Safe Keeping
Safe Keeping
Barbara Taylor Sissel
At the heart of every crime, there's a family…My son is a murderer…. So begins this chilling and emotionally charged mystery from highly acclaimed author Barbara Taylor Sissel.Emily Lebay had always thought of her family as ordinary. Sure, they've endured their share of problems, even a time of great trouble–what family hasn't? But when a woman's body turns up in the dense woods near their home, and Emily's grown son, Tucker, is accused of murder, Emily is forced to confront the unfathomable, and everything she believed about her life is called into question.This isn't the first time Tucker has been targeted by the police; a year ago he was a person of interest when another woman was found dead in the same stretch of woods. Still, neither Emily nor her daughter, Lissa, can reconcile their Tucker with these brutal crimes. Terrified, convinced there's been a tragic mistake, Emily and Lissa set out to learn the truth about Tucker, once and for all. And while his life hangs in the balance, what they discover proves far more shocking than their darkest fears…."A gut-wrenching mystery…enjoyable and insightful." –RT Book Reviews on Evidence of Life
At the heart of every crime, there’s a family…
My son is a murderer.… So begins this chilling and emotionally charged mystery from highly acclaimed author Barbara Taylor Sissel.
Emily Lebay had always thought of her family as ordinary. Sure, they’ve endured their share of problems, even a time of great trouble—what family hasn’t? But when a woman’s body turns up in the dense woods near their home, and Emily’s grown son, Tucker, is accused of murder, Emily is forced to confront the unfathomable, and everything she believed about her life is called into question.
This isn’t the first time Tucker has been targeted by the police; a year ago he was a person of interest when another woman was found dead in the same stretch of woods. Still, neither Emily nor her daughter, Lissa, can reconcile their Tucker with these brutal crimes. Terrified, convinced there’s been a tragic mistake, Emily and Lissa set out to learn the truth about Tucker, once and for all. And while his life hangs in the balance, what they discover proves far more shocking than their darkest fears.…
Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel
EVIDENCE OF LIFE
Safe Keeping
Barbara Taylor Sissel
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For my sister Susan and my brother John.
And in memory of our parents, gone so soon.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u326e6792-e546-58f7-9744-65bdffbcab79)
Chapter 2 (#u0ae7501b-0e4f-58f5-bc2e-151fe6d6c0d1)
Chapter 3 (#u7d2cddd4-83bb-5024-b00b-66c3f8d92fa4)
Chapter 4 (#ucbb47b81-3f3e-5f65-8c07-0bd55964c64f)
Chapter 5 (#u04eb2564-6b29-5847-9e01-3dcfdd3c5e1c)
Chapter 6 (#u16f202e9-424a-5414-9e06-8150a9a09dae)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Reader's Guide (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
A Conversation with the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
1
MY SON IS a murderer.
The words hovered in Emily’s mind.
She said them aloud, “My son is a murderer.”
But they sounded no more believable than when they were rattling around in her head. Why did her mind do this? Why did it conjure up the worst of her fears? One that was neither logical nor possible? So far, like Tucker, the girl, Jessica Sweet, was only missing, not dead, and whatever more dire connection might exist between them was a figment of Emily’s overactive imagination, the result of too little sleep and too much worry. It was the uncertainty that was killing her. If only she could know Tucker was safe.
She stared over the foot of the bed, beyond the circle of lamplight, into new morning light that was as pale as a milky eye. Behind the closed bathroom door, the sound of the shower was a muted hiss. The sharp crease of light on the floor under the door assured her Roy was in there performing his morning routine. Even in retirement, he was a man of routine, of habits that were as predictable as moonrise.
Heart thudding, she looked at the telephone on the nightstand near her elbow and then at the bathroom door. Was she prepared for what would happen if she went through with it, if she dialed 9-1-1? Was there time before Roy was finished? The sound of the shower clattered in her ears. She lifted the cordless receiver from its base.
Impossibly his fingers closed over her wrist. “Don’t, Em.”
Her gaze bounced. A breath went down hard. “Someone has to—”
“No.”
“Tucker’s been gone almost two weeks, Roy. It’s not like him.”
“What do you mean? He pulls this stunt all the time, his damn disappearing act, and the hell with us left behind to worry.”
“But never for this long. I think we should call the police.”
“No,” Roy repeated.
“What if he’s been in an accident?” Emily asked. “What if he got mugged or someone took him? He could be lying somewhere hurt.” Her voice picked up speed; it caught on her panic. “He could have amnesia.”
“You’re making yourself crazy.” Roy sat beside her. “He’s making us both crazy.” Emily started to answer, but Roy talked over her. “He’s thirty-four years old, for Christ’s sake, a grown man. Why is he still living here? Why isn’t he out on his own?”
“He’s tried, Roy. You know he has.” Emily stopped. They’d had this discussion so many times; she knew it by heart. If she were to go on and say the rest of it, that some children took longer to grow up, that if they were patient Tucker would eventually find his way, Roy would say she was making excuses. She would be moved to defend herself. They would go back and forth, making an endless loop of words that would resolve nothing.
He picked up her hand and met her gaze. The wan circle of lamplight silvered the gray bristle of his closely cut hair. With the tip of her finger, she traced a darker line of fatigue that grooved his cheek. He was exhausted from the stress; they both were. “I want some peace and quiet in our lives,” he said. “Is that so much to ask? Haven’t we earned it by now?”
“Yes,” she said. “And we’ll have it, you’ll see. When we find Tucker, we’ll sit down together—”
“God help us if it’s happening again, Em.” He looked hard at her.
But she wasn’t having it and looked away. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, even though only moments ago, she’d been in the same place, entertaining the same anxiety. She thought of reminding Roy that Tucker had been furious when he left, and given his mood, it wasn’t terribly unusual that he hadn’t called. He’d walked out angry any number of times before, and while it was true that he didn’t ordinarily stay away this long, it was still possible that was all this disappearance amounted to. Except it wasn’t, and something inside her knew it, knew that this time was different.
It was like a crack in the earth, imperceptible to the naked eye, but there all the same, a warning, an omen. Setting the phone receiver on the nightstand, she pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I want him home,” she said, putting her feet over the bedside. “I want to know he’s all right.”
“I think it’s a mistake to call this his home, Em.” Roy was in his closet now, pulling on a pair of jeans. “I think when he shows up, we need to set boundaries, set a concrete date that he has to be out of here. We’ve done all we can for him, more than most parents would.”
“It might be different if you wouldn’t lose your temper,” Emily said. “If you could give him the benefit of the doubt the way you do Lissa. If you could just—”
“Just what, Em?”
She didn’t answer; she was out of energy, suddenly past the wish to explain. She looked at the floor. If he’d been our first, he might have been our last. The old joke, one she’d heard other parents make, drifted through her mind. She didn’t find it particularly amusing even though she’d resorted to it on occasion herself. Would she have had another child had it been Tucker and not Lissa who came first? No one could have asked for a lovelier or more obedient child than Lissa, and Evan, the man she’d chosen for her husband, was a godsend. Emily and Roy relied on him, his steadiness, his kindness and good sense. Even Tucker seemed calmer and more content when Evan was nearby.
“What would you tell the police if you called them?” Roy emerged from the closet. “What evidence do you have—of anything wrong, I mean?”
“How do you know they don’t have him already?”
“We would have heard.”
“The girl who disappeared,” Emily began, because it was impossible, after all, not to voice the fear that was uppermost in both their minds, “the one everyone is looking for, Jessica Sweet, I think I recognize her name. What if Tucker knew her, dated her like he did Miranda?”
“Like I said before, God help us if that turns out to be the case.” Roy stuffed his shirt hem into his jeans and threaded his belt through the loops. “I’ll tell you right now, I can’t handle that again.”
The drama, Roy meant, the horrible way it had ended—in Miranda’s murder of all things. Emily picked at her thumbnail. She and Roy had welcomed Miranda Quick when Tucker first began dating her in high school; they’d grown fond of her. They knew her family from church, knew her to be a sweet girl, the very sort of girl Emily could imagine as a daughter-in-law, but after graduation Miranda changed, becoming restless and unhappy. She went out nights alone. Tucker had had no idea where she was or what she was doing, and when he found out, it devastated him. But he loved her, and he was determined to stay with her even after she proved herself unworthy of his devotion.
He remained faithful, while Miranda broke his heart over and over. Emily had never felt so helpless and frustrated. Then, just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, Miranda went missing and Tucker was the one who found her body. A day later, the police came for him. They questioned him for hours. His picture was everywhere in the media; he was labeled a person of interest—in a murder investigation. How? Emily still couldn’t wrap her mind around it, how her son had become involved in something so horrifying. She blamed Miranda. Miranda was the cancer who had gotten her hooks into Tucker. She was the blight of their lives, and if it was possible, Emily believed she hated Miranda more now that she was dead, and she truly didn’t care if she went to hell for it.
Switching off the bedside light, she felt the mattress give when Roy sat down to put on his shoes, felt the heat from his palm when he flattened it on her back. He said he would make the coffee. “I’ll bring it up to you with some toast and that marmalade you like. How about it?”
Ordinarily, she would have been delighted. Roy wasn’t the sort of man who was comfortable in the kitchen. A construction site was more his domain; hard physical labor was his refuge, and providing a good living for his family was his contribution, his source of pride. Or it had been until last fall when he retired. Emily encouraged it. She imagined they would do things together, finish building the lake house, plant a vegetable garden. She’d dreamed of more exotic possibilities, traveling on the Orient Express or learning ballroom dancing, but in a very not-funny way, there was just something about having your son’s name—their own Lebay family name—linked to a murder investigation that caused such visions to lose their luster.
Pushing aside the bed linen, she told Roy she would make the coffee, that she needed to get up, to be busy. But then she was sorry not to have accepted his invitation, because when they came downstairs, he didn’t accompany her into the kitchen. Instead, he disappeared into his office.
Emily heard the door close, the click of the lock, and she sighed. Standing at the counter, she parted the checked curtains at the window over the sink. The view was as familiar to her as the image of her own face. Her great-grandfather had built this house, and it had come down to her through the generations. She grew up here and could recall the very year her parents remodeled the old carriage house to accommodate two cars and the workshop, where, like her dad, Roy would go to putter. Beyond it, there was an alley. Closer in, a huge old elm tree centered the bit of backyard, housing a picnic table that Roy built and a wood-seated swing. After they were married in the spring of 1972, on his good days, Roy had pushed her in that swing.
“Higher!” she hollered at him, laughing. “Higher!” she shouted.
And later, he pushed her while she held their children as infants in her arms.
They had been happy, hadn’t they? They weren’t different from other families in the neighborhood. They shopped and vacationed and participated in community events. They attended church. And like their neighbors, they’d had their share of good times and bad.
Emily started the coffee, and while she waited for it to brew, she collected the Monday editions of the two newspapers they read from the front porch. Their small-town newspaper, the Hardys Walk Tribune, was lighter in weight and folksier in tone than the Houston Chronicle. On her way back to the kitchen, she paused at Roy’s office door, and putting her ear against it, she listened and heard nothing. Only the sound of the tall grandfather clock on the landing in the front hall. The rhythmic tock tock was magnified like heartbeats in a row. Gunshots fired in evenly spaced salute.
She straightened. In her mind’s eye, she could see Roy sitting at his desk, and on the wall opposite him, she saw the gun case that housed his collection. The glass front would hold a faint reflection of his image, doing whatever it was he did in there these days. She hoped he wasn’t brooding. The guns worried her. She didn’t like thinking it, and perhaps it was only a temporary effect of retirement, but there was something in his demeanor in recent weeks that was beginning to remind her of the wounded man he was when he came back from the war in Vietnam. He’d tried hard to hold in the horror, closing himself off from her, not wanting to burden her, he said. They’d worked through it eventually, but it had taken a near-tragedy to bring him around.
She tapped on the door. “Coffee’s ready,” she said through the panel, and she was relieved to hear his acknowledgment, to hear the leather creak as he rose from his chair. He followed her into the kitchen, and she thought the drag of his step sounded more uneven than usual. She wanted to turn and look, to ask if his pain was worse, but he didn’t like her fussing over him.
She unsheathed both papers from their plastic wrappers and set them, still folded, on the table, and that’s when she saw it—a piece of the missing girl’s, Jessica Sweet’s, face. It was looking out from the front page of the Chronicle. Above it, Emily glimpsed two words: found and dead, and her heart slammed into the wall of her chest. Any moment now, Roy would see it, too.
She brought the toast to the table and sat across from Roy. She was aware of the newspaper between them and was seized by a sudden, heated and irrational urge to tear it to shreds. She imagined Tucker coming through the door. He would put his arms around her; he would say how sorry he was to have caused her such concern. She would tell him about the dead girl, show him her picture, and he’d be sorry for her, too. But he wouldn’t know her. He wouldn’t have loved her or shared a messy, emotional history with her the way he had with Miranda Quick.
Emily picked up her slice of toast and then set it down, thinking if she had to sit here through another day without word from Tucker, or about him, she would come out of her skin.
She caught Roy’s glance.
“What?” he said.
“Why don’t we ride out there?”
“Where?” he asked, but she was certain he knew.
“Indigo Lake.”
“What for? There’s nothing to see,” he said. “A slab, pipes, a frame. I ought to get Evan to send a crew out there to pull it down. I’ll sell the land.”
Evan had worked for Roy in the family construction business long before becoming Lissa’s husband. Evan and Lissa ran the company now since Roy’s retirement. Tucker would have had a share in running it, too, if he was in the least reliable.
Emily touched Roy’s hand. “I think you should finish the house. It would take your mind off—” She didn’t want to say Tucker, so she said, “Things, you know. You need a project. Once it’s finished, if you don’t want to keep it, you can always sell it then.”
“Why the sudden interest? You’ve already said you won’t move out there.”
“I could change my mind.”
“Why would you?”
Emily looked into her coffee cup. For you, she thought. But if she were to say that, he’d think it was out of pity. “A change of scenery,” she said softly. “I think we need a change of scenery.”
Roy made a sound that could have meant anything. He took his cup and plate to the sink, thanked her for the toast. It was only after she heard his office door close behind him that she realized he’d taken the Houston paper with him, and her head livened with a fresh buzz of anxiety. He was bound to see the photo and the article now, she thought, and she closed her eyes. It was happening again just as Roy feared. She could feel it to her core. And this time, when Roy insisted they cut their ties to Tucker, he would mean it.
2
LISSA PULLED HER pickup in behind her dad’s truck and killed the engine, but she didn’t get out right away. Instead, she distracted herself, looking along the sidewalk in front of her parents’ house where the sharp morning light planked an angular path across the generously proportioned front porch to the door. How many times did she and Tucker paint that porch, all the balusters and assorted gingerbread trim? Tucker had resented every minute, but Lissa hadn’t minded. She loved the house her great-great-grandfather, Hiram Winter, built. It was one of several of his designs in the neighborhood, a Queen Anne. He had favored the Queen Anne and Georgian styles. Deep porches, cornices, pilasters, colonnaded verandas and gingerbread were architectural details that Lissa loved, too. The classically fashioned bungalow she and Evan recently finished building on acreage west of town, in a newish subdivision, was a compromise. They were in the process of completing Lissa’s art studio and a gazebo, too, in a style to match the house.
She gave the front porch another look. The newspaper was gone, which meant her parents had been up long enough to retrieve it. It would be lying open on the kitchen table, folded to show the dead woman’s photo, and her mom and dad would be sitting over it in a worried stew of complicated silence, suffering the same nasty jolt of déjà vu as Lissa. It was inevitable given the eerie similarities between Miranda’s and Jessica Sweet’s deaths. According to the news report Lissa heard earlier, Jessica’s car was found abandoned in the same strip shopping center where Miranda’s car was found, and now Jessica’s body had turned up in the same location, a mere matter of yards from where Tucker discovered Miranda’s body a year ago. The manner of death was the same, too. Both women appeared to have been strangled. While the report hadn’t mentioned Tucker’s name in connection to Miranda’s case, which remained unsolved, Lissa thought it was only a matter of time.
She looked out at her parents’ house. She didn’t need to see them to know they were as panicked by the news as she was. What could she say to them, anyway? It will be fine? She couldn’t offer that kind of reassurance, not now. Maybe later. Maybe if she gave it a little more time Tucker would show up. She started the truck.
“Hey!”
Lissa froze, as if she could pretend she hadn’t heard her dad’s shout, hadn’t caught sight of him from the corner of her eye, crabbing his way down the front steps. She looked through the windshield at her dad’s pickup, at the license plate that had Disabled Vet printed across the top. He would allow the tag that labeled him a cripple, but if anyone were to suggest the use of a cane, he’d growl like an injured bear.
He met her at the gate, swinging it open for her. “Guess you came looking for your brother and thought you’d just skip on by if he wasn’t here.”
“No, Daddy, I was coming in.”
“The hell you were.”
“You look like hell,” she said. Up close, she could see his face was sweaty and pale under his iron-gray buzz cut. His leg was bothering him again, or she should say the lack of his leg. The pain was worse, Lissa guessed. Ordinarily, he was never bothered by it. In fact, people who knew him often forgot he was missing a limb. According to her mother, though, the ill effects of her dad’s amputation, the aching and tenderness, had resurfaced recently. Probably the result of stress, Lissa thought. He wasn’t handling retirement very well, and there was Tucker, always Tucker. Lissa loved him—they all loved him—but the joke, the painful family joke, was that he could drive God to drink.
She followed her dad into his office. When she and Tucker were young, her dad kept it locked because of his gun collection. Of course, the precaution only heightened their curiosity; they had looked for ways to be in here, to handle the weapons, and their wish was granted. Over their mother’s protests, Daddy schooled them—the same as their mom—in their use. He taught them to hunt and claimed Lissa had a dead eye.
She sat in a club chair across from him now, and she was wary. She couldn’t quite sort out his mood. She asked if he was okay.
No answer. There was only the sound of his breath, the creak of the leather as he shifted his weight in the tall wingback desk chair.
Dropping her glance, she saw the morning newspaper folded on the desk’s corner, the photo of Jessica Sweet staring out. It looked as if it had been taken from a high school yearbook of roughly the same vintage as Tucker’s. Lissa thought she had read somewhere they were the same age, thirty-four, and it worried her. It made it seem more likely Tucker might have known her. She started to say something, to make some comment, or offer the customary reassurance, but then she saw the ledger—the old-fashioned, leather-bound business ledger that her dad insisted they keep the family company’s, Lebay-Winter’s, financial records in because he didn’t trust computers, the ledger that was supposed to be at the office that she and Evan shared in town, but instead was sitting here, open on the desk blotter.
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“Not the right question,” her dad answered.
“So, what is?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
They sat, eyes locked, while silence rose, like a rigid wall. Lissa’s dad, the former decorated United States Army drill sergeant, said a guilty man, a soldier in her dad’s case, who had something to hide, couldn’t handle the silence. Pretty soon, he’d break down, say whatever came into his mind just to fill the void. Eventually, he’d hang himself. Her dad was waiting for that now, for Lissa to hang herself.
She set her teeth together.
“I’ve been going over the numbers,” he said finally. “You and Evan have been bullshitting me. We’re not in good shape the way you said. In fact, this is looking like the worst year we’ve had in the past five. You want to tell me why you lied?”
“About the numbers?” When had he gotten the ledger? Lissa tried to put it together even as she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Lissa!” Her dad smacked the desktop with the flat of his hand. “I’m retired, not senile.”
“I understand that, Dad, but I assumed that since you retired and turned over control of the company to me, and to Evan, that meant you trusted us to run the place.”
“I built that goddamn business from nothing, worked it thirty years. You can’t push me out.”
“Oh, Daddy, we’re not trying to!” Lissa was nonplussed at the emotion in his voice, the way it slipped and caught.
He held her gaze, and she saw that his eyes were dark with anguish and, amazingly, filmed with tears. In her entire life, she had never known him to cry; he counted a man’s tears as weakness. It alarmed her; it hurt her heart. He could be gruff, even hard; he might take your head off if you made a foolish mistake. But the very same man had spent hours building her the exact replica of a dollhouse from an illustration in a book she’d fallen in love with, and she could still recall the shapes of the calluses that spanned his palm from all the times he’d taken her hand when he’d walked her to school. He’d taught her to drive and never once raised his voice, not even when she’d driven them into a ditch and he’d had to call a tow truck to get them out again.
“Look,” she said quickly, “maybe we did overstate a bit. It’s been tough the past several months, you know that, what with the economy, and then ever since—” She stopped before she could say Tucker’s name, say how badly business had been affected by last year’s notoriety, but her dad knew what was in her mind.
