"Slau_0440335574_oeb_c14_r1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Slaughter Karin - [Grant County 05] - Faithless (html))
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Yes, ma’am,” Jeffrey said into the telephone, rolling his eyes at Lena. She could tell that Barbara, Paul Ward’s secretary, was giving him everything but her social security number. The woman’s tinny voice was so loud that Lena could hear it from five feet away.
“That’s good,” he said. “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned his head against his hand. “Oh, excuse me— excuse—” he tried, then, “I’ve got another call. Thank you.” He hung up, Barbara’s cackling coming out of the earpiece even as he dropped the receiver back on the hook.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, rubbing his ear. “Literally.”
“She try to save your soul?”
“Let’s just say she’s really happy to be involved with the church.”
“So, she’d say anything she could to cover for Paul?”
“Probably,” he agreed, sitting back in his chair. He looked down at his notes, which consisted of three words. “She confirms what Paul said about being in Savannah. She even remembered working late with him the night Abby died.”
Lena knew that pinpointing time of death wasn’t an exact science. “All night?”
“That’s a point,” he allowed. “She also said Abby came by with some papers a couple of days before she went missing.”
“Did she seem okay?”
“Said she was a little ray of sunshine, as usual. Paul signed some papers, they went to lunch and he took her back to the bus station.”
“They could’ve had some kind of altercation during lunch.”
“True,” he agreed. “But why would he kill his niece?”
“It could be his baby she was carrying,” Lena suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Jeffrey rubbed his jaw. “Yeah,” he admitted, and she could tell the thought left a bad taste in his mouth. “But Cole Connolly was pretty sure it was Chip’s.”
“Are you sure Cole didn’t poison her?
“As close to sure as I can be,” he told her. “Maybe we need to separate out the two, forget worrying about who killed Abby. Who killed Cole? Who would want him dead?”
Lena wasn’t entirely convinced of Connolly’s truthfulness about Abby’s death. Jeffrey had been pretty shaken up after watching the man die. She wondered if his conviction of Cole’s innocence was influenced by what had to have been a truly grotesque experience.
She suggested, “Maybe somebody who knew Cole had poisoned Abby decided to get revenge, wanted him to suffer the same way Abby had.”
“I didn’t tell anyone in the family that she was poisoned until after Cole was dead,” he reminded her. “On the other hand, whoever did it knew he drank coffee every morning. He told me the sisters were always on him, trying to get him to quit.”
Lena took it a step further. “Rebecca might know, too.”
Jeffrey nodded. “There’s a reason she’s staying away.” He added, “At least I hope she’s choosing to stay away.”
Lena had been thinking this same thing. “You’re sure Cole didn’t put her somewhere? To punish her for something?”
“I know you think I shouldn’t take him at his word,” Jeffrey began, “but I don’t think he took her. People like Cole know who to choose.” He leaned across his desk, hands clasped in front of him, as if he was saying something vital to the case. “They pick the ones they know won’t talk. It’s the same way with Dale picking Terri. These guys know who they can push around— who will shut up and take it and who won’t.”
Lena felt her cheeks burning. “Rebecca seemed pretty defiant. We only saw her that once, but I got the feeling she didn’t let anybody push her around.” She shrugged. “The thing is, you never know, do you?”
“No,” he said, giving her a careful look. “For all we know, Rebecca’s the one behind all of this.”
Frank stood in the doorway with a stack of papers in his hand. He said something neither one of them had considered. “Poisoning is a woman’s crime.”
“Rebecca was scared when she talked to us,” Lena said. “She didn’t want her family to know. Then again, maybe she didn’t want them to know because she was playing us.”
Jeffrey asked, “Did she seem like the type?”
“No,” she admitted. “Lev and Paul, maybe. Rachel’s pretty sturdy, too.”
Frank said, “What’s the brother doing living in Savannah, anyway?”
“It’s a port city,” Jeffrey reminded him. “Lots of trade still goes on down there.” He indicated the papers in Frank’s hand. “What’ve you got?”
“The rest of the credit reports,” he said, handing them over.
“Anything jump out at you?”
Frank shook his head as Marla’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Chief, Sara’s on line three.”
Jeffrey picked up the phone. “Hey.”
Lena made to leave in order to give him some privacy, but Jeffrey waved her back down in her chair. He took out his pen, saying into the phone, “Spell that,” as he wrote. Then, “Okay. Next.”
Lena read upside down as he wrote a series of names, all men.
“This is good,” Jeffrey told Sara. “I’ll call you later.” He hung up the telephone, not even pausing for a breath before saying, “Sara’s at Brock’s. She says that nine people have died on the farm in the last two years.”
“Nine?” Lena was sure she’d heard wrong.
“Brock got four of the bodies. Richard Cable got the rest.”
Lena knew Cable ran one of the funeral homes in Catoogah County. She asked, “What was the cause of death?”
Jeffrey ripped the sheet of paper off his pad. “Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses. One had a heart attack. Jim Ellers over in Catoogah did the autopsies. He ruled them all natural causes.”
Lena was skeptical, not of what Jeffrey was saying, but of Ellers’s competence. “He said nine people in two years, living on the same place, died from natural causes?”
Jeffrey said, “Cole Connolly had a lot of drugs hidden in his room.”
“You think he helped them along?” Frank asked.
“That’s what he did with Chip,” Jeffrey said. “Cole told me that himself. Said he was tempting him with the apple, something like that.”
“So,” Lena surmised, “Cole was picking out the ‘weak’ ones, dangling drugs or whatever in front of their faces, seeing if they would take them and prove him right.”
“And the ones who took them ended up going to their maker,” Jeffrey said, but she could tell from his crocodile smile he had more.
She asked, “What?”
He told her, “The Church for the Greater Good paid for all the cremations.”
“Cremations,” Frank repeated. “So, we can’t exhume the bodies.”
Lena knew there was more to it than that. She asked, “What am I missing?”
Jeffrey told them, “Paul Ward got all their death certificates.”
Stupidly, Lena began, “Why would he need—” but answered her own question before she finished. “Life insurance.”
“Bingo,” Jeffrey said, handing Frank the paper with the names. “Get Hemming and go through the phone book. Do we have one for Savannah?” Frank nodded. “Find the big insurance companies. We’ll start there first. Don’t call the local agents, call the corporate national fraud hotlines. The local agents might be involved.”
Lena asked, “Will they give out that information over the phone?”
“They will if they think they’ve been cheated out of some dough,” Frank said. “I’ll get right on it.”
As Frank left the room, Jeffrey pointed his finger at Lena. “I knew this had to be about money. It had to be about something concrete.”
She had to admit, “You were right.”
“We found our general,” he told her. “Cole said he was just an old soldier, but he needed a general to tell him what to do.”
“Abby was in Savannah a few days before she died. Maybe she found out about the life insurance policies.”
“How?” Jeffrey asked.
“Her mother said she worked in the office for a while. That she was good with numbers.”
“Lev saw her in the office once at the photocopier. Maybe she saw something she wasn’t meant to.” He paused, mulling over the possibilities. “Rachel said Abby went to Savannah before she died because Paul had left some papers behind in his briefcase. Maybe Abby saw the policies.”
She asked, “So, you think Abby confronted him in Savannah?”
Jeffrey nodded. “And Paul called Cole to prod him on to punish her.”
“Or he called Lev.”
“Or Lev,” he agreed.
“Cole already knew about Chip. He followed him and Abby out into the woods.” She had to say, “I don’t know, though. It’s strange. Paul didn’t strike me as the overly religious type.”
“Why would he have to be?”
“Telling Cole to bury his niece in a coffin in the woods?” she asked. “Lev seems more like your general to me.” She added, “Plus, Paul was never in Dale’s garage. If that’s where the cyanide came from, then it points straight back to Lev, because he’s the only one we can connect to the garage.” She paused a moment. “Or Cole.”
“I don’t think it was Cole,” Jeffrey insisted. “Did you ever have a real conversation with Terri Stanley about that?”
She felt her blush come back, this time from shame. “No.”
His lips pressed into a tight line, but he didn’t say the obvious. If she had talked to Terri before, maybe they wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Maybe Rebecca would be safe at home, Cole Connolly would still be alive, and they would be back in the interrogation room, talking to the person who had killed Abigail Bennett.
“I fucked up,” she said.
“Yeah, you did.” He waited a few seconds before saying, “You don’t listen to me, Lena. I need to be able to trust you to do what I say.” He paused as if he expected her to interrupt him. She didn’t, and he continued, “You can be a good cop, a smart cop. That’s why I made you detective.” She looked down, unable to take the compliment, knowing what was coming next. “Everything that happens in this town is my responsibility, and if somebody gets hurt or worse because you can’t follow my orders, then it’s all on me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough this time. Sorry means you understand what I’m saying and you’re not going to do it again.” He let that sink in. “I’ve heard sorry one too many times now. I need to see actions, not hear empty words.”
His quiet tone was worse than if he had yelled at her. Lena looked down at the floor, wondering how many times he was going to let her screw things up before he finally cut her loose.
He stood quickly, taking her by surprise. Lena flinched, gripped by an inexplicable panic that he was going to hit her.
Jeffrey was shocked, looking at her as if he had never seen her in his life.
“I just—” She couldn’t find the words to say. “You scared me.”
Jeffrey leaned out the door, telling Marla, “Send back the woman who’s about to walk in.” He told Lena, “Mary Ward is here. I just saw her pull up into the parking lot.”
Lena tried to regain her composure. “I thought she didn’t like to drive.”
“Guess she made an exception,” Jeffrey answered, still looking at her like she was a book he couldn’t read. “Are you going to be able to do this?”
“Of course,” she said, pushing herself out of the chair. She tucked in her shirt, feeling fidgety and out of place.
He took her hand in both of his, and she felt another shock. He never touched her like that. It wasn’t something he did.
He said, “I need you to be on your game right now.”
“You’ve got me,” she assured him, pulling back her hand to tuck in her shirt again even though it was already tight. “Let’s go.”
Lena didn’t wait for him. She squared her shoulders and walked across the squad room with purposeful strides. Marla’s hand was on the buzzer as Lena opened the door.
Mary Ward stood in the lobby, her purse clutched to her chest.
“Chief Tolliver,” she said, as if Lena wasn’t right in front of her. She had a ratty old black and red scarf around her shoulders, looking more like a little old lady now than the first time they had seen her. The woman was probably only ten years older than Lena. She was either putting on an act or was truly one of the most pathetic people walking the face of the earth.
“Why don’t you come back to my office,” Jeffrey offered, putting his hand at Mary’s elbow, guiding her through the open doorway before she could change her mind. He said, “You remember Detective Adams?”
“Lena,” Lena supplied, ever helpful. “Can I get you some coffee or something?”
“I don’t drink caffeine,” the woman replied, her voice still strained, as if she had been screaming and had made herself hoarse. Lena could see she had a balled tissue up her sleeve and assumed she’d been crying.
Jeffrey sat Mary at one of the desks outside his office, probably wanting to keep her off guard. He waited for her to sit, then took the chair beside her. Lena hung back behind them, thinking Mary would be more comfortable talking to Jeffrey.
He asked, “What can I help you with, Mary?”
She took her time, her breathing audible in the small room as they waited for her to speak. “You said my niece was in a box, Chief Tolliver.”
“Yes.”
“That Cole had buried her in a box.”
“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Cole admitted it to me before he died.”
“And you found her there? You found Abby yourself?”
“My wife and I were in the woods. We found the metal pipe in the ground. We dug her out ourselves.”
Mary took the tissue from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “Several years ago,” she began; then: “I guess I should back up.”
“Take your time.”
She seemed to do exactly that, and Lena pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to shake it out of her.
“I have two sons,” Mary said. “William and Peter. They live out west.”
“I remember you telling us that,” Jeffrey said, though Lena didn’t.
“They chose to leave the church.” She blew her nose in the tissue. “It was very hard for me to lose my children. Not that we turned our backs on them. Everyone makes their own decisions. We don’t exclude people because they . . .” She let her voice trail off. “My sons turned their backs on us. On me.”
