I stared at a letter.
At the signature.
I looked back at Dina.
She nodded when I spoke the two-syllable name.
Maddy didn’t need anymore drama, but the waiting room was filling with people, several suspiciously looking like media types who didn’t want to look like media types, attractive and perky in the Jamie Jane mold.
Sherman remained in his chair, looking out blurrily at the world. I leaned in and whispered to him I’d be back in a few minutes. Dina was already at Aster’s side, asking her if they could go outside for a few minutes, talk something over.
Standing, Aster said something about having just been outside. Petulant. I was amazed Dina didn’t grab the smaller woman by the arm and drag Disaster behind her.
Dina changed her mind halfway down the hall and suddenly pointed us into a vacant hospital room. She closed the door behind us. Turned on the lights. Then stood right in front of the door. I stood at her shoulder, facing Aster.
“How long were you writing letters to Mr. Pederson?” she asked.
Aster cocked her head. A pretty bird trying to make out something exotic and new.
“I have no idea,” she said, “what that even means.”
“He was under the assumption that he and Maddy were going to hook up,” said Dina.
Aster laughed.
“Hook up,” she said. Nodded. “The way Maddy is sometimes, I think a lot of men are under that assumption.” She threw a quick glance at me, wondering how I might take that suggestion.
Dina took the letters out of her inner jacket pocket. Handed them to Aster.
Aster looked at them, skimmed them. Shrugged. Looked back at Dina.
“She fucked with him. She led him on. What do you expect?”
It was a different aspect to Aster’s personality. Accusatory. Nasty. Even more than when she’d blown up at the wedding caterer. She always seemed so mixed up or kind of whiny, to have teeth like this seemed impossible like one of the personalities had to be an impostor.
“Everything you do, everything you have done, for Maddy or Jack, is backed up on a server,” said Dina. “Doesn’t matter if it’s from a laptop or your tablet. You’re still doing it on a server. It’s like the ocean. Every ship might be different, but it’s sailing on the same ocean.”
Aster exhaled deeply. She blinked rapidly.
“I already have confirmation from LA that these letters were written and printed from machines only you use.”
Aster laughed. Shook her head. Winched her jaw to one side and it tugged her mouth at an extraordinary angle like she was wearing down an apricot sized jawbreaker.
Dina waited. There was foot traffic in the hall behind us. Voices moving near and then far away.
“It didn’t-“ Aster started. And stopped. Her hands tremored. She let go of the strap on her bag and reached for her face, her forehead. The bag strap slumped over her shoulder and then gravity took over and her bag slumped onto the floor. The tremors worsened. Aster squeaked. Tears leaked from her eyes. She crumpled the letters in her hand.
“I didn’t-“ Spit and tears streamed into her mouth.
Dina seemed capable of only watching so much.
She walked over to Aster and gripped and squeezed her wrist and tugged the letters from the assistant’s hand. Then she left the room. Her boot heels thudded sharply on the tile floor until the door closed behind her.
I stared at Aster. Her mouth open, her shoulders rose and fell like she was newly exposed to air her lungs couldn’t quite adapt to and process.
Out in the hall, Dina walked with me back towards the waiting room.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“I needed a witness.”
“Okay.”
“Otherwise,” Dina said, “I would’ve taken her head off.”
She didn’t add the ‘literally’. She didn’t have to.
Chapter 57
Mr. Pederson’s fingerprints were found in the Verney house. Tracks from his car tires matched tracks around the Verney place. Later, guests would confirm seeing Mr. Pederson arrive at the premiere party in a timeframe that would’ve allowed him to head back to Eaton from Royal Cinemas and commit the crime and return for the premiere party.
Bragging killed Nick.
At the eventual trial it came out that Mr. Pederson had tracked various student’s Facebook posts via his son’s account.
With that access through Perry, Mr. Pederson knew all about Nick boasting about Small Town Girl’s fate. When the bomb threat was called in, ruining the premiere, Mr. Pederson drove back to Eaton, to the Verney home. He used the excuse of a broken down car to gain admittance to the Verney household.
Tuesday, Mr. Pederson behind bars, a reporter at the news conference hastily arranged on Jennings outside the Verney driveway asked the bereaved father what he’d like to say to his son’s probable killer. The farmer’s brow crimped a moment before simply stating, “Nothing. Eventually, the devil will get his hands on him.”
Nick’s funeral was scheduled for Wednesday morning.
I didn’t know that I should attend. I thought my attendance might be problematic, but then people would think ill of my not attending, too. Things were getting back to normal, a little, if the gossipy tongues of townspeople were becoming a concern.
Tuesday held distractions that shouldered Nick’s funeral from being my chief consideration.
Maddy and I were supposed to meet at the Eaton County Courthouse. The sheriff’s office and the jails were located there, too.
Several cop cars arrived at the house at the same time. The investigators were going to go over the house for evidence while I was out of the house, in town. Sheriff Younger had asked me if that would be ok.
Maddy had said she’d wanted to stay at the house with me, but logistically, the hotel in Ashmond was the better choice. Easier to plan around. Easier was the aim here on out, until she flew back home.