He inclined his head in the direction of the Houston Chronicle and said, “Yeah, well, it looks like the shit’s about to hit the fan again.”
“You don’t know that, Dad.”
A silence fell.
Her father broke it. “Your mother tried to call the cops to report him missing this morning. She would have, if I hadn’t stopped her.”
“She wants to find him, that’s all.”
He shook his head. “She’s losing it.”
Lissa didn’t ask what he meant, whether he thought it was her mother’s faith or her mind that was going. He looked at the newspaper, but she looked at him. She thought he was the one who was losing it. He looked so distraught. But he’d caused this, hadn’t he? He’d put himself in this position.
As if he felt her gaze, her father looked at her and said, “What?” in that tone he used when he meant to prick a nerve.
“Momma said you told Tucker to get out and not come back.”
“So?”
“So, you got what you wanted.”
“He called me, his own father, a fucking bastard and said he was a grown man and could take care of himself, which I’d like to see—just once.”
“Well, he could, if he had a job, if he had a paycheck. You cut him out of the business, Daddy! You basically disowned him. What was he supposed to do, fall all over you with kisses, his heartfelt thanks?”
“You know he blew another meeting with Carl Pederson.”
She nodded. She and Evan were as irked at Tucker as her dad, as Carl himself, was. It wasn’t easy to find a good cabinet man.
“If it was anyone else, screwing up as consistently as your brother has, I’d have fired them a long time ago,” her dad said. “Even you and Evan would have. You know I’m right.”
Lissa picked at her thumbnail. He wanted her to say he was justified in cutting Tucker from the business. And maybe he was. “Tucker is your son, not just some employee,” she said.
“I’ve given him every chance, bent over backward. Like I said to your mother this morning, the boy needs to grow up....”
And if that means he has to hit the bottom... Her dad went on.
Lissa tuned him out. Some things weren’t worth fighting over.
“Where’s Mom?” Lissa waited to ask until her dad was quiet.
“Upstairs. She’s pissed because I won’t go to the lake and see about finishing the house.”
“What’s going on with that, Dad? You always said after you retired, you were going to build that house and fish until you died.”
“I’ve got no appetite for it anymore,” he said, and his voice was raw. “You get a crew out there, pull the frame down, use the material somewhere else. Tell Evan—”
He stopped, but Lissa kept his gaze while a hundred thoughts crowded her mind. She could offer him comfort, but she didn’t know how he’d take it. He’d never needed her comfort before.
He brushed his hand over his face, and the breath he took in was huge and ragged. “Go on, little girl, and check on your momma, will you? I’m worried about her.”
“Daddy?” Lissa felt a fresh jolt of alarm. She could see his eyes were filmed with tears again. Her own throat constricted.
He waved her off. “Just let me be now.”
“Tucker will come home soon. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
“Sure,” he said. “It always is, isn’t it?”
She eyed him a moment longer, then left, pulling the door closed behind her. When she heard the click of the lock, she looked back, and the thought came that he shouldn’t be alone now, not with all those guns, and it chilled her momentarily. She thought of asking him to let her back in, but he’d only refuse, if he answered her at all.
Her head throbbed with every step as she climbed to the second floor. She had wakened with another brutal headache this morning that had only gotten worse. She’d had a series of them recently. They had to be sinus related, she thought.
“Mom?” she called, reaching the upstairs hallway.
“Back here,” she answered.
Lissa went toward the sound of her mother’s voice and found her sitting on a footstool in the linen closet. Her mother looked up. “Honey, what’s wrong? You’re so pale.”
“Headache,” Lissa said. “I think it’s sinus. I took some Advil, but it’s not helping.”
“Dr. White gave me something good for that last time I went to see him.” Her mother went into the bathroom next to the linen closet and returned with a glass of water and a tablet. “It works, and it won’t make you sleepy.”
Lissa took the pill and a swallow of water.
“He said to remind you that you’re overdue for a checkup.”
“I know. I’ve been putting it off.” Lissa drank the rest of the water. As much as she loved Dr. White, she wished she could see someone different for her exam, a doctor who hadn’t known her since she was six. Someone who would only see her as a condition, not as a person. In case of bad news, she thought it might be easier if it were treated with clinical dispassion. Not that she felt as if she were seriously ill. It was only that she didn’t feel herself. In addition to the frequent headaches, she wasn’t sleeping, her appetite was low and, last week, she’d fainted. She kept telling herself it was stress. She wanted it to be.
Lissa’s mother resumed her perch on the stool. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I wanted to check on you, you know, because of—”
“I’ve been rereading Dad’s old letters,” Lissa’s mother interrupted. She half lifted a cardboard box from her lap. “Did I ever show you this one?” She handed Lissa a sheet of onionskin paper, sepia tinged at the edges and covered in her dad’s cramped writing.
“‘My Dearest Em,’” her mother read, “‘my dearest one, my love, how will I tell you this news, the awful thing that has happened. I’m not the same, not your sweetest—not your sweetest honey—’” She caught her lip, took a breath. “‘I’m not sure I’m even a man anymore.’”
“Mom...” Lissa’s murmur was half in sorrow, half in protest.
She hadn’t read her dad’s letters home from Vietnam, but she knew how he’d been injured there. Her mother had told her and Tucker the story, how in the aftermath of battle, he’d rescued a four-year-old North Vietnamese boy, an enemy’s son, and run with him from a burning house, but before he could make it back to the location where his company was bivouacked, sniper fire had caught him in the meaty part of his calf below his left knee. Still, he’d kept running with the child; he’d brought the boy to safety against all odds, and sixty-one days later, they’d amputated the gangrenous, blasted remains of his lower leg. He’d nearly died from the infection.
Lissa was still in awe of the story. She couldn’t imagine the selfless act of courage it had taken. She remembered socking a kid once in third grade who called her dad a cripple. She’d been sent home that day for fighting, but she hadn’t been punished. Her mother only said the boy was probably frightened at the idea of her father having only one leg. It hadn’t made sense to Lissa. Her dad wasn’t different from any other dad with two legs. In fact, he was stronger than any man she knew. She never thought of him as handicapped. Most of her life, she’d scarcely been aware of it.
She gave her father’s letter back to her mother. “Daddy doesn’t look good, Mom. I’m worried about him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so shaky.”
“That missing girl—she’s—”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, you know?”
Her mother hugged her elbows. “They don’t make linen closets with so much room in them anymore, do they? I played house in here when I was little, did I ever tell you?”
“Sure, Momma.” Lissa went along. “We played house in here, too, remember? You and me and Tucker.”
“It’s just the right size. Your grandma let me have a little table. And dishes. Such pretty dishes. I loved being in here—I still do. The way the old floor creaks and how the sunlight comes through the door, and the smell—it’s a comfort to me.” She drew in a breath, eyes closed. “Some people think it’s musty, but to me it smells safe. It smells the way love would smell, if love had a smell.”
Lissa knelt beside her. “Tucker will be home soon, Momma, or he’ll call. He always does.” The assurance sounded no better now than when she’d offered it to her dad.
Her mother touched Lissa’s cheek, lifted her fingers, trailing them across Lissa’s brow. “You and your brother are so different,” she said. “Tucker’s blond, like me, like the Winters, but you favor your father with all that wonderful dark hair. You’re strong, too, like he is.”
They shared a silence.
“I want to help him, you know? But when he hits these dark places, when he retreats and goes into himself, I— It’s hard to know what to do.”
Lissa tucked a wayward strand of her mother’s hair behind her ear. It added to her worry, seeing her parents so undone, so not themselves. Abruptly, she held out a hand to her mother. “Come with me to Pecan Grove. It will do you good to get out of the house.”
“Oh, that would be lovely, but you’ve got work to do out there, and I’m fine. Dad and I both are. Don’t worry about us.” Her mother stood up making shooing motions, then suddenly she cupped Lissa’s face in both hands. “Do you know how much I love you?” Her eyes were swimming with tears.
Lissa nodded; her own throat knotted.
“Sometimes, I think we get so focused on Tucker, we forget about you. Forget to tell you how special you are. Please say you know how much we love you.”
Lissa slid her palms over her mother’s hands. “Of course I do, Momma.”
She gathered herself and gave Lissa’s cheeks a final pat. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I just need to hear from your brother. Once he’s home, and he and your dad have mended their fences, we can get back to normal.”
“What’s normal?” Lissa asked, and she was glad when her mother smiled.
* * *
She stopped outside her dad’s office door on her way down the front hall. “Daddy?” she called softly, but he didn’t answer her, and she didn’t call out again. Passing the dining room on her way out of the house, her path was diverted when she caught sight of the collection of family photos arrayed across the top of her mother’s baby grand piano. Some were casual shots that her dad had taken back when she and Tucker were little. Others were formal studio shots. She picked one up, a five-by-seven framed in wood. It was of the four of them sitting on a sofa. Her mother was holding Tucker on her lap, and Lissa was leaning against her daddy’s good leg, smiling, gap-toothed. Tucker was in shorts and had a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on one chubby knee.
Setting the studio portrait down, she picked up another, a shot her father had taken that her mother had framed in silver. It was from Easter Sunday. Lissa remembered the year was 1981. Tucker turned three that year, and she turned seven. They were outside on the front porch, dressed in their church finery. Lissa’s outfit, a ruffle-hemmed sheath made of pink dotted swiss, with pink patent-leather Mary Janes and a purse to match, had been a favorite. Her mother had corralled her glossy, straight, dark hair into a French braid that hung midway down her back and ended in a tied puff of pink chiffon. Lissa wore it in a French braid to this day, to keep it out of her face, especially when she was working or painting. Growing up, Tucker called the braid her donkey tail to annoy her. He’d grabbed it and held it to his chin, letting the end dangle, making a long beard of it, teasing her. She’d wanted to clobber him.
She touched the tip of her finger to the image of his face, then put the photo back. Looking at it left her feeling some nostalgic mix of happy and sad. She guessed it was because life had never been as simple again after that year.
* * *
She was almost to the interstate when her cell phone rang.
“Where are you?” Evan asked when she answered.
“Why? What’s wrong?” She knew what he would say. Still, her heart paused when Evan said, “Tucker was here, at the office, and not fifteen minutes after he left, the police showed up, looking for him.”
She put on her signal, turned right into a gas station and parked. “Do you know where he went?” she asked, and she almost couldn’t hear her own voice over the hammer of her pulse.
“He didn’t say. He wanted to see you, and I said you were at your folks’, but I don’t think he’ll go there.”
“No.” Lissa pressed her fingertips above her right eye where the pain had settled into an ache dulled by the medication her mother had given her.
“He’s driving some girl’s car, an old Volkswagen. He says his Tahoe broke down on the freeway last night, and she helped him out. He said he’s been in Austin.”
“That’s nowhere near—”
“Where the dead woman was found. Yeah, it’s a relief.”
“Can he prove it?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say, and all the cops would tell me is that they wanted to question him, but not what it was about.”
Lissa rested her head against the seatback. “Well, it could be anything. An unpaid speeding ticket. Lord knows he’s gotten a slew of those.”
“Yeah,” Evan said, because, like her, he wanted it to be that simple. They both did. And maybe it was.
“I wonder if he’s called Mom and Dad,” she said.
“I don’t think so. He lost his cell phone.”
“Figures. Is he getting another one?”
“He says he’s busted.”
“You didn’t give him any money.”
“No, and to his credit, he didn’t ask.”
“Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?” Lissa ran the tip of her finger along the lower curve of the steering wheel, biting her lip, trying not to cry.
“Yeah,” Evan said, “but I can always go for hearing it again.”
They decided Lissa wouldn’t call her parents until she knew something concrete. She was on her way to the office when her cell phone rang again. Glancing at the caller ID, she saw her own home phone number, the landline, and her heart faltered.
“Tucker?” she said when she answered, because it could only be him.
“That’s me,” he said.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“Hiding?” He laughed.
Lissa didn’t. “Not funny. So not funny,” she repeated, and the breath she drew bumped over the renewal of tears, the hot mix of relief, aggravation and outright fury that jammed her throat. If Tucker were here, she would pull off the road, she thought, and kill him.
“Can you come home?” he said. “We need to talk.”
“What is it, Tuck?” Something in his voice deepened her sense of disquiet. Even when he answered that it was nothing to worry about, she wasn’t mollified. Instead, what rose in her mind was the image of the two of them from that long ago Easter Sunday in 1981, and this time it brought with it a colder, darker memory of how quickly life could change, just the way it had then, in the space of one single, terrifying afternoon.
3
THE I-45 INTERSTATE that bisected the heart of town wasn’t really an interstate at all given that the entire length of it, some 294 miles, fell inside Texas borders. It was anchored on its northern end by the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and on its southern end by the bay-front city of Galveston. The drive down to the beach wasn’t bad. If you started out early enough, it made a nice day trip. As children, Lissa and Tucker went with their parents, and when Lissa was older, high school age, she went with her girlfriends.
The last time was twenty years ago, the weekend after her high school graduation. She wouldn’t ever forget it because it was the same weekend she realized Evan wasn’t just some guy who worked for her dad. That weekend she went with a girlfriend to a party in a bay-front condo where cocaine was heaped in a bowl on the coffee table. It scared the shit out of her, but her girlfriend was all over it.
Lissa tried it, too, one tiny line—how could she not?—and then she freaked out. She was certain she was going to die of an overdose or become an addict. She felt wild, as if she had somehow crawled outside her own skin. In her mania, she went out to the beach to dance, alone, putting herself in even worse jeopardy as it turned out. She was fortunate, later, to escape behind the locked door of the bathroom, and when she spied the telephone hanging on the wall near the toilet, she did the only thing that seemed reasonable; she dialed her dad’s office number. Thankfully—it still gave her chills to remember her luck—it was Evan who answered, Evan who came to retrieve her. Who knew what her dad might have done? He might have brought a gun or the police or both. He might have killed her, given his temper. He didn’t often lose it, but he could, if the right trigger was pulled.
Instead, it was Evan who walked her up and down the beach along the water’s edge, while she jabbered like a madwoman until the stuff left her system. He took her to an all-night café and bought her orange juice and a doughnut, too, and suggested she was probably not good drug-addict material, and then he drove her home. At some point before that, he called Tucker and alerted him. Lissa remembered now that it was Tucker who covered for her with their parents, who waited up for her.
It was usually the other way around, Lissa taking care of Tucker.
She sat at the I-45 intersection, waiting for the light to change, thinking of him waiting at her house to tell her God knew what. It wouldn’t be anything good, not if the police were looking for him. When she had called Evan back and told him she was headed home, that Tucker was there, he said he would come, but as much as she might long for his support, she told him no. It was bad enough that she was missing work. She thought of her foolish behavior all those years ago, how she could so easily have fallen into harm’s way and, instead, had fallen— She paused. Not in love with Evan, she thought, not at first. Something better, richer. It had been more like falling into deep and abiding friendship and gratitude. Love, the full-out passionate, can’t get enough of you lust—Lissa’s face warmed—that came later; it had been a slow, sweet progression, like the unfolding of a flower’s petals into a fuller bloom. That long-ago day in Galveston, she hadn’t had a clue about what she and Evan would come to mean to each other.
She’d still been woozy when he handed her carefully through the door to her little brother. Tucker had been all of fourteen, or fifteen, maybe. Lissa could see him in her mind’s eye, hustling her up the stairs, leading her quietly by their folks’ bedroom. He’d been upset with her, that she’d been drunk and strung out with people—men—she didn’t know. Any one of whom might have been a psycho, he said. He brought her an aspirin and a glass of water, and because he wanted to make a point about the danger she’d put herself in, he gave her a folder full of newspaper clippings he’d been collecting about the girls from communities near Galveston who had been found dead around there. So many, dating as far back as the 1970s, that there were rumors of multiple serial killers working in the area.
Lissa knew of Tucker’s interest in crime. During his short college career, he talked about studying criminology, but she didn’t know much about the I-45 serial killings, or his fascination with them before that summer night when he took out all the contents of his folder and spread them around her on the bed and on the floor at her feet. There were photos of the victims and of the crime scene locations, most of which were strung along a battered stretch of I-45 the locals called the Gulf Freeway, an approximately fifty-mile stretch of the interstate that connected the unraveling southern edge of Houston to the Galveston Causeway. The land the highway bisected was riddled with tree-clotted, snake-infested bayous and the skeletal remains of oilfield equipment that sat forgotten and rusting in the mean shadows of smog-choked refineries. There were roads, too, old service roads made of chipped asphalt covered over with hard-packed dirt. They crisscrossed the terrain, and when the night wind was right, the smoke from the nearby refineries drifted down their rutted tracks like ghosts.
It was a murderer’s paradise, the perfect dumping ground, one that over the years became known collectively as the killing fields. And the four-lane stretch of interstate that roped the crime scenes together, the Gulf Freeway, was referred to in other less flattering terms as the Highway to Hell, or the Road to Perdition, or the Killing Corridor.
Lissa remembered being spooked by Tucker’s stories that night. She remembered thinking that while his interest did seem a bit obsessive and a little unusual for a kid his age, it hadn’t struck her as weird. Not given his worry about her, that in her inebriated state she might have fallen prey to some monster killer. He told her he’d been reading up on the FBI, everything about criminal profiling he could find. John Douglas was his hero, he said, and when Lissa shrugged in ignorance, Tucker said, “Are you kidding? He’s the guy who profiled the Green River Killer. That’s how the FBI got him.”
Tucker dreamed of being like John Douglas, of doing what Douglas did. Lissa thought he could have, too; he’d been one of the smart kids, at least through elementary school. But he’d also been labeled emotional, high-strung, ADD—whatever name the teacher du jour chose to assign to him, as if the label alone would be adequate to explain his behavior. Her parents sought help for him. Tucker was tested and counseled, but no one could come up with a diagnosis that was definitive. It was frustrating, especially for her folks, but for Tucker, too.
He was a mystery even to himself.
Lissa pulled into her driveway now and parked behind the dented, yellow VW, eyeing it as she passed by, wondering about the girl it belonged to. Not a nice girl. Nice girls weren’t in the habit of picking up stray guys from the side of the road in daylight, much less at night. Lissa was judging—she knew she was—but Tucker had a reputation for attracting the wrong sort of women, the kind who would lean on him and look up to him. He liked helping them; he liked it when they took his advice.
She found him in the kitchen sitting at the table. “Hey,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket.
“Hey yourself.” He found her gaze but let it go after only a moment.
“Evan says you were in Austin? You couldn’t call?”
“Can you spare me the lecture, Liss? I already know I’m a fuckup, okay?”
She hung her jacket on the back of a chair, not saying anything, feeling her jaw tighten. Be something else, then, she wanted to say. Please...
“Look, I know you’re pissed because I missed the meeting with Pederson, but I went by the office and gave Evan the plans, so it’ll be fine now.”
“God, Tucker, you’re such an idiot! We were already behind schedule out there. We’re losing money hand over fist. Dad got hold of the books—he’s about to have a coronary.”
“What’s that got to do with me? It’s not like I work there anymore.”
Lissa closed her eyes and took a breath. The work wasn’t the issue. None of this—the schedule, Dad having the ledger, the fact that Tucker had been fired again—was important. But it was as if in some part of her mind she entertained a fantasy that if she concentrated on something else, she could hold off the calamity she could sense was shaping itself just beyond the periphery of her vision.
She watched Tucker’s feet dance under the table. He looked rough, as if he hadn’t slept or had a decent meal in any one of the twelve days he’d been gone. Mud rimmed the sole of one tennis shoe, the hem of one leg of his jeans. She noticed a cut beneath his right eye, a tiny, upside-down crescent moon inked in blood.
She leaned against the counter. “What were you doing in Austin?”
“Helping out a friend.”
“What friend?”
“You don’t know him. Guy’s got a band—he’s looking for a bass guitarist. I might go on the road with them.”
Lissa kept Tucker’s gaze, and he hung in with her, not letting hers go this time, and she was somehow relieved. Liars couldn’t look you in the eye. She said, “A man with a band, huh? I figured it would be one of your stray-dog friends.”
“Not this time.”
Lissa went to the pantry. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Nah. Thanks. I stopped at Mickey D’s on the way here. I’d take a cup of coffee, though, if it’s no trouble.”
“Since when do you drink coffee?”
“Since it got colder than hell outside.” The grin he shot her was surface, a token meant to placate her. It didn’t.
“You need to call Mom and Dad, Tuck.”
“I’ll call Mom, but I’ve got nothing to say to the old man.”
