Kisscut

  Paul tightened his grip on Jeffrey’s hand. “She was such a sweet girl.”

  “I know she was,” Jeffrey agreed, squeezing back. “My wife, Sara, saw her.” Jeffrey realized suddenly that he had mis-spoken. “I mean my ex-wife. She’s a pediatrician. Sara.”

  He looked up, hope in his eyes. “She saw Wendy?”

  “Yes,” Jeffrey told him. “Sara said she was a bright girl. Very intelligent, very sweet. She had a caring heart.”

  “Was she healthy?”

  Jeffrey lied on purpose this time. There was no reason to tell this father what his daughter had been through. “Yes,” he said. “She was very healthy.”

  Paul released Jeffrey’s hand and picked up the photograph of his daughter. “She was always sweet, even as a baby. You can just tell with some kids. She had such a good heart.”

  Jeffrey took out his handkerchief and blew his nose. At the last minute he realized he should have offered it to Paul.

  “I’m sorry,” Jeffrey said.

  “I don’t blame you,” Paul told him. “I blame her. I blame Wanda. She took my child. She did those horrible things to her.” He cleared his throat and wiped his nose with his hand. “She put all of this into motion by being the kind of person she is.” He locked eyes with Jeffrey. “I don’t blame you,” he repeated, his tone vehement. “Don’t live with that guilt, Mr. Tolliver. I’ve lived with guilt my entire life. What if I had never married her? What if I had listened to the rumors? What if I had let the police check my little girl to see if her mother…?” He put his hand to his mouth, and again his body shook as he cried.

  Jeffrey felt himself tearing up again, and tried to collect himself. All he could think of was Lacey Patterson’s school picture on the flier in his desk drawer. He thought about what Jenny had been through, and what Mark still had ahead of him if he managed to pull out of the coma. He thought of Sara, too, and what she must be going through, the guilt she had to be feeling because these were her kids. Hell, they were Jeffrey’s kids, too. Maybe because they didn’t have any of their own they felt responsible for the whole town. And look at what Jeffrey had let happen. How many children had been hurt because Jeffrey had been blind to the evil going on in his own backyard?

  “You did your job,” Paul told Jeffrey, as if reading his mind. “You did what you had to do to protect that boy.”

  Jeffrey had not helped the girl he knew as Jenny Weaver. He had not rescued Mark or Lacey Patterson. He had not protected anyone but Dottie Weaver, who had sat in this very station house and spoon-fed them her lies.

  Paul said, “So much came out after she left town.” He looked down at his hands. “She did some baby-sitting on the weekends. Those children were abused, too.”

  Jeffrey sat up, trying not to let his own grief overshadow Paul’s. He asked, “Was a warrant ever issued?”

  “No,” he said, then gave an ironic smile. “A couple of days later, they issued a warrant to arrest the other woman, but she had left town, too.”

  Jeffrey felt the hair on the back of his neck rise as he thought about Lacey Patterson. “What was her name?”

  “Markson,” Paul said, wiping his nose again. “Grace Markson.”

  16

  LENA SAT beside Grace Patterson’s bed, listening to the slow beeps of the heart monitor beside her. The blind was drawn on the window overlooking the hospital parking lot, but there wasn’t much to see at this hour, anyway. Teddy Patterson sat across the bed from Lena in a tall recliner, his head leaned back, his mouth opened as he snored, seeming not to have a care in the world. He had laughed in Lena’s face when she suggested Grace had anything to do with what had happened to their children. Patterson was a con, and he had an innate distrust of cops. Of course, if he was involved in this thing up to his eyeballs, he wasn’t likely to come clean and tell Lena where his daughter was being held. Teddy had actually demanded Lena leave, but for some reason Grace had requested she be allowed to stay. He had grumbled, but acquiesced. Patterson’s wife had her nails dug so deep into his balls he didn’t take a shit without getting her permission first. Grace seemed to be the center of Teddy’s life and the longer Lena was in the same room with him, the clearer it was to her that Teddy didn’t give a shit for either of his children.

