still wanted him brought out alive, to clear his cousin of suspicion. “You see, I’ve talked to Connie, and she really does care. She’s just been waiting, she said. Waiting for you to finally pull yourself together. Like tough love, you know? She’s just been acting like it’s over because she wants to help you help yourself.”

“She…she does?” Wonder flooded Kenneth’s voice, making the man sound strangely childlike.

Ross heard a clatter in the background, followed by Kenneth’s sharply drawn breath.

“No,” yelled Fleming, his mouth turned away from the phone. “Stay out. Stay back or I—”

Justine’s and Laney’s heads swiveled toward the house at the same moment Ross heard the staccato burst of gunfire from both the phone and, offset by a split second, across the street. A clatter followed—sounding like Kenneth’s phone falling—as Ross shouted Fleming’s name into his own cell.

“What’s happening? Were those shots?” cried Laney.

Justine sprinted toward the house, the deputies on crowd control running in the same direction. Ross wanted to follow, but with all the drawn guns, he forced himself to hold up and pressed his ear to the phone.

In it, he heard voices shouting in the background. Paul Miller’s, Ross thought. Maybe Larry’s, too.

Which would mean…Ross’s stomach went slippery. With a glance at Laney’s panicked face, he forced himself to get a grip on his emotions. He didn’t have the luxury to indulge them—and Fleming might not have the time.

He saw the front door open just as Justine reached it, with Larry looking pale and shaky as he waved her and the other deputy inside.

Taking that as his cue, Ross told Laney, “I’m going in. I have to see what I can do—in case someone’s injured.”

“But I want to—”

“Then come with me,” he said, feeling the cold finger of a premonition that she’d take off the moment he left her unattended.

Taking her by the hand, he ran with Laney toward the house.

“What happened? Are you all right?” Justine asked Larry as he led her through a formal living room. His face, she’d noticed, was misted red with blood.

“We found a key hidden by the back door, but he heard us come in, ran at us shouting.” Sweat beaded Larry’s forehead, dampened his comb-over. “He raised the gun—pointing at
us. But Paul and I…we…The training kicks in, you know? The training and adrenaline and…We couldn’t let him shoot us.”

In the kitchen, Paul Miller squatted behind Fleming’s prone form, the deputy’s knees planted in the spreading puddle of the downed man’s blood. Fleming’s pink bathrobe had gone deep red around what appeared to be two fist-size exit wounds in his back. Red enough that Justine suspected Miller wouldn’t find the vitals he was seeking.