‘I’m not asking Mrs Westcott. I’m asking you.’
‘Fine.’ She squared her shoulders, as if facing a firing squad. ‘I got into trouble and got sent to a home for “troubled girls”.’
His brows crunched slightly. ‘How did you get into trouble?’
‘I broke into Mrs Westcott’s house. Then she accused me of stealing from her.’
His brows crunched more. ‘Why did you break into her house?’
‘There was something there I wanted.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Lucy, are you going to tell me the whole story or do I have to dig it out of you with a grapefruit spoon?’
She put the frame back on the shelf with a weary sigh. ‘Westcott’s got a son.’
JD rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘Let me guess. He knew your brother and Edwards and Bennett and Agar.’
She frowned. ‘Yes. Sonny’s the same age, played on the team with my brother.’
‘Linus.’
One side of her mouth lifted sadly. ‘He hated that name. My mother’s maiden name is Buckland, and that was his middle name. Everyone called him Buck.’
‘You loved your brother.’
‘Yes. Buck was . . . bigger than life. My parents’ living room is filled with his trophies, all sports. I sat in the bleachers for every game. He got all the cheers. Everyone loved Buck.’
‘But?’ he asked.
‘When he was gone, everything . . . stopped.’
‘What stopped?’
‘My m—’ She caught herself and shrugged. ‘Life. My parents worked their important jobs and when they came home, it was all about Buck. My father watched videos of his games and my mother polished his trophies. His room became a shrine. Nobody was allowed in there.’
‘Even you?’
She let out a breath. ‘Especially me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my mother said so. But I’d go in his room when my mother was . . . not home. I missed him, so much. I’d sneak into his room to be near his things. Weeks became months and suddenly a year had passed. His funeral had been a few days before my fourteenth birthday, so it was my birthday again and I snuck into his room and found this.’ She jangled the bracelet on her arm. ‘It was in a cigar box under some baseball cards. He must have gotten it for my birthday right before the accident.’
JD lifted her hand so that he could read the charm. ‘ “Number one sister”.’ When he lowered her hand, he held it loosely so she could pull away. Instead she held on tighter.
‘Buck probably got it out of a Cracker Jack box, but for a girl missing her brother, it was like a gift sent down from heaven. I never took it off except to shower.’
‘What did your parents say?’
‘Nothing. They didn’t notice it. They weren’t noticing much of anything by then.’
‘So what did Mrs Westcott have that you wanted back?’
Her smile was sardonic. ‘I knew you’d come back to that. My bracelet disappeared, just a few days after I’d found it. I’d taken a shower and came back to my room to find it missing – and a boy climbing out of my window.’
‘Mrs Westcott’s son?’ he asked and she nodded.
‘I threw on clothes and went to the Westcotts’ to get it back. Old lady Westcott wasn’t home, so I opened the door and went in. Sonny was there along with Russ Bennett. I demanded my bracelet back and Sonny bald-faced lied and said he didn’t have it. I got so angry.’
JD lifted his brows. ‘You broke his nose?’
Lucy winced. ‘More like I bruised it. But it bled an awful lot. Russ was dragging me off him and that’s when Mrs Westcott came home, saw her baby bleeding and went ballistic. Called the cops and everything. My father was very unhappy.’
‘But Westcott’s “baby” was your brother’s age.’
‘Nineteen by then. And none too happy that a girl had bloodied his face.’
‘He was a football player,’ JD said incredulously.
‘Yes, he was. Which, I imagine, made it worse. The boys taunted him. I heard that even after he went back to college the story followed him and he was always getting into fights because people called him a wuss.’
‘How did you get your bracelet back?’
‘Like I said, I broke into Mrs Westcott’s house. The time before the door was unlocked and I walked in. After the bloody nose brouhaha died down, I broke Sonny’s window and snuck in after Westcott had gone to sleep. By this point Sonny had gone back to college, so I figured it was safe. I found the bracelet under his skin magazine collection. Unfortunately, Mrs Westcott caught me climbing out of the window and called the cops again. I dropped the bracelet behind a bush. If the cops caught me with it they’d have taken it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Took the Fifth, got a stern talking-to by my father, hysterics from my mother. I waited till it all died down and went back to get my bracelet. After that, I kept it hidden. I couldn’t wear it anymore anyway. Sonny had pulled it apart. The chain was broken and the clasp was crushed.’