  Lena looked at Grace Patterson, watching her sleep, wondering at the power the woman seemed to have over her family. She had refused to be put on a ventilator, but a mask gave her oxygen to help her breathe. Pillows were propped around and under her body to keep her comfortable, but there was no mistaking that the woman was dying an extraordinarily painful death. In the few days since Lena had seen her, Grace Patterson had declined rapidly. Maybe it was being in the hospital that had done it to her, but Grace looked as much on her deathbed as she was. Her skin was sallow, her cheeks sunken. Her eyes were rheumy and constantly wept what on a normal person would have been tears.

  Lena shifted in her chair, trying to get into a more comfortable position. Her tailbone felt as if it had been beaten with a bat, and her hands and feet were aching like they had after the attack. She had figured out an hour before that this was because she kept clenching her fists and curling her toes. Her body was tight with tension, and just being in the room with the Pattersons made her stomach clench like the rest of her body. She wanted to throttle them both, to remind them that every second ticking by could mean something horrible for Lacey.

  Maybe they were being quiet because Lena was in the room. Teddy wasn’t exactly acting the part of the grieving husband, as far as Lena could tell. He had watched television while his wife slept, laughing at sitcoms, then narrating for no one in particular the events unfolding during an action movie.

  “He’s gonna whup his ass,” Teddy would tell them. Or, “Give that brother something to think about.”

  Teddy had fallen asleep during the news and seemed to be a heavy sleeper. Even when the nurse had come in to check Grace’s stats, he had not stirred.

  All this left Lena with was time to stare at Grace Patterson and think about what had happened in the last few days. Mark was at a different hospital than his mother because the ambulance crew had taken him to the closest emergency room. There was no telling what was going to happen to him, but none of his doctors seemed to think he would ever recover from what he had done to himself.

  Lena thought about Mark, who was just like any other boy, just wanting love, wanting his mother’s attention, and taking it any way he could. She also remembered herself at that age, and how fucked up she had been. Everything had been so emotional, and she had been desperate for anyone but Hank’s approval. She had defined herself by what a small handful of outcasts at school thought of her, and used how she looked to get what in retrospect could only be called the wrong kind of attention.

  Lena was fifteen when she first started sleeping with Russ Fleming, and while her body had been ready for the physical side of the relationship, emotionally, she had been a wreck. Russ was twenty-two, something Hank had a really big problem with, but Lena had thought she loved him, and Russ had played her like a pro. Anything he wanted, she gave him. He was a moody asshole, and Lena reacted to him like a thermometer, trying to soothe him one minute and seduce him the next. Her days were constant ups and downs, depending on how Russ was treating her, and if she wasn’t crying in her room, she was sitting on the front porch, hands between her knees as she nervously waited for him to show up. She had been so young and so stupid, and Russ had given her what she thought was love.

  Looking back now, Lena knew that he was just a paranoid pothead, getting his rocks off screwing a teenage girl, but at the time Lena had thought he was the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was amazing how stupid kids could be, and how desperate they were for love and attention. Mark must have been such an easy target for his mother. He must have felt like an open wound, convinced that only his mother could heal him. And now everything that he had survived had made him want to die. Lena understood the dichotomy all too well.

  Grac
e took a sharp breath, waking up. Her eyes slowly opened. She stared for a while at the ceiling, as if her brain was trying to work out where she was and what was happening. Lena wanted to remind her, to tell her that she was dying, but Grace seemed to make that connection on her own.

  The stiff pillowcase crackled as Grace turned her head toward Lena. Her eyes traveled down as far as they could go, past the blood pressure monitor on her arm to the I.V., which she followed to the self-administering morphine pump beside the bed. Lena had had one of these when she was in the hospital. The patient could control the release of morphine by pressing a button attached to the pump. The machine wouldn’t let you kill yourself by holding the button down, but it did give the patient some sense of control over her own pain management.

  Without being aware of what she was doing, Lena reached over and took the button away from Grace before the woman could press it. Lena had not been alone with Grace since she’d gotten here. Teddy seemed a sound enough sleeper for her to take advantage of the moment.

  “Looking for this?” Lena whispered, holding up the device.