Lissa could have asked him right then why the police were looking for him, but she didn’t. Instead, she rinsed out the carafe while he told her about his Tahoe, that it had died coming back into town and that he’d gotten lucky when a girl pulled off the road to help him.
“Did you know her?” Lissa asked.
“I do now,” Tucker answered, cocking an eyebrow. “I spent the night at her place.”
“You’re hopeless, you know that?”
“Yeah, but you still love me, right?” His smile now was pure Tucker, full of mischief and his affection for her. Full of so many small teasing moments they’d shared just like this one. Full of all that connected them—family secrets, sibling histories, the ties that bind.
Lissa would tell people they were close, and in her next breath she would say they had nothing in common. Either way it was true. She’d taught him to read; she’d taught him to tie his shoes and how to color inside the lines. She’d read aloud to him and sung songs with him. “Itsy Bitsy Spider” was his favorite. He’d loved playing the finger game that went with it. At one time he’d even slept with a big, stuffed spider. It had been purple, and he’d named it Itsy. She wondered what had become of it. They’d played endless rounds of Clue and Monopoly on rainy days and shared a love of Bon Jovi and the first Rocky movie. Sometimes she understood Tucker completely; other times he was an enigma, a puzzle to which she was missing a vital piece.
She turned off the tap. “What happened to your face?”
He touched his cheek. “This? Cut myself shaving.” His feet danced.
She looked out the kitchen window. The coffeemaker sighed. She said, “I hate what’s happening, Tuck.”
“It’s not your fault Pop’s an asshole.”
He thought she was referring to the fight he’d had with their father, the latest blowout, and she was, but that was only part of it. The cup and saucer she handed him rattled in his big, work-roughened hands. He had strong, narrow wrists and long, tapered fingers that could measure an octave on the piano. Their mother had taught him to play, and he’d been a willing student until he picked up a friend’s guitar one day in high school. He’d played in a couple of bands, and Lissa thought he was good, but she wasn’t an expert. She only knew what she liked, and anyway, she kind of agreed with her dad. It wouldn’t be reliable, earning a living that way.
Dad had wanted Tucker to play baseball, as if that would be a more stable occupation.
“The old man told me not to come back.” Tucker blew over the top of his coffee cup. “So now, in addition to being jobless, I’m homeless.”
“He didn’t mean it. You know how he is. He’s cooled off now. Trust me.”
“I think I’m going to move in with Morgan, anyway.”
“Who’s Morgan?” Lissa sat across from him and stirred the sugar substitute from two blue packets into her cup.
“The girl I met last night. Her dad owns a car dealership. She thinks he’ll hire me.”
“What about the band? I thought going on the road with them was the plan.”
“Whichever works out, I guess.”
Where were you really? Lissa couldn’t bring herself to ask. She was filled with foreboding, heavy with it. She cleared her throat.
“What?” Tucker gulped his coffee.
Too fast, she thought, because he grimaced as if he’d burned his mouth. When he asked for a Coke, she brought it to him, along with the Houston Chronicle. She unfolded it.
He popped the top on his soft drink. “What’s this?”
“Do you know her?” Lissa sat down.
“This girl?” Tucker studied the picture. Nothing altered in his expression or in his voice. Lissa started to breathe, and then he said, “It’s Jessica Sweet. Holy shit!” He brought his glance to Lissa’s. “She’s dead?”
“You knew her.” Lissa’s heart throbbed in her ears.
“Yeah. Miranda introduced us. They were friends.”
“Oh, Tucker. She was a dancer, too? Did they work at the same club?”
“Yeah. So what? After Miranda was killed, we hung out together, but really, I hardly knew her. Jessica was Senator Sweet’s daughter. You remember him, U.S. senator, back in the day? She was kind of wild, got into trouble with drugs and stuff. I heard she cost her old man his last campaign—”
“Tucker! She’s dead!”
“Yeah, that’s what it says here. I can’t believe it.”
“She and Miranda were friends. They worked at the same club. You knew her. The police are looking for you. It’s happening all over again....”
“No, Liss. There’s no history between us, no big soap-opera drama. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t find her body.”
Lissa didn’t answer.
“Come on, you know I had nothing to do with this, right? I mean you’re not stressing because you think I’m, like, guilty, are you? I didn’t even know the chick was missing until this morning when I saw the news.”
“A second ago, you said you couldn’t believe it, as if you hadn’t heard—”
“I should have known!” He tossed up his hands. “I should have guessed what you’d think. I bet Pop’s all over it, too. I’m a killer, right? The family lunatic, the psycho. That’s why Pop doesn’t want me home.” He stood up fast enough to rock the chair, grabbing his jacket, shoving his arms into the sleeves.
“Come on, Tucker. You have to admit it’s weird. Twice? In two years? Jessica was found in almost the exact location where Miranda was. You knew both of them. You must see how it looks.”
“Yeah. I see how it looks. I just never expected you would believe in how it looks. I thought you would believe in me.”
“I do, of course I do!” Lissa picked up a towel, wound her hands in it. “It’s just—”
“I’m only going to say this one time, okay? I didn’t kill Jessica. I didn’t kill Miranda. I’ve never killed anybody.” His gaze was hard on hers.
She tented her hands over her mouth, said his name, fighting tears, fighting for breath.
“I’ve got to go.” He shoved the chair under the table. “Thanks for the Coke.”
“No, wait. Where will you go? The police—”
“Fuck ’em,” he said, and then he was gone, slamming the back door behind him.
4
WHEN LISSA CALLED late that morning to say Tucker was with her and seemed all right, Roy didn’t share Emily’s relief; he acted as if it didn’t matter to him at all. He went out the back door and down the steps, and Emily watched him cross the backyard and disappear into his workshop. She got out the ingredients to bake a chocolate cake, Tucker’s favorite. She wanted to have something special on hand to feed him when he got home, but she was irked at Roy. Suppose he wouldn’t even try and sort things out this time? She creamed the sugar with the butter in the bowl, but all at once, the mood to bake left her, and untying her apron, she walked out of her kitchen and around the corner to Anna Brinker’s house.
They were lifelong friends, still living in the houses they were raised in and that their mothers had been raised in. Like many of the other historic homes in the neighborhood, Anna’s house, a pale green, turreted Eastlake, was also a Hiram Winter creation. When Emily and Anna were sixteen, a new girl their same age moved with her family into the Winter-built, red-brick, Georgian colonial next door to Anna. Natalie’s closet was crammed with great-looking clothes she was willing to share and she could use her mother’s turquoise-blue Cadillac convertible pretty much whenever she wanted it. She drove Anna and Emily everywhere, top down, radio blasting. They became inseparable and never really lost touch, not even after high school. It was their good fortune when as newlyweds they returned with husbands in tow to the old neighborhood, like migratory birds, to live in the homes of their girlhood.
They shared nearly everything: pregnancies and diapers, recipes, celebrations. They raised their children together. Emily and Roy had Lissa and Tucker; Anna and her husband, Harvey, had their son, Cory; and Nat and her husband, Benny McPherson, had their daughter, Holly. Lissa was the oldest, Cory was the youngest and Tucker and Holly were the same age, born only weeks apart. It was a good life, filled with good times.
But like all good things, those times ended. Not easily. Not in any way Emily cared to remember.
Stirring a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee now, she glanced at Anna. “I probably shouldn’t have come. I’m not fit company in the mood I’m in.”
“Nonsense.” Anna patted Emily’s arm. “Is Tucker coming home? Did Lissa say?”
“She didn’t, and it worries me. I have a feeling they got into it, but it’s not as if she’d tell me. You know how those two keep secrets.” She was no different, Emily thought. She was keeping her own secrets. But when tempers were already strained to the max, sometimes keeping what you knew to yourself was for the best. Sometimes, if you just gave a situation a little time, it would resolve itself.
“We need something to nibble on.” Anna scooted from her chair and went to rummage in the pantry.
She was biting her tongue, but soon enough, she would speak her mind. She would give Emily her opinion, the benefit of her advice. In times of trouble, that’s what friends did, but Emily didn’t necessarily always want to hear what Anna had to say. As close as they were, and as much as they shared, Emily didn’t feel that Anna understood about Tucker. How could she? His nature was so much more complicated than Cory’s or Lissa’s. Who knew how or why? Emily had used up Tucker’s childhood trying to sort it out, to sort him out. It still mystified her that two children, who shared the same parents, could be so utterly different in almost every way. But it was watching Tucker struggle with those very differences, watching him try so hard to fit in, that made Emily want to defend him, to shield him. She could wish all she liked to have a son like Cory, one who fit the norm, a regular kid, but she didn’t.
Perfect Cory, Emily thought, and then she was ashamed.
Anna turned from the pantry, holding out a box of Milanos, her favorite cookie. She smiled.
“I don’t think those are on our diet, are they?” Emily smiled, too.
“Think of it this way. We can eat these or take Prozac. I think these are cheaper and better for us. Am I right?” Anna waggled her eyebrows, making a joke.
Emily laughed outright and then wondered how she could, given the circumstances.
Anna arranged the cookies on a plate and brought it to the table. “What has Roy said?”
Her casual tone didn’t fool Emily for a moment. “Oh, you know Roy,” she said just as casually, wanting to avoid contention, while at the same time knowing the impossibility, because she needed to talk this out, and who else was there but Anna? Emily flashed a glance at her and found her looking back.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Emily said, “but it isn’t as simple as blaming Roy every time Tucker disappears.”
“Did I say I blamed him?”
“You don’t have to. I know you think he’s controlling.”
“I’ve heard you say it yourself.”
“Yes, and you know why.”
“Look, I’m as sorry as you that Roy’s parents were tough on him and that he lost his leg in a war few of us wanted any part of, but you aren’t responsible for that. If memory serves, you tried to keep him from going.”
It was true. Roy had been two weeks into his first spring training camp with the Astros in Kissimmee, and happier, he said, than any man had a right to be, when his draft notice came. The effect was devastating. He was terrified of losing her and his budding baseball career. She was the one who said they should go to Canada. She had often wondered since what would have happened if he had agreed. Who would they be now? He would have been granted amnesty eventually. Maybe he would have found a place to work in baseball again. One thing was certain: he would still have both his legs.
Anna said, “I’m not passing judgment, Em. You know that, don’t you?”
Emily said she did, although Anna’s opinion of Roy always seemed faintly condemnatory to her. She toyed with her teaspoon, feeling Anna’s concern, and she was sorry for it. She regretted being the cause, and when Anna asked, “What is it?” she hesitated a long moment, drawing in a breath, before admitting that she was worried about Roy.
“He’s so quiet and withdrawn since he retired, and this morning, he talked to Lissa about tearing down the lake house.” She caught Anna’s gaze. “What if it’s coming back, all that old post-traumatic stress business?”
“You don’t think he’s drinking.”
“No.” Emily was definite.
“But you think he might—what? Hurt someone, himself? Is it that bad again?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid to talk to him about it.” She paused. “He’s really had it with Tucker this time. I’m not sure what will happen when he comes home. I kind of dread it, actually.”
“Oh, Em.”
She stood up in the silence that fell and went to Anna’s kitchen sink to look out the window. “I was foolish to think that because Miranda was dead the craziness would be over. I so wanted to believe Tucker would come to his senses, but he hasn’t. He still associates with those people, her friends. Other women like her. It’s as if she’s still manipulating him, even from the grave.”
“They were together a long time.”
“I should have put my foot down at the very beginning. They were too serious about each other. But Roy said if we argued, if I made a thing of it, it would only make them more determined. How I wish I had listened to my own intuition.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Em. Miranda was a sweet girl growing up, remember? No one, not even her parents, knew why she went so far off the track. Tucker only wanted to help her.”
“For all the good it did him, and still, he persists. If he’s so determined to rescue the downtrodden, I’d much rather he’d become a missionary and render aid in some third-world country. It would be safer.”
When Emily sat down again, Anna patted her arm, and they shared a look deepened by years of familiarity and affection.
“The girl who was missing,” Emily said, “Jessica Sweet, did you hear they found her?”
Anna nodded, and Emily sensed that Anna had been biding the time, waiting until Emily brought it up.
“I’m so worried she’ll have some connection to Miranda. They were found in the same patch of woods.”
“I heard that on the news.”
“I need for him to come home, Anna. I need to look into his eyes, then I’ll know—”
“Know?”
“Whether he—” Emily hesitated. Whether he is a murderer. She wanted to say it—to test out the possibility of it being true with Anna, her dearest friend in all the world—but even if she could have brought the words past the knot in her throat, they wouldn’t be accurate. She couldn’t really tell anything about Tucker by looking at him anymore. Now that he was grown, he was as much of an enigma to her as to anyone. All smoke and mirrors. Mercurial. Here and gone. All his life she’d sought answers, the key to understanding his nature. Had he come with a different temperament, one that was more tightly wired? Was it the fault of genetics, or had he been marked by early childhood trauma, that handful of years when Roy had been so unstable? She didn’t know.
Like Roy, Tucker suffered from night terrors. When he was a child, Emily had gone to him on those nights when he’d wakened, flailing and shouting out, and she had comforted him as best she could until he fell back asleep. But she no longer did that. He was a man now, and she imagined the man’s fear exceeded the scope of her ability to reassure him; by now, its boundaries would be much larger than the mother-size shelter of her embrace. Or so she assumed.
He got his comfort elsewhere, in places she didn’t want to think about. And that was the worst part of it for her. That in the wake of his random disappearances she was left to form assumptions based on nothing of substance, the fallout from a single childhood trauma, the failure to properly parent versus the heritability of a hotter temper. What, of any of it, was valid?
“Em?” Anna urged. “You can talk to me. You know that, right? You know nothing you tell me—”
A knock came on the back door, a sharp rapping, and they both turned to look in that direction. Anna went to answer it, and when she reappeared, Emily was alarmed to see that Roy was behind her. He was white-faced, and a muscle that might be rage or fear or both was darting like a minnow under the skin at the corner of his jaw.
Emily’s heart closed as tightly as a fist. Her breath stopped. “Tucker?” she said faintly. “Has something happened to him?”
“The cops are questioning a suspect about that girl’s murder,” Roy said. “It was just on the news. It’s Tucker, Em. They’ve got him.”
She felt her knees weaken. Anna’s palm slid under her forearm. Their eyes met. “Do you want me to call Joe?”
Emily’s face warmed. Joe Merchant was a Houston homicide detective now, but once, while Roy was away fighting in Vietnam, Joe had worked as a security guard for her mother, and she and Joe had very briefly been lovers. The affair ended; the friendship didn’t. Emily had needed for it not to end. When Roy came home from the war, he’d been so damaged in every possible way, and out of her grief for him, and feeling unable to cope with the magnitude of his injuries, she relied on Joe for his strength, his advice. Once Roy healed, the bond persisted, even though they would go months without speaking. Anna knew of their relationship, but Emily wasn’t sure about Roy. He didn’t ask, and it didn’t feel wrong to her, keeping it for herself.
But Anna’s mention of Joe’s name now worried her. Not because of her history with Joe, but because of the legal bind Tucker had gotten himself into last November that Joe had helped her to resolve. Wanting to spare Roy the stress, she had said nothing to him about it, and she’d been afraid ever since of the consequences if he were to find out. She looked at him, but if he was aware of her gaze, her anxiety, he gave no sign. He was informing Anna sharply that since it was a Lincoln County case, he doubted they’d want interference from Houston.
“Is Tucker all right?” Emily knew her question was ridiculous, but she wanted Joe, the whole idea of him, banished, gone from the room.
“Oh, sure, Em. He’s great. Jesus Christ.” Disgust rimmed Roy’s tone, but remembering Anna, he worked his mouth into something that was meant to resemble a smile, and taking Emily’s elbow, he said, “We need to get home.”
Leading her from Anna’s kitchen, his gait was unsteady, and when he staggered, if it hadn’t been for Emily, that she was somehow able to keep him upright, he might have fallen. She knew he knew it, too. She felt his humiliation, the blow leaning on her, even for a moment, was to his pride.
“Call me,” Anna said after them, and Emily heard the apprehension in her voice.
“I talked to Lissa,” Roy said once they were out of Anna’s house and out of her earshot. “She and Evan are on their way to the sheriff’s office to see what they can find out.”
“Has Tucker been arrested?”
“I guess we’ll know soon enough.”
They climbed the back porch stairs, and going into the kitchen, Emily’s gaze fell on the abandoned mixing bowl with the ingredients for a chocolate cake scattered around it; her apron was discarded over the back of a kitchen chair. The sight was so ordinary, and she felt out of place somehow, as if given all the brewing calamity she had no right to be here, to even think of baking a cake. And yet, it was all she wanted to do. “They shouldn’t be the ones who have to go after Tucker every time,” she said to Roy.
“You can’t handle it, and you damn sure don’t want me going down there,” he answered. “That’s what you told me last time,” he said in response to her heated look.
She held his gaze, clinging to the hope that Roy was referring to the time in April when they’d given Tucker two thousand dollars to clear his traffic tickets, and not to the time in November when she’d contacted Joe for help after Tucker was arrested and charged with stalking. Keeping Roy in ignorance then had been out of concern for him, but he would likely not see it that way.
“You do remember telling me that?” Roy’s stare was penetrating, unnerving.
“You always lose your temper. It doesn’t help.”
He didn’t argue.
“Will they bring Tucker home?” Tying her apron around her waist, she crossed to the refrigerator. “I was going to bake a chicken for dinner. If I do two, there will be enough for all of us. We can sit down together when they get here.”
“I don’t want Tucker here, if they let him go.”
“What?” Emily turned to Roy. “He’s our son. Of course you want him here.”
“Not if it’s going to be the way it was when Miranda was murdered. Cops and reporters everywhere. Phone ringing all the goddamn time. I swear if Tucker gets pulled into this, if he knew this girl, too—” Roy pivoted on his metal foot, then pivoted back, locking Emily with his glare. “If that’s the case, you and your friend Joe won’t be able to pay his way out of this one, Em. None of us will. You do realize that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She didn’t know how she managed to keep her voice level. Her heart was beating fast, so fast, she put her hand there.
Roy huffed his disdain and, leaving the kitchen, disappeared into his office, closing the door.
Emily followed him; she balanced her hand on the knob, and resting her forehead against the panel, she said, “I’m sorry, I was only trying to protect you.” But then, lifting her head, she thought how badly she had failed, that in truth, she hadn’t protected any one of them at all.
5
THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE and the county jail were housed in the courthouse, an imposing three-story, old colonial-style building on the Hardys Walk town square. Evan pulled into a space in the parking lot at the back, where parking was free. Out in front they’d have to feed a meter, and Lissa knew from previous experience there wasn’t any telling how long they’d be.
Inside, the duty officer, a heavyset guy, didn’t bother looking up when Lissa and Evan approached. He was engrossed in reading a magazine, or pretending to be, like maybe if he didn’t look up, they would go away. Lissa steadied her breath. “I’m looking for my brother,” she said. “Tucker Lebay?”
The officer took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.
“We were told he was brought in here earlier this afternoon for questioning,” Evan said.
“Wait here.” The duty officer slid off the stool and headed for a door at the end of the counter.
Lissa turned to Evan, running her fingers around her ears. Her hands were shaking; she was shaking. Evan slipped his arm around her.
“I hate this,” she said.
“I know, babe. Me, too.”
“Daddy said not to bring Tucker home. What are we going to do? I can’t tell Tucker that.”
Before Evan could answer, the duty cop reappeared, resuming his post. “Sergeant Garza’ll be out in a sec. You can sit over there on the bench, if you want.”
Evan sat, but Lissa didn’t. She paced and watched the big white-faced wall clock, marking the tiny jerks of the minute hand as it hooked each second, and when the door at the end of the counter opened again, she flinched. Evan stood up and came to Lissa’s side as the woman approached them. She appeared to be Hispanic, dark-haired, slim, maybe thirty-five, dressed in a dark gray jacket and skirt, a pair of low-heeled black pumps. She looked businesslike, professional. Lissa couldn’t read her expression. She didn’t give it much thought other than to assume it was deliberate, that looking impassive was part of Garza’s uniform. It didn’t occur to her then there might be more to it.
The woman introduced herself. “I’m Detective Sergeant Cynthia Garza. Lincoln County Criminal Investigation Division. What can I do for you folks?”
“You’re questioning my brother about Jessica Sweet’s murder, is that right?”
“Yes, we—”
“Does he have a lawyer?”
“He hasn’t asked for one.”
“Well, I’m asking for one on his behalf.” Lissa spoke strongly, surprising herself. In hindsight, it would seem laughable, her idea that she could control any of what was happening.
