“And when did Bud bring him home to you, when did you do this?”
“It was two nights before the killing.”
“How do you remember that, what with the meth and all?”
She smiled, sniffled loudly. “It was my birthday.”
Will stared into the opaque river and said nothing. The day was cold and dying. At last he spoke through the chill, “Darlene, you’re going to have to give a statement. Are you willing to do that?”
“Yes. Yes, I am…just let me keep my baby.”
He patted her arm and told her she could go. She stubbed out the last Camel, tossed it into the growing pile of cigarette filters on the sidewalk, and stood. She walked two steps and turned.
“I always liked you, Detective Will. Always thought you were fair. I never believed what Bud said about you.”
It was a moment of premonition, the nanosecond where the bullet leaves the rifle and strikes a target even before its sound is heard. But Will asked, “What did Bud say?”
“That you killed Theresa.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Cheryl Beth was relieved for the physical effort of folding the wheelchair and lifting it into the back of her car. When she almost lost control of it, nearly tossing it into the air, she knew the level of her emotions. Yet she could say nothing once she was in the car. Will was on his cell phone, obviously talking to Detective Dodds. She could only hear his end of the conversation.
“Darlene gave it all up…calm down…never mind why I’m not in the hospital…”
She could hear the angry percussions of Dodds’ voice coming through Will’s phone, interrupting nearly every sentence, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“Are you done now? She admits he wasn’t with her the night Theresa died, and she explained how he planted the DNA evidence…of course, I Mirandized her…She’s got a kid now, so you’ve got leverage…He turned her into a tweaker but she says she’s clean now…She’s in the same crappy little house, yes, she’s there…You’ve got to get over there now and take her statement, get her protected, and get a warrant out on him. Pull him in for anything, just get him and hold him…I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job…Because somebody had to…You know where to find me.”
She listened to Will talk, such enthusiasm in his voice. Her emotions were lava under pressure.
“Will Borders, you’d better the hell tell me what’s going on because there’s nothing I hate more than being lied to.” She turned in the seat to face him, refusing to break eye contact, talking as adamantly with her hands as with her voice. “I’ve watched you these weeks as you’ve struggled and worked, and I’ve admired you. I never would have let you hurt as long as you did if I’d known and I stopped it. And then I got you out today, you go and get a damned gun, and this trailer girl talks about this man saying you killed that woman, and, God, you’d better stop lying to me right now! I’m sick of people lying to me! You’d better tell me what’s going on right now!”
She threw it out as the words boiled out of her mind. One of the docs used to make gentle fun of her when she was that intense, the exclamation points shooting out of her, calling it “running hot.” She was running hot. She stared at Will as he meekly put his phone away and reached down to rearrange his left leg. His eyes were wide.
“What do you want to know?”
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
“Then why did that girl say you did? Why did Lennie think you were the devil?”
“You think I killed Christine Lustig? That would be quite a trick.”
“Don’t play games with me,” she snapped. “You know exactly what I mean.”
“I didn’t kill Theresa.”
“How do I know that?” she demanded.
“I was with Dodds that night.”
“But he said you lied to him. I heard you two, fighting in the morgue. He said you left homicide because he fired you, because you lied to him.” She pushed herself back into the seat and stared out at the park. “What did you lie about?”
He sighed and adjusted his tie. “Theresa.”
Something in the way that he said her name crashed against Cheryl Beth’s anger and mistrust, leaving her off balance. She said, “Were you sleeping with her?”
“Yes.”
There it was. Cheryl Beth looked straight ahead. The park was becoming a faded dream as their breath fogged over the windshield. It was growing cold inside the car, but she didn’t make a move to turn the key.
Will’s voice was drained of its previous excitement. “It was three years ago. I walked into a bar downtown. It was a slow evening and there weren’t many people there. I walked between the tables and knocked her purse over, and I bent down to help her. We talked for a minute. She looked so sad. I’d never seen anyone look so sad. But there was this beauty, this grace, hidden behind it. So I sent a drink over to her table, and in a minute she came and joined me…”
“You were cheating on your wife?” She noticed he wasn’t wearing a wedding band, but his chart showed a contact, Cynthia Holland, as his wife.
He gave a sour laugh. “We’d separated, again. She was seeing a man on the side. Or was it two?”
“So you and this woman…”
“Her name was Theresa.”
His voice sounded as if it had hit a sandbar.
“She didn’t want to get involved with a cop again,” he said. “But we did.” He spoke more slowly, pausing, his mind far from the cold inside of the car. “She’d never had anybody be good to her. Never had flowers sent to her. A car door opened for her.”
“Her husband, Bud, he found out?”
“They were separated. I knew Bud Chambers years ago, on patrol. We weren’t friends. The more I heard about the way he had treated her, I hated him. I checked him out. He was still a patrolman, never even made sergeant. He had a load of brutality complaints. But he was part of the ole-boy network on the force.” He shook his head. “She deserved so much better. But it was, like, I don’t know, once Cindy realized I was involved with somebody she suddenly said she wanted me back. I knew better, but it was hard. Cindy was the woman I’d married. But Theresa…”
He huddled deeper in his coat. “Her daughter kept pressing her to reconcile with Bud. The girl was, maybe, sixteen then. She didn’t know any better, wanted mom and dad together. Theresa was very guilt-ridden about it. She said she was probably doing the wrong thing, making the biggest mistake of her life. But she told me she’d decided to try again with Bud. I didn’t hear from her for almost a year. Then, the week before…” He swallowed hard. “Before she was murdered. She called and said he had moved out again. She’d thrown him out and gotten a restraining order. She said she didn’t want for me to have to get involved in it. But she said she’d come over soon. We made a date. It was for the day after…after…”
He took a gulp of air. “We were the primaries. The first detectives called to the scene. It was a beautiful day. Like the first real spring day. I prayed she had moved, that someone else was at that address. But I knew. I knew.” His voice slowed as he seemed to struggle to get the words out. “I knew he did it. I swore to her I’d make him pay, but I never did. I got him off the force, but he got away with it. And with those other girls he killed to cover his tracks. And now with Christine. He’s a killer. Who knows why? Who cares?”
She asked why he didn’t tell Dodds that he had been involved with Theresa Chambers.
“I knew how he’d react,” Will said. “It would be a distraction, too. I knew Bud did it. And command might take me off the case-too close to the victim and all that. So I didn’t tell him for two weeks, when the next woman was killed. When I did, he said he didn’t want to work with me anymore. He never told anyone. We stayed together until Craig Factor was convicted and everybody said we were supercops. But our friendship was over. I transferred to Internal Investigations, to try to get some of these dirtbag cops off the streets.” He paused. “That’s what I told myself. I just kept seeing her face, seeing her dead…”