  Grace’s eyes flashed, then darted toward Teddy.

  “You want to wake him up so he can hear what I have to say?” Lena asked, still keeping her voice low. “I talked to Mark, Grace. You want Teddy to know just how much you love your little boy?”

  She swallowed, but that was all.

  “You can talk,” Lena said. She had heard Grace ask for ice chips only a few hours before. “I know you can talk.”

  Slowly, Grace reached up to the mask covering her nose and mouth. She pulled it to the side, panting with the effort. “Give…,” she said. “Pump…”

  Lena tested the weight of the button in her hand. It had felt so much heavier when she had used it for her own pain relief.

  She asked, “Hurts, huh?”

  Grace nodded, her face contorted in pain.

  “You want to trade?” Lena asked, wagging the device like a piece of candy.

  Grace had the audacity to smile, and something in her eyes seemed to say that she had underestimated Lena.

  “Yeah?” Lena prompted. “Tell me where Lacey is and I’ll let you drug yourself to hell and back.”

  Grace still smiled, but there was a hardness to her eyes now. She turned her head away from Lena to stare back up at the ceiling. Lena could see that the woman’s hand shook as she placed it over her chest. The doctor had ordered more powerful narcotics on standby. Why Grace had not called for them earlier was a mystery. It wasn’t as if the woman had a chance of getting out of this bed.

  Lena said, “I know you want it, Grace. I know you need it.”

  Grace turned back to her. She inhaled sharply, then breathed out a labored, “No.”

  Lena stood, clenching her fist around the device. She still kept her voice down so as not to wake Teddy. “I know you raped Mark.”

  Grace’s smile widened, as if this was a fond memory. She closed her eyes, and Lena was under the impression she was recalling a shared moment with her son.

  “Tell me about Jenny Weaver,” Lena hissed. “What did you do to her?”

  “She was…,” Grace began, still staring at the ceiling, tears streaming from her eyes. The tears were part of her medical condition, a sign of the physical pain she was in, not an indication that she felt any grief.

  The mask was still pushed to the side, and Grace put her hand on it to move it back, but not before saying, “Such…a…sweet…”

  Her voice trailed off, and Lena stood there, waiting for her to finish the sentence. When nothing came, she prompted, “Sweet what?”

  Grace gave an almost angelic smile behind the mask. “Sweet…fuck.”

  “You bitch,” Lena whispered, grabbing the pillow at Grace’s side. She moved the mask off the woman’s face and pressed the pillow down over her. Grace did not struggle under Lena, who was keeping her eye on Teddy as she tried to smother his wife. Grace’s legs twitched slightly, and Lena stopped—made herself stop—pulling back the pillow. She fumbled, putting the mask back onto Grace’s face, making sure she got the oxygen. What seemed like minutes but could have only been seconds passed before Grace opened her eyes again. She seemed surprised, then angry. Lena knew that killing her would have been a mercy. Grace Patterson only had a few hours at most left in this world. Lena would not hasten them.

  Grace was panting angrily as she glared at Lena. Her mouth worked, and she whispered, “Coward.”

  Mark had called Lena this before, and maybe it was true, but not for the reason Grace was thinking.

  Lena countered, “Not as cowardly as raping a child.”

  Grace shook her head, either denying that Mark was a child or that what she had done to him was rape.

  “He tried to kill himself,” Lena told her. “Did you know that?”

  She could tell from Grace’s reaction that she did not.

  “Hanged himself in his closet, right after he told me you’d fucked him,” she clarified. “He didn’t want to live anymore, knowing what you’d done to him.”

  Grace stared back at the ceiling. The tears still came, but Lena could not tell if they were from grief or pain.

  “He’s in a coma. Probably won’t wake up.”

  Grace whispered something, but Lena could not make out what she was saying. Lena leaned down, putting her ear close to the woman’s mouth, her hand on the side of the bed. Without warning, Grace reached out, grabbing Lena’s hand. The woman was weak from the labor of dying, and Lena was able to pull her hand away, but not before she felt Grace’s thumb brush across the scar on Lena’s hand. The touch was tender, almost sexual, and Lena could see the charge Grace got out of it.