Jeffrey waited, the only sign of his impatience his hand gripping the arm of the chair.
“Cole was very hard on them,” she said. “He disciplined them.”
“Did he abuse them?”
“He punished them when they were bad,” was all she would admit. “My husband had passed away a year before. I was grateful for Cole’s help. I thought they needed a strong man in their lives.” She sniffed, wiping her nose. “These were different times.”
“I understand,” Jeffrey told her.
“Cole has— had— very firm ideas about right and wrong. I trusted him. My father trusted him. He was first and foremost a man of God.”
“Did anything happen to change that?”
She seemed overcome by sadness. “No. I believed everything he said. At the cost of my own children, I believed in him. I turned my back on my daughter.”
Lena felt her eyebrows shoot up.
“You have a daughter?”
She nodded. “Genie.”
Jeffrey sat back in the chair, though his body remained tense.
“She told me,” Mary continued. “Genie told me what he had done to her.” She paused. “The box in the woods.”
“He buried her there?”
“They were camping,” Mary explained. “He took the children camping all the time.”
Lena knew Jeffrey was thinking about Rebecca, how she had run away to the woods before. He asked, “What did your daughter say happened?”
“She said Cole tricked her, that he told her he was going to take her for a walk in the woods.” She stopped, then willed herself to go on. “He left her there for five days.”
“What did you do when she told you about this?”
“I asked Cole about it.” She shook her head at her own stupidity. “He told me that he couldn’t stay on the farm if I believed Genie over him. He felt that strongly about it.”
“But he didn’t deny it?”
“No,” she told Jeffrey. “I never realized it until last night. He never denied it. He told me that I should pray about it, let the Lord tell me whom to believe— Genie or him. I trusted in him. He has such a strict sense of right and wrong. I took him for a God-fearing man.”
“Did anyone else in the family know about this?”
She shook her head again. “I was ashamed. She lied.” Mary corrected, “She lied about some things. I see that now, but at the time, it was harder to see. Genie was a very rebellious young girl. She used drugs. She ran around with boys. She turned away from the church. She turned away from the family.”
“What did you tell them about Genie’s disappearance?”
“I sought my brother’s counsel. He told me to tell them she had run away with a boy. It was a believable story. I thought it saved us all the embarrassment of the truth, and neither of us wanted to upset Cole.” She dabbed the tissue at the corner of her eye. “He was so valuable to us then. My brothers were both away at school. None of us girls were capable of taking care of the farm. Cole ran everything along with my father. He was critical to the operation.”
The fire door banged open and Frank came in, stopping in his tracks when he saw Jeffrey and Mary Ward sitting at the desk. He walked over and put his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder, handing him a folder. Jeffrey opened the file, obviously knowing Frank would not have interrupted unless it was important. Lena could tell that he was looking at several faxed pages. The station was run on a tight budget and the machine was about ten years old, using thermal rolls instead of plain paper. Jeffrey smoothed out the pages as he scanned them. When he looked up, Lena couldn’t tell if he had read good news or bad.
“Mary,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve been calling you Ms. Ward this whole time. Is your married name Morgan?”
Her surprise registered on her face. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”
“And your daughter is named Teresa Eugenia Morgan?”
“Yes.”
Jeffrey gave her a minute to collect herself. “Mary,” he began. “Did Abby ever meet your daughter?”
“Of course,” she said. “Genie was ten when Abby was born. She treated her like her own little baby. Abby was devastated when Genie left. They were both devastated.”
“Could Abby have visited your daughter that day she went to Savannah?”
“Savannah?”
He took out one of the faxed pages. “We have Genie’s address listed as 241 Sandon Square, Savannah.”
“Well, no,” she said, a bit troubled. “My daughter lives here in town, Chief Tolliver. Her married name is Stanley.”
Lena drove to the Stanley place while Jeffrey talked on his cell phone to Frank. He kept his spiral notepad balanced on his knee as he wrote down whatever Frank was telling him, giving the occasional grunt to confirm he’d heard what was being said.
Lena glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure Brad Stephens was behind them. He was following in his cruiser, and for once, Lena was glad to have the junior patrolman around. Brad was goofy, but he had been working out lately and had the muscle to show for it. Jeffrey had told them about the loaded revolver Dale Stanley kept on top of one of the cabinets in the garage. She wasn’t looking forward to confronting Terri’s husband, but part of her was hoping he tried something so that Jeffrey and Brad had an excuse to show him what it felt like for someone larger and stronger than you to bring down a world of pain on your ass.
Jeffrey told Frank, “No, don’t put her in a cell. Give her some milk and cookies if you have to. Just keep her away from the phone and her brothers.” Lena knew he was talking about Mary Morgan. The woman had been startled when Jeffrey had told her she wasn’t to leave the police station but, like most law-abiding citizens, she was so scared of going to jail that she had just sat there, nodding, agreeing with everything he said.
“Good work, Frank.” Jeffrey told him, “Let me know what else you come up with,” and rang off. He started scribbling on his pad again, not speaking.
Lena didn’t have the patience to wait for him to finish with his notes. “What did he say?”
“They’ve found six policies so far,” he told her, still writing. “Lev and Terri are listed as beneficiaries for both Abby and Chip. Mary Morgan is on two, Esther Bennett is on two others.”
“What’d Mary say about that?”
“She said she had no idea what Frank was talking about. Paul handles all the accounts for the family.”
“Did Frank believe her?”
“He’s not sure,” Jeffrey said. “Hell, I’m not sure and I talked to her for half an hour.”
“I wouldn’t guess they’re living high on the hog.”
“Sara says they make their own clothes.”
“Paul doesn’t,” she pointed out. “How much were the policies worth?”
“Around fifty thousand each. They were greedy, but they weren’t stupid.”
Lena knew that anything exorbitant would have raised suspicion with the insurance agencies. As it was, the family had managed to collect a half-million dollars over the last two years, all of it tax free.
“What about the house?” Lena asked. The policies had listed each beneficiary as living at the same address in Savannah. A quick call to the Chatham County courthouse had revealed that the house on Sandon Square was purchased by a Stephanie Linder five years ago. Either there was another Ward sibling Jeffrey didn’t know about or someone was playing a nasty joke on the family.
Lena asked, “You think Dale is involved in this, too?”
“Frank ran a credit check,” he said. “Dale and Terri are both in debt up to their eyeballs— credit cards, mortgage, two car payments. They’ve got three medical collections against them. Sara says the kid’s been in the hospital a couple of times. They’re hurting for money.”
“You think Terri killed her?” Lena asked. Frank was right when he said poisoning was generally a woman’s crime.
“Why would she do it?”
“She knew what Cole did. She could’ve been following him.”
“But why kill Abby?”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Lena tried. “Maybe Cole killed Abby and Terri decided to give him some of his own medicine.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think Cole killed Abby. He was genuinely sad that she was dead.”
Lena let it go, but in her mind, she thought he was giving a large benefit of the doubt to one of the sickest fucks she’d ever run into.
Jeffrey opened his cell phone and dialed a number. Someone obviously answered on the other end, and he said, “Hey, Molly. Can you give a message to Sara for me?” He paused a beat. “Tell her we’re heading out to the Stanley place right now. Thanks.” He hung up, telling Lena, “Terri had an appointment with Sara around lunchtime.”
It was half past ten. Lena thought about the gun in Dale’s garage. “Why didn’t we just pick her up then?”
“Because Sara’s office is out of bounds.”
Lena thought this was a pretty lame excuse, but she knew better than to push him on it. Jeffrey was the best cop she had ever known, but he was like a whipped puppy as far as Sara Linton was concerned. The fact that she jerked him around so much would have been embarrassing to any other man, but he seemed to take pride in it.
Jeffrey must have sensed her thoughts— at least some of them— because he said, “I don’t know what Terri’s capable of. I sure as hell don’t want her going ballistic in an office full of little kids.”
He pointed to a black mailbox jutting up beside the road. “It’s up here on the right.”
Lena slowed, turning into the Stanley driveway, Brad right behind her. She saw Dale working in the garage and felt her breath catch. She had met him once, years ago, at another police picnic when his brother, Pat, had just joined the force. Lena had forgotten how large he was. Not just large, but strong.
Jeffrey got out of the car, but Lena found herself hesitating. She made her hand move to the handle on the door, made herself open it and get out. She heard Brad’s door shut behind her, but didn’t want to take her eyes off Dale for a second. He stood just inside the doorway of the garage, hefting a heavy-looking wrench in his meaty hands. The cabinet with the gun was a few feet away. Like Jeffrey, he had a dark bruise under his eye.
“Hey, Dale,” Jeffrey said. “How’d you get the shiner?”
“Ran into a door,” he quipped, and Lena wondered how he’d really gotten it. Terri would need to stand on a chair to reach his head. Dale weighed about a hundred pounds more than she did and was at least two feet taller. Lena looked at his hands, thinking one was large enough to wrap around her throat. He could strangle her without giving it a second thought. She hated that feeling, hated the sensation of her lungs shaking in her chest, her eyes rolling back, everything starting to disappear as she willed herself not to pass out.
Jeffrey stepped forward, Brad and Lena on either side of him. He told Dale, “I need you to come out of the garage.”
Dale tightened his hand around the wrench. “What’s going on?” His lips twitched in a quick smile. “Terri call you?”
“Why would she call us?”
“No reason.” He shrugged, but the wrench in his hand said he had something to worry about. Lena glanced at the house, trying to see Terri. If Dale had a bruised eye, Terri probably had something ten times worse.
Jeffrey was obviously thinking the same. Still, he told the man, “You’re not in trouble.”
Dale was smarter than he looked. “Don’t seem that way to me.”
“Come out of the garage, Dale.”
“Man’s home is his castle,” Dale said. “You got no right coming in here. I want you off my property right now.”
“We want to talk to Terri.”
“Nobody talks to Terri unless I say so, and I ain’t saying so, so . . .”
Jeffrey stopped about four feet from Dale, and Lena moved to his left, thinking she could get to the gun before Dale. She suppressed a curse when she realized that the cabinet was well out of her reach. Brad should have taken this side. He was at least a foot taller than she was. By the time Lena dragged over a stool to retrieve the gun, Dale would be on his way to Mexico.
Jeffrey said, “Put the wrench down.”
Dale’s eyes darted to Lena, then Brad. “Maybe ya’ll should back up a step or two.”
“You’re not in charge here, Dale,” Jeffrey told him. Lena wanted to put her hand on her gun, but knew that she should take her signals from Jeffrey. He had his arms at his sides, probably thinking he could talk Dale down. She wasn’t convinced.
“Y’all are crowdin’ me,” Dale said. “I don’t like that.” He lifted the wrench to chest level, resting the end in his palm. Lena knew the man wasn’t an idiot. The wrench could do a lot of damage, but not to three people at the same time, especially considering the three people had guns on their belts. She watched Dale closely, knowing in her gut that he would make a try for the gun.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jeffrey told him. “We just want to talk to Terri.”
Dale moved swiftly for a man his size, but Jeffrey was faster. He yanked the baton from Brad’s belt and slammed it into the back of Dale’s knees as the taller man lunged for the gun. Dale dropped to the floor like a stack of bricks.
Lena felt nothing but shock as she watched the normally docile Brad jam his knee into Dale’s back, pressing him into the ground as he cuffed him. One swipe to the back of the knees and he had fallen. He wasn’t even putting up a fight as Brad jerked back his hands, using two sets of cuffs to keep his wrists bound behind his back.
Jeffrey told Dale, “I warned you not to do this.”
Dale yelped like a dog when Brad pulled him up to his knees. “Jesus, watch it,” he complained, rolling his shoulders like he was afraid they’d been popped out of the sockets. “I want to call my lawyer.”
“You can do that later.” Jeffrey handed the baton back to Brad, saying, “Put him in the back of the car.”
“Yes, sir,” Brad said, pulling Dale up to standing, eliciting another yelp.