“I think it’s a bit premature, but even if it weren’t, it’s actually his call,” Garza said.
“Are you arresting him?”
Evan moved more closely to Lissa’s side; she felt his warmth, his radiant calm. He said, “The family is understandably upset, so anything you can tell us—”
“Look, we’re just talking to him. It shouldn’t be too much longer,” Garza added, walking away.
“Wait!” Lissa trailed in Garza’s wake.
She didn’t respond, didn’t so much as glance back. She went through the door, and it snapped shut behind her.
Evan walked Lissa to the bench and sat her down. She put her face into her hands. She didn’t want to feel the panic that was trying to stand up in her stomach. “Tell me this isn’t happening,” she said. “It feels like déjà vu all over again.” Her voice broke.
Evan put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. He murmured things, nonsense mostly. She felt his breath stir the hair at her temple. It both comforted her and made her impatient when he said it would be okay. Twenty minutes passed and when the door opened in the wall behind the duty desk a second time, Lissa straightened.
Her eyes collided with Tucker’s; he lifted his chin, and his expression was at once chagrined and belligerent. But underneath, Lissa could see that Tucker was scared. Evan stood up and Lissa did, too, along with her panic. It made her feel light-headed and hot all at once. Her stomach rolled, and she put her hand there.
“Hey, guys,” Tucker said. “Can you dig this? That I’m back here again? It’s Sergeant Garza’s fault.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the detective. “She can’t get enough of me.”
“Tucker...” His name when Lissa said it was protest; it was despair. She glanced sidelong at the detective. Garza appeared unaffected, but who could say for sure?
“Don’t make any plans to leave the area, Mr. Lebay,” she said. “We might want to talk to you again.”
He raised his arm in acknowledgment. “Sure thing, sweetheart,” he said, but he was looking at Lissa and Evan. “Where were you, anyhow? You get that mess straightened out with Pederson? You guys know I’m sorry, right?” He shifted his feet, lifting the faded red Astros ball cap he wore, slapping it against his thigh, resettling it. “This?” He pronounced the word as if they had asked for an explanation. “It’s a bunch of shit. Big misunderstanding. Cindy here has got a bad case of the hots for me. She likes my company. Right, Cindy?” He turned to her and laughed, pushing the joke.
Lissa’s throat narrowed with the threat of tears, the heat of exasperation. Tucker did this when he was frightened; he made an ass of himself, but she could hardly explain that to the detective. She took Tucker’s arm. “Come on,” she said.
“Yeah, okay,” he answered. “I guess you better get me out of here before they change their minds and toss me in the slammer.” He laughed, but when he lifted his cap again, his hand was shaking.
Lissa led the way to the door, and Evan held it open, so it was her and Tucker going down the steps, shoulder to shoulder.
“When are you going to learn to mind your mouth, Tucker?” Lissa asked.
“It’s got nothing to do with my mouth, Liss.”
“Your shoes are untied.” She pointed this out as if it were important.
Tucker kept walking.
Lissa tried to catch Evan’s eye as they got into the truck, but he wouldn’t look at her. He never liked it when she and Tucker squabbled like children.
“You’d think someone from the media would be here,” Lissa said.
“Maybe we got lucky,” Evan said.
“Why?” Tucker glared at Lissa. “Because I’m a psycho?”
“I never said that, Tucker.”
“You might as well have.”
“Don’t make this about me. Okay? Tell me why the police are talking to you about this.”
“Because—” Tucker broke off, and Lissa heard him sigh as if he was reluctant but knew he wouldn’t get away without answering.
Evan glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
Tucker said, “I was with Chantelle the Saturday night before she disappeared, okay? I was the last person to be seen with her alive, according to the cops.”
“Chantelle?” Evan said.
“I thought you were in Austin,” Lissa said at the same time. “I thought you said you hardly knew her.”
“Chantelle is Jessica’s—it was Jessica’s stage name.” Tucker tapped Evan’s shoulder. “Dude, you should have seen the deck on her.”
“Tucker!” Lissa turned around as far as the seat belt would allow. “Please tell me you didn’t lie to me.”
“I didn’t. There was a party, okay? In Galveston. Before I went to Austin, I went down there with this other dude, and that’s where I hooked up with Chantelle. I didn’t want to tell you because you’d just give me shit about her.”
“What other dude?” Lissa asked.
“Hooked up how?” Evan asked.
“Have y’all been home? I bet Pop is beyond pissed.”
“Tucker, come on! This is serious.” Lissa hit the seatback with the heel of her hand. “There’s more to it than the fact you were with her, isn’t there? Isn’t there?” She insisted, because she could feel it. “Tell me,” she demanded.
“Okay, okay. Chantelle was into some kind of bad shit.”
“What do you mean exactly?” Evan looked in the rearview at Tucker again.
Lissa stifled an impulse to cover her ears.
“She did stuff just for kicks, like once she robbed a liquor store to see if she could get away with it.”
“And you were dating her.” Lissa didn’t bother hiding her disgust.
“It wasn’t dating, really. I just missed Miranda so damn much. Chantelle loved her, too. We helped each other.”
Lissa might have scoffed at that, but Evan cut her off, and it was just as well, she thought.
“The stuff she did,” Evan said, “you think there might be somebody who had it in for her, maybe bad enough to kill her?”
“It’s possible. She was hooking—”
“As in prostitution?” Evan asked.
“Prostitution!” Lissa was stunned, but then she wondered why.
“Miranda never went that far. I know how it looks—you probably don’t believe me, but just because you work for an escort service doesn’t mean you’re turning tricks. I tried to tell Jessica she was playing with fire. Looks like she got burned.”
“Oh, Tucker.” Lissa rested her head against the seatback. She had no idea what else to say. They passed several miles in silence.
Tucker broke it. “Bad thing is they got my DNA, got my prints, the works.”
Lissa whipped around, finding his gaze, even in the dark. “You let them? Why? Why didn’t you tell them you wanted a lawyer? God, Tucker! Didn’t you learn anything last time?”
“It would have looked bad if I didn’t cooperate.”
Evan asked, “Are you saying you had sex with Jess—Chantelle, whatever her name is...was? They’ll get a match?”
“They could, I guess, but one of the cops who ID’d her body works security part-time at Mystique. He knows Jessica and I hung around a lot together. You know the guy, Liss. Sonny Cade? I think he was in your class at Hardys Walk High, wasn’t he?”
“I remember him, but he was a couple of years behind me. He was kind of a thug, always in trouble. He’s a policeman now?”
“Yep. He’s still a tough guy, but he’s sharp. Runs his own security firm on the side. He knows a lot about the shit that goes on at the club.”
Lissa and Evan exchanged a glance, and Lissa knew they were sharing the same sinking sensation of dread.
Tucker touched her shoulder and said he was sorry, and when she didn’t respond, he settled back, but she was aware of him, of his distress, all the same. She knew his remorse was as real and true as her frustration. But he never changed; he just kept on making the same mistakes, again and again.
“Come on, Liss, it’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”
How? she wondered. But she didn’t ask. She doubted he had an answer, or if he did, it would be one he’d invented, to placate her.
“I wish you guys had been with us in Austin.” Tucker bent forward. “You would have loved it. That band I was telling you about? I knew the bass player. Me and the dude I was with—”
“What dude?” Lissa asked again.
“You don’t know him,” Tucker said. “The cool thing was we hooked up with these chicks, and we’re sitting there in the club—we got, like, this whole backstage vibe going on, because of me. Because I knew the drummer and the bass player. The chicks were into it. It was great.”
Lissa caught the flash of Tucker’s teeth in the road light and knew he was grinning.
“What can I say?” he asked, having fun with it. “The women love me.”
“Jesus, Tuck.” Evan shook his head.
“Sorry.”
For several moments there was only the sound of the tires, the hum of the truck’s engine. The cab was washed in a dirty swirl of road light.
Tucker bent forward, touching Lissa’s shoulder. “Look, all B.S. aside, I’m really sick about this. Underneath all that crazy shit, Chantelle was a nice girl. Not in the same class as Miranda, but she could have been if she hadn’t gotten messed up on coke and meth. I was trying to help her.”
“Oh, Tucker, when are you ever going to learn? Women like that don’t want to be helped.”
“Nobody deserves to die the way she did, Liss. To get killed and tossed into the woods like a sack of trash. I wish I’d been with her. I wish we hadn’t gotten so pissed off with each other.”
“What do you mean pissed off?” Evan asked.
“It was nothing, really. We had a—a discussion, you know?”
“A fight, you mean,” Lissa said.
“That’s why I left the party,” Tucker said. “I’m sorry as shit now.” His voice wobbled, and Lissa felt her own tears rise in her throat.
“Was Todd Hite there? Did he know Jessica?” Evan asked. “Could she have been involved with him the way Miranda was?”
Lissa turned to Evan. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. It had been a while since she’d thought of him. Todd Hite had been the other person of interest in Miranda’s murder case besides Tucker—someone else’s brother, son, uncle, source for heartbreak. Lissa had been convinced Todd was guilty. The whole family had thought so. Todd Hite was—or he had been—a stockbroker until a police undercover operation exposed him as the ringleader of a white-collar gang, composed mostly of his clients, who were involved in everything from money laundering and drugs to prostitution. Somehow, because Miranda attended several of the gang functions as an escort, Todd got the idea she was a police informant. He was overheard threatening her life. A month later she was dead.
“Why are you asking about him?” Tucker sounded wary.
Lissa knotted her hands.
“Because, he blamed Miranda when he got arrested, remember?” Evan said. “He accused her of ratting him out. He got fired because of her. He was pretty pissed off. Maybe it was the same with Jessica.”
“Hite’s full of shit.”
“You don’t think Miranda or Jessica were working with the cops?” asked Evan.
“Hell, no. Miranda would have told me,” Tucker said. “Look, there were a lot of people at the party in Galveston. A lot of guys. Hite could have been there, I guess, but I doubt it.” He sounded forlorn now. Pressing his palms together, he knifed his hands between his knees. “Goddamn it, I do not want to see Pop. Do you guys?”
“We could get something to eat,” Lissa said. She wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t want to face their folks, either.
“I could go for a burger.” Evan pulled into the parking lot of Ace’s Grill, a diner and pool hall near Lissa’s parents’ house, and while Evan and Tucker went inside to order their hamburgers and beers, Lissa called home. She was relieved it was her mom, not her dad, who answered, even though she had to reassure her mother a dozen times that Tucker was fine, everybody was fine.
“We’re just getting a hamburger, Mom,” Lissa said.
“I roasted two chickens,” Lissa’s mother said. “There’s plenty for everyone.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. We didn’t know. The guys are already inside ordering. Will it keep until tomorrow?”
Her mother said she imagined it would get eaten one way or another. She said, “You’re sure Tucker’s okay now, he’s in the clear?”
Lissa said she hoped so. She said they’d be there within the hour.
Tucker and Evan were already eating when she joined them. She unwrapped her burger.
“Your folks okay?” Evan asked.
“Mom made dinner for everyone,” Lissa said.
“Uh-oh. Should have known.” Tucker took a swallow of his beer. “Is she mad?”
“No. You’ll have it for lunch tomorrow.” Lissa set down her burger; she wiped her fingers on her napkin. “Listen, Tucker, about this morning, at the house, I didn’t mean anything.”
“I know. It’s all right,” he said, but he wouldn’t look at her.
“It isn’t that I don’t believe in you.”
Now he met her eyes. “I said I know.”
Lissa held his glance a moment, then picked up her burger again. “Where did you go, anyway, after you left? Where did the police find you?”
“Morgan’s apartment. I was taking her car back to her. They got me in the parking lot there.”
“Who’s Morgan?” Evan asked.
“There wasn’t any reason not to go with them,” Tucker said, as if he hadn’t heard Evan, or maybe, Lissa thought, Tucker was ignoring him. Maybe, for once, he was embarrassed to admit he’d been picked up by yet one more woman, a total stranger, and spent the night with her, in her bed.
“I don’t understand why you would talk to them, though, without a lawyer, Tuck.” Lissa rewrapped her burger. She couldn’t finish it, or her French fries, or her beer.
“You’re done?” Evan asked. “Was it bad?”
“No, it’s fine. My head hurts, is all.”
“It’s hurting all the time lately,” Tucker said.
“Too much of the time.” Evan wiped his mouth, wadded his paper napkin and tossed it into his empty burger basket. “Do I have to make an appointment with Dr. White, or will you?”
“If you don’t do it, Liss, I will,” Tucker said. “You can’t whip up on us both.”
She dipped her glance; she didn’t want them to see that she was afraid.
* * *
Their mother wasn’t more than a silhouette, a dark sketch under the porch light, when they pulled up in front of the house. Still, it seemed to Lissa that she could feel the worry rising off her in waves, or maybe she was conditioned to expect it from long experience. She wondered how many hours her mother had logged on the porch, looking up and down the street for Tucker, consumed with anxiety for him, praying for any sign. Lissa had done time on the porch, too. Hard scary time. She could name the day it started, the first time Tucker disappeared. It had been the week after they were to have celebrated his fourth birthday.
Dad hired a circus clown for the occasion. He bought a movie camera. Unable to sit still, Lissa’s mother dropped her at a friend’s house to play. Lissa ended up spending the night there, and the following day when her mother picked her up, she wasn’t the same. Nothing was. She tried to explain it, how Daddy’s mind broke from all the terrible things he went through during the war, and somehow this made him lock Tucker in a closet. She said she needed Lissa to be very brave, because Daddy was gone for a while to the hospital, and Tucker was still so badly frightened, he wasn’t talking. Lissa remembered her own panic. She remembered Tucker’s hollow stare and the grim set of her mother’s mouth.
She remembered the day a week after her father left when she walked out onto the front porch, hunting for Tucker, anxious about him and her parents, her dad’s absence, her mother’s and Tucker’s terrible quiet. She expected to see her little brother playing in the yard, but instead, she saw the front gate hanging open, idly squeaking on its hinges, and beyond it, nothing.
A white aching space.
As if along with Tucker the whole world had vanished. The police were called in, and they found him just after nightfall, after everyone was good and scared, none the worse for his adventure, in a ravine nearly a mile from their house. The story he told was that he’d been trying to catch a dog, a little puppy. He said he followed it because it looked so sad and lost, and he wanted to bring it home and take care of it.
Lissa remembered Tucker hiding from their dad on his return from the hospital weeks later. Even though he was calmer and seemed to keep a better grip on his temper, it took Tucker a long time to warm up to him again. Thinking back now, Lissa didn’t remember the movie camera ever making it out of the box. It was probably packed away somewhere along with Momma’s habit of humming and Dad’s laughter, which was rare even then.
She didn’t know exactly, because even as a child she’d been reluctant to ask, to talk about her dad’s absence at all. She had always thought there was more to it; she still did.
Evan took her hand, and they followed Tucker up the sidewalk.
Their mother came to the top of the steps. Tucker joined her, and she took hold of him, bending her forehead to his chest. She wasn’t crying, but she was close to it, and Lissa was glad when Tucker slipped his arms around her.
“Come on, Ma. It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Are you sure?” She tilted her gaze to look at him.
“They wanted to ask me some questions, that’s all.”
“You didn’t know her, then? Jessica Sweet? You told the police you didn’t?”
Lissa’s heart sank. She ought to have warned her mother, but there hadn’t been time, and truthfully she hadn’t wanted to. “Mom? I think he’s going to need a lawyer.”
“No, I told you—”
“You talked to the police without an attorney, Tucker. They know you had a relationship with Jessica. Nothing’s over. When they find her killer, then it will be over.”
6
TUCKER SAID LISSA was making too much of it, that it was no big deal. This time he had an alibi—witnesses, receipts, proof that he was nowhere near here when Jessica Sweet was killed and dumped in the woods. Emily wanted to believe him; she did believe him. She gathered herself. “I baked a cake,” she said.
Tucker grinned his foolish puppy grin. “Chocolate?”
She nodded, patting his cheeks, happy to have him home, to have her family together. She didn’t miss Lissa’s sigh of exasperation but chose to ignore it. “Why don’t we all go inside?”
Lissa asked for a rain check. “I’m worn out, and Evan and I have an early day—”
When she broke off, Emily didn’t have to turn around to know that Roy was standing in the doorway. She froze. She had tried talking to him at dinner, forcing herself to say Joe’s name. She had said, “Please, let me explain,” but Roy answered there wasn’t a need, and his voice had been low with hurt. She had no idea what he thought he knew, or where he could have gotten his information, if he had any, and she was beside herself with the worry of it. But there was no way they could pursue it now, in front of the children. She hugged her arms around herself.
Tucker lifted his cap, whipped it once, then again, against his leg, saying nothing.
The silence thickened. Someone in the neighborhood called for their dog and now the night breeze carried the sound of a train whistle from the edge of town.
“Roy?” Emily lifted her voice. “I was just saying we should all come inside and have some cake.” She paused, and when he didn’t answer, she turned to him, and she was relieved and not a little amazed when he didn’t argue, when instead, he backed out of the doorway, leaving it open. Gesturing at Tucker and Lissa and Evan, she followed Roy down the front hall and into the kitchen. The cake was centered on the table, underneath a glass cake dome. It had turned out beautifully, and Emily was glad she hadn’t abandoned making it.
“Mmm, looks yummy.” Lissa opened a cabinet and lifted down five dessert plates.
“I hope it’s not too dry.” Emily gathered forks and napkins, taking a moment to circle Lissa’s waist as a way of thanking her for staying, for being amenable.
Lissa tipped her head to Emily’s. They were often the peacemakers, the buffer between Roy and Tucker.
“Is coffee all right? There are soft drinks and milk.” Emily looked around at the men, and she thought it wasn’t only Roy who was humoring her. Every one of them was. Even Lissa was likely wondering if Emily truly believed she could serve them slices of cake like doses of medicine and somehow defuse the tension. She knew better, of course. But she wanted her family to see that regardless of the circumstances they could still come together, just as they had in the past, to share in the sweetness of dessert.
When everyone was seated, she said they should join hands. It seemed important to offer a blessing. “Roy, would you do the honors?” she asked, and her heart almost broke with love and gratitude when he bowed his head, and taking Tucker’s hand in his left and Lissa’s hand in his right, he thanked God for them and for Evan, and for the cake, and Emily, who baked it.
After they said their amens, she squeezed Tucker’s opposite hand. “Thank you, God, too, that our son is home safe.” She smiled at him.
He kept her glance and her hand, and there was something wounded and fraught caging the shadows of his eyes. Some quality or essence had come over him—was it despair? Remorse? She didn’t know, had never seen it before.
“I’ve been a bastard,” he said.
Emily frowned.
“I’m sorry,” Tucker said.
“It’s all right, honey,” Emily said, but panic knotted her stomach.
“It isn’t all right,” he insisted. “It hasn’t been right—I haven’t been right, not for a long time.”
“What do you mean, Tucker?” Lissa asked the question Emily couldn’t find breath for.
“I didn’t murder Jessica Sweet.” Tucker looked hard at Lissa. “Or Miranda. I tried telling you earlier, Liss. The cops can dog me into hell, and they probably will, but they’ve got it wrong.”
“If they’re so goddamn wrong,” Roy said, “why do they keep coming after you?”
Emily tensed, waiting for Tucker to say something ugly; she waited to hear the scrape of his chair, the clatter of his plate when he dumped it into the sink. She waited for him to walk out in a huff, or walk out yelling. But for what seemed an eternal moment there was nothing.
And then Tucker said, “I want to come back to work.”
Emily looked at Tucker in astonishment.
But he had eyes only for his father. “I’ll do whatever it takes, Pop. You can cut my salary, put me on any kind of job. I don’t care. I just want a chance to make it up to you, to get it right.”
A tremor rocked Tucker’s voice, stalling Emily’s heart.
“I meant what I said before,” he went on, “about being a bastard. I’m sick of myself. Sick of living this way. Sick of being so fucked up— Sorry, Mom. There’s no reason you should believe me, but I swear this time it’s different. If you could just let me try—if you could just give me one more shot.”
Roy drew his napkin from his lap. “The only job we’ve got going on is Pecan Grove, and Pederson’s made it clear if he sees you out at the site, he’ll quit. We can’t afford to lose him. I think your sister and Evan would agree.”
“Maybe if we talked to him,” Evan said.
“If we reassure him he won’t have to work directly with Tuck again,” Lissa said. “Either Evan or I can meet with Carl from now on.”
Emily clenched her fists, willing Roy to see the possibility.