‘So . . . why were you sent away?’
‘Because Sonny came home for Thanksgiving. He must have heard that I’d broken in, and he came over and threatened me. I told him I didn’t know where the bracelet was and all of the sudden he smiled and said, “Okay”.’
‘That doesn’t sound good,’ JD murmured.
‘Because it wasn’t. The next morning – Thanksgiving – a deputy showed up at our house. Mrs Westcott had filed a complaint. She was missing a ring and some cash. Since I’d broken in before, she accused me. The deputy found both the ring and cash in my underwear drawer.’
‘Sonny had planted it.’
Fury had her eyes flashing again. ‘Yes.’
‘Is that when you were sent away?’
‘Yes. To St Anne’s School for Troubled Girls. For three years.’
‘For a first offense?’ he asked, shocked.
‘I’d had some trouble in school, too. Lots of detentions the year after Buck died. A few fights. Let’s just say I had a little practice before I bloodied Sonny’s nose.’
‘When did you meet Mr Pugh?’
‘After school one day. I was scrubbing a floor because I’d gotten in trouble again, and I heard this horrible music coming from one of the rooms. The screeching had been a girl getting a music lesson, but then Mr Pugh played, showing her what to do. I hid, listening. I didn’t think anyone could see me, but after the lesson he walked straight to where I was hiding. Turns out he knew I’d been in trouble. I was apparently the topic of lunchroom teacher conversations.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He asked if I liked music. My mother had always forced me to take lessons, but all of a sudden I wanted to play. I started lessons the next afternoon.’ She swallowed hard. ‘My parents were asked to pay for my lessons but my father wouldn’t. Mr Pugh taught me for free, for three years. Later he told me it was a joy to teach someone who was so thirsty to learn.’
‘That was kind of him. And explains a lot. Did you come home during the three years?’
‘The first summer I went home supposedly to stay, but my parents didn’t really want me there. Plus, the first week at Anderson Ferry High was harsh. Everyone knew I’d been away and the kids looked at me as an oddity, like a caged animal they could poke with sticks.’
‘They tried to get you to fight.’
She nodded. ‘Finally they succeeded and it was one dilly of a fight. One of the kids filed charges and I got hauled before a judge. I was so miserable at home. I wanted to go back to St Anne’s and I told her so.’ She shrugged. ‘The teachers were kind to me there. The judge said the school was expensive, but if my parents would continue to pay, she’d send me back. My father said he would, so I packed up what little I had and went back.’
‘Wait. What do you mean your parents continued to pay?’
She met his confused eyes, realization dawning in hers. ‘It wasn’t juvie, JD. It was a private facility f
or kids with behavior problems. My parents paid for my years there.’
JD was angry. ‘Barb said they never came to visit you.’
She flinched and pulled her hand away. ‘That’s true. That’s one of the many reasons I no longer visit them.’ She hiked the duffle bag onto her shoulder and headed for the door. ‘Time’s passing, Detective. If we’re going to Anderson Ferry, let’s go.’
He needed a moment to calm his voice. He’d made her painful memory worse without meaning to. ‘Lucy. I didn’t expect you’d tell me what happened. Thank you.’
She shrugged. ‘You were going to hear most of the story from Sonny Westcott sooner or later. I just wanted to give you my side first.’
‘Wait a minute.’ He gently grabbed her arm to stop her when she opened the door to leave. ‘I’m going to meet Sonny Westcott?’
‘I imagine so. You do plan to visit the Anderson Ferry sheriff’s office, don’t you?’
‘Sonny Westcott works for the sheriff’s office?’ he asked, surprised.
‘Sonny is the sheriff.’ She tugged free, leaving him open-mouthed. ‘Let’s go.’