The big man shuffled his feet on the way to the car, a storm of dust kicking up behind him.
Just so Lena could hear, Jeffrey said, “Not such a tough guy, huh? I bet it makes him feel real good beating on his little wife.”
Lena felt a bead of sweat roll down her back. Jeffrey swiped some dust off the leg of his pants before heading toward the house. He reminded Lena, “There are two kids in there.”
Lena cast around for something to say. “Do you think she’ll resist?”
“I don’t know what she’ll do.”
The door opened before they reached the front porch. Terri Stanley stood inside, a sleeping baby on her hip. At her side was another kid, probably about two. He was rubbing his little fists into his eyes as if he’d just woken up. Terri’s cheeks were sunken; dark circles rimmed her eyes. Her lip was busted open, a fresh, bluish-yellow bruise traced along her jaw, and angry red welts wrapped around her neck. Lena understood why Dale hadn’t wanted them to talk to his wife. He’d beaten the shit out of her. Lena couldn’t see how the woman was still standing.
Terri watched her husband being led to the squad car, studiously avoiding Jeffrey’s and Lena’s eyes as she told them in a flat voice, “I’m not going to press charges. You might as well let him go.”
Jeffrey looked back at the car. “We’re just gonna let him stew there for a while.”
“Y’all are just making it worse.” She spoke carefully, obviously trying not to crack the lip back open. Lena knew the trick just as she knew it was hell on your throat, making you strain your voice just so your words could be understood. “He never hit me like this before. Not in the face.” Her voice wavered. She was trapped, overwhelmed. “My kids’ve gotta see this.”
“Terri . . .” Jeffrey began, but obviously didn’t know how to finish it.
“He’ll kill me if I leave him.” Her drawl was exaggerated by her swollen lip.
“Terri—”
“I’m not gonna press charges.”
“We’re not asking you to.”
She faltered, as if that hadn’t been the response she was expecting.
Jeffrey said, “We need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
He pulled an old cop’s trick. “You know about what.”
She looked at her husband, who was sitting in the back of Brad’s cruiser.
“He’s not going to hurt you.”
She gave him a wary look, as if he’d told a really bad joke.
Jeffrey said, “We’re not going anywhere until we talk to you.”
“I guess come on in,” she finally relented, stepping back from the open door. “Tim, Mama needs to talk to these people.” She took the boy’s hand, leading him into a den that had a large TV as the focal point. Lena and Jeffrey waited in the large entrance foyer at the base of the stairs while she put a DVD into the player.
Lena looked up at the high ceiling, which opened onto the upstairs hall. Where a chandelier should be hanging there were only a few stray wires jutting out of the Sheetrock. There were scuff marks on the walls by the stairs, and someone had kicked a small hole at the top. The spindles holding up the railing on the other side looked almost bent, several cracked or broken toward the landing at the top. Terri, she bet, picturing Dale dragging the woman up the stairs, her legs kicking wildly behind her. There were twelve steps in all, twice as many spindles to grab on to as she tried to stop the inevitable.
The shrill voice of SpongeBob SquarePants echoed off the cold tiles in the foyer, and Terri came out, still holding her youngest son on her hip.
Jeffrey asked her, “Where can we talk?”
“Let me put him down,” she said, meaning the baby. “The kitchen’s through the back.” She started up the stairs and Jeffrey motioned for Lena to follow her.
The house was larger than it looked from the outside, the landing at the top of the stairs leading to a long hallway and what looked like three bedrooms and a bath. Terri stopped at the first room and Lena paused, not following her in. Instead, she stood at the door to the nursery, watching Terri lay the sleeping baby in the crib. The room was brightly decorated, clouds on the ceiling, a pastoral scene on the walls showing happy sheep and cows. Over the crib was a mobile with more sheep. Lena couldn’t see the kid while his mother stroked his head, but his little legs stretched out when Terri took off the crocheted booties. Lena hadn’t realized that babies’ feet were so small, their toes little nubs, their arches curling like banana peels as they pulled their knees to their chests.
Terri was staring intently at Lena over her shoulder. “You got kids?” She made a hoarse noise that Lena took as an attempt at a laugh. “I mean, other than the one you left in Atlanta.”
Lena knew she was trying to threaten her, using her words to remind Lena that they had both been in that clinic for the same thing, but Terri Stanley wasn’t the type of woman who could carry this off. When the mother turned around, all Lena could do was feel sorry for her. The light was bright in the room, sunlight illuminating the bruise along Terri’s jaw as if it were in Technicolor. Her lip had cracked, a sliver of blood seeping out onto her chin. Lena realized that six months ago she could have been looking at a mirror.
“You’d do anything for them,” Terri said with a tone of sadness. “You’d put up with anything.”
“Anything?”
Terri swallowed, wincing from the pain. Dale had obviously choked her. The bruises weren’t out yet, but they would come soon enough, looking like a dark necklace around her throat. Heavy concealer would take care of it, but she would feel stiff all week, turning her head carefully, trying not to wince when she swallowed, biding her time as she waited for the muscles to relax, the pain to go away.
She said, “I can’t explain—”
Lena was in no position to lecture her. “You know you don’t have to.”
“Yeah,” Terri agreed, turning back around, pulling a light blue blanket up around the baby’s chin. Lena stared at her back, wondering if Terri was capable of murder. She would be the type to poison if she did anything. There was no way Terri could see someone face-to-face and kill them. Of course, she had obviously gotten her own back with Dale. He didn’t get the bruise on his eye from shaving.
“Looks like you got him one good,” Lena said.
Terri turned around, confused. “What?”
“Dale,” she said, indicating her own eye.
Terri smiled a genuine smile, and her whole face changed. Lena got a glimpse of the woman she had been before all this happened, before Dale started beating her, before life became something to endure instead of enjoy. She was beautiful.
“I paid for it,” Terri said, “but it felt so good.”
Lena smiled, too, knowing how good it felt to fight back. You paid for it in the end, but it was so fucking fantastic when you were doing it. It was almost like a high.
Terri took a deep breath and let it go. “Let’s get this over with.”
Lena followed her back down the stairs, their footsteps echoing on the wooden boards. There were no rugs on the main floor and the noise sounded like a horse clattering around. Dale had probably done this on purpose, making sure he knew exactly where his wife was at all times.
They walked into the kitchen where Jeffrey was looking at the photographs and children’s colorings on the refrigerator. On the drawings, Lena could see where Terri had written the names of the animals they were supposed to represent. Lion, Tiger, Bear. She dotted her i’s with an open circle the way girls did in high school.
“Have a seat,” Terri said, taking a chair at the table. Jeffrey remained standing, but Lena sat opposite Terri. The kitchen was neat for this time of morning. Plates and silverware from breakfast were drying in the rack and the counters were wiped clean. Lena wondered if Terri was naturally fastidious or if Dale had beat it into her.
Terri stared at her hands, which were clasped in front of her on the table. She was a small woman, but the way she held herself made her seem even smaller. Sadness radiated off her like an aura. Lena couldn’t imagine how Dale managed to hit her without breaking her in two.
Terri offered, “Y’all want something to drink?”
Lena and Jeffrey answered no at the same time. After what happened with Cole Connolly, Lena doubted she’d ever take anything from anyone again.
Terri sat back in her chair, and Lena looked at her closely. She realized that they were about the same height, the same build. Terri was about ten pounds lighter, maybe an inch or two shorter, but there wasn’t that much different about them.
Terri asked, “Y’all aren’t here to talk about Dale?”
“No.”
She picked at the cuticle on her thumb. Dried blood showed where she had done this before. “I guess I should’ve known you guys would come eventually.”
“Why’s that?” Jeffrey asked.
“The note I sent to Dr. Linton,” she told him. “I guess I wasn’t real smart about it.”
Again, Jeffrey showed no reaction. “Why is that?”
“Well, I know y’all can get all kinds of evidence from it.”
Lena nodded like this was true, thinking the girl had watched too many crime shows on TV, where lab techs ran around in Armani suits and high heels, plucking a minuscule piece of somebody’s cuticle from a rose thorn, then trotting back to their labs where through the miracle of science they discovered that the attacker was a right-handed albino who collected stamps and lived with his mother. Setting aside the fact that no crime lab in the world could afford the zillions of dollars’ worth of equipment they showed, the fact was that DNA broke down. Outside factors could compromise the strand, or sometimes there wasn’t enough for a sample. Fingerprints were subject to interpretation and it was very rare there were enough points for comparison to hold up in court.
Jeffrey asked, “Why did you send the letter to Dr. Linton?”
“I knew she’d do something about it,” Terri said, then added quickly, “Not that y’all wouldn’t, but Dr. Linton, she takes care of people. She really looks after them. I knew she’d understand.” She shrugged. “I knew she’d tell you.”
“Why not just tell her in person?” Jeffrey asked. “You saw me Monday morning at the clinic. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
She gave a humorless laugh. “Dale’d kill me if he knew I’d gotten messed up in all of this. He hates the church. He hates everything about them. It’s just . . .” Her voice trailed off. “When I heard what happened to Abby, I thought y’all should know he’s done it before.”
“Who’s done it before?”
Her throat worked as she struggled to say the name. “Cole.”
“He put you in a box out in the state forest?” Jeffrey asked.
She nodded, her hair falling into her eyes. “We were supposed to be camping. He took me out for a walk.” She swallowed. “He brought me to this clearing. There was this hole in the ground. A rectangle. There was a box inside.”
Lena asked, “What did you do?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered. “I don’t think I even had time to scream. He hit me real hard, pushed me in. I cut my knee open, scraped my hand. I started yelling but he got on top of me and raised his fist, like he was going to beat me.” She paused, trying to keep her composure as she told the story. “So, I just laid there. I just laid there while he put the boards on top of me, nailing them in one by one. . . .”
Lena looked at her own hands, thinking about the nails that had been driven in, the metallic sound of the hammer hitting the metal spike, the unfathomable fear as she lay there, helpless to do anything to save herself.
“He was praying the whole time,” Terri said. “Saying stuff about God giving him the strength, that he was just a vessel for the Lord.” She closed her eyes, tears slipping out. “The next thing I know, I’m looking up at these black slats. Sunlight was coming through them, I guess, but it felt like a lighter shade of dark. It was so dark in there.” She shuddered at the memory. “I heard the dirt coming down, not fast but slow, like he had all the time in the world. And he kept praying, louder, like he wanted to make sure I could hear him.”
She stopped, and Lena asked, “What did you do?”
Again, Terri’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I started screaming, and it just echoed in the box. It hurt my ears. I couldn’t see anything. I could barely move. I still hear it sometimes,” she said. “At night, when I’m trying to sleep, I’ll hear the thud of the dirt hitting the box. The grit coming through, getting stuck in my throat.” She had started to cry harder at the memory. “He was such a bad man.”
Jeffrey said, “And that is why you left home.”
Terri seemed surprised that he asked this.
He explained, “Your mother told us what happened, Terri.”
She laughed, a hollow-sounding noise devoid of any humor. “My mother?”
“She came into the station this morning.”
More tears sprang into her eyes and her lower lip started quivering. “She told you?” she asked. “Mama told you what Cole did?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t believe me,” Terri said, her voice no more than a murmur. “I told her what he did, and she said I was making it up. She told me I was going to go to hell.” She looked around the kitchen, her life. “I guess she was right.”
Lena asked, “Where did you go when you left?”
“Atlanta,” she answered. “I was with this boy— Adam. He was just a way to get out of here. I couldn’t stay, not with them not believing me.” She sniffed, wiping her nose with her hand. “I was so scared Cole was gonna get me again. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I just kept waiting for him to take me.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“I just . . .” She let her voice trail off. “I grew up here. And then I met Dale . . .” Again she didn’t finish the thought. “He was a good man when I met him. So sweet. He wasn’t always the way he is now. The kids being sick puts a lot of pressure on him.”
Jeffrey didn’t let her continue along that track. “How long have y’all been married?”
