“And why were you calling her Saturday?” Will asked.
“I missed her,” he said. “She was a very passionate woman. And remember, we’re talking off the record. I’m nothing more than a cooperating citizen, trying to be helpful to the police. You haven’t even read me my rights.”
Will paused. “I’ll only do that if you’re a suspect.”
“Then I’ll ruin your life, detective.” He said it calmly, at the end of a pointed finger, his face set, but the tendons in his neck visible with tension. “I’ll sue your department for harassment. I’ll have your badge. I’ll get a settlement that will drive this city into bankruptcy. I’ll fuck you over, Borders.” He opened the door and stood.
“Oh, Mr. Buchanan…”
He stuck his head back in, the same look of barely suppressed rage on his face.
“What?”
“Seems like you have an anger-management issue, sir. That makes you seem less like a cooperating citizen and more like a suspect. And even if I can’t place you on that boat Sunday morning, I’ll check your alibi. Very indiscreetly, if you get me. Then I have a lot of ways to let your partners know about your little hidden life. And what you think about Elder and Moeller. They won’t like any of it, especially that last part. So be careful I don’t fuck you over. How does that make you feel, counselor?”
Will stuffed down his own anger as the door slammed hard and Kenneth Buchanan stalked over to a new Mercedes Benz. It was amazing, watching this man walk fast with no effort, no thought to it at all.
He started the car and his phone rang. It was Diane Henderson.
“How’s the lawyer?”
“Pissed and full of threats.” Will gave her the rundown.
“Do you like him for this?”
“I don’t dislike him,” Will said. “He claims he’s got an alibi, but my gut says he’s hiding something.”
“Trust your gut. They were lovers. They broke up. She was seeing other men. Jealousy is a great motive.”
“He’s got powerful connections. He called the chief.”
“And what did the chief tell you?”
“Handle with care.”
“I have some news,” she said. “Crime scene found some hairs that didn’t belong to Gruber. And they have a partial shoeprint.”
After she hung up, he realized he was an hour late taking his Baclofen. He dry swallowed the white pill. Only the realization that he had missed the dose caused the right quads to get angry. He hadn’t felt any discomfort during his confrontation with Kenneth Buchanan.
Such a strange thing, this mind-body connection.
Wednesday
Chapter Fifteen
She left home and flew down Ravine Street, her favorite in the city. It inclined down the hill toward downtown at a steep angle, offering splendid views. Then she drove out Madison to the Joseph-Beth Bookstore in Rookwood Pavilion. It was this or spend the afternoon in her closet agonizing over what to wear tonight when she went out with Will Borders. A short skirt wouldn’t do, but neither would pants. Men liked her legs. But she didn’t want to come off wrong on a first date. It was a date, right? Cheryl Beth hadn’t been on a real date in a very long time. Maybe on the way home she would get a pedicure.
She was turning the corner of the poetry section when she almost ran straight on into Noah Smith.
“I’m sorry I gave you a start,” he said.
It was true. Her heart rate was still over one-fifty when she asked him what he was doing there.
“I was released this morning. Brooks sure didn’t like it.”
Noah looked gaunt and pale, but still handsome in khakis and a blue long-sleeved shirt. His big smile that must have attracted the girls was gone. “The truth is, I followed you.”
Pulse back up. “You what? You know where I live? How do you know where I live?”
“You can find things on the Internet.”
She took another step back. “Now you’re really creeping me out.”
“You don’t…” He stepped closer and this time she held her ground. “You can’t think I had anything to do with Lauren and Holly getting killed.”
“Keep your voice down.”
“I want to come back to class,” he whispered.
She told him all the ways that would be a bad idea, impossible even. She couldn’t imagine having him as student right now, and the university had suspended him pending the investigation.
She looked around. The store was crowded even on a Wednesday afternoon. She was safe. Except for the fact that he knew where she lived.
“I need to graduate. I need to get a job.”
“I can’t fix that, Noah. You can’t take the NCLEX until you’re cleared of this, anyway.” The national licensing examinations.
“Cheryl Beth, I need something to do. To keep my mind off this. Brooks is going to do everything he can to put me in prison for something I did not do.” His eyes were suddenly older, exhausted.
“What happened out there that night, Noah?”
“I keep trying to remember.” He carefully touched the back of his head. “They said I had a mild concussion, but I keep having headaches. It still burns where they used the Taser on me, and I don’t feel right. It’s hard to keep it all in my head.”
“You screamed something like ‘hostiles! I have wounded!’ What were you thinking?”
He leaned his hands against a shelve and stared at the floor. “I don’t remember. Sometimes, after my deployments, I have flashbacks…”
He seemed sincere. But she pressed on: “Did you have a knife with you that night?”
“No!”
“But you were in the Army, right? You’re good with a knife.”
“That doesn’t mean I would kill those girls. I was crazy about them.”
“Nothing but an an innocent boy from Corbin, Kentucky,” she said.
“You don’t believe me.” He roughly ran his hands down his face. “If you don’t believe me, I’m sunk.”
“Do you know I’m from Corbin, Noah? Is that something you found on the Internet, too?”
“You are? Good lord.”
“It’s a small town. Tell me somebody I might know.”
“I’m a lot younger than you,” he said. “No offense. You’re very attractive.” He shook his head. “Shit, I can’t say the right thing here.”
“Corbin.” She heard the sternness in her voice.
He stared beyond her. She was about to walk away when he spoke again.
“When I was three years old, my father killed my mother, okay?”
She stopped and watched him again. He seemed to age before her eyes.
“My earliest memories are their fights. Both of them screaming as loud as they could. Him slapping her. He finally used a shotgun. I saw it happen. The whole thing. I saw her brains and blood against the wallpaper of the kitchen. I didn’t know that’s what they were, I remember the colors and textures and her head was…” He stopped speaking and the muscles in his neck tensed.
He was breathing heavily, holding his hands tightly at his side. “Then he killed himself. I remember everything. Forget anything you’ve heard about little kids not remembering trauma.” He fought tears as he gave the date, his parents’ names and where they lived, a couple miles out of town. “You can look it up. After that, I was sent to live with my uncle and aunt in Lexington. When I was eighteen, I joined the Army.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. The year he gave was long after she had left Corbin. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, Hank Brooks thinks I have my daddy’s homicidal bloodline. That’s the way he put it.”
When he had composed himself, he said, “On Monday, I keep remembering waking up in the grass, then seeing Lauren and Holly. They were maybe twenty feet away, but I could already see the blood. I got to my feet and went to them. I checked their pulses but they were both dead. Cold. Oh, god…”