Tuesday, May 4, 12.25 P.M.
Breathing hard, he stepped back from Ryan Agar who now sat slumped in the wheelchair, passed out cold. Getting him from the car to the chair had been a pain. Guy weighs a freaking ton. He needed to rest before pushing Ryan up the ramp and onto the Satisfaction.
Pulling his cell from his pocket, he checked the tracking website and frowned. Lucy was on the move again. She’d left her apartment and was headed east, back to Anderson Ferry – which troubled him. She could mess everything up. He needed to know what she was doing.
Ryan would have to be stored for a little while. Now that he was in the chair, it would be easy to dump him down the stairs into the hold. He’d leave him trussed up like a Christmas turkey and when Ryan woke up, he’d have time to stew a bit. Apparently the police hadn’t told him specifically what had been done to his mother.
No matter. He’d find out for himself soon enough.
Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday, May 4, 12.30 P.M.
JD was relieved to find the highway in the direction of Anderson Ferry to be fairly empty, allowing him to catch up to Stevie and Berman who were miles ahead of them.
It was a fine day for a drive. The sun was shining, the sky a cloudless blue. But the mood in JD’s car was dark and tense. Lucy sat in the passenger seat, her duffle at her feet. She stared out the window, having said nothing since leaving her apartment.
He’d been on the phone with Sloane and Kaminski, the detectives who’d picked up the Jane Doe case. The pair had searched for leads as to where Jane Doe had been before her throat was slit. So far they had nothing. They were waiting on Latent to run her prints, hoping she’d be in the system.
He’d then checked in with Tory Reading, the cop staked out in front of the Peabody Hotel. So far Ryan Agar had not emerged. He’d not called for room service nor to the morgue to arrange to ID his mother. JD thought the man might run. Agar was definitely terrified and had every right to be. He’d asked Reading to make sure Agar was still in his room, because if this field trip to Anderson Ferry was a bust, Janet’s son was their only link to real answers.
Thirty hours after finding Russ Bennett’s body, they had six victims and so far nothing more than connections and a lot of unanswered questions. And Lucy Trask, who for some reason was the center of it all. Something had happened in her town.
‘Lucy, I need to—’ His question was cut off by his cell phone. ‘Fitzpatrick.’
‘It’s Debbie.’ Hyatt’s clerk. ‘I have those LUDs you’ve been waiting for.’
‘Russ Bennett’s?’
‘Home and cell. They came last night, but they were sent to the fax in Narcotics. Somebody had your old fax number in their file. What do you want done with these?’
JD glanced at the clock. Even if everything went well it would be hours before they returned to the city. ‘Can you email them to Mazzetti and me? She has her laptop.’
‘Yeah. It’ll take a little while to scan them,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you when it’s sent.’
‘Thanks,’ he said and started to hang up.
‘I’m not finished yet,’ Debbie said. ‘You asked for a trace on the number that called the victim’s son last night. It came from a pay phone.’ She gave him the address and JD frowned.
‘That’s just a mile from the dumpster where Jane Doe was found. Can you send a request to Latent to take prints from that phone?’
‘Will do. I’ll call you when those LUDs are on their way.’
‘Thanks.’ He hung up and glanced at Lucy who was checking her messages. ‘Any news?’
‘A bit. Craig just finished Jane Doe’s exam and checked the lab results on the samples we submitted yesterday. Both Janet Gordon and Russ Bennett’s urine tox screens came back positive for pentobarbital and chlorohydrate.’
‘Old-fashioned Mickey Finn,’ JD said. ‘They would have been highly suggestible, but for a little while able to walk on their own.’
‘Stagger, anyway. Eventually it would have knocked them out. No news on Jane Doe’s prints, but she’d had intercourse with two different men the night she died.’
‘A prostitute?’
‘Maybe, except most higher-class prostitutes that I see use condoms.’
That was true. ‘How do you know she was higher class?’
‘Her blouse was designer, probably ran her at least one-fifty. Her hair was well tended in a salon and her perfume was expensive, too.’