“Eight years,” she answered. Eight years of having the shit beaten out of her. Eight years of making excuses, covering his tracks, convincing herself that this time was different, this time he would change. Eight years of knowing deep in her gut that she was lying to herself but not being able to do anything about it.
Lena would be dead in eight years if she had to endure that.
Terri said, “When Dale met me, I was clean, but I was still messed up. Didn’t think much of myself.” Lena could hear the regret in her voice. She wasn’t wallowing in self-pity. She was looking back on her life and seeing how the hole she had dug for herself wasn’t much different from the one Cole Connolly had put her in.
Terri told them, “Before that, I was into speed, shooting up. I did some really bad things. I think Tim’s the one who’s paid for it most.” She added, “His asthma is really bad. Who knows how long those drugs stay in your system? Who knows what it does to your insides?”
He asked, “When did you clean up?”
“When I was twenty-one,” she answered. “I just stopped. I knew I wouldn’t see twenty-five if I didn’t.”
“Have you had any contact with your family since then?”
She started picking at her cuticle again. “I asked my uncle for some money a while back,” she admitted. “I needed it for . . .” Her throat moved again as she swallowed. Lena knew what she needed the money for. Terri didn’t have a job. Dale probably kept every dime that came into the house. She had to pay the clinic somehow, and borrowing money from her uncle had been the only way.
Terri told Jeffrey, “Dr. Linton’s been real nice, but we had to pay her something for all she’s been doing. Tim’s medication isn’t covered by his insurance.” Suddenly, she looked up, fear lighting her eyes. “Don’t tell Dale,” she pleaded, talking to Lena. “Please don’t tell him I asked for money. He’s proud. He doesn’t like me begging.”
Lena knew he would want to know where the money went. She asked, “Did you ever see Abby?”
Her lips quivered as she tried not to cry. “Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes, she used to come by during the day to check on me and the kids. She’d bring us food, candy for the kids.”
“You knew she was pregnant?”
Terri nodded, and Lena wondered if Jeffrey felt the sadness coming off her. She was probably thinking about the child she had lost, the one in Atlanta. Lena felt herself thinking the same thing. For some reason, the image of the baby upstairs came to her mind, his little feet curling in the air, the way Terri tucked the blanket under his soft chin. Lena had to look down so that Jeffrey wouldn’t see the tears stinging her eyes.
She could feel Terri looking at her. The mother had an abused woman’s sense of other people, an instinctive recognition of changing emotions that came from years of trying not to say or do the wrong thing.
Jeffrey was oblivious to all of this as he asked, “What did you say to Abby when she told you about the baby?”
“I should have known what was going to happen,” she said. “I should have warned her.”
“Warned her about what?”
“About Cole, about what he did to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“My own mother wouldn’t believe me,” she said bluntly. “I don’t know . . . Over the years, I thought maybe I was making it up. I did so many drugs then, lots of bad stuff. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was easier to just think that I made it up.”
Lena knew what she was talking about. You lied to yourself in degrees just so you could get through the day.
Jeffrey asked, “Did Abby tell you she was seeing somebody?”
Terri nodded, saying, “Chip,” with some regret. “I told her not to get mixed up with him. You’ve got to understand, girls don’t know much growing up on the Holy Grown farm. They keep us secluded, like they’re protecting us, but what it really does is make it easier for all the men.” She gave another humorless laugh. “I never even knew what sex was until I was having it.”
“When did Abby tell you she was leaving?”
“She came by on her way to Savannah about a week before she died,” Terri said. “She told me she was going to leave with Chip when Aunt Esther and Uncle Eph went into Atlanta in a couple of days.”
“Did she seem upset?”
She considered the question. “She seemed preoccupied. That’s not like Abby. There was a lot on her mind, though. She was . . . she was distracted.”
“Distracted how?”
Terri looked down, obviously trying to conceal her reaction. “Just with stuff.”
Jeffrey said, “Terri, we need to know what stuff.”
She spoke. “We were here in the kitchen,” she began. She indicated Lena’s chair. “She was sitting right there. She had Paul’s briefcase in her lap, holding it like she couldn’t let go. I remember thinking I could sell that thing and feed my kids for a month.”
“It’s a nice briefcase?” Jeffrey asked, and Lena knew he was thinking exactly the same thing she was. Abby had looked in the briefcase and found something Paul didn’t want her to see.
She said, “He probably paid a thousand dollars for it. He spends money like it’s water. I just don’t understand.”
Jeffrey asked, “What did Abby say?”
“That she had to go see Paul, then when she came back, she was leaving with Chip.” She sniffed. “She wanted me to tell her mama and daddy that she loved them with all her heart.” She started to cry again. “I need to tell them that. I owe Esther that at least.”
“Do you think she told Paul she was pregnant?”
Terri shook her head. “I don’t know. She could’ve gone to Savannah to get some help.”
Lena asked, “Help getting rid of the baby?”
“God, no,” she said, shocked. “Abby would never kill her baby.”
Lena felt her mouth working, but her voice was caught somewhere in her throat.
Jeffrey asked, “What do you think she wanted from Paul?”
“Maybe she asked him for some money?” Terri guessed. “I told her she’d need some money if she was going off with Chip. She doesn’t understand how the real world works. She gets hungry and there’s food on the table. She’s cold and there’s the thermostat. She’s never had to fend for herself. I warned her she’d need money of her own, and to hide it from Chip, to keep something back for herself, in case he left her somewhere. I didn’t want her to make the same mistakes I had.” She wiped her nose. “She was such a sweet, sweet girl.”
A sweet girl who was trying to bribe her uncle into paying her off with blood money, Lena thought. She asked, “You think Paul gave her the money?”
“I don’t know,” Terri admitted. “That was the last time I saw her. She was supposed to leave with Chip after that. I really thought she had until I heard . . . until you found her on Sunday.”
“Where were you last Saturday night?”
Terri used the back of her hand to wipe her nose. “Here,” she told them. “With Dale and the kids.”
“Can anyone else verify that?”
She bit her bottom lip, thinking. “Well, Paul dropped by,” she told them. “Just for a minute.”
“Saturday night?” Jeffrey verified, glancing at Lena. Paul had insisted several times that he was in Savannah the night his niece died. His chatty secretary had even backed him up. He said he had driven to the farm on Sunday evening to help look for Abby.
Jeffrey asked, “Why was Paul here?”
“He brought Dale that thing for one of his cars.”
Jeffrey asked, “What thing?”
“That Porsche thing,” she answered. “Paul loves flashy cars— hell, he loves flashy anything. He tries to hide it from Papa and them, but he likes to have his toys.”
“What kind of toys?”
“He brings in old beaters he finds at auctions and Dale fixes them up for a discount. At least Dale says he’s giving a discount. I don’t know what he charges, but it’s gotta be cheaper to do it here than it is in Savannah.”
“How often does Paul bring in cars?”
“Two, three times that I can think of.” Terri shrugged. “You’d have to ask Dale. I’m in the back mostly, working on the upholstery.”
“Dale didn’t mention Paul came by when I saw him the other night.”
“I doubt he would,” Terri said. “Paul pays him in cash. He don’t report it on the taxes.” She tried to defend his actions. “We’ve got collections after us. The hospital’s already garnishing Dale’s wages from when Tim went in last year. The bank reports back everything that goes in and out. We’d lose the house if we didn’t have that extra cash.”
“I don’t work for the IRS,” Jeffrey told her. “All I care about is Saturday night. You’re sure Paul came by Saturday?”
She nodded. “You can ask Dale,” she said. “They stayed in the garage for about ten minutes, then he was gone. I just saw him through the front window. Paul doesn’t really talk to me.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m a fallen woman,” she said, absent any sarcasm.
“Terri,” Jeffrey began, “was Paul ever in the garage alone?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“How many times?” he pushed.
“I don’t know. A lot.”
Jeffrey wasn’t so conciliatory anymore. He pressed her harder. “How about in the last three months or so? Was he here then?”
“I guess,” she repeated, agitated. “Why does it matter if Paul was in the garage?”
“I’m just trying to figure out if he had time to take something that was out there.”
She snorted a laugh at the suggestion. “Dale would’ve wrung his neck.”
“What about the insurance policies?” he asked.
“What policies?”
Jeffrey took out a folded sheet of fax paper and put it on the table in front of her.
Terri’s brow furrowed as she read the document. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy with you as the beneficiary.”
“Where did you find this?”
“You don’t get to ask the questions,” Jeffrey told her, dropping his understanding tone. “Tell us what’s going on, Terri.”
“I thought—” she began, then stopped, shaking her head.
Lena asked, “You thought what?”
Terri shook her head, picking at the cuticle on her thumb.
“Terri?” Lena prodded, not wanting Jeffrey to be too hard on her. She obviously had something to say; now was not the time to be impatient.
Jeffrey adjusted his tone. “Terri, we need your help here. We know Cole put her in that box, just like he did with you, only Abby never got out. We need you to help us find out who killed her.”
“I don’t . . .” Terri let her voice trail off.
Jeffrey said, “Terri, Rebecca is still missing.”
She said something under her breath that sounded like a word or two of encouragement. Without warning, she stood, saying, “I’ll be back.”
“Hold on a minute.” Jeffrey caught her by the arm as she started to leave the kitchen but Terri flinched and he let go.
“Sorry,” she apologized, rubbing her arm where Dale had bruised her. Lena could see tears from the pain well up in the other woman’s eyes. Still, Terri repeated, “I’ll be right back.”
Jeffrey didn’t touch her again, but he said, “We’ll go with you,” in a tone that said it wasn’t just a friendly suggestion.
Terri hesitated, then gave him a curt nod. She looked down the hallway as if to make sure no one was there. Lena knew she was looking for Dale. Even though he was handcuffed in the squad car, she was still terrified he could get to her.
She opened the back door, giving another furtive glance, this time to make sure Lena and Jeffrey were following. She told Jeffrey, “Leave it open a crack in case Tim needs me,” meaning the door. He caught the screen so it wouldn’t slam, playing along with her paranoia.
Together, the three of them walked into the backyard. The dogs were all mutts, probably rescued from the pound. They whined quietly, jumping up at Terri, trying to get her attention. She absently stroked their heads as she passed, edging around the garage. She stopped at the corner and Lena could see an outbuilding behind it. If Dale was looking this way, he would be able to see them go to the building.
Jeffrey realized this about the same time Lena did. He was offering, “I can—” when Terri took a deep breath and walked out into the open yard.
Lena followed her, not looking at the squad car, feeling the heat of Dale’s stare anyway.
“He’s not looking,” Jeffrey said, but both Lena and Terri were too frightened to look.
Terri took a key out of her pocket and slid it into the locked shed door. She turned on the lights as she went into the cramped room. A sewing machine was in the center, bolts of dark leather stacked against the walls, harsh light overhead. This must be where Terri sewed upholstery for the cars Dale rebuilt. The room was dank, musty. It was little more than a sweatshop and must have felt like hell itself in the dead of winter.
Terri turned around, finally looking out the window. Lena followed her gaze and saw the dark silhouette of Dale Stanley sitting in the back of the squad car. Terri said, “He’s gonna kill me when he finds out about this.” She told Lena, “What’s one more thing, huh?”
Lena said, “We can protect you, Terri. We can take him to jail right now and he’ll never see the light of day again.”
“He’ll get out,” she said.
“No,” Lena told her, because she knew there were ways to make sure prisoners didn’t get out. If you put them in the right cell with the right person, you could fuck up their lives forever. She said, “We can make sure,” and from the look Terri gave her, Lena knew the other woman understood.
Jeffrey had been listening to all of this as he walked around the small room. Suddenly, he pulled a couple of bolts of material away from the wall. There was a noise from behind them, almost like a scurrying mouse. He pulled away another bolt, holding out his hand to the girl crouched against the wall.
He had found Rebecca Bennett.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Yes, ma’am,” Jeffrey said into the telephone, rolling his eyes at Lena. She could tell that Barbara, Paul Ward’s secretary, was giving him everything but her social security number. The woman’s tinny voice was so loud that Lena could hear it from five feet away.