  “You sick bitch,” Lena said, rubbing her hand as if she could wipe off the sensation. “You’re going to rot in hell.”

  It seemed to take all of her energy, but the mother said in one smooth line, “I’ll see you there.”

  Lena backed away until she was standing against the wall, feeling an eerie sense of déjà vu. Mark and Jenny had said almost the exact same thing to each other the night Jenny had died.

  Lena stood there for a moment, watching Grace Patterson, then checking on Teddy. He was still sound asleep. She checked her watch. There were three more hours until sunrise, when the nurse would be back to check on Grace. Lena clipped the morphine button to the railing, well out of Grace’s reach. She sat down in the chair, ignoring her own shaking hands as she waited for Grace Patterson to die.

  17

  JEFFREY WAS sweating under his bulletproof vest. The August heat combined with the weight of the Teflon vest would have felled an elephant by now. He had lost enough water from sweating to make the back of his throat feel like it had been rubbed with sandpaper.

  “Good times,” Nick said, using his handkerchief to wipe the back of his neck.

  Jeffrey bit back a cutting remark, asking instead, “What time is it?”

  Nick checked his watch. “Ten after,” he said. “Don’t sweat it, Chief. Criminals got their own sense of time.”

  “Yeah,” Joe Stewart piped up. He was Nick’s perp who had flipped, and from the way he was acting, Jeffrey imagined Nick had let the man do a little blow to keep the edge off. He was as wired as a Las Vegas street corner.

  Jeffrey said, “You’re sure you don’t know anything about a missing girl?”

  “How young is she?” Joe licked his lips. “You gotta picture of her?”

  “Sit down,” Nick ordered, kicking at Joe’s shins with his pointy cowboy boots. Nick had gone all out for the part of a pedophile, and was wearing a pressed black shirt tucked into the tightest pair of blue jeans Jeffrey had ever seen on a man. Nick had even taken off his gold necklace and trimmed his beard for the occasion. Jeffrey imagined Nick lived for this kind of action. Truthfully, so did every cop Jeffrey knew, including himself.

  “I tole you to sit,” Nick reminded Joe.

  Joe slumped on the bed, scratching his arms as he mumbled something under his breath. He was a sk
inny kid, probably in his late twenties. Pimples littered his face like spots on a dog, and he had picked at some of them, bringing blood.

  Jeffrey looked at Nick. “Did you have to get him pumped up like this?”

  “You want him pissing in his pants?” Nick asked.

  “Wouldn’t be much of a difference,” Jeffrey pointed out. Joe smelled almost as bad as the musty thirty-dollar-a-night hotel room they were standing in.

  Jeffrey asked, “Are you sure the air conditioner isn’t working?”

  “We turn it on, we won’t be able to pick up the audio,” Nick reminded him. “Settle down, Chief. It’ll be over soon.”

  “What about Atlanta?” Jeffrey asked.

  Nick’s eyes darted to Joe. The post office box in Grant that Dottie had used for the credit card was a dummy drop. A forwarding address had been given so that all mail sent to Grant would automatically be forwarded on to a different post office box in Atlanta. Jeffrey had asked Nick to set up a surveillance, hoping Dottie would show up.

  “It’s in place,” Nick told him. “As soon as I know something, you’ll know something.”

  Jeffrey’s phone vibrated at his side, and he clipped it off his belt. “Yeah?”

  “Hey,” Frank said. “Patterson’s been in his trailer since his wife died this morning.”

  Jeffrey felt the tension drain from his body. Maybe Patterson had canceled the meeting. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Frank bristled. “He didn’t even go to the hospital to see his kid.”

  “All right,” Jeffrey said. He snapped the phone shut and reported the news to Nick.

  “Maybe we’ll be seeing Dottie?” Nick suggested. “Patterson’s no fool. He knows he’s being watched.”

  As if on cue, two knocks came at the door, followed by a pause, then another knock.

  Jeffrey slipped into the bathroom, leaving the door slightly open so as not to draw attention to it. He grimaced at the smell in the tiny room, which probably had not been ventilated since the Nixon administration.