He didn’t. “That’s not going to fly,” he said. “If he even sees Tucker out there, he says he’s done. I had to tack five percent onto his original bid to get him to stay as it is.”
“Dad!” Lissa protested. “We’re already upside down on that job.”
“Yeah, well, do you think losing Pederson is going to put us right side up?”
“Look,” Evan said, “we could use Tucker’s help out at our place, right, Lissa? He could lay the floor in your art studio, for one thing.”
“That would be great,” Lissa said. “I’m dying to have a real place where I can paint again.”
Evan found Tucker’s gaze. “We can’t pay you much.”
“I don’t want any pay. I’ll just be glad for a job, the chance to show everyone I mean what I say.”
“It’s a deal, then,” Evan said. “You want to start tomorrow?”
“Is eight o’clock too early?” Tucker said, sounding as eager as a child.
Evan laughed, and Lissa said it was fine. She said, “The floor tile for the studio is at the office,” and a discussion ensued among the three of them about the logistics of transporting it to the house.
Emily looked at Roy when he shifted his fork from one side of his plate to the other, the noise drawing her attention. She knew what he was thinking, that this was another of Tucker’s empty promises. He would say people don’t change, that they were incapable of it. She didn’t know how much he based his opinion on his own experience, the ongoing war he waged with his own demons. She didn’t hold his gaze when their eyes met. She couldn’t. She was too afraid of what she might reveal. Why hadn’t she told him immediately when Tucker was arrested last fall? A confession now would sound so much worse. She stood up, and began stacking plates, pausing when Evan mentioned the lake house.
“I think I know how we can engineer the deck off the master bedroom to extend over the water the way you want it to,” he told Roy. “If you’ve got a set of plans here, I can show you.”
Emily exchanged a wondering glance with Lissa, who shrugged.
Catching them at it, Evan grinned. “Roy did say he wanted to be able to fish from bed.”
“Please tell me that’s a joke,” Emily said, feeling a warm surge of delight mixed with relief. Suppose Evan could convince Roy to take up his project again? Suppose Tucker did even half of what he promised? Suppose he was right and the police were finished with him? Suppose her worry over what Roy might or might not know about Joe Merchant was needless? Then life might be as it had once been. She wondered if she was asking for too much.
Tucker said the house plans were upstairs, that he’d get them.
Lissa stored the leftover cake.
Emily carried the dishes to the sink. “I don’t have a clue how Evan can fix the problem with the deck, but I’ll be beyond ecstatic if he can get your dad back to work on that house.”
“Me, too. Evan’s as worried as we are about him. He thinks Daddy’s in a lot more pain than he’s letting on.”
“He is, but we both know how he feels about seeing a doctor. He won’t even let Dr. White look at him.”
“If only Tucker would get his act together, that would help.”
“Maybe he will this time. I’ve never heard him sound quite so—” Emily paused, hunting for the right word.
“Committed? Contrite?” Lissa supplied two. She dampened a dishcloth and wiped the countertop. “He has to grow up sometime.”
Emily opened the dishwasher. “He said he has receipts, proving he was in Austin over the weekend when Jessica was murdered. Did he give them to the police, do you know?”
“They’re in his glove box. He has to get his car back first.”
“That should take care of it, right?”
“Maybe, but you know, if it doesn’t, if the police insist on pursuing him, we’ll have to get a lawyer.”
Emily wouldn’t say it aloud; she didn’t want Lissa to worry, but she wondered where the money to pay a lawyer would come from. She wondered why the police focus on Tucker continued. It was as if they wanted him to be guilty. A year ago, when the police fixated on him, the media raised the outrageous possibility that whoever killed Miranda had likely killed the other two victims who’d been found at the same location in previous years.
More than one reporter speculated that the I-45 serial killer had moved his base of operations from the Galveston area north, seventy or so miles, to the piney woods. They associated the location with Tucker’s home—her home—by describing it as “near where Tucker Lebay, a person of interest in the murder of Miranda Quick, lives.”
It horrified Emily, the very idea that her son’s name was forever linked in some people’s minds to such brutal crimes. And it was complete insanity, anyway. The math didn’t work. Tucker wasn’t old enough to have committed the first two murders. He wasn’t capable of such violence in any case. These crimes were the work of a monster, one who was still out there, still on the loose, which could only mean more women would disappear, more bodies would be found. And more families, good families, like the Quicks, would suffer heartbreak and loss, while the police wasted time hounding Tucker, while they drove him even further back into the black cave of his unhappiness and frustration.
Lissa came to stand beside her.
“I wish Tucker could be more like Evan.” Emily was sorry even as she said it. Even as she felt Lissa’s arm slip around her waist, the surge of her love was tainted with regret. She shouldn’t compare them, these three who would always be children to her.
She had mothered Evan, too, the same as Lissa and Tucker, ever since Roy gave Evan a job when he was barely seventeen, nothing more than a scrawny boy. As a nine-year-old, Tucker almost instantly idolized Evan. But even Lissa, at thirteen, was drawn to him, although she had pretended the opposite. Still, the seed of their attraction for each other had been visible from the beginning. Tucker’s admiration was less self-conscious. So often when he needed someone strong, when he needed a sure and steady guide, Evan was there.
He possessed every admirable trait a parent could want in a son, despite his own complicated upbringing, which involved a father who’d walked out and a mother who was indifferent. Emily would never understand it. Evan’s parents were so careless with him, and yet, he never caused them, or anyone, one moment’s worth of worry or doubt.
“Some people seem to lead a charmed life, while others struggle,” she said now, and there was a bite in her voice that was unintentional, and she rued it.
Lissa moved away. “Evan hasn’t led a charmed life, and neither have I. Tucker has the same opportunity as anyone to make better choices. Not even Daddy can stop him.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know, Momma. It’s okay.”
Emily glanced sidelong at her daughter. “I know you’ve pretty much decided not to have children, but if you were to change your mind and become a mother, you’d understand. There’s just this drive to protect, especially when your child is—” Emily shrugged. She didn’t want to say impulsive or high strung, or oversensitive or—she didn’t know. Just hardwired, differently, in some nameless, unfathomable way.
* * *
Lissa and Evan had left, and Roy had gone upstairs to bed, when Tucker found Emily, as she had hoped he would, outside on the porch, tucked into a corner of the swing.
He sat down beside her. “What are you doing out here? It’s cold.”
“I think that woman is calling your dad,” Emily said without preamble.
“What woman?” Tucker asked, as if he didn’t know.
“The one who had you arrested for stalking her last fall,” Emily answered shortly. “Revel Wiley.”
“What makes you think—?”
“I’ve been getting calls on my cell phone from her number, and I’ve ignored them. Now, in the past few days, the same number has started coming up on the landline caller ID. When I answer, she hangs up. But if your dad answers, he talks away. He’s acted odd when I ask about it. I’m afraid it’s her, that she’s stirring up trouble again.” Emily couldn’t keep the edge from her voice. “Every time I think how you involved me in that mess, Tucker, I’m angry all over again. I wish you hadn’t put me in the middle of it.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I posted your bail. I paid Revel a thousand dollars to drop the stalking charge altogether because you said that would end it. I should have known better.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“No! For heaven’s sake, Tucker, if you can only do one thing for me, please, please promise me you’ll stay away from those women, the clubs, that life.”
He scrubbed his hands down his thighs, shifted his feet, jarring the swing.
Emily’s initial jolt of exasperation was softened by her regret for his inadequacies and his struggles, his aura of unhappiness. It was the constant war of her own emotions that weighed on her, that rendered her nearly useless when it came to making a stand. At one moment she would feel she didn’t love Tucker enough, or in the right way, and then at another, she would feel as if she loved him and catered to him too much. She slid her palm over the back of his hand. “You know I want to believe what you said earlier, that you want to change, to take responsibility, but for that to work out, you’re going to have to stay away from Miranda’s friends—”
“Revel misunderstood me, Mom. I only wanted to help her get out of the business and out of the rat hole she was living in.”
“Yes, but she and the rest of those girls aren’t your responsibility. You can scarcely take care of yourself.”
Even in the half-light, Emily could see his shoulders sag. She saw his defeat and his aggravation written into the line of his jaw, the crease of his brow. He hitched forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll be up a shit creek with Pop if he finds out.”
Emily was worried, too, for the possible consequences, which was why she’d talked to Joe and solicited his help. She felt as though the slightest pressure could send Roy reeling off an edge. A breeze kicked a hash of dried leaves mixed with road grit along the curb, making a ruckus, and she looked in that direction. “He’s done so well for so long,” she said.
There had been episodes of irrational behavior as the result of lingering post-traumatic stress, but none so terrifying as what occurred on the occasion of Tucker’s fourth birthday. That awful day when she left Roy and Tucker napping to run last-minute errands, only to come home and find Tucker locked in a closet, and Roy pacing the house with a loaded gun, drunk, and raving about shelling from the enemy. When she tried to reason with him, he angrily informed her that she was a fucking idiot if she didn’t realize they were at war in a country where even the women and children carried weapons. Couldn’t she see that he had secured their position to save her and their home? It took every ounce of her strength and diplomacy to convince him to hand over the key to the closet and scoop Tucker, eerily quiet, alarmingly covered in blood, into her arms.
Weary by then, and sobering, Roy slumped to the floor. He allowed her to take the gun, his old Colt service revolver that he’d carried in Vietnam, and to bring Tucker around the corner to Anna’s, where they found he was bleeding from a cut on the heel of his bare foot. When Emily asked how he’d gotten hurt, he only stared at her, eyes stunned, uncomprehending. He didn’t speak again for six days.
The single saving grace that came out of the whole ordeal was that it frightened Roy badly enough that he finally sought help. It wasn’t until after his six-week stay in the VA hospital that Emily found out Tucker inadvertently set off the whole tragic sequence of events when he wakened before Roy and went into the bathroom for a drink. It was the sound of the water glass exploding against the tile floor when it slipped from Tucker’s small hand that jerked Roy upright. Caught in the throes of one of his war dreams, the nightmare came with him as he rose, terrified, into an altered reality.
For him the house was a battleground, Tucker the enemy.
To this day, Emily couldn’t bear to think what might have happened had she not come home when she did. She would have taken the children and left Roy then, and he knew it. He stopped drinking entirely. He packed away his collection of guns, only getting them out again, years later, when Lissa and Tucker expressed an interest in learning to shoot. As a family, they took every recommended step, and eventually they mended. Normal life resumed.
A new normal, Emily thought now, scarred by a feeling that, as parents, she and Roy had failed Tucker, failed to protect him, to keep him safe. She flattened her palm on his back, remembering the awful days when he hadn’t spoken, remembering, too, the sore number of weeks that passed before he would stay even for a moment in the same room with his dad. Tucker’s trust had been broken, and it had made her heart ache, watching Roy work to regain it, watching his hope fade a bit more each day that Tucker didn’t reach out to him. They hadn’t forced it; they’d been advised to give it time. And then one day, Tucker wasn’t a little boy anymore, and Emily realized he wouldn’t ever reach out to either Roy or her in the way that small children do again. They were out of time.
She rubbed a circle between Tucker’s shoulder blades. “Maybe I’m wrong, and it isn’t Revel who’s calling your dad. She did tell me she was going back to Oklahoma, where her folks live. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Emily didn’t know why she was saying any of this when she knew perfectly well Revel was the caller, and while Revel had made a promise about leaving Texas, Emily had no real hope she’d kept it.
Tucker didn’t look as if he believed it, either. He said he didn’t really care anymore what Revel did.
“The trouble with people like her is that when you give in to them, it’s only the beginning.” Emily repeated a line from the lecture Joe had given her when she’d called him for advice after Revel made a second, nerve-jangling demand for more money. He’d gone with her to meet Revel, and flashed his badge at her, warning her not to contact Emily or Tucker again or there would be legal consequences, all of which was completely false. Even Emily knew Joe acted outside his authority. He claimed it was nothing, but Emily was still angry at herself and at Tucker that Joe had put his career in jeopardy for them.
She wanted Tucker to know this, to know the cost of his actions to others.
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Barbara Taylor Sissel
At the heart of every crime, there's a family…My son is a murderer…. So begins this chilling and emotionally charged mystery from highly acclaimed author Barbara Taylor Sissel.Emily Lebay had always thought of her family as ordinary. Sure, they've endured their share of problems, even a time of great trouble–what family hasn't? But when a woman's body turns up in the dense woods near their home, and Emily's grown son, Tucker, is accused of murder, Emily is forced to confront the unfathomable, and everything she believed about her life is called into question.This isn't the first time Tucker has been targeted by the police; a year ago he was a person of interest when another woman was found dead in the same stretch of woods. Still, neither Emily nor her daughter, Lissa, can reconcile their Tucker with these brutal crimes. Terrified, convinced there's been a tragic mistake, Emily and Lissa set out to learn the truth about Tucker, once and for all. And while his life hangs in the balance, what they discover proves far more shocking than their darkest fears…."A gut-wrenching mystery…enjoyable and insightful." –RT Book Reviews on Evidence of Life
At the heart of every crime, there’s a family…
My son is a murderer.… So begins this chilling and emotionally charged mystery from highly acclaimed author Barbara Taylor Sissel.
Emily Lebay had always thought of her family as ordinary. Sure, they’ve endured their share of problems, even a time of great trouble—what family hasn’t? But when a woman’s body turns up in the dense woods near their home, and Emily’s grown son, Tucker, is accused of murder, Emily is forced to confront the unfathomable, and everything she believed about her life is called into question.
This isn’t the first time Tucker has been targeted by the police; a year ago he was a person of interest when another woman was found dead in the same stretch of woods. Still, neither Emily nor her daughter, Lissa, can reconcile their Tucker with these brutal crimes. Terrified, convinced there’s been a tragic mistake, Emily and Lissa set out to learn the truth about Tucker, once and for all. And while his life hangs in the balance, what they discover proves far more shocking than their darkest fears.…
Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel
EVIDENCE OF LIFE
Safe Keeping
Barbara Taylor Sissel
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For my sister Susan and my brother John.
And in memory of our parents, gone so soon.
Contents
Chapter 1 (#u326e6792-e546-58f7-9744-65bdffbcab79)
Chapter 2 (#u0ae7501b-0e4f-58f5-bc2e-151fe6d6c0d1)
Chapter 3 (#u7d2cddd4-83bb-5024-b00b-66c3f8d92fa4)
Chapter 4 (#ucbb47b81-3f3e-5f65-8c07-0bd55964c64f)
Chapter 5 (#u04eb2564-6b29-5847-9e01-3dcfdd3c5e1c)
Chapter 6 (#u16f202e9-424a-5414-9e06-8150a9a09dae)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Reader's Guide (#litres_trial_promo)
Questions for Discussion (#litres_trial_promo)
A Conversation with the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
1
MY SON IS a murderer.
The words hovered in Emily’s mind.
She said them aloud, “My son is a murderer.”
But they sounded no more believable than when they were rattling around in her head. Why did her mind do this? Why did it conjure up the worst of her fears? One that was neither logical nor possible? So far, like Tucker, the girl, Jessica Sweet, was only missing, not dead, and whatever more dire connection might exist between them was a figment of Emily’s overactive imagination, the result of too little sleep and too much worry. It was the uncertainty that was killing her. If only she could know Tucker was safe.
She stared over the foot of the bed, beyond the circle of lamplight, into new morning light that was as pale as a milky eye. Behind the closed bathroom door, the sound of the shower was a muted hiss. The sharp crease of light on the floor under the door assured her Roy was in there performing his morning routine. Even in retirement, he was a man of routine, of habits that were as predictable as moonrise.
Heart thudding, she looked at the telephone on the nightstand near her elbow and then at the bathroom door. Was she prepared for what would happen if she went through with it, if she dialed 9-1-1? Was there time before Roy was finished? The sound of the shower clattered in her ears. She lifted the cordless receiver from its base.
Impossibly his fingers closed over her wrist. “Don’t, Em.”
Her gaze bounced. A breath went down hard. “Someone has to—”
“No.”
“Tucker’s been gone almost two weeks, Roy. It’s not like him.”
“What do you mean? He pulls this stunt all the time, his damn disappearing act, and the hell with us left behind to worry.”
“But never for this long. I think we should call the police.”
“No,” Roy repeated.
“What if he’s been in an accident?” Emily asked. “What if he got mugged or someone took him? He could be lying somewhere hurt.” Her voice picked up speed; it caught on her panic. “He could have amnesia.”
“You’re making yourself crazy.” Roy sat beside her. “He’s making us both crazy.” Emily started to answer, but Roy talked over her. “He’s thirty-four years old, for Christ’s sake, a grown man. Why is he still living here? Why isn’t he out on his own?”
“He’s tried, Roy. You know he has.” Emily stopped. They’d had this discussion so many times; she knew it by heart. If she were to go on and say the rest of it, that some children took longer to grow up, that if they were patient Tucker would eventually find his way, Roy would say she was making excuses. She would be moved to defend herself. They would go back and forth, making an endless loop of words that would resolve nothing.
He picked up her hand and met her gaze. The wan circle of lamplight silvered the gray bristle of his closely cut hair. With the tip of her finger, she traced a darker line of fatigue that grooved his cheek. He was exhausted from the stress; they both were. “I want some peace and quiet in our lives,” he said. “Is that so much to ask? Haven’t we earned it by now?”
“Yes,” she said. “And we’ll have it, you’ll see. When we find Tucker, we’ll sit down together—”
“God help us if it’s happening again, Em.” He looked hard at her.
But she wasn’t having it and looked away. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, even though only moments ago, she’d been in the same place, entertaining the same anxiety. She thought of reminding Roy that Tucker had been furious when he left, and given his mood, it wasn’t terribly unusual that he hadn’t called. He’d walked out angry any number of times before, and while it was true that he didn’t ordinarily stay away this long, it was still possible that was all this disappearance amounted to. Except it wasn’t, and something inside her knew it, knew that this time was different.
It was like a crack in the earth, imperceptible to the naked eye, but there all the same, a warning, an omen. Setting the phone receiver on the nightstand, she pressed her fingertips to her temples. “I want him home,” she said, putting her feet over the bedside. “I want to know he’s all right.”
“I think it’s a mistake to call this his home, Em.” Roy was in his closet now, pulling on a pair of jeans. “I think when he shows up, we need to set boundaries, set a concrete date that he has to be out of here. We’ve done all we can for him, more than most parents would.”
“It might be different if you wouldn’t lose your temper,” Emily said. “If you could give him the benefit of the doubt the way you do Lissa. If you could just—”
“Just what, Em?”
She didn’t answer; she was out of energy, suddenly past the wish to explain. She looked at the floor. If he’d been our first, he might have been our last. The old joke, one she’d heard other parents make, drifted through her mind. She didn’t find it particularly amusing even though she’d resorted to it on occasion herself. Would she have had another child had it been Tucker and not Lissa who came first? No one could have asked for a lovelier or more obedient child than Lissa, and Evan, the man she’d chosen for her husband, was a godsend. Emily and Roy relied on him, his steadiness, his kindness and good sense. Even Tucker seemed calmer and more content when Evan was nearby.
“What would you tell the police if you called them?” Roy emerged from the closet. “What evidence do you have—of anything wrong, I mean?”
“How do you know they don’t have him already?”
“We would have heard.”
“The girl who disappeared,” Emily began, because it was impossible, after all, not to voice the fear that was uppermost in both their minds, “the one everyone is looking for, Jessica Sweet, I think I recognize her name. What if Tucker knew her, dated her like he did Miranda?”
“Like I said before, God help us if that turns out to be the case.” Roy stuffed his shirt hem into his jeans and threaded his belt through the loops. “I’ll tell you right now, I can’t handle that again.”
The drama, Roy meant, the horrible way it had ended—in Miranda’s murder of all things. Emily picked at her thumbnail. She and Roy had welcomed Miranda Quick when Tucker first began dating her in high school; they’d grown fond of her. They knew her family from church, knew her to be a sweet girl, the very sort of girl Emily could imagine as a daughter-in-law, but after graduation Miranda changed, becoming restless and unhappy. She went out nights alone. Tucker had had no idea where she was or what she was doing, and when he found out, it devastated him. But he loved her, and he was determined to stay with her even after she proved herself unworthy of his devotion.
He remained faithful, while Miranda broke his heart over and over. Emily had never felt so helpless and frustrated. Then, just when she thought it couldn’t get worse, Miranda went missing and Tucker was the one who found her body. A day later, the police came for him. They questioned him for hours. His picture was everywhere in the media; he was labeled a person of interest—in a murder investigation. How? Emily still couldn’t wrap her mind around it, how her son had become involved in something so horrifying. She blamed Miranda. Miranda was the cancer who had gotten her hooks into Tucker. She was the blight of their lives, and if it was possible, Emily believed she hated Miranda more now that she was dead, and she truly didn’t care if she went to hell for it.