“That’s good,” he said. “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned his head against his hand. “Oh, excuse me— excuse—” he tried, then, “I’ve got another call. Thank you.” He hung up, Barbara’s cackling coming out of the earpiece even as he dropped the receiver back on the hook.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, rubbing his ear. “Literally.”
“She try to save your soul?”
“Let’s just say she’s really happy to be involved with the church.”
“So, she’d say anything she could to cover for Paul?”
“Probably,” he agreed, sitting back in his chair. He looked down at his notes, which consisted of three words. “She confirms what Paul said about being in Savannah. She even remembered working late with him the night Abby died.”
Lena knew that pinpointing time of death wasn’t an exact science. “All night?”
“That’s a point,” he allowed. “She also said Abby came by with some papers a couple of days before she went missing.”
“Did she seem okay?”
“Said she was a little ray of sunshine, as usual. Paul signed some papers, they went to lunch and he took her back to the bus station.”
“They could’ve had some kind of altercation during lunch.”
“True,” he agreed. “But why would he kill his niece?”
“It could be his baby she was carrying,” Lena suggested. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
Jeffrey rubbed his jaw. “Yeah,” he admitted, and she could tell the thought left a bad taste in his mouth. “But Cole Connolly was pretty sure it was Chip’s.”
“Are you sure Cole didn’t poison her?
“As close to sure as I can be,” he told her. “Maybe we need to separate out the two, forget worrying about who killed Abby. Who killed Cole? Who would want him dead?”
Lena wasn’t entirely convinced of Connolly’s truthfulness about Abby’s death. Jeffrey had been pretty shaken up after watching the man die. She wondered if his conviction of Cole’s innocence was influenced by what had to have been a truly grotesque experience.
She suggested, “Maybe somebody who knew Cole had poisoned Abby decided to get revenge, wanted him to suffer the same way Abby had.”
“I didn’t tell anyone in the family that she was poisoned until after Cole was dead,” he reminded her. “On the other hand, whoever did it knew he drank coffee every morning. He told me the sisters were always on him, trying to get him to quit.”
Lena took it a step further. “Rebecca might know, too.”
Jeffrey nodded. “There’s a reason she’s staying away.” He added, “At least I hope she’s choosing to stay away.”
Lena had been thinking this same thing. “You’re sure Cole didn’t put her somewhere? To punish her for something?”
“I know you think I shouldn’t take him at his word,” Jeffrey began, “but I don’t think he took her. People like Cole know who to choose.” He leaned across his desk, hands clasped in front of him, as if he was saying something vital to the case. “They pick the ones they know won’t talk. It’s the same way with Dale picking Terri. These guys know who they can push around— who will shut up and take it and who won’t.”
Lena felt her cheeks burning. “Rebecca seemed pretty defiant. We only saw her that once, but I got the feeling she didn’t let anybody push her around.” She shrugged. “The thing is, you never know, do you?”
“No,” he said, giving her a careful look. “For all we know, Rebecca’s the one behind all of this.”
Frank stood in the doorway with a stack of papers in his hand. He said something neither one of them had considered. “Poisoning is a woman’s crime.”
“Rebecca was scared when she talked to us,” Lena said. “She didn’t want her family to know. Then again, maybe she didn’t want them to know because she was playing us.”
Jeffrey asked, “Did she seem like the type?”
“No,” she admitted. “Lev and Paul, maybe. Rachel’s pretty sturdy, too.”
Frank said, “What’s the brother doing living in Savannah, anyway?”
“It’s a port city,” Jeffrey reminded him. “Lots of trade still goes on down there.” He indicated the papers in Frank’s hand. “What’ve you got?”
“The rest of the credit reports,” he said, handing them over.
“Anything jump out at you?”
Frank shook his head as Marla’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Chief, Sara’s on line three.”
Jeffrey picked up the phone. “Hey.”
Lena made to leave in order to give him some privacy, but Jeffrey waved her back down in her chair. He took out his pen, saying into the phone, “Spell that,” as he wrote. Then, “Okay. Next.”
Lena read upside down as he wrote a series of names, all men.
“This is good,” Jeffrey told Sara. “I’ll call you later.” He hung up the telephone, not even pausing for a breath before saying, “Sara’s at Brock’s. She says that nine people have died on the farm in the last two years.”
“Nine?” Lena was sure she’d heard wrong.
“Brock got four of the bodies. Richard Cable got the rest.”
Lena knew Cable ran one of the funeral homes in Catoogah County. She asked, “What was the cause of death?”
Jeffrey ripped the sheet of paper off his pad. “Alcohol poisoning, drug overdoses. One had a heart attack. Jim Ellers over in Catoogah did the autopsies. He ruled them all natural causes.”
Lena was skeptical, not of what Jeffrey was saying, but of Ellers’s competence. “He said nine people in two years, living on the same place, died from natural causes?”
Jeffrey said, “Cole Connolly had a lot of drugs hidden in his room.”
“You think he helped them along?” Frank asked.
“That’s what he did with Chip,” Jeffrey said. “Cole told me that himself. Said he was tempting him with the apple, something like that.”
“So,” Lena surmised, “Cole was picking out the ‘weak’ ones, dangling drugs or whatever in front of their faces, seeing if they would take them and prove him right.”
“And the ones who took them ended up going to their maker,” Jeffrey said, but she could tell from his crocodile smile he had more.
She asked, “What?”
He told her, “The Church for the Greater Good paid for all the cremations.”
“Cremations,” Frank repeated. “So, we can’t exhume the bodies.”
Lena knew there was more to it than that. She asked, “What am I missing?”
Jeffrey told them, “Paul Ward got all their death certificates.”
Stupidly, Lena began, “Why would he need—” but answered her own question before she finished. “Life insurance.”
“Bingo,” Jeffrey said, handing Frank the paper with the names. “Get Hemming and go through the phone book. Do we have one for Savannah?” Frank nodded. “Find the big insurance companies. We’ll start there first. Don’t call the local agents, call the corporate national fraud hotlines. The local agents might be involved.”
Lena asked, “Will they give out that information over the phone?”
“They will if they think they’ve been cheated out of some dough,” Frank said. “I’ll get right on it.”
As Frank left the room, Jeffrey pointed his finger at Lena. “I knew this had to be about money. It had to be about something concrete.”
She had to admit, “You were right.”
“We found our general,” he told her. “Cole said he was just an old soldier, but he needed a general to tell him what to do.”
“Abby was in Savannah a few days before she died. Maybe she found out about the life insurance policies.”
“How?” Jeffrey asked.
“Her mother said she worked in the office for a while. That she was good with numbers.”
“Lev saw her in the office once at the photocopier. Maybe she saw something she wasn’t meant to.” He paused, mulling over the possibilities. “Rachel said Abby went to Savannah before she died because Paul had left some papers behind in his briefcase. Maybe Abby saw the policies.”
She asked, “So, you think Abby confronted him in Savannah?”
Jeffrey nodded. “And Paul called Cole to prod him on to punish her.”
“Or he called Lev.”
“Or Lev,” he agreed.
“Cole already knew about Chip. He followed him and Abby out into the woods.” She had to say, “I don’t know, though. It’s strange. Paul didn’t strike me as the overly religious type.”
“Why would he have to be?”
“Telling Cole to bury his niece in a coffin in the woods?” she asked. “Lev seems more like your general to me.” She added, “Plus, Paul was never in Dale’s garage. If that’s where the cyanide came from, then it points straight back to Lev, because he’s the only one we can connect to the garage.” She paused a moment. “Or Cole.”
“I don’t think it was Cole,” Jeffrey insisted. “Did you ever have a real conversation with Terri Stanley about that?”
She felt her blush come back, this time from shame. “No.”
His lips pressed into a tight line, but he didn’t say the obvious. If she had talked to Terri before, maybe they wouldn’t be sitting here right now. Maybe Rebecca would be safe at home, Cole Connolly would still be alive, and they would be back in the interrogation room, talking to the person who had killed Abigail Bennett.
“I fucked up,” she said.
“Yeah, you did.” He waited a few seconds before saying, “You don’t listen to me, Lena. I need to be able to trust you to do what I say.” He paused as if he expected her to interrupt him. She didn’t, and he continued, “You can be a good cop, a smart cop. That’s why I made you detective.” She looked down, unable to take the compliment, knowing what was coming next. “Everything that happens in this town is my responsibility, and if somebody gets hurt or worse because you can’t follow my orders, then it’s all on me.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough this time. Sorry means you understand what I’m saying and you’re not going to do it again.” He let that sink in. “I’ve heard sorry one too many times now. I need to see actions, not hear empty words.”
His quiet tone was worse than if he had yelled at her. Lena looked down at the floor, wondering how many times he was going to let her screw things up before he finally cut her loose.
He stood quickly, taking her by surprise. Lena flinched, gripped by an inexplicable panic that he was going to hit her.
Jeffrey was shocked, looking at her as if he had never seen her in his life.
“I just—” She couldn’t find the words to say. “You scared me.”
Jeffrey leaned out the door, telling Marla, “Send back the woman who’s about to walk in.” He told Lena, “Mary Ward is here. I just saw her pull up into the parking lot.”
Lena tried to regain her composure. “I thought she didn’t like to drive.”
“Guess she made an exception,” Jeffrey answered, still looking at her like she was a book he couldn’t read. “Are you going to be able to do this?”
“Of course,” she said, pushing herself out of the chair. She tucked in her shirt, feeling fidgety and out of place.
He took her hand in both of his, and she felt another shock. He never touched her like that. It wasn’t something he did.
He said, “I need you to be on your game right now.”
“You’ve got me,” she assured him, pulling back her hand to tuck in her shirt again even though it was already tight. “Let’s go.”
Lena didn’t wait for him. She squared her shoulders and walked across the squad room with purposeful strides. Marla’s hand was on the buzzer as Lena opened the door.
Mary Ward stood in the lobby, her purse clutched to her chest.
“Chief Tolliver,” she said, as if Lena wasn’t right in front of her. She had a ratty old black and red scarf around her shoulders, looking more like a little old lady now than the first time they had seen her. The woman was probably only ten years older than Lena. She was either putting on an act or was truly one of the most pathetic people walking the face of the earth.
“Why don’t you come back to my office,” Jeffrey offered, putting his hand at Mary’s elbow, guiding her through the open doorway before she could change her mind. He said, “You remember Detective Adams?”
“Lena,” Lena supplied, ever helpful. “Can I get you some coffee or something?”
“I don’t drink caffeine,” the woman replied, her voice still strained, as if she had been screaming and had made herself hoarse. Lena could see she had a balled tissue up her sleeve and assumed she’d been crying.
Jeffrey sat Mary at one of the desks outside his office, probably wanting to keep her off guard. He waited for her to sit, then took the chair beside her. Lena hung back behind them, thinking Mary would be more comfortable talking to Jeffrey.
He asked, “What can I help you with, Mary?”
She took her time, her breathing audible in the small room as they waited for her to speak. “You said my niece was in a box, Chief Tolliver.”
“Yes.”
“That Cole had buried her in a box.”
“That’s right,” he confirmed. “Cole admitted it to me before he died.”
“And you found her there? You found Abby yourself?”
“My wife and I were in the woods. We found the metal pipe in the ground. We dug her out ourselves.”
Mary took the tissue from her sleeve and wiped her nose. “Several years ago,” she began; then: “I guess I should back up.”
“Take your time.”
She seemed to do exactly that, and Lena pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to shake it out of her.
“I have two sons,” Mary said. “William and Peter. They live out west.”
“I remember you telling us that,” Jeffrey said, though Lena didn’t.
“They chose to leave the church.” She blew her nose in the tissue. “It was very hard for me to lose my children. Not that we turned our backs on them. Everyone makes their own decisions. We don’t exclude people because they . . .” She let her voice trail off. “My sons turned their backs on us. On me.”
Jeffrey waited, the only sign of his impatience his hand gripping the arm of the chair.