They’d invited me to come stay at the hotel, too, but dogs weren’t allowed.
Dad's car was impounded, at least until the investigators looking into the kidnapping and the murders decided it could be released. Until then I was bumming rides.
On Tuesday Deputy Llewellyn seemed surprised when I’d told Mojo to stay rather than hop into the back of the deputy’s unit. Driving away from the house I looked back through the protective glass behind the front seats and the rear windshield. Mojo remained in the same spot.
“She’ll stay. She’s got to get used to staying at the house,” I said, for my comfort, for the deputy’s as well.
“Hopefully the guys actually do their job rather than play with her,” said Deputy Llewellyn. “Some of them, sadly, are kind of easily distracted.”
Maddy had been waiting a few minutes when I arrived in the lobby. She studied Wanted posters. Most the people in the lobby studied her.
She wore jeans and a dark silk sweater. Her hair was up and she wore a baseball cap, pulled low, like that did any good around here to mask her too familiar face.
I looked around, but there was no Jack or Dina nearby. Maddy hugged me, but I could tell she was tense. We both were. We went up one stairwell and entered the sheriff’s office. It was a relief when one of the cops almost immediately told us to follow her down a hallway. Opening the door ahead of us, she’d called it the interrogation room.
Once we were waiting, I muttered something about how I thought it’d be like the movies and we’d be talking through glass. Maddy just kind of grunted. When I asked after her voice she grunted, too.
Just said, “Lozenges. Lots and lots of lozenges.”
Sheriff Younger opened the door, and Dad walked ahead of him into the room.
He wore a grey matched set, short sleeve top and pants, kind of like scrubs you saw on people at the hospital only the
color of drier lint. He wasn’t handcuffed or chained around the ankles. He looked at us, his sockets purpled, a few days worth of silvered beard growth coating his cheeks.
The sheriff indicated the chair opposite us as Senate McCall’s destination. Dad sat. Sheriff Younger looked at him. Looked at us. He smiled.
“Ladies, if you need anything, we’ve got eyes and ears aplenty about.” He tilted his head, eyebrows surging for the tiptop of his balding head.
We both nodded. After giving Dad a look, the sheriff exited, closing the door behind him.
Dad sat forward. Rested his arms on the table. I hunched forward in my chair, my shoulders drooping. Maddy sat back in her seat, right ankle crossed over her left knee. She seemed stiff. Tense. Her jaw extended out like she was on the cusp of cussing someone out.
“Hi,” I said when it seemed no one else was going to speak.
“Lucy.” Dad whispered.
I looked at Maddy. She stared right at Dad. She didn’t blink. The foot hooked over the knee jiggled restlessly. An indication of the lava primed to blow.
“Bob,” said Dad, “said to tell you he was sorry. About it. It’s not his fault-”
Maddy said, “Bullshit.”
Dad swallowed. “Lucy, he asked if you could take care of Mojo.”
“I am.”
“Ok. Good. And I think he said Will Leasey was seeing to his place, so…That’s taken care of.”
He ran a hand over his face. The whiskers brushed roughly against his hand.
Staring at the top of the desk, he held a hand over his mouth almost like the lips were moving while he prepped his next words for issuance. He wanted to get them right before speaking them aloud.
“He said you wanted me to be free,” said Maddy.
Dad looked at her.
“The dead man. One of the dead men. Lloyd. You know. Lloyd. He said I could call him Lloyd. Once I had stopped trying to fight them. Lloyd said that I was keeping dangerous company. That I couldn’t think for myself. Not anymore. People were thinking for me. When should I eat? What should I wear? Who should I love? All of it. Out of my hands. And I’d gotten to this dangerous point where I wanted it out of my hands.”
Dad looked at her.
“Between the dope in my system and the general feeling of fear,” continued Maddy, “when Pederson showed up, and just started murdering Lloyd right in front of me, I almost thought it was part of the exercise. Part of the process, you know, being cleansed. But then,” she held up a finger, “but then, when Pederson came over and started getting me out of the chair I realized that it probably wasn’t all that possible that the brains and the blood on him were faked. That…that was real. That Lloyd, well meaning Lloyd, the life just bashed the hell out of him, was done wearing smartly styled vests for this lifetime.”
“I’m sorry,” said Dad.
“What would Mom say?” asked Maddy. “No. Strike that. How would you explain this to her? That’s what I want to know. How would you make what you did sound sane?”
Dad stared at his hands.
“About a month - maybe two months ago - I got a phone call from Ruth Arnett.” He paused to see what, if anything, Maddy would say at that. He continued.
“I’d sent her condolences for her sister way back last year. I guess what got her to come and talk to me was hearing about the plan to show your movie here. I mean she had her own agenda - wanting to get close to Horace, cause him some grief. She said there were things from his past that could he used against him. But mostly she told me about her sister in more detail. Told me about warning signs that she didn’t pay attention to, that her family didn’t pay attention to. It got me thinking. Got me worried.”
“She’s nuts,” said Maddy.
“Her sister died. Where would your head be in that instance?”
Maddy smiled. “Well, I just almost got to find out, now didn’t I?”