Switching off the bedside light, she felt the mattress give when Roy sat down to put on his shoes, felt the heat from his palm when he flattened it on her back. He said he would make the coffee. “I’ll bring it up to you with some toast and that marmalade you like. How about it?”
Ordinarily, she would have been delighted. Roy wasn’t the sort of man who was comfortable in the kitchen. A construction site was more his domain; hard physical labor was his refuge, and providing a good living for his family was his contribution, his source of pride. Or it had been until last fall when he retired. Emily encouraged it. She imagined they would do things together, finish building the lake house, plant a vegetable garden. She’d dreamed of more exotic possibilities, traveling on the Orient Express or learning ballroom dancing, but in a very not-funny way, there was just something about having your son’s name—their own Lebay family name—linked to a murder investigation that caused such visions to lose their luster.
Pushing aside the bed linen, she told Roy she would make the coffee, that she needed to get up, to be busy. But then she was sorry not to have accepted his invitation, because when they came downstairs, he didn’t accompany her into the kitchen. Instead, he disappeared into his office.
Emily heard the door close, the click of the lock, and she sighed. Standing at the counter, she parted the checked curtains at the window over the sink. The view was as familiar to her as the image of her own face. Her great-grandfather had built this house, and it had come down to her through the generations. She grew up here and could recall the very year her parents remodeled the old carriage house to accommodate two cars and the workshop, where, like her dad, Roy would go to putter. Beyond it, there was an alley. Closer in, a huge old elm tree centered the bit of backyard, housing a picnic table that Roy built and a wood-seated swing. After they were married in the spring of 1972, on his good days, Roy had pushed her in that swing.
“Higher!” she hollered at him, laughing. “Higher!” she shouted.
And later, he pushed her while she held their children as infants in her arms.
They had been happy, hadn’t they? They weren’t different from other families in the neighborhood. They shopped and vacationed and participated in community events. They attended church. And like their neighbors, they’d had their share of good times and bad.
Emily started the coffee, and while she waited for it to brew, she collected the Monday editions of the two newspapers they read from the front porch. Their small-town newspaper, the Hardys Walk Tribune, was lighter in weight and folksier in tone than the Houston Chronicle. On her way back to the kitchen, she paused at Roy’s office door, and putting her ear against it, she listened and heard nothing. Only the sound of the tall grandfather clock on the landing in the front hall. The rhythmic tock tock was magnified like heartbeats in a row. Gunshots fired in evenly spaced salute.
She straightened. In her mind’s eye, she could see Roy sitting at his desk, and on the wall opposite him, she saw the gun case that housed his collection. The glass front would hold a faint reflection of his image, doing whatever it was he did in there these days. She hoped he wasn’t brooding. The guns worried her. She didn’t like thinking it, and perhaps it was only a temporary effect of retirement, but there was something in his demeanor in recent weeks that was beginning to remind her of the wounded man he was when he came back from the war in Vietnam. He’d tried hard to hold in the horror, closing himself off from her, not wanting to burden her, he said. They’d worked through it eventually, but it had taken a near-tragedy to bring him around.
She tapped on the door. “Coffee’s ready,” she said through the panel, and she was relieved to hear his acknowledgment, to hear the leather creak as he rose from his chair. He followed her into the kitchen, and she thought the drag of his step sounded more uneven than usual. She wanted to turn and look, to ask if his pain was worse, but he didn’t like her fussing over him.
She unsheathed both papers from their plastic wrappers and set them, still folded, on the table, and that’s when she saw it—a piece of the missing girl’s, Jessica Sweet’s, face. It was looking out from the front page of the Chronicle. Above it, Emily glimpsed two words: found and dead, and her heart slammed into the wall of her chest. Any moment now, Roy would see it, too.
She brought the toast to the table and sat across from Roy. She was aware of the newspaper between them and was seized by a sudden, heated and irrational urge to tear it to shreds. She imagined Tucker coming through the door. He would put his arms around her; he would say how sorry he was to have caused her such concern. She would tell him about the dead girl, show him her picture, and he’d be sorry for her, too. But he wouldn’t know her. He wouldn’t have loved her or shared a messy, emotional history with her the way he had with Miranda Quick.
Emily picked up her slice of toast and then set it down, thinking if she had to sit here through another day without word from Tucker, or about him, she would come out of her skin.
She caught Roy’s glance.
“What?” he said.
“Why don’t we ride out there?”
“Where?” he asked, but she was certain he knew.
“Indigo Lake.”
“What for? There’s nothing to see,” he said. “A slab, pipes, a frame. I ought to get Evan to send a crew out there to pull it down. I’ll sell the land.”
Evan had worked for Roy in the family construction business long before becoming Lissa’s husband. Evan and Lissa ran the company now since Roy’s retirement. Tucker would have had a share in running it, too, if he was in the least reliable.
Emily touched Roy’s hand. “I think you should finish the house. It would take your mind off—” She didn’t want to say Tucker, so she said, “Things, you know. You need a project. Once it’s finished, if you don’t want to keep it, you can always sell it then.”
“Why the sudden interest? You’ve already said you won’t move out there.”
“I could change my mind.”
“Why would you?”
Emily looked into her coffee cup. For you, she thought. But if she were to say that, he’d think it was out of pity. “A change of scenery,” she said softly. “I think we need a change of scenery.”
Roy made a sound that could have meant anything. He took his cup and plate to the sink, thanked her for the toast. It was only after she heard his office door close behind him that she realized he’d taken the Houston paper with him, and her head livened with a fresh buzz of anxiety. He was bound to see the photo and the article now, she thought, and she closed her eyes. It was happening again just as Roy feared. She could feel it to her core. And this time, when Roy insisted they cut their ties to Tucker, he would mean it.
2
LISSA PULLED HER pickup in behind her dad’s truck and killed the engine, but she didn’t get out right away. Instead, she distracted herself, looking along the sidewalk in front of her parents’ house where the sharp morning light planked an angular path across the generously proportioned front porch to the door. How many times did she and Tucker paint that porch, all the balusters and assorted gingerbread trim? Tucker had resented every minute, but Lissa hadn’t minded. She loved the house her great-great-grandfather, Hiram Winter, built. It was one of several of his designs in the neighborhood, a Queen Anne. He had favored the Queen Anne and Georgian styles. Deep porches, cornices, pilasters, colonnaded verandas and gingerbread were architectural details that Lissa loved, too. The classically fashioned bungalow she and Evan recently finished building on acreage west of town, in a newish subdivision, was a compromise. They were in the process of completing Lissa’s art studio and a gazebo, too, in a style to match the house.
She gave the front porch another look. The newspaper was gone, which meant her parents had been up long enough to retrieve it. It would be lying open on the kitchen table, folded to show the dead woman’s photo, and her mom and dad would be sitting over it in a worried stew of complicated silence, suffering the same nasty jolt of déjà vu as Lissa. It was inevitable given the eerie similarities between Miranda’s and Jessica Sweet’s deaths. According to the news report Lissa heard earlier, Jessica’s car was found abandoned in the same strip shopping center where Miranda’s car was found, and now Jessica’s body had turned up in the same location, a mere matter of yards from where Tucker discovered Miranda’s body a year ago. The manner of death was the same, too. Both women appeared to have been strangled. While the report hadn’t mentioned Tucker’s name in connection to Miranda’s case, which remained unsolved, Lissa thought it was only a matter of time.
She looked out at her parents’ house. She didn’t need to see them to know they were as panicked by the news as she was. What could she say to them, anyway? It will be fine? She couldn’t offer that kind of reassurance, not now. Maybe later. Maybe if she gave it a little more time Tucker would show up. She started the truck.
“Hey!”
Lissa froze, as if she could pretend she hadn’t heard her dad’s shout, hadn’t caught sight of him from the corner of her eye, crabbing his way down the front steps. She looked through the windshield at her dad’s pickup, at the license plate that had Disabled Vet printed across the top. He would allow the tag that labeled him a cripple, but if anyone were to suggest the use of a cane, he’d growl like an injured bear.
He met her at the gate, swinging it open for her. “Guess you came looking for your brother and thought you’d just skip on by if he wasn’t here.”
“No, Daddy, I was coming in.”
“The hell you were.”
“You look like hell,” she said. Up close, she could see his face was sweaty and pale under his iron-gray buzz cut. His leg was bothering him again, or she should say the lack of his leg. The pain was worse, Lissa guessed. Ordinarily, he was never bothered by it. In fact, people who knew him often forgot he was missing a limb. According to her mother, though, the ill effects of her dad’s amputation, the aching and tenderness, had resurfaced recently. Probably the result of stress, Lissa thought. He wasn’t handling retirement very well, and there was Tucker, always Tucker. Lissa loved him—they all loved him—but the joke, the painful family joke, was that he could drive God to drink.
She followed her dad into his office. When she and Tucker were young, her dad kept it locked because of his gun collection. Of course, the precaution only heightened their curiosity; they had looked for ways to be in here, to handle the weapons, and their wish was granted. Over their mother’s protests, Daddy schooled them—the same as their mom—in their use. He taught them to hunt and claimed Lissa had a dead eye.
She sat in a club chair across from him now, and she was wary. She couldn’t quite sort out his mood. She asked if he was okay.
No answer. There was only the sound of his breath, the creak of the leather as he shifted his weight in the tall wingback desk chair.
Dropping her glance, she saw the morning newspaper folded on the desk’s corner, the photo of Jessica Sweet staring out. It looked as if it had been taken from a high school yearbook of roughly the same vintage as Tucker’s. Lissa thought she had read somewhere they were the same age, thirty-four, and it worried her. It made it seem more likely Tucker might have known her. She started to say something, to make some comment, or offer the customary reassurance, but then she saw the ledger—the old-fashioned, leather-bound business ledger that her dad insisted they keep the family company’s, Lebay-Winter’s, financial records in because he didn’t trust computers, the ledger that was supposed to be at the office that she and Evan shared in town, but instead was sitting here, open on the desk blotter.
“What are you doing with that?” she asked.
“Not the right question,” her dad answered.
“So, what is?”
“Oh, I think you know.”
They sat, eyes locked, while silence rose, like a rigid wall. Lissa’s dad, the former decorated United States Army drill sergeant, said a guilty man, a soldier in her dad’s case, who had something to hide, couldn’t handle the silence. Pretty soon, he’d break down, say whatever came into his mind just to fill the void. Eventually, he’d hang himself. Her dad was waiting for that now, for Lissa to hang herself.
She set her teeth together.
“I’ve been going over the numbers,” he said finally. “You and Evan have been bullshitting me. We’re not in good shape the way you said. In fact, this is looking like the worst year we’ve had in the past five. You want to tell me why you lied?”
“About the numbers?” When had he gotten the ledger? Lissa tried to put it together even as she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Lissa!” Her dad smacked the desktop with the flat of his hand. “I’m retired, not senile.”
“I understand that, Dad, but I assumed that since you retired and turned over control of the company to me, and to Evan, that meant you trusted us to run the place.”
“I built that goddamn business from nothing, worked it thirty years. You can’t push me out.”
“Oh, Daddy, we’re not trying to!” Lissa was nonplussed at the emotion in his voice, the way it slipped and caught.
He held her gaze, and she saw that his eyes were dark with anguish and, amazingly, filmed with tears. In her entire life, she had never known him to cry; he counted a man’s tears as weakness. It alarmed her; it hurt her heart. He could be gruff, even hard; he might take your head off if you made a foolish mistake. But the very same man had spent hours building her the exact replica of a dollhouse from an illustration in a book she’d fallen in love with, and she could still recall the shapes of the calluses that spanned his palm from all the times he’d taken her hand when he’d walked her to school. He’d taught her to drive and never once raised his voice, not even when she’d driven them into a ditch and he’d had to call a tow truck to get them out again.
“Look,” she said quickly, “maybe we did overstate a bit. It’s been tough the past several months, you know that, what with the economy, and then ever since—” She stopped before she could say Tucker’s name, say how badly business had been affected by last year’s notoriety, but her dad knew what was in her mind.
He inclined his head in the direction of the Houston Chronicle and said, “Yeah, well, it looks like the shit’s about to hit the fan again.”
“You don’t know that, Dad.”
A silence fell.
Her father broke it. “Your mother tried to call the cops to report him missing this morning. She would have, if I hadn’t stopped her.”
“She wants to find him, that’s all.”
He shook his head. “She’s losing it.”
Lissa didn’t ask what he meant, whether he thought it was her mother’s faith or her mind that was going. He looked at the newspaper, but she looked at him. She thought he was the one who was losing it. He looked so distraught. But he’d caused this, hadn’t he? He’d put himself in this position.
As if he felt her gaze, her father looked at her and said, “What?” in that tone he used when he meant to prick a nerve.
“Momma said you told Tucker to get out and not come back.”
“So?”
“So, you got what you wanted.”
“He called me, his own father, a fucking bastard and said he was a grown man and could take care of himself, which I’d like to see—just once.”
“Well, he could, if he had a job, if he had a paycheck. You cut him out of the business, Daddy! You basically disowned him. What was he supposed to do, fall all over you with kisses, his heartfelt thanks?”
“You know he blew another meeting with Carl Pederson.”
She nodded. She and Evan were as irked at Tucker as her dad, as Carl himself, was. It wasn’t easy to find a good cabinet man.
“If it was anyone else, screwing up as consistently as your brother has, I’d have fired them a long time ago,” her dad said. “Even you and Evan would have. You know I’m right.”
Lissa picked at her thumbnail. He wanted her to say he was justified in cutting Tucker from the business. And maybe he was. “Tucker is your son, not just some employee,” she said.
“I’ve given him every chance, bent over backward. Like I said to your mother this morning, the boy needs to grow up....”
And if that means he has to hit the bottom... Her dad went on.
Lissa tuned him out. Some things weren’t worth fighting over.
“Where’s Mom?” Lissa waited to ask until her dad was quiet.
“Upstairs. She’s pissed because I won’t go to the lake and see about finishing the house.”
“What’s going on with that, Dad? You always said after you retired, you were going to build that house and fish until you died.”
“I’ve got no appetite for it anymore,” he said, and his voice was raw. “You get a crew out there, pull the frame down, use the material somewhere else. Tell Evan—”
He stopped, but Lissa kept his gaze while a hundred thoughts crowded her mind. She could offer him comfort, but she didn’t know how he’d take it. He’d never needed her comfort before.
He brushed his hand over his face, and the breath he took in was huge and ragged. “Go on, little girl, and check on your momma, will you? I’m worried about her.”
“Daddy?” Lissa felt a fresh jolt of alarm. She could see his eyes were filmed with tears again. Her own throat constricted.
He waved her off. “Just let me be now.”
“Tucker will come home soon. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.”
“Sure,” he said. “It always is, isn’t it?”
She eyed him a moment longer, then left, pulling the door closed behind her. When she heard the click of the lock, she looked back, and the thought came that he shouldn’t be alone now, not with all those guns, and it chilled her momentarily. She thought of asking him to let her back in, but he’d only refuse, if he answered her at all.
Her head throbbed with every step as she climbed to the second floor. She had wakened with another brutal headache this morning that had only gotten worse. She’d had a series of them recently. They had to be sinus related, she thought.
“Mom?” she called, reaching the upstairs hallway.
“Back here,” she answered.
Lissa went toward the sound of her mother’s voice and found her sitting on a footstool in the linen closet. Her mother looked up. “Honey, what’s wrong? You’re so pale.”
“Headache,” Lissa said. “I think it’s sinus. I took some Advil, but it’s not helping.”
“Dr. White gave me something good for that last time I went to see him.” Her mother went into the bathroom next to the linen closet and returned with a glass of water and a tablet. “It works, and it won’t make you sleepy.”
Lissa took the pill and a swallow of water.
“He said to remind you that you’re overdue for a checkup.”
“I know. I’ve been putting it off.” Lissa drank the rest of the water. As much as she loved Dr. White, she wished she could see someone different for her exam, a doctor who hadn’t known her since she was six. Someone who would only see her as a condition, not as a person. In case of bad news, she thought it might be easier if it were treated with clinical dispassion. Not that she felt as if she were seriously ill. It was only that she didn’t feel herself. In addition to the frequent headaches, she wasn’t sleeping, her appetite was low and, last week, she’d fainted. She kept telling herself it was stress. She wanted it to be.
Lissa’s mother resumed her perch on the stool. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I wanted to check on you, you know, because of—”
“I’ve been rereading Dad’s old letters,” Lissa’s mother interrupted. She half lifted a cardboard box from her lap. “Did I ever show you this one?” She handed Lissa a sheet of onionskin paper, sepia tinged at the edges and covered in her dad’s cramped writing.
“‘My Dearest Em,’” her mother read, “‘my dearest one, my love, how will I tell you this news, the awful thing that has happened. I’m not the same, not your sweetest—not your sweetest honey—’” She caught her lip, took a breath. “‘I’m not sure I’m even a man anymore.’”
“Mom...” Lissa’s murmur was half in sorrow, half in protest.
She hadn’t read her dad’s letters home from Vietnam, but she knew how he’d been injured there. Her mother had told her and Tucker the story, how in the aftermath of battle, he’d rescued a four-year-old North Vietnamese boy, an enemy’s son, and run with him from a burning house, but before he could make it back to the location where his company was bivouacked, sniper fire had caught him in the meaty part of his calf below his left knee. Still, he’d kept running with the child; he’d brought the boy to safety against all odds, and sixty-one days later, they’d amputated the gangrenous, blasted remains of his lower leg. He’d nearly died from the infection.
Lissa was still in awe of the story. She couldn’t imagine the selfless act of courage it had taken. She remembered socking a kid once in third grade who called her dad a cripple. She’d been sent home that day for fighting, but she hadn’t been punished. Her mother only said the boy was probably frightened at the idea of her father having only one leg. It hadn’t made sense to Lissa. Her dad wasn’t different from any other dad with two legs. In fact, he was stronger than any man she knew. She never thought of him as handicapped. Most of her life, she’d scarcely been aware of it.
She gave her father’s letter back to her mother. “Daddy doesn’t look good, Mom. I’m worried about him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him quite so shaky.”
“That missing girl—she’s—”
“But it doesn’t necessarily mean anything, you know?”
Her mother hugged her elbows. “They don’t make linen closets with so much room in them anymore, do they? I played house in here when I was little, did I ever tell you?”
“Sure, Momma.” Lissa went along. “We played house in here, too, remember? You and me and Tucker.”
“It’s just the right size. Your grandma let me have a little table. And dishes. Such pretty dishes. I loved being in here—I still do. The way the old floor creaks and how the sunlight comes through the door, and the smell—it’s a comfort to me.” She drew in a breath, eyes closed. “Some people think it’s musty, but to me it smells safe. It smells the way love would smell, if love had a smell.”
Lissa knelt beside her. “Tucker will be home soon, Momma, or he’ll call. He always does.” The assurance sounded no better now than when she’d offered it to her dad.
Her mother touched Lissa’s cheek, lifted her fingers, trailing them across Lissa’s brow. “You and your brother are so different,” she said. “Tucker’s blond, like me, like the Winters, but you favor your father with all that wonderful dark hair. You’re strong, too, like he is.”
They shared a silence.
“I want to help him, you know? But when he hits these dark places, when he retreats and goes into himself, I— It’s hard to know what to do.”
Lissa tucked a wayward strand of her mother’s hair behind her ear. It added to her worry, seeing her parents so undone, so not themselves. Abruptly, she held out a hand to her mother. “Come with me to Pecan Grove. It will do you good to get out of the house.”
“Oh, that would be lovely, but you’ve got work to do out there, and I’m fine. Dad and I both are. Don’t worry about us.” Her mother stood up making shooing motions, then suddenly she cupped Lissa’s face in both hands. “Do you know how much I love you?” Her eyes were swimming with tears.
Lissa nodded; her own throat knotted.
“Sometimes, I think we get so focused on Tucker, we forget about you. Forget to tell you how special you are. Please say you know how much we love you.”
Lissa slid her palms over her mother’s hands. “Of course I do, Momma.”
She gathered herself and gave Lissa’s cheeks a final pat. “Don’t pay any attention to me. I just need to hear from your brother. Once he’s home, and he and your dad have mended their fences, we can get back to normal.”
“What’s normal?” Lissa asked, and she was glad when her mother smiled.