“Cole was very hard on them,” she said. “He disciplined them.”
“Did he abuse them?”
“He punished them when they were bad,” was all she would admit. “My husband had passed away a year before. I was grateful for Cole’s help. I thought they needed a strong man in their lives.” She sniffed, wiping her nose. “These were different times.”
“I understand,” Jeffrey told her.
“Cole has— had— very firm ideas about right and wrong. I trusted him. My father trusted him. He was first and foremost a man of God.”
“Did anything happen to change that?”
She seemed overcome by sadness. “No. I believed everything he said. At the cost of my own children, I believed in him. I turned my back on my daughter.”
Lena felt her eyebrows shoot up.
“You have a daughter?”
She nodded. “Genie.”
Jeffrey sat back in the chair, though his body remained tense.
“She told me,” Mary continued. “Genie told me what he had done to her.” She paused. “The box in the woods.”
“He buried her there?”
“They were camping,” Mary explained. “He took the children camping all the time.”
Lena knew Jeffrey was thinking about Rebecca, how she had run away to the woods before. He asked, “What did your daughter say happened?”
“She said Cole tricked her, that he told her he was going to take her for a walk in the woods.” She stopped, then willed herself to go on. “He left her there for five days.”
“What did you do when she told you about this?”
“I asked Cole about it.” She shook her head at her own stupidity. “He told me that he couldn’t stay on the farm if I believed Genie over him. He felt that strongly about it.”
“But he didn’t deny it?”
“No,” she told Jeffrey. “I never realized it until last night. He never denied it. He told me that I should pray about it, let the Lord tell me whom to believe— Genie or him. I trusted in him. He has such a strict sense of right and wrong. I took him for a God-fearing man.”
“Did anyone else in the family know about this?”
She shook her head again. “I was ashamed. She lied.” Mary corrected, “She lied about some things. I see that now, but at the time, it was harder to see. Genie was a very rebellious young girl. She used drugs. She ran around with boys. She turned away from the church. She turned away from the family.”
“What did you tell them about Genie’s disappearance?”
“I sought my brother’s counsel. He told me to tell them she had run away with a boy. It was a believable story. I thought it saved us all the embarrassment of the truth, and neither of us wanted to upset Cole.” She dabbed the tissue at the corner of her eye. “He was so valuable to us then. My brothers were both away at school. None of us girls were capable of taking care of the farm. Cole ran everything along with my father. He was critical to the operation.”
The fire door banged open and Frank came in, stopping in his tracks when he saw Jeffrey and Mary Ward sitting at the desk. He walked over and put his hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder, handing him a folder. Jeffrey opened the file, obviously knowing Frank would not have interrupted unless it was important. Lena could tell that he was looking at several faxed pages. The station was run on a tight budget and the machine was about ten years old, using thermal rolls instead of plain paper. Jeffrey smoothed out the pages as he scanned them. When he looked up, Lena couldn’t tell if he had read good news or bad.
“Mary,” Jeffrey said. “I’ve been calling you Ms. Ward this whole time. Is your married name Morgan?”
Her surprise registered on her face. “Yes,” she said. “Why?”
“And your daughter is named Teresa Eugenia Morgan?”
“Yes.”
Jeffrey gave her a minute to collect herself. “Mary,” he began. “Did Abby ever meet your daughter?”
“Of course,” she said. “Genie was ten when Abby was born. She treated her like her own little baby. Abby was devastated when Genie left. They were both devastated.”
“Could Abby have visited your daughter that day she went to Savannah?”
“Savannah?”
He took out one of the faxed pages. “We have Genie’s address listed as 241 Sandon Square, Savannah.”
“Well, no,” she said, a bit troubled. “My daughter lives here in town, Chief Tolliver. Her married name is Stanley.”
Lena drove to the Stanley place while Jeffrey talked on his cell phone to Frank. He kept his spiral notepad balanced on his knee as he wrote down whatever Frank was telling him, giving the occasional grunt to confirm he’d heard what was being said.
Lena glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure Brad Stephens was behind them. He was following in his cruiser, and for once, Lena was glad to have the junior patrolman around. Brad was goofy, but he had been working out lately and had the muscle to show for it. Jeffrey had told them about the loaded revolver Dale Stanley kept on top of one of the cabinets in the garage. She wasn’t looking forward to confronting Terri’s husband, but part of her was hoping he tried something so that Jeffrey and Brad had an excuse to show him what it felt like for someone larger and stronger than you to bring down a world of pain on your ass.
Jeffrey told Frank, “No, don’t put her in a cell. Give her some milk and cookies if you have to. Just keep her away from the phone and her brothers.” Lena knew he was talking about Mary Morgan. The woman had been startled when Jeffrey had told her she wasn’t to leave the police station but, like most law-abiding citizens, she was so scared of going to jail that she had just sat there, nodding, agreeing with everything he said.
“Good work, Frank.” Jeffrey told him, “Let me know what else you come up with,” and rang off. He started scribbling on his pad again, not speaking.
Lena didn’t have the patience to wait for him to finish with his notes. “What did he say?”
“They’ve found six policies so far,” he told her, still writing. “Lev and Terri are listed as beneficiaries for both Abby and Chip. Mary Morgan is on two, Esther Bennett is on two others.”
“What’d Mary say about that?”
“She said she had no idea what Frank was talking about. Paul handles all the accounts for the family.”
“Did Frank believe her?”
“He’s not sure,” Jeffrey said. “Hell, I’m not sure and I talked to her for half an hour.”
“I wouldn’t guess they’re living high on the hog.”
“Sara says they make their own clothes.”
“Paul doesn’t,” she pointed out. “How much were the policies worth?”
“Around fifty thousand each. They were greedy, but they weren’t stupid.”
Lena knew that anything exorbitant would have raised suspicion with the insurance agencies. As it was, the family had managed to collect a half-million dollars over the last two years, all of it tax free.
“What about the house?” Lena asked. The policies had listed each beneficiary as living at the same address in Savannah. A quick call to the Chatham County courthouse had revealed that the house on Sandon Square was purchased by a Stephanie Linder five years ago. Either there was another Ward sibling Jeffrey didn’t know about or someone was playing a nasty joke on the family.
Lena asked, “You think Dale is involved in this, too?”
“Frank ran a credit check,” he said. “Dale and Terri are both in debt up to their eyeballs— credit cards, mortgage, two car payments. They’ve got three medical collections against them. Sara says the kid’s been in the hospital a couple of times. They’re hurting for money.”
“You think Terri killed her?” Lena asked. Frank was right when he said poisoning was generally a woman’s crime.
“Why would she do it?”
“She knew what Cole did. She could’ve been following him.”
“But why kill Abby?”
“Maybe she didn’t,” Lena tried. “Maybe Cole killed Abby and Terri decided to give him some of his own medicine.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think Cole killed Abby. He was genuinely sad that she was dead.”
Lena let it go, but in her mind, she thought he was giving a large benefit of the doubt to one of the sickest fucks she’d ever run into.
Jeffrey opened his cell phone and dialed a number. Someone obviously answered on the other end, and he said, “Hey, Molly. Can you give a message to Sara for me?” He paused a beat. “Tell her we’re heading out to the Stanley place right now. Thanks.” He hung up, telling Lena, “Terri had an appointment with Sara around lunchtime.”
It was half past ten. Lena thought about the gun in Dale’s garage. “Why didn’t we just pick her up then?”
“Because Sara’s office is out of bounds.”
Lena thought this was a pretty lame excuse, but she knew better than to push him on it. Jeffrey was the best cop she had ever known, but he was like a whipped puppy as far as Sara Linton was concerned. The fact that she jerked him around so much would have been embarrassing to any other man, but he seemed to take pride in it.
Jeffrey must have sensed her thoughts— at least some of them— because he said, “I don’t know what Terri’s capable of. I sure as hell don’t want her going ballistic in an office full of little kids.”
He pointed to a black mailbox jutting up beside the road. “It’s up here on the right.”
Lena slowed, turning into the Stanley driveway, Brad right behind her. She saw Dale working in the garage and felt her breath catch. She had met him once, years ago, at another police picnic when his brother, Pat, had just joined the force. Lena had forgotten how large he was. Not just large, but strong.
Jeffrey got out of the car, but Lena found herself hesitating. She made her hand move to the handle on the door, made herself open it and get out. She heard Brad’s door shut behind her, but didn’t want to take her eyes off Dale for a second. He stood just inside the doorway of the garage, hefting a heavy-looking wrench in his meaty hands. The cabinet with the gun was a few feet away. Like Jeffrey, he had a dark bruise under his eye.
“Hey, Dale,” Jeffrey said. “How’d you get the shiner?”
“Ran into a door,” he quipped, and Lena wondered how he’d really gotten it. Terri would need to stand on a chair to reach his head. Dale weighed about a hundred pounds more than she did and was at least two feet taller. Lena looked at his hands, thinking one was large enough to wrap around her throat. He could strangle her without giving it a second thought. She hated that feeling, hated the sensation of her lungs shaking in her chest, her eyes rolling back, everything starting to disappear as she willed herself not to pass out.
Jeffrey stepped forward, Brad and Lena on either side of him. He told Dale, “I need you to come out of the garage.”
Dale tightened his hand around the wrench. “What’s going on?” His lips twitched in a quick smile. “Terri call you?”
“Why would she call us?”
“No reason.” He shrugged, but the wrench in his hand said he had something to worry about. Lena glanced at the house, trying to see Terri. If Dale had a bruised eye, Terri probably had something ten times worse.
Jeffrey was obviously thinking the same. Still, he told the man, “You’re not in trouble.”
Dale was smarter than he looked. “Don’t seem that way to me.”
“Come out of the garage, Dale.”
“Man’s home is his castle,” Dale said. “You got no right coming in here. I want you off my property right now.”
“We want to talk to Terri.”
“Nobody talks to Terri unless I say so, and I ain’t saying so, so . . .”
Jeffrey stopped about four feet from Dale, and Lena moved to his left, thinking she could get to the gun before Dale. She suppressed a curse when she realized that the cabinet was well out of her reach. Brad should have taken this side. He was at least a foot taller than she was. By the time Lena dragged over a stool to retrieve the gun, Dale would be on his way to Mexico.
Jeffrey said, “Put the wrench down.”
Dale’s eyes darted to Lena, then Brad. “Maybe ya’ll should back up a step or two.”
“You’re not in charge here, Dale,” Jeffrey told him. Lena wanted to put her hand on her gun, but knew that she should take her signals from Jeffrey. He had his arms at his sides, probably thinking he could talk Dale down. She wasn’t convinced.
“Y’all are crowdin’ me,” Dale said. “I don’t like that.” He lifted the wrench to chest level, resting the end in his palm. Lena knew the man wasn’t an idiot. The wrench could do a lot of damage, but not to three people at the same time, especially considering the three people had guns on their belts. She watched Dale closely, knowing in her gut that he would make a try for the gun.
“You don’t want to do this,” Jeffrey told him. “We just want to talk to Terri.”
Dale moved swiftly for a man his size, but Jeffrey was faster. He yanked the baton from Brad’s belt and slammed it into the back of Dale’s knees as the taller man lunged for the gun. Dale dropped to the floor like a stack of bricks.
Lena felt nothing but shock as she watched the normally docile Brad jam his knee into Dale’s back, pressing him into the ground as he cuffed him. One swipe to the back of the knees and he had fallen. He wasn’t even putting up a fight as Brad jerked back his hands, using two sets of cuffs to keep his wrists bound behind his back.
Jeffrey told Dale, “I warned you not to do this.”
Dale yelped like a dog when Brad pulled him up to his knees. “Jesus, watch it,” he complained, rolling his shoulders like he was afraid they’d been popped out of the sockets. “I want to call my lawyer.”
“You can do that later.” Jeffrey handed the baton back to Brad, saying, “Put him in the back of the car.”
“Yes, sir,” Brad said, pulling Dale up to standing, eliciting another yelp.