Dad quieted.
“You have such little respect for me, for my ability to make choices,” said Maddy, “you can’t ask me about my beliefs? You suppose. You listen to the words of a drunk grieving over her sister. You conclude. On your own.”
He met her eyes and then looked back at the desk.
“I made a promise,” he said.
“I know you did,” said Maddy. “To keep us safe.”
“That’s right.”
“Safe. Ok.”
Maddy leaned forward, the chair scraping linoleum as she settled her elbows across the desk, looking Dad in the face.
“So. Explain how having them take Lucy and then having some asshole take pictures of her bound to a bed - and half naked - is keeping us safe. Tell me what Mom would say if you came to her and tried to tell her that step was necessary, absolutely necessary, in keeping your daughters safe.”
Dad met her eyes briefly. He blinked and blinked and ran the back of his hand over his face.
“I didn’t know that-“ He swallowed. Cleared his throat. “Pat told me it might get rough. But that I could trust him.”
“You had a code word? Right?”
“Yes.”
“’Dorothy’. Mom’s name. You call him. You say it. Boom. It’s over.”
Dad nodded.
“Then why,” Maddy said, “the moment you got that image of my sister, of your daughter, bound, exposed, didn’t you call him and give him the code word? How much more evidence did you need?”
Dad closed his eyes. Tears welled out either one.
“What more did you need? Did you need to see her getting raped? Did you need to see one of them on top of her? Fucking your daughter as she screamed, as she tried to fight them off?”
I made a noise.
Dad looked at me.
“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have…”
Maddy looked at her father and her sister with disdain. We were both crying.
“You have to believe me,” said Dad. “If I’d known. If I’d known how it would turn out, if I’d known. If I’d known, none of it. None of it…I never would have, I never would have. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Lucy. I’m so sorry.”
I got out of my chair and hugged him. I got down on my knees beside his chair and clasped his side. We sobbed and trembled.
At one point I looked across the table at Maddy.
She stared at us. She studied us dryly like we were specimen infinitesimal upon a microscopic slide, just colored blots, porous and all of a molecule thick.
Outside, at the base of the courthouse steps she looked at me.
“If it were up to you, you’d let him walk out of there, free as a bird, even with all that blood on his hands.”
“I don’t…I don’t know.”
“If the baby,” she smiled for a moment, “if it was going to be a boy, we were going to name it ‘Senate’.”
She looked across the street. Her eyes moved with a car passing by before returning to look into mine.
“Now, it doesn’t matter which sex it is. That name means nothing to me. That man means nothing to me. And I swear to you, I swear, when they’re born, when it’s born, he or she will never know that man. His voice. His face. His touch. His name. Nothing. Never.”
Her voice had cracked. Before I could reach for her she turned and walked down the street until she came to her car. She got in. She backed out and drove away.
Chapter 58
Sherman loaned me his car. Any interest he’d had in driving was stymied by the doctor’s warning that infection might follow over use. Sherman had asked after the absolute worst outcome of infection. Amputation did sound pretty bad.
He drove out to the house Tuesday evening. Then we drove into town and I dropped him off and drove myself back home.
Wednesday, right around the hour of Nick Verney’s funeral, I drove through the streets. I’d laughed for
the first time in days when Sherman had said he never thought he’d see the day that people would turn out in droves for the burial of a prick. Afterward I felt awful, but I was happy for the temporary release.
The attempts to paint Nick in the colors of sainthood were annoying Sherman. Kitty, too. In the aftermath of his murder he was being turned into a saint. Kitty couldn’t quite run with it.
She said she wouldn’t be attending the funeral if Geoff didn’t seem to need the support.
A few blocks south of the cemetery I could see cars still filing in to find parking spaces near the cemetery. The rest of the town seemed pretty still. The mood at school, according to Sherman, was a little weird.
The house I was looking for shared a lawn with a number of trees. The trees tall and bushy enough they obstructed view of the house’s second story.
The garage stood separate from the house, a white and blue trimmed wood structure, the track door pooched out a little like too much junk was crammed inside and the door couldn’t properly close.
Spray-painted across the front of the door – “Fucking killer” – in giant blood red letters, the ‘F’ high as my upper torso from waist to tiptop of my head. After I parked and got out of the car I stared at the graffiti. There were plenty of houses and windows nearby. I wondered if anyone had seen the graffiti being applied, if it’d happened in the dark or right out in the open.
A cat sitting on the front porch railing meowed at me as I walked up the steps. I said hello. The cat slit its eyes, drinking in the warmth of the sun that had settled in after the morning rain.
I knocked on the door. Waiting for the door to open I removed the floppy hat and the sunglasses. It was one of Mom’s chemotherapy hats. I’d no business wearing it, but I’d no business being out like this while a classmate was going into the ground either. Twitchiness had set me off from the house.
A thin cloth window cover was shoved aside far enough a single eyeball could look out at me. Then the cloth was moved back into place. For several moments I didn’t think the door would open, and several moments after that definitely convinced me that it wouldn’t.
I headed back towards Sherman’s car. I’d just stepped off the porch to the lawn when the lock turned behind me.