* * *
She stopped outside her dad’s office door on her way down the front hall. “Daddy?” she called softly, but he didn’t answer her, and she didn’t call out again. Passing the dining room on her way out of the house, her path was diverted when she caught sight of the collection of family photos arrayed across the top of her mother’s baby grand piano. Some were casual shots that her dad had taken back when she and Tucker were little. Others were formal studio shots. She picked one up, a five-by-seven framed in wood. It was of the four of them sitting on a sofa. Her mother was holding Tucker on her lap, and Lissa was leaning against her daddy’s good leg, smiling, gap-toothed. Tucker was in shorts and had a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on one chubby knee.
Setting the studio portrait down, she picked up another, a shot her father had taken that her mother had framed in silver. It was from Easter Sunday. Lissa remembered the year was 1981. Tucker turned three that year, and she turned seven. They were outside on the front porch, dressed in their church finery. Lissa’s outfit, a ruffle-hemmed sheath made of pink dotted swiss, with pink patent-leather Mary Janes and a purse to match, had been a favorite. Her mother had corralled her glossy, straight, dark hair into a French braid that hung midway down her back and ended in a tied puff of pink chiffon. Lissa wore it in a French braid to this day, to keep it out of her face, especially when she was working or painting. Growing up, Tucker called the braid her donkey tail to annoy her. He’d grabbed it and held it to his chin, letting the end dangle, making a long beard of it, teasing her. She’d wanted to clobber him.
She touched the tip of her finger to the image of his face, then put the photo back. Looking at it left her feeling some nostalgic mix of happy and sad. She guessed it was because life had never been as simple again after that year.
* * *
She was almost to the interstate when her cell phone rang.
“Where are you?” Evan asked when she answered.
“Why? What’s wrong?” She knew what he would say. Still, her heart paused when Evan said, “Tucker was here, at the office, and not fifteen minutes after he left, the police showed up, looking for him.”
She put on her signal, turned right into a gas station and parked. “Do you know where he went?” she asked, and she almost couldn’t hear her own voice over the hammer of her pulse.
“He didn’t say. He wanted to see you, and I said you were at your folks’, but I don’t think he’ll go there.”
“No.” Lissa pressed her fingertips above her right eye where the pain had settled into an ache dulled by the medication her mother had given her.
“He’s driving some girl’s car, an old Volkswagen. He says his Tahoe broke down on the freeway last night, and she helped him out. He said he’s been in Austin.”
“That’s nowhere near—”
“Where the dead woman was found. Yeah, it’s a relief.”
“Can he prove it?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say, and all the cops would tell me is that they wanted to question him, but not what it was about.”
Lissa rested her head against the seatback. “Well, it could be anything. An unpaid speeding ticket. Lord knows he’s gotten a slew of those.”
“Yeah,” Evan said, because, like her, he wanted it to be that simple. They both did. And maybe it was.
“I wonder if he’s called Mom and Dad,” she said.
“I don’t think so. He lost his cell phone.”
“Figures. Is he getting another one?”
“He says he’s busted.”
“You didn’t give him any money.”
“No, and to his credit, he didn’t ask.”
“Did I ever tell you you’re my hero?” Lissa ran the tip of her finger along the lower curve of the steering wheel, biting her lip, trying not to cry.
“Yeah,” Evan said, “but I can always go for hearing it again.”
They decided Lissa wouldn’t call her parents until she knew something concrete. She was on her way to the office when her cell phone rang again. Glancing at the caller ID, she saw her own home phone number, the landline, and her heart faltered.
“Tucker?” she said when she answered, because it could only be him.
“That’s me,” he said.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“Hiding?” He laughed.
Lissa didn’t. “Not funny. So not funny,” she repeated, and the breath she drew bumped over the renewal of tears, the hot mix of relief, aggravation and outright fury that jammed her throat. If Tucker were here, she would pull off the road, she thought, and kill him.
“Can you come home?” he said. “We need to talk.”
“What is it, Tuck?” Something in his voice deepened her sense of disquiet. Even when he answered that it was nothing to worry about, she wasn’t mollified. Instead, what rose in her mind was the image of the two of them from that long ago Easter Sunday in 1981, and this time it brought with it a colder, darker memory of how quickly life could change, just the way it had then, in the space of one single, terrifying afternoon.
3
THE I-45 INTERSTATE that bisected the heart of town wasn’t really an interstate at all given that the entire length of it, some 294 miles, fell inside Texas borders. It was anchored on its northern end by the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex and on its southern end by the bay-front city of Galveston. The drive down to the beach wasn’t bad. If you started out early enough, it made a nice day trip. As children, Lissa and Tucker went with their parents, and when Lissa was older, high school age, she went with her girlfriends.
The last time was twenty years ago, the weekend after her high school graduation. She wouldn’t ever forget it because it was the same weekend she realized Evan wasn’t just some guy who worked for her dad. That weekend she went with a girlfriend to a party in a bay-front condo where cocaine was heaped in a bowl on the coffee table. It scared the shit out of her, but her girlfriend was all over it.
Lissa tried it, too, one tiny line—how could she not?—and then she freaked out. She was certain she was going to die of an overdose or become an addict. She felt wild, as if she had somehow crawled outside her own skin. In her mania, she went out to the beach to dance, alone, putting herself in even worse jeopardy as it turned out. She was fortunate, later, to escape behind the locked door of the bathroom, and when she spied the telephone hanging on the wall near the toilet, she did the only thing that seemed reasonable; she dialed her dad’s office number. Thankfully—it still gave her chills to remember her luck—it was Evan who answered, Evan who came to retrieve her. Who knew what her dad might have done? He might have brought a gun or the police or both. He might have killed her, given his temper. He didn’t often lose it, but he could, if the right trigger was pulled.
Instead, it was Evan who walked her up and down the beach along the water’s edge, while she jabbered like a madwoman until the stuff left her system. He took her to an all-night café and bought her orange juice and a doughnut, too, and suggested she was probably not good drug-addict material, and then he drove her home. At some point before that, he called Tucker and alerted him. Lissa remembered now that it was Tucker who covered for her with their parents, who waited up for her.
It was usually the other way around, Lissa taking care of Tucker.
She sat at the I-45 intersection, waiting for the light to change, thinking of him waiting at her house to tell her God knew what. It wouldn’t be anything good, not if the police were looking for him. When she had called Evan back and told him she was headed home, that Tucker was there, he said he would come, but as much as she might long for his support, she told him no. It was bad enough that she was missing work. She thought of her foolish behavior all those years ago, how she could so easily have fallen into harm’s way and, instead, had fallen— She paused. Not in love with Evan, she thought, not at first. Something better, richer. It had been more like falling into deep and abiding friendship and gratitude. Love, the full-out passionate, can’t get enough of you lust—Lissa’s face warmed—that came later; it had been a slow, sweet progression, like the unfolding of a flower’s petals into a fuller bloom. That long-ago day in Galveston, she hadn’t had a clue about what she and Evan would come to mean to each other.
She’d still been woozy when he handed her carefully through the door to her little brother. Tucker had been all of fourteen, or fifteen, maybe. Lissa could see him in her mind’s eye, hustling her up the stairs, leading her quietly by their folks’ bedroom. He’d been upset with her, that she’d been drunk and strung out with people—men—she didn’t know. Any one of whom might have been a psycho, he said. He brought her an aspirin and a glass of water, and because he wanted to make a point about the danger she’d put herself in, he gave her a folder full of newspaper clippings he’d been collecting about the girls from communities near Galveston who had been found dead around there. So many, dating as far back as the 1970s, that there were rumors of multiple serial killers working in the area.
Lissa knew of Tucker’s interest in crime. During his short college career, he talked about studying criminology, but she didn’t know much about the I-45 serial killings, or his fascination with them before that summer night when he took out all the contents of his folder and spread them around her on the bed and on the floor at her feet. There were photos of the victims and of the crime scene locations, most of which were strung along a battered stretch of I-45 the locals called the Gulf Freeway, an approximately fifty-mile stretch of the interstate that connected the unraveling southern edge of Houston to the Galveston Causeway. The land the highway bisected was riddled with tree-clotted, snake-infested bayous and the skeletal remains of oilfield equipment that sat forgotten and rusting in the mean shadows of smog-choked refineries. There were roads, too, old service roads made of chipped asphalt covered over with hard-packed dirt. They crisscrossed the terrain, and when the night wind was right, the smoke from the nearby refineries drifted down their rutted tracks like ghosts.
It was a murderer’s paradise, the perfect dumping ground, one that over the years became known collectively as the killing fields. And the four-lane stretch of interstate that roped the crime scenes together, the Gulf Freeway, was referred to in other less flattering terms as the Highway to Hell, or the Road to Perdition, or the Killing Corridor.
Lissa remembered being spooked by Tucker’s stories that night. She remembered thinking that while his interest did seem a bit obsessive and a little unusual for a kid his age, it hadn’t struck her as weird. Not given his worry about her, that in her inebriated state she might have fallen prey to some monster killer. He told her he’d been reading up on the FBI, everything about criminal profiling he could find. John Douglas was his hero, he said, and when Lissa shrugged in ignorance, Tucker said, “Are you kidding? He’s the guy who profiled the Green River Killer. That’s how the FBI got him.”
Tucker dreamed of being like John Douglas, of doing what Douglas did. Lissa thought he could have, too; he’d been one of the smart kids, at least through elementary school. But he’d also been labeled emotional, high-strung, ADD—whatever name the teacher du jour chose to assign to him, as if the label alone would be adequate to explain his behavior. Her parents sought help for him. Tucker was tested and counseled, but no one could come up with a diagnosis that was definitive. It was frustrating, especially for her folks, but for Tucker, too.
He was a mystery even to himself.
Lissa pulled into her driveway now and parked behind the dented, yellow VW, eyeing it as she passed by, wondering about the girl it belonged to. Not a nice girl. Nice girls weren’t in the habit of picking up stray guys from the side of the road in daylight, much less at night. Lissa was judging—she knew she was—but Tucker had a reputation for attracting the wrong sort of women, the kind who would lean on him and look up to him. He liked helping them; he liked it when they took his advice.
She found him in the kitchen sitting at the table. “Hey,” she said, shrugging out of her jacket.
“Hey yourself.” He found her gaze but let it go after only a moment.
“Evan says you were in Austin? You couldn’t call?”
“Can you spare me the lecture, Liss? I already know I’m a fuckup, okay?”
She hung her jacket on the back of a chair, not saying anything, feeling her jaw tighten. Be something else, then, she wanted to say. Please...
“Look, I know you’re pissed because I missed the meeting with Pederson, but I went by the office and gave Evan the plans, so it’ll be fine now.”
“God, Tucker, you’re such an idiot! We were already behind schedule out there. We’re losing money hand over fist. Dad got hold of the books—he’s about to have a coronary.”
“What’s that got to do with me? It’s not like I work there anymore.”
Lissa closed her eyes and took a breath. The work wasn’t the issue. None of this—the schedule, Dad having the ledger, the fact that Tucker had been fired again—was important. But it was as if in some part of her mind she entertained a fantasy that if she concentrated on something else, she could hold off the calamity she could sense was shaping itself just beyond the periphery of her vision.
She watched Tucker’s feet dance under the table. He looked rough, as if he hadn’t slept or had a decent meal in any one of the twelve days he’d been gone. Mud rimmed the sole of one tennis shoe, the hem of one leg of his jeans. She noticed a cut beneath his right eye, a tiny, upside-down crescent moon inked in blood.
She leaned against the counter. “What were you doing in Austin?”
“Helping out a friend.”
“What friend?”
“You don’t know him. Guy’s got a band—he’s looking for a bass guitarist. I might go on the road with them.”
Lissa kept Tucker’s gaze, and he hung in with her, not letting hers go this time, and she was somehow relieved. Liars couldn’t look you in the eye. She said, “A man with a band, huh? I figured it would be one of your stray-dog friends.”
“Not this time.”
Lissa went to the pantry. “Do you want something to eat?”
“Nah. Thanks. I stopped at Mickey D’s on the way here. I’d take a cup of coffee, though, if it’s no trouble.”
“Since when do you drink coffee?”
“Since it got colder than hell outside.” The grin he shot her was surface, a token meant to placate her. It didn’t.
“You need to call Mom and Dad, Tuck.”
“I’ll call Mom, but I’ve got nothing to say to the old man.”
Lissa could have asked him right then why the police were looking for him, but she didn’t. Instead, she rinsed out the carafe while he told her about his Tahoe, that it had died coming back into town and that he’d gotten lucky when a girl pulled off the road to help him.
“Did you know her?” Lissa asked.
“I do now,” Tucker answered, cocking an eyebrow. “I spent the night at her place.”
“You’re hopeless, you know that?”
“Yeah, but you still love me, right?” His smile now was pure Tucker, full of mischief and his affection for her. Full of so many small teasing moments they’d shared just like this one. Full of all that connected them—family secrets, sibling histories, the ties that bind.
Lissa would tell people they were close, and in her next breath she would say they had nothing in common. Either way it was true. She’d taught him to read; she’d taught him to tie his shoes and how to color inside the lines. She’d read aloud to him and sung songs with him. “Itsy Bitsy Spider” was his favorite. He’d loved playing the finger game that went with it. At one time he’d even slept with a big, stuffed spider. It had been purple, and he’d named it Itsy. She wondered what had become of it. They’d played endless rounds of Clue and Monopoly on rainy days and shared a love of Bon Jovi and the first Rocky movie. Sometimes she understood Tucker completely; other times he was an enigma, a puzzle to which she was missing a vital piece.
She turned off the tap. “What happened to your face?”
He touched his cheek. “This? Cut myself shaving.” His feet danced.
She looked out the kitchen window. The coffeemaker sighed. She said, “I hate what’s happening, Tuck.”
“It’s not your fault Pop’s an asshole.”
He thought she was referring to the fight he’d had with their father, the latest blowout, and she was, but that was only part of it. The cup and saucer she handed him rattled in his big, work-roughened hands. He had strong, narrow wrists and long, tapered fingers that could measure an octave on the piano. Their mother had taught him to play, and he’d been a willing student until he picked up a friend’s guitar one day in high school. He’d played in a couple of bands, and Lissa thought he was good, but she wasn’t an expert. She only knew what she liked, and anyway, she kind of agreed with her dad. It wouldn’t be reliable, earning a living that way.
Dad had wanted Tucker to play baseball, as if that would be a more stable occupation.
“The old man told me not to come back.” Tucker blew over the top of his coffee cup. “So now, in addition to being jobless, I’m homeless.”
“He didn’t mean it. You know how he is. He’s cooled off now. Trust me.”
“I think I’m going to move in with Morgan, anyway.”
“Who’s Morgan?” Lissa sat across from him and stirred the sugar substitute from two blue packets into her cup.
“The girl I met last night. Her dad owns a car dealership. She thinks he’ll hire me.”
“What about the band? I thought going on the road with them was the plan.”
“Whichever works out, I guess.”
Where were you really? Lissa couldn’t bring herself to ask. She was filled with foreboding, heavy with it. She cleared her throat.
“What?” Tucker gulped his coffee.
Too fast, she thought, because he grimaced as if he’d burned his mouth. When he asked for a Coke, she brought it to him, along with the Houston Chronicle. She unfolded it.
He popped the top on his soft drink. “What’s this?”
“Do you know her?” Lissa sat down.
“This girl?” Tucker studied the picture. Nothing altered in his expression or in his voice. Lissa started to breathe, and then he said, “It’s Jessica Sweet. Holy shit!” He brought his glance to Lissa’s. “She’s dead?”
“You knew her.” Lissa’s heart throbbed in her ears.
“Yeah. Miranda introduced us. They were friends.”
“Oh, Tucker. She was a dancer, too? Did they work at the same club?”
“Yeah. So what? After Miranda was killed, we hung out together, but really, I hardly knew her. Jessica was Senator Sweet’s daughter. You remember him, U.S. senator, back in the day? She was kind of wild, got into trouble with drugs and stuff. I heard she cost her old man his last campaign—”
“Tucker! She’s dead!”
“Yeah, that’s what it says here. I can’t believe it.”
“She and Miranda were friends. They worked at the same club. You knew her. The police are looking for you. It’s happening all over again....”
“No, Liss. There’s no history between us, no big soap-opera drama. In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t find her body.”
Lissa didn’t answer.
“Come on, you know I had nothing to do with this, right? I mean you’re not stressing because you think I’m, like, guilty, are you? I didn’t even know the chick was missing until this morning when I saw the news.”
“A second ago, you said you couldn’t believe it, as if you hadn’t heard—”
“I should have known!” He tossed up his hands. “I should have guessed what you’d think. I bet Pop’s all over it, too. I’m a killer, right? The family lunatic, the psycho. That’s why Pop doesn’t want me home.” He stood up fast enough to rock the chair, grabbing his jacket, shoving his arms into the sleeves.
“Come on, Tucker. You have to admit it’s weird. Twice? In two years? Jessica was found in almost the exact location where Miranda was. You knew both of them. You must see how it looks.”
“Yeah. I see how it looks. I just never expected you would believe in how it looks. I thought you would believe in me.”
“I do, of course I do!” Lissa picked up a towel, wound her hands in it. “It’s just—”
“I’m only going to say this one time, okay? I didn’t kill Jessica. I didn’t kill Miranda. I’ve never killed anybody.” His gaze was hard on hers.
She tented her hands over her mouth, said his name, fighting tears, fighting for breath.
“I’ve got to go.” He shoved the chair under the table. “Thanks for the Coke.”
“No, wait. Where will you go? The police—”
“Fuck ’em,” he said, and then he was gone, slamming the back door behind him.
4
WHEN LISSA CALLED late that morning to say Tucker was with her and seemed all right, Roy didn’t share Emily’s relief; he acted as if it didn’t matter to him at all. He went out the back door and down the steps, and Emily watched him cross the backyard and disappear into his workshop. She got out the ingredients to bake a chocolate cake, Tucker’s favorite. She wanted to have something special on hand to feed him when he got home, but she was irked at Roy. Suppose he wouldn’t even try and sort things out this time? She creamed the sugar with the butter in the bowl, but all at once, the mood to bake left her, and untying her apron, she walked out of her kitchen and around the corner to Anna Brinker’s house.
They were lifelong friends, still living in the houses they were raised in and that their mothers had been raised in. Like many of the other historic homes in the neighborhood, Anna’s house, a pale green, turreted Eastlake, was also a Hiram Winter creation. When Emily and Anna were sixteen, a new girl their same age moved with her family into the Winter-built, red-brick, Georgian colonial next door to Anna. Natalie’s closet was crammed with great-looking clothes she was willing to share and she could use her mother’s turquoise-blue Cadillac convertible pretty much whenever she wanted it. She drove Anna and Emily everywhere, top down, radio blasting. They became inseparable and never really lost touch, not even after high school. It was their good fortune when as newlyweds they returned with husbands in tow to the old neighborhood, like migratory birds, to live in the homes of their girlhood.
They shared nearly everything: pregnancies and diapers, recipes, celebrations. They raised their children together. Emily and Roy had Lissa and Tucker; Anna and her husband, Harvey, had their son, Cory; and Nat and her husband, Benny McPherson, had their daughter, Holly. Lissa was the oldest, Cory was the youngest and Tucker and Holly were the same age, born only weeks apart. It was a good life, filled with good times.
But like all good things, those times ended. Not easily. Not in any way Emily cared to remember.
Stirring a teaspoon of sugar into her coffee now, she glanced at Anna. “I probably shouldn’t have come. I’m not fit company in the mood I’m in.”
“Nonsense.” Anna patted Emily’s arm. “Is Tucker coming home? Did Lissa say?”
“She didn’t, and it worries me. I have a feeling they got into it, but it’s not as if she’d tell me. You know how those two keep secrets.” She was no different, Emily thought. She was keeping her own secrets. But when tempers were already strained to the max, sometimes keeping what you knew to yourself was for the best. Sometimes, if you just gave a situation a little time, it would resolve itself.
“We need something to nibble on.” Anna scooted from her chair and went to rummage in the pantry.
She was biting her tongue, but soon enough, she would speak her mind. She would give Emily her opinion, the benefit of her advice. In times of trouble, that’s what friends did, but Emily didn’t necessarily always want to hear what Anna had to say. As close as they were, and as much as they shared, Emily didn’t feel that Anna understood about Tucker. How could she? His nature was so much more complicated than Cory’s or Lissa’s. Who knew how or why? Emily had used up Tucker’s childhood trying to sort it out, to sort him out. It still mystified her that two children, who shared the same parents, could be so utterly different in almost every way. But it was watching Tucker struggle with those very differences, watching him try so hard to fit in, that made Emily want to defend him, to shield him. She could wish all she liked to have a son like Cory, one who fit the norm, a regular kid, but she didn’t.