‘Her body was behind a dumpster. How could you smell her perfume?’
‘You learn to discern the smells you need to pay attention to,’ she said and he decided to leave it at that. ‘Few street hookers are going to be able to afford niceties like that. She also had no visible evidence of drug use, no track marks. We’ll need her tox report to confirm or deny.’
‘Anything else in the messages?’
‘The heart is the same blood type as Janet Gordon, just as we expected. That’s it.’
He said nothing for a minute, wondering how to phrase the rest of his questions, none of which she was likely to appreciate. She huffed an irritated sigh at his silence.
‘You want to ask me more questions. Go ahead. Get it over with.’
‘Okay. How long have you been partners with Thorne and Gwyn in the club?’
‘Four and a half years. The club’s been open a little more than three years. The first year and a half was planning and raising money.’
‘How long have you known Gwyn?’
Her glance was sharp. ‘She has nothing to do with this.’
‘I’m pretty sure I believe that, too. So how long?’
‘I told you yesterday, we knew each other as kids, before Buck died. We met again when I broke Russ Bennett’s nose.’
A detail fell into place. ‘You said you and Gwyn had become separated by life. That’s when you were sent to St Anne’s.’
‘Give the man a Kewpie doll,’ she said sarcastically.
He let her sarcasm roll off his back. ‘So she introduced you to Thorne.’
‘Yes, because I needed an attorney when Russ brought charges against me.’
‘And the three of you hit it off.’
‘What are you getting at?’ she snapped.
‘Nothing yet,’ he said, frustrated. ‘You won’t tell me enough to get at anything. I’m not the enemy, Lucy. My questions might just save your life or the lives of your friends. It’s too late for Kevin.’ She flinched, but he didn’t back off. ‘Somebody knew enough about you to know you’d be at the club last night. Somebody with a key to Gwyn’s place – who thought you’d be there – left you a heart. How did they get a key?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, frustrated also. ‘Gwyn insists that the only person who had an extra key was her neighbor. Gwyn couldn’t get into her place this morning because she’d given her own to me last night.’
‘She has a
boyfriend. Does he have a key?’
‘No, they’re still in the sleepover phase. She doesn’t usually hold onto them long enough to get to the key-exchange phase.’
‘Tell me about him anyway.’
‘Royce is in Sales. Office printers, I think. I only know him from the club. We never spend much time together on the outside.’
‘Why?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t want him to know I was an ME, plus . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Gwyn’s last boyfriend tried to pick me up behind her back. She knew I had nothing to do with it, but it still hurt her. She’s kind of kept Royce at a distance until recently.’
‘What does Thorne do at the club?’
‘For a while he did the books and paid the bills. Now Gwyn does all that, along with keeping his schedule at the law office. We hired Mowry to be the club’s manager when the job got too big. He orders the booze and pretzels, takes care of the day to day stuff. Now Thorne scouts new talent and plays a mean bass.’
‘Thorne told me that the two of you shared a common past.’
She frowned. ‘Oh. Our trials. I suppose you want to know about that, too.’
‘I do.’
‘Then answer me something,’ she said, her jaw cocked belligerently.
‘If I can.’
‘Why did you come to the autopsy of a little girl you didn’t know and weren’t responsible for? And don’t say because you found her. She was the only autopsy you ever came to witness. I checked the sign-in records last night, after you dropped me off at the morgue. Before you followed me. I’d like to know. Please.’
He supposed she was entitled to some quid pro quo so he sucked it up and made himself tell it. ‘My mother was . . . is a drunk. Not bad enough so that I got taken away, but bad enough that my childhood sucked. I was lucky enough to have an aunt take me in and give me some consistency in high school. I graduated, but not by much. I ended up going in the army.’
‘What did you do?’
‘Killed a lot of people,’ he said evenly. ‘Which messes you up. I was a loner before the army, but when I came home I was more so. Alone even in a crowd. I didn’t dislike people, I just didn’t know how to connect. And then I met Paul Mazzetti, Stevie’s husband. He was the first friend I ever had.’