The big man shuffled his feet on the way to the car, a storm of dust kicking up behind him.
Just so Lena could hear, Jeffrey said, “Not such a tough guy, huh? I bet it makes him feel real good beating on his little wife.”
Lena felt a bead of sweat roll down her back. Jeffrey swiped some dust off the leg of his pants before heading toward the house. He reminded Lena, “There are two kids in there.”
Lena cast around for something to say. “Do you think she’ll resist?”
“I don’t know what she’ll do.”
The door opened before they reached the front porch. Terri Stanley stood inside, a sleeping baby on her hip. At her side was another kid, probably about two. He was rubbing his little fists into his eyes as if he’d just woken up. Terri’s cheeks were sunken; dark circles rimmed her eyes. Her lip was busted open, a fresh, bluish-yellow bruise traced along her jaw, and angry red welts wrapped around her neck. Lena understood why Dale hadn’t wanted them to talk to his wife. He’d beaten the shit out of her. Lena couldn’t see how the woman was still standing.
Terri watched her husband being led to the squad car, studiously avoiding Jeffrey’s and Lena’s eyes as she told them in a flat voice, “I’m not going to press charges. You might as well let him go.”
Jeffrey looked back at the car. “We’re just gonna let him stew there for a while.”
“Y’all are just making it worse.” She spoke carefully, obviously trying not to crack the lip back open. Lena knew the trick just as she knew it was hell on your throat, making you strain your voice just so your words could be understood. “He never hit me like this before. Not in the face.” Her voice wavered. She was trapped, overwhelmed. “My kids’ve gotta see this.”
“Terri . . .” Jeffrey began, but obviously didn’t know how to finish it.
“He’ll kill me if I leave him.” Her drawl was exaggerated by her swollen lip.
“Terri—”
“I’m not gonna press charges.”
“We’re not asking you to.”
She faltered, as if that hadn’t been the response she was expecting.
Jeffrey said, “We need to talk to you.”
“About what?”
He pulled an old cop’s trick. “You know about what.”
She looked at her husband, who was sitting in the back of Brad’s cruiser.
“He’s not going to hurt you.”
She gave him a wary look, as if he’d told a really bad joke.
Jeffrey said, “We’re not going anywhere until we talk to you.”
“I guess come on in,” she finally relented, stepping back from the open door. “Tim, Mama needs to talk to these people.” She took the boy’s hand, leading him into a den that had a large TV as the focal point. Lena and Jeffrey waited in the large entrance foyer at the base of the stairs while she put a DVD into the player.
Lena looked up at the high ceiling, which opened onto the upstairs hall. Where a chandelier should be hanging there were only a few stray wires jutting out of the Sheetrock. There were scuff marks on the walls by the stairs, and someone had kicked a small hole at the top. The spindles holding up the railing on the other side looked almost bent, several cracked or broken toward the landing at the top. Terri, she bet, picturing Dale dragging the woman up the stairs, her legs kicking wildly behind her. There were twelve steps in all, twice as many spindles to grab on to as she tried to stop the inevitable.
The shrill voice of SpongeBob SquarePants echoed off the cold tiles in the foyer, and Terri came out, still holding her youngest son on her hip.
Jeffrey asked her, “Where can we talk?”
“Let me put him down,” she said, meaning the baby. “The kitchen’s through the back.” She started up the stairs and Jeffrey motioned for Lena to follow her.
The house was larger than it looked from the outside, the landing at the top of the stairs leading to a long hallway and what looked like three bedrooms and a bath. Terri stopped at the first room and Lena paused, not following her in. Instead, she stood at the door to the nursery, watching Terri lay the sleeping baby in the crib. The room was brightly decorated, clouds on the ceiling, a pastoral scene on the walls showing happy sheep and cows. Over the crib was a mobile with more sheep. Lena couldn’t see the kid while his mother stroked his head, but his little legs stretched out when Terri took off the crocheted booties. Lena hadn’t realized that babies’ feet were so small, their toes little nubs, their arches curling like banana peels as they pulled their knees to their chests.
Terri was staring intently at Lena over her shoulder. “You got kids?” She made a hoarse noise that Lena took as an attempt at a laugh. “I mean, other than the one you left in Atlanta.”
Lena knew she was trying to threaten her, using her words to remind Lena that they had both been in that clinic for the same thing, but Terri Stanley wasn’t the type of woman who could carry this off. When the mother turned around, all Lena could do was feel sorry for her. The light was bright in the room, sunlight illuminating the bruise along Terri’s jaw as if it were in Technicolor. Her lip had cracked, a sliver of blood seeping out onto her chin. Lena realized that six months ago she could have been looking at a mirror.
“You’d do anything for them,” Terri said with a tone of sadness. “You’d put up with anything.”
“Anything?”
Terri swallowed, wincing from the pain. Dale had obviously choked her. The bruises weren’t out yet, but they would come soon enough, looking like a dark necklace around her throat. Heavy concealer would take care of it, but she would feel stiff all week, turning her head carefully, trying not to wince when she swallowed, biding her time as she waited for the muscles to relax, the pain to go away.
She said, “I can’t explain—”
Lena was in no position to lecture her. “You know you don’t have to.”
“Yeah,” Terri agreed, turning back around, pulling a light blue blanket up around the baby’s chin. Lena stared at her back, wondering if Terri was capable of murder. She would be the type to poison if she did anything. There was no way Terri could see someone face-to-face and kill them. Of course, she had obviously gotten her own back with Dale. He didn’t get the bruise on his eye from shaving.
“Looks like you got him one good,” Lena said.
Terri turned around, confused. “What?”
“Dale,” she said, indicating her own eye.
Terri smiled a genuine smile, and her whole face changed. Lena got a glimpse of the woman she had been before all this happened, before Dale started beating her, before life became something to endure instead of enjoy. She was beautiful.
“I paid for it,” Terri said, “but it felt so good.”
Lena smiled, too, knowing how good it felt to fight back. You paid for it in the end, but it was so fucking fantastic when you were doing it. It was almost like a high.
Terri took a deep breath and let it go. “Let’s get this over with.”
Lena followed her back down the stairs, their footsteps echoing on the wooden boards. There were no rugs on the main floor and the noise sounded like a horse clattering around. Dale had probably done this on purpose, making sure he knew exactly where his wife was at all times.
They walked into the kitchen where Jeffrey was looking at the photographs and children’s colorings on the refrigerator. On the drawings, Lena could see where Terri had written the names of the animals they were supposed to represent. Lion, Tiger, Bear. She dotted her i’s with an open circle the way girls did in high school.
“Have a seat,” Terri said, taking a chair at the table. Jeffrey remained standing, but Lena sat opposite Terri. The kitchen was neat for this time of morning. Plates and silverware from breakfast were drying in the rack and the counters were wiped clean. Lena wondered if Terri was naturally fastidious or if Dale had beat it into her.
Terri stared at her hands, which were clasped in front of her on the table. She was a small woman, but the way she held herself made her seem even smaller. Sadness radiated off her like an aura. Lena couldn’t imagine how Dale managed to hit her without breaking her in two.
Terri offered, “Y’all want something to drink?”
Lena and Jeffrey answered no at the same time. After what happened with Cole Connolly, Lena doubted she’d ever take anything from anyone again.
Terri sat back in her chair, and Lena looked at her closely. She realized that they were about the same height, the same build. Terri was about ten pounds lighter, maybe an inch or two shorter, but there wasn’t that much different about them.
Terri asked, “Y’all aren’t here to talk about Dale?”
“No.”
She picked at the cuticle on her thumb. Dried blood showed where she had done this before. “I guess I should’ve known you guys would come eventually.”
“Why’s that?” Jeffrey asked.
“The note I sent to Dr. Linton,” she told him. “I guess I wasn’t real smart about it.”
Again, Jeffrey showed no reaction. “Why is that?”
“Well, I know y’all can get all kinds of evidence from it.”
Lena nodded like this was true, thinking the girl had watched too many crime shows on TV, where lab techs ran around in Armani suits and high heels, plucking a minuscule piece of somebody’s cuticle from a rose thorn, then trotting back to their labs where through the miracle of science they discovered that the attacker was a right-handed albino who collected stamps and lived with his mother. Setting aside the fact that no crime lab in the world could afford the zillions of dollars’ worth of equipment they showed, the fact was that DNA broke down. Outside factors could compromise the strand, or sometimes there wasn’t enough for a sample. Fingerprints were subject to interpretation and it was very rare there were enough points for comparison to hold up in court.
Jeffrey asked, “Why did you send the letter to Dr. Linton?”
“I knew she’d do something about it,” Terri said, then added quickly, “Not that y’all wouldn’t, but Dr. Linton, she takes care of people. She really looks after them. I knew she’d understand.” She shrugged. “I knew she’d tell you.”
“Why not just tell her in person?” Jeffrey asked. “You saw me Monday morning at the clinic. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
She gave a humorless laugh. “Dale’d kill me if he knew I’d gotten messed up in all of this. He hates the church. He hates everything about them. It’s just . . .” Her voice trailed off. “When I heard what happened to Abby, I thought y’all should know he’s done it before.”
“Who’s done it before?”
Her throat worked as she struggled to say the name. “Cole.”
“He put you in a box out in the state forest?” Jeffrey asked.
She nodded, her hair falling into her eyes. “We were supposed to be camping. He took me out for a walk.” She swallowed. “He brought me to this clearing. There was this hole in the ground. A rectangle. There was a box inside.”
Lena asked, “What did you do?”
“I don’t remember,” she answered. “I don’t think I even had time to scream. He hit me real hard, pushed me in. I cut my knee open, scraped my hand. I started yelling but he got on top of me and raised his fist, like he was going to beat me.” She paused, trying to keep her composure as she told the story. “So, I just laid there. I just laid there while he put the boards on top of me, nailing them in one by one. . . .”
Lena looked at her own hands, thinking about the nails that had been driven in, the metallic sound of the hammer hitting the metal spike, the unfathomable fear as she lay there, helpless to do anything to save herself.
“He was praying the whole time,” Terri said. “Saying stuff about God giving him the strength, that he was just a vessel for the Lord.” She closed her eyes, tears slipping out. “The next thing I know, I’m looking up at these black slats. Sunlight was coming through them, I guess, but it felt like a lighter shade of dark. It was so dark in there.” She shuddered at the memory. “I heard the dirt coming down, not fast but slow, like he had all the time in the world. And he kept praying, louder, like he wanted to make sure I could hear him.”
She stopped, and Lena asked, “What did you do?”
Again, Terri’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I started screaming, and it just echoed in the box. It hurt my ears. I couldn’t see anything. I could barely move. I still hear it sometimes,” she said. “At night, when I’m trying to sleep, I’ll hear the thud of the dirt hitting the box. The grit coming through, getting stuck in my throat.” She had started to cry harder at the memory. “He was such a bad man.”
Jeffrey said, “And that is why you left home.”
Terri seemed surprised that he asked this.
He explained, “Your mother told us what happened, Terri.”
She laughed, a hollow-sounding noise devoid of any humor. “My mother?”
“She came into the station this morning.”
More tears sprang into her eyes and her lower lip started quivering. “She told you?” she asked. “Mama told you what Cole did?”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t believe me,” Terri said, her voice no more than a murmur. “I told her what he did, and she said I was making it up. She told me I was going to go to hell.” She looked around the kitchen, her life. “I guess she was right.”
Lena asked, “Where did you go when you left?”
“Atlanta,” she answered. “I was with this boy— Adam. He was just a way to get out of here. I couldn’t stay, not with them not believing me.” She sniffed, wiping her nose with her hand. “I was so scared Cole was gonna get me again. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I just kept waiting for him to take me.”
“Why’d you come back?”
“I just . . .” She let her voice trail off. “I grew up here. And then I met Dale . . .” Again she didn’t finish the thought. “He was a good man when I met him. So sweet. He wasn’t always the way he is now. The kids being sick puts a lot of pressure on him.”
Jeffrey didn’t let her continue along that track. “How long have y’all been married?”
“Eight years,” she answered. Eight years of having the shit beaten out of her. Eight years of making excuses, covering his tracks, convincing herself that this time was different, this time he would change. Eight years of knowing deep in her gut that she was lying to herself but not being able to do anything about it.
Lena would be dead in eight years if she had to endure that.
Terri said, “When Dale met me, I was clean, but I was still messed up. Didn’t think much of myself.” Lena could hear the regret in her voice. She wasn’t wallowing in self-pity. She was looking back on her life and seeing how the hole she had dug for herself wasn’t much different from the one Cole Connolly had put her in.
Terri told them, “Before that, I was into speed, shooting up. I did some really bad things. I think Tim’s the one who’s paid for it most.” She added, “His asthma is really bad. Who knows how long those drugs stay in your system? Who knows what it does to your insides?”
He asked, “When did you clean up?”
“When I was twenty-one,” she answered. “I just stopped. I knew I wouldn’t see twenty-five if I didn’t.”
“Have you had any contact with your family since then?”
She started picking at her cuticle again. “I asked my uncle for some money a while back,” she admitted. “I needed it for . . .” Her throat moved again as she swallowed. Lena knew what she needed the money for. Terri didn’t have a job. Dale probably kept every dime that came into the house. She had to pay the clinic somehow, and borrowing money from her uncle had been the only way.
Terri told Jeffrey, “Dr. Linton’s been real nice, but we had to pay her something for all she’s been doing. Tim’s medication isn’t covered by his insurance.” Suddenly, she looked up, fear lighting her eyes. “Don’t tell Dale,” she pleaded, talking to Lena. “Please don’t tell him I asked for money. He’s proud. He doesn’t like me begging.”
Lena knew he would want to know where the money went. She asked, “Did you ever see Abby?”
Her lips quivered as she tried not to cry. “Yes,” she answered. “Sometimes, she used to come by during the day to check on me and the kids. She’d bring us food, candy for the kids.”
“You knew she was pregnant?”
Terri nodded, and Lena wondered if Jeffrey felt the sadness coming off her. She was probably thinking about the child she had lost, the one in Atlanta. Lena felt herself thinking the same thing. For some reason, the image of the baby upstairs came to her mind, his little feet curling in the air, the way Terri tucked the blanket under his soft chin. Lena had to look down so that Jeffrey wouldn’t see the tears stinging her eyes.
She could feel Terri looking at her. The mother had an abused woman’s sense of other people, an instinctive recognition of changing emotions that came from years of trying not to say or do the wrong thing.
Jeffrey was oblivious to all of this as he asked, “What did you say to Abby when she told you about the baby?”
“I should have known what was going to happen,” she said. “I should have warned her.”
“Warned her about what?”
“About Cole, about what he did to me.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“My own mother wouldn’t believe me,” she said bluntly. “I don’t know . . . Over the years, I thought maybe I was making it up. I did so many drugs then, lots of bad stuff. I wasn’t thinking straight. It was easier to just think that I made it up.”
Lena knew what she was talking about. You lied to yourself in degrees just so you could get through the day.
Jeffrey asked, “Did Abby tell you she was seeing somebody?”
Terri nodded, saying, “Chip,” with some regret. “I told her not to get mixed up with him. You’ve got to understand, girls don’t know much growing up on the Holy Grown farm. They keep us secluded, like they’re protecting us, but what it really does is make it easier for all the men.” She gave another humorless laugh. “I never even knew what sex was until I was having it.”
“When did Abby tell you she was leaving?”
“She came by on her way to Savannah about a week before she died,” Terri said. “She told me she was going to leave with Chip when Aunt Esther and Uncle Eph went into Atlanta in a couple of days.”
“Did she seem upset?”
She considered the question. “She seemed preoccupied. That’s not like Abby. There was a lot on her mind, though. She was . . . she was distracted.”
“Distracted how?”
Terri looked down, obviously trying to conceal her reaction. “Just with stuff.”
Jeffrey said, “Terri, we need to know what stuff.”
She spoke. “We were here in the kitchen,” she began. She indicated Lena’s chair. “She was sitting right there. She had Paul’s briefcase in her lap, holding it like she couldn’t let go. I remember thinking I could sell that thing and feed my kids for a month.”
“It’s a nice briefcase?” Jeffrey asked, and Lena knew he was thinking exactly the same thing she was. Abby had looked in the briefcase and found something Paul didn’t want her to see.
She said, “He probably paid a thousand dollars for it. He spends money like it’s water. I just don’t understand.”
Jeffrey asked, “What did Abby say?”
“That she had to go see Paul, then when she came back, she was leaving with Chip.” She sniffed. “She wanted me to tell her mama and daddy that she loved them with all her heart.” She started to cry again. “I need to tell them that. I owe Esther that at least.”
“Do you think she told Paul she was pregnant?”
Terri shook her head. “I don’t know. She could’ve gone to Savannah to get some help.”
Lena asked, “Help getting rid of the baby?”
“God, no,” she said, shocked. “Abby would never kill her baby.”
Lena felt her mouth working, but her voice was caught somewhere in her throat.
Jeffrey asked, “What do you think she wanted from Paul?”
“Maybe she asked him for some money?” Terri guessed. “I told her she’d need some money if she was going off with Chip. She doesn’t understand how the real world works. She gets hungry and there’s food on the table. She’s cold and there’s the thermostat. She’s never had to fend for herself. I warned her she’d need money of her own, and to hide it from Chip, to keep something back for herself, in case he left her somewhere. I didn’t want her to make the same mistakes I had.” She wiped her nose. “She was such a sweet, sweet girl.”
A sweet girl who was trying to bribe her uncle into paying her off with blood money, Lena thought. She asked, “You think Paul gave her the money?”
“I don’t know,” Terri admitted. “That was the last time I saw her. She was supposed to leave with Chip after that. I really thought she had until I heard . . . until you found her on Sunday.”
“Where were you last Saturday night?”
Terri used the back of her hand to wipe her nose. “Here,” she told them. “With Dale and the kids.”
“Can anyone else verify that?”
She bit her bottom lip, thinking. “Well, Paul dropped by,” she told them. “Just for a minute.”
“Saturday night?” Jeffrey verified, glancing at Lena. Paul had insisted several times that he was in Savannah the night his niece died. His chatty secretary had even backed him up. He said he had driven to the farm on Sunday evening to help look for Abby.
Jeffrey asked, “Why was Paul here?”
“He brought Dale that thing for one of his cars.”
Jeffrey asked, “What thing?”
“That Porsche thing,” she answered. “Paul loves flashy cars— hell, he loves flashy anything. He tries to hide it from Papa and them, but he likes to have his toys.”
“What kind of toys?”
“He brings in old beaters he finds at auctions and Dale fixes them up for a discount. At least Dale says he’s giving a discount. I don’t know what he charges, but it’s gotta be cheaper to do it here than it is in Savannah.”
“How often does Paul bring in cars?”
“Two, three times that I can think of.” Terri shrugged. “You’d have to ask Dale. I’m in the back mostly, working on the upholstery.”
“Dale didn’t mention Paul came by when I saw him the other night.”
“I doubt he would,” Terri said. “Paul pays him in cash. He don’t report it on the taxes.” She tried to defend his actions. “We’ve got collections after us. The hospital’s already garnishing Dale’s wages from when Tim went in last year. The bank reports back everything that goes in and out. We’d lose the house if we didn’t have that extra cash.”
“I don’t work for the IRS,” Jeffrey told her. “All I care about is Saturday night. You’re sure Paul came by Saturday?”
She nodded. “You can ask Dale,” she said. “They stayed in the garage for about ten minutes, then he was gone. I just saw him through the front window. Paul doesn’t really talk to me.”
“Why is that?”
“I’m a fallen woman,” she said, absent any sarcasm.
“Terri,” Jeffrey began, “was Paul ever in the garage alone?”
She shrugged. “Sure.”
“How many times?” he pushed.
“I don’t know. A lot.”
Jeffrey wasn’t so conciliatory anymore. He pressed her harder. “How about in the last three months or so? Was he here then?”
“I guess,” she repeated, agitated. “Why does it matter if Paul was in the garage?”
“I’m just trying to figure out if he had time to take something that was out there.”
She snorted a laugh at the suggestion. “Dale would’ve wrung his neck.”
“What about the insurance policies?” he asked.
“What policies?”
Jeffrey took out a folded sheet of fax paper and put it on the table in front of her.
Terri’s brow furrowed as she read the document. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy with you as the beneficiary.”
“Where did you find this?”
“You don’t get to ask the questions,” Jeffrey told her, dropping his understanding tone. “Tell us what’s going on, Terri.”
“I thought—” she began, then stopped, shaking her head.
Lena asked, “You thought what?”
Terri shook her head, picking at the cuticle on her thumb.
“Terri?” Lena prodded, not wanting Jeffrey to be too hard on her. She obviously had something to say; now was not the time to be impatient.
Jeffrey adjusted his tone. “Terri, we need your help here. We know Cole put her in that box, just like he did with you, only Abby never got out. We need you to help us find out who killed her.”
“I don’t . . .” Terri let her voice trail off.
Jeffrey said, “Terri, Rebecca is still missing.”
She said something under her breath that sounded like a word or two of encouragement. Without warning, she stood, saying, “I’ll be back.”
“Hold on a minute.” Jeffrey caught her by the arm as she started to leave the kitchen but Terri flinched and he let go.
“Sorry,” she apologized, rubbing her arm where Dale had bruised her. Lena could see tears from the pain well up in the other woman’s eyes. Still, Terri repeated, “I’ll be right back.”
Jeffrey didn’t touch her again, but he said, “We’ll go with you,” in a tone that said it wasn’t just a friendly suggestion.
Terri hesitated, then gave him a curt nod. She looked down the hallway as if to make sure no one was there. Lena knew she was looking for Dale. Even though he was handcuffed in the squad car, she was still terrified he could get to her.
She opened the back door, giving another furtive glance, this time to make sure Lena and Jeffrey were following. She told Jeffrey, “Leave it open a crack in case Tim needs me,” meaning the door. He caught the screen so it wouldn’t slam, playing along with her paranoia.
Together, the three of them walked into the backyard. The dogs were all mutts, probably rescued from the pound. They whined quietly, jumping up at Terri, trying to get her attention. She absently stroked their heads as she passed, edging around the garage. She stopped at the corner and Lena could see an outbuilding behind it. If Dale was looking this way, he would be able to see them go to the building.
Jeffrey realized this about the same time Lena did. He was offering, “I can—” when Terri took a deep breath and walked out into the open yard.
Lena followed her, not looking at the squad car, feeling the heat of Dale’s stare anyway.
“He’s not looking,” Jeffrey said, but both Lena and Terri were too frightened to look.
Terri took a key out of her pocket and slid it into the locked shed door. She turned on the lights as she went into the cramped room. A sewing machine was in the center, bolts of dark leather stacked against the walls, harsh light overhead. This must be where Terri sewed upholstery for the cars Dale rebuilt. The room was dank, musty. It was little more than a sweatshop and must have felt like hell itself in the dead of winter.
Terri turned around, finally looking out the window. Lena followed her gaze and saw the dark silhouette of Dale Stanley sitting in the back of the squad car. Terri said, “He’s gonna kill me when he finds out about this.” She told Lena, “What’s one more thing, huh?”
Lena said, “We can protect you, Terri. We can take him to jail right now and he’ll never see the light of day again.”
“He’ll get out,” she said.
“No,” Lena told her, because she knew there were ways to make sure prisoners didn’t get out. If you put them in the right cell with the right person, you could fuck up their lives forever. She said, “We can make sure,” and from the look Terri gave her, Lena knew the other woman understood.
Jeffrey had been listening to all of this as he walked around the small room. Suddenly, he pulled a couple of bolts of material away from the wall. There was a noise from behind them, almost like a scurrying mouse. He pulled away another bolt, holding out his hand to the girl crouched against the wall.
He had found Rebecca Bennett.
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