Perfect Cory, Emily thought, and then she was ashamed.
Anna turned from the pantry, holding out a box of Milanos, her favorite cookie. She smiled.
“I don’t think those are on our diet, are they?” Emily smiled, too.
“Think of it this way. We can eat these or take Prozac. I think these are cheaper and better for us. Am I right?” Anna waggled her eyebrows, making a joke.
Emily laughed outright and then wondered how she could, given the circumstances.
Anna arranged the cookies on a plate and brought it to the table. “What has Roy said?”
Her casual tone didn’t fool Emily for a moment. “Oh, you know Roy,” she said just as casually, wanting to avoid contention, while at the same time knowing the impossibility, because she needed to talk this out, and who else was there but Anna? Emily flashed a glance at her and found her looking back.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Emily said, “but it isn’t as simple as blaming Roy every time Tucker disappears.”
“Did I say I blamed him?”
“You don’t have to. I know you think he’s controlling.”
“I’ve heard you say it yourself.”
“Yes, and you know why.”
“Look, I’m as sorry as you that Roy’s parents were tough on him and that he lost his leg in a war few of us wanted any part of, but you aren’t responsible for that. If memory serves, you tried to keep him from going.”
It was true. Roy had been two weeks into his first spring training camp with the Astros in Kissimmee, and happier, he said, than any man had a right to be, when his draft notice came. The effect was devastating. He was terrified of losing her and his budding baseball career. She was the one who said they should go to Canada. She had often wondered since what would have happened if he had agreed. Who would they be now? He would have been granted amnesty eventually. Maybe he would have found a place to work in baseball again. One thing was certain: he would still have both his legs.
Anna said, “I’m not passing judgment, Em. You know that, don’t you?”
Emily said she did, although Anna’s opinion of Roy always seemed faintly condemnatory to her. She toyed with her teaspoon, feeling Anna’s concern, and she was sorry for it. She regretted being the cause, and when Anna asked, “What is it?” she hesitated a long moment, drawing in a breath, before admitting that she was worried about Roy.
“He’s so quiet and withdrawn since he retired, and this morning, he talked to Lissa about tearing down the lake house.” She caught Anna’s gaze. “What if it’s coming back, all that old post-traumatic stress business?”
“You don’t think he’s drinking.”
“No.” Emily was definite.
“But you think he might—what? Hurt someone, himself? Is it that bad again?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid to talk to him about it.” She paused. “He’s really had it with Tucker this time. I’m not sure what will happen when he comes home. I kind of dread it, actually.”
“Oh, Em.”
She stood up in the silence that fell and went to Anna’s kitchen sink to look out the window. “I was foolish to think that because Miranda was dead the craziness would be over. I so wanted to believe Tucker would come to his senses, but he hasn’t. He still associates with those people, her friends. Other women like her. It’s as if she’s still manipulating him, even from the grave.”
“They were together a long time.”
“I should have put my foot down at the very beginning. They were too serious about each other. But Roy said if we argued, if I made a thing of it, it would only make them more determined. How I wish I had listened to my own intuition.”
“You can’t blame yourself, Em. Miranda was a sweet girl growing up, remember? No one, not even her parents, knew why she went so far off the track. Tucker only wanted to help her.”
“For all the good it did him, and still, he persists. If he’s so determined to rescue the downtrodden, I’d much rather he’d become a missionary and render aid in some third-world country. It would be safer.”
When Emily sat down again, Anna patted her arm, and they shared a look deepened by years of familiarity and affection.
“The girl who was missing,” Emily said, “Jessica Sweet, did you hear they found her?”
Anna nodded, and Emily sensed that Anna had been biding the time, waiting until Emily brought it up.
“I’m so worried she’ll have some connection to Miranda. They were found in the same patch of woods.”
“I heard that on the news.”
“I need for him to come home, Anna. I need to look into his eyes, then I’ll know—”
“Know?”
“Whether he—” Emily hesitated. Whether he is a murderer. She wanted to say it—to test out the possibility of it being true with Anna, her dearest friend in all the world—but even if she could have brought the words past the knot in her throat, they wouldn’t be accurate. She couldn’t really tell anything about Tucker by looking at him anymore. Now that he was grown, he was as much of an enigma to her as to anyone. All smoke and mirrors. Mercurial. Here and gone. All his life she’d sought answers, the key to understanding his nature. Had he come with a different temperament, one that was more tightly wired? Was it the fault of genetics, or had he been marked by early childhood trauma, that handful of years when Roy had been so unstable? She didn’t know.
Like Roy, Tucker suffered from night terrors. When he was a child, Emily had gone to him on those nights when he’d wakened, flailing and shouting out, and she had comforted him as best she could until he fell back asleep. But she no longer did that. He was a man now, and she imagined the man’s fear exceeded the scope of her ability to reassure him; by now, its boundaries would be much larger than the mother-size shelter of her embrace. Or so she assumed.
He got his comfort elsewhere, in places she didn’t want to think about. And that was the worst part of it for her. That in the wake of his random disappearances she was left to form assumptions based on nothing of substance, the fallout from a single childhood trauma, the failure to properly parent versus the heritability of a hotter temper. What, of any of it, was valid?
“Em?” Anna urged. “You can talk to me. You know that, right? You know nothing you tell me—”
A knock came on the back door, a sharp rapping, and they both turned to look in that direction. Anna went to answer it, and when she reappeared, Emily was alarmed to see that Roy was behind her. He was white-faced, and a muscle that might be rage or fear or both was darting like a minnow under the skin at the corner of his jaw.
Emily’s heart closed as tightly as a fist. Her breath stopped. “Tucker?” she said faintly. “Has something happened to him?”
“The cops are questioning a suspect about that girl’s murder,” Roy said. “It was just on the news. It’s Tucker, Em. They’ve got him.”
She felt her knees weaken. Anna’s palm slid under her forearm. Their eyes met. “Do you want me to call Joe?”
Emily’s face warmed. Joe Merchant was a Houston homicide detective now, but once, while Roy was away fighting in Vietnam, Joe had worked as a security guard for her mother, and she and Joe had very briefly been lovers. The affair ended; the friendship didn’t. Emily had needed for it not to end. When Roy came home from the war, he’d been so damaged in every possible way, and out of her grief for him, and feeling unable to cope with the magnitude of his injuries, she relied on Joe for his strength, his advice. Once Roy healed, the bond persisted, even though they would go months without speaking. Anna knew of their relationship, but Emily wasn’t sure about Roy. He didn’t ask, and it didn’t feel wrong to her, keeping it for herself.
But Anna’s mention of Joe’s name now worried her. Not because of her history with Joe, but because of the legal bind Tucker had gotten himself into last November that Joe had helped her to resolve. Wanting to spare Roy the stress, she had said nothing to him about it, and she’d been afraid ever since of the consequences if he were to find out. She looked at him, but if he was aware of her gaze, her anxiety, he gave no sign. He was informing Anna sharply that since it was a Lincoln County case, he doubted they’d want interference from Houston.
“Is Tucker all right?” Emily knew her question was ridiculous, but she wanted Joe, the whole idea of him, banished, gone from the room.
“Oh, sure, Em. He’s great. Jesus Christ.” Disgust rimmed Roy’s tone, but remembering Anna, he worked his mouth into something that was meant to resemble a smile, and taking Emily’s elbow, he said, “We need to get home.”
Leading her from Anna’s kitchen, his gait was unsteady, and when he staggered, if it hadn’t been for Emily, that she was somehow able to keep him upright, he might have fallen. She knew he knew it, too. She felt his humiliation, the blow leaning on her, even for a moment, was to his pride.
“Call me,” Anna said after them, and Emily heard the apprehension in her voice.
“I talked to Lissa,” Roy said once they were out of Anna’s house and out of her earshot. “She and Evan are on their way to the sheriff’s office to see what they can find out.”
“Has Tucker been arrested?”
“I guess we’ll know soon enough.”
They climbed the back porch stairs, and going into the kitchen, Emily’s gaze fell on the abandoned mixing bowl with the ingredients for a chocolate cake scattered around it; her apron was discarded over the back of a kitchen chair. The sight was so ordinary, and she felt out of place somehow, as if given all the brewing calamity she had no right to be here, to even think of baking a cake. And yet, it was all she wanted to do. “They shouldn’t be the ones who have to go after Tucker every time,” she said to Roy.
“You can’t handle it, and you damn sure don’t want me going down there,” he answered. “That’s what you told me last time,” he said in response to her heated look.
She held his gaze, clinging to the hope that Roy was referring to the time in April when they’d given Tucker two thousand dollars to clear his traffic tickets, and not to the time in November when she’d contacted Joe for help after Tucker was arrested and charged with stalking. Keeping Roy in ignorance then had been out of concern for him, but he would likely not see it that way.
“You do remember telling me that?” Roy’s stare was penetrating, unnerving.
“You always lose your temper. It doesn’t help.”
He didn’t argue.
“Will they bring Tucker home?” Tying her apron around her waist, she crossed to the refrigerator. “I was going to bake a chicken for dinner. If I do two, there will be enough for all of us. We can sit down together when they get here.”
“I don’t want Tucker here, if they let him go.”
“What?” Emily turned to Roy. “He’s our son. Of course you want him here.”
“Not if it’s going to be the way it was when Miranda was murdered. Cops and reporters everywhere. Phone ringing all the goddamn time. I swear if Tucker gets pulled into this, if he knew this girl, too—” Roy pivoted on his metal foot, then pivoted back, locking Emily with his glare. “If that’s the case, you and your friend Joe won’t be able to pay his way out of this one, Em. None of us will. You do realize that?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She didn’t know how she managed to keep her voice level. Her heart was beating fast, so fast, she put her hand there.
Roy huffed his disdain and, leaving the kitchen, disappeared into his office, closing the door.
Emily followed him; she balanced her hand on the knob, and resting her forehead against the panel, she said, “I’m sorry, I was only trying to protect you.” But then, lifting her head, she thought how badly she had failed, that in truth, she hadn’t protected any one of them at all.
5
THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE and the county jail were housed in the courthouse, an imposing three-story, old colonial-style building on the Hardys Walk town square. Evan pulled into a space in the parking lot at the back, where parking was free. Out in front they’d have to feed a meter, and Lissa knew from previous experience there wasn’t any telling how long they’d be.
Inside, the duty officer, a heavyset guy, didn’t bother looking up when Lissa and Evan approached. He was engrossed in reading a magazine, or pretending to be, like maybe if he didn’t look up, they would go away. Lissa steadied her breath. “I’m looking for my brother,” she said. “Tucker Lebay?”
The officer took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes.
“We were told he was brought in here earlier this afternoon for questioning,” Evan said.
“Wait here.” The duty officer slid off the stool and headed for a door at the end of the counter.
Lissa turned to Evan, running her fingers around her ears. Her hands were shaking; she was shaking. Evan slipped his arm around her.
“I hate this,” she said.
“I know, babe. Me, too.”
“Daddy said not to bring Tucker home. What are we going to do? I can’t tell Tucker that.”
Before Evan could answer, the duty cop reappeared, resuming his post. “Sergeant Garza’ll be out in a sec. You can sit over there on the bench, if you want.”
Evan sat, but Lissa didn’t. She paced and watched the big white-faced wall clock, marking the tiny jerks of the minute hand as it hooked each second, and when the door at the end of the counter opened again, she flinched. Evan stood up and came to Lissa’s side as the woman approached them. She appeared to be Hispanic, dark-haired, slim, maybe thirty-five, dressed in a dark gray jacket and skirt, a pair of low-heeled black pumps. She looked businesslike, professional. Lissa couldn’t read her expression. She didn’t give it much thought other than to assume it was deliberate, that looking impassive was part of Garza’s uniform. It didn’t occur to her then there might be more to it.
The woman introduced herself. “I’m Detective Sergeant Cynthia Garza. Lincoln County Criminal Investigation Division. What can I do for you folks?”
“You’re questioning my brother about Jessica Sweet’s murder, is that right?”
“Yes, we—”
“Does he have a lawyer?”
“He hasn’t asked for one.”
“Well, I’m asking for one on his behalf.” Lissa spoke strongly, surprising herself. In hindsight, it would seem laughable, her idea that she could control any of what was happening.
“I think it’s a bit premature, but even if it weren’t, it’s actually his call,” Garza said.
“Are you arresting him?”
Evan moved more closely to Lissa’s side; she felt his warmth, his radiant calm. He said, “The family is understandably upset, so anything you can tell us—”
“Look, we’re just talking to him. It shouldn’t be too much longer,” Garza added, walking away.
“Wait!” Lissa trailed in Garza’s wake.
She didn’t respond, didn’t so much as glance back. She went through the door, and it snapped shut behind her.
Evan walked Lissa to the bench and sat her down. She put her face into her hands. She didn’t want to feel the panic that was trying to stand up in her stomach. “Tell me this isn’t happening,” she said. “It feels like déjà vu all over again.” Her voice broke.
Evan put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her against him. He murmured things, nonsense mostly. She felt his breath stir the hair at her temple. It both comforted her and made her impatient when he said it would be okay. Twenty minutes passed and when the door opened in the wall behind the duty desk a second time, Lissa straightened.
Her eyes collided with Tucker’s; he lifted his chin, and his expression was at once chagrined and belligerent. But underneath, Lissa could see that Tucker was scared. Evan stood up and Lissa did, too, along with her panic. It made her feel light-headed and hot all at once. Her stomach rolled, and she put her hand there.
“Hey, guys,” Tucker said. “Can you dig this? That I’m back here again? It’s Sergeant Garza’s fault.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the detective. “She can’t get enough of me.”
“Tucker...” His name when Lissa said it was protest; it was despair. She glanced sidelong at the detective. Garza appeared unaffected, but who could say for sure?
“Don’t make any plans to leave the area, Mr. Lebay,” she said. “We might want to talk to you again.”
He raised his arm in acknowledgment. “Sure thing, sweetheart,” he said, but he was looking at Lissa and Evan. “Where were you, anyhow? You get that mess straightened out with Pederson? You guys know I’m sorry, right?” He shifted his feet, lifting the faded red Astros ball cap he wore, slapping it against his thigh, resettling it. “This?” He pronounced the word as if they had asked for an explanation. “It’s a bunch of shit. Big misunderstanding. Cindy here has got a bad case of the hots for me. She likes my company. Right, Cindy?” He turned to her and laughed, pushing the joke.
Lissa’s throat narrowed with the threat of tears, the heat of exasperation. Tucker did this when he was frightened; he made an ass of himself, but she could hardly explain that to the detective. She took Tucker’s arm. “Come on,” she said.
“Yeah, okay,” he answered. “I guess you better get me out of here before they change their minds and toss me in the slammer.” He laughed, but when he lifted his cap again, his hand was shaking.
Lissa led the way to the door, and Evan held it open, so it was her and Tucker going down the steps, shoulder to shoulder.
“When are you going to learn to mind your mouth, Tucker?” Lissa asked.
“It’s got nothing to do with my mouth, Liss.”
“Your shoes are untied.” She pointed this out as if it were important.
Tucker kept walking.
Lissa tried to catch Evan’s eye as they got into the truck, but he wouldn’t look at her. He never liked it when she and Tucker squabbled like children.
“You’d think someone from the media would be here,” Lissa said.
“Maybe we got lucky,” Evan said.
“Why?” Tucker glared at Lissa. “Because I’m a psycho?”
“I never said that, Tucker.”
“You might as well have.”
“Don’t make this about me. Okay? Tell me why the police are talking to you about this.”
“Because—” Tucker broke off, and Lissa heard him sigh as if he was reluctant but knew he wouldn’t get away without answering.
Evan glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
Tucker said, “I was with Chantelle the Saturday night before she disappeared, okay? I was the last person to be seen with her alive, according to the cops.”
“Chantelle?” Evan said.
“I thought you were in Austin,” Lissa said at the same time. “I thought you said you hardly knew her.”
“Chantelle is Jessica’s—it was Jessica’s stage name.” Tucker tapped Evan’s shoulder. “Dude, you should have seen the deck on her.”
“Tucker!” Lissa turned around as far as the seat belt would allow. “Please tell me you didn’t lie to me.”
“I didn’t. There was a party, okay? In Galveston. Before I went to Austin, I went down there with this other dude, and that’s where I hooked up with Chantelle. I didn’t want to tell you because you’d just give me shit about her.”
“What other dude?” Lissa asked.
“Hooked up how?” Evan asked.
“Have y’all been home? I bet Pop is beyond pissed.”
“Tucker, come on! This is serious.” Lissa hit the seatback with the heel of her hand. “There’s more to it than the fact you were with her, isn’t there? Isn’t there?” She insisted, because she could feel it. “Tell me,” she demanded.
“Okay, okay. Chantelle was into some kind of bad shit.”
“What do you mean exactly?” Evan looked in the rearview at Tucker again.
Lissa stifled an impulse to cover her ears.
“She did stuff just for kicks, like once she robbed a liquor store to see if she could get away with it.”
“And you were dating her.” Lissa didn’t bother hiding her disgust.
“It wasn’t dating, really. I just missed Miranda so damn much. Chantelle loved her, too. We helped each other.”
Lissa might have scoffed at that, but Evan cut her off, and it was just as well, she thought.
“The stuff she did,” Evan said, “you think there might be somebody who had it in for her, maybe bad enough to kill her?”
“It’s possible. She was hooking—”
“As in prostitution?” Evan asked.
“Prostitution!” Lissa was stunned, but then she wondered why.
“Miranda never went that far. I know how it looks—you probably don’t believe me, but just because you work for an escort service doesn’t mean you’re turning tricks. I tried to tell Jessica she was playing with fire. Looks like she got burned.”
“Oh, Tucker.” Lissa rested her head against the seatback. She had no idea what else to say. They passed several miles in silence.
Tucker broke it. “Bad thing is they got my DNA, got my prints, the works.”
Lissa whipped around, finding his gaze, even in the dark. “You let them? Why? Why didn’t you tell them you wanted a lawyer? God, Tucker! Didn’t you learn anything last time?”
“It would have looked bad if I didn’t cooperate.”
Evan asked, “Are you saying you had sex with Jess—Chantelle, whatever her name is...was? They’ll get a match?”
“They could, I guess, but one of the cops who ID’d her body works security part-time at Mystique. He knows Jessica and I hung around a lot together. You know the guy, Liss. Sonny Cade? I think he was in your class at Hardys Walk High, wasn’t he?”
“I remember him, but he was a couple of years behind me. He was kind of a thug, always in trouble. He’s a policeman now?”
“Yep. He’s still a tough guy, but he’s sharp. Runs his own security firm on the side. He knows a lot about the shit that goes on at the club.”
Lissa and Evan exchanged a glance, and Lissa knew they were sharing the same sinking sensation of dread.
Tucker touched her shoulder and said he was sorry, and when she didn’t respond, he settled back, but she was aware of him, of his distress, all the same. She knew his remorse was as real and true as her frustration. But he never changed; he just kept on making the same mistakes, again and again.
“Come on, Liss, it’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”
How? she wondered. But she didn’t ask. She doubted he had an answer, or if he did, it would be one he’d invented, to placate her.
“I wish you guys had been with us in Austin.” Tucker bent forward. “You would have loved it. That band I was telling you about? I knew the bass player. Me and the dude I was with—”
“What dude?” Lissa asked again.
“You don’t know him,” Tucker said. “The cool thing was we hooked up with these chicks, and we’re sitting there in the club—we got, like, this whole backstage vibe going on, because of me. Because I knew the drummer and the bass player. The chicks were into it. It was great.”
Lissa caught the flash of Tucker’s teeth in the road light and knew he was grinning.
“What can I say?” he asked, having fun with it. “The women love me.”
“Jesus, Tuck.” Evan shook his head.
“Sorry.”
For several moments there was only the sound of the tires, the hum of the truck’s engine. The cab was washed in a dirty swirl of road light.
Tucker bent forward, touching Lissa’s shoulder. “Look, all B.S. aside, I’m really sick about this. Underneath all that crazy shit, Chantelle was a nice girl. Not in the same class as Miranda, but she could have been if she hadn’t gotten messed up on coke and meth. I was trying to help her.”
“Oh, Tucker, when are you ever going to learn? Women like that don’t want to be helped.”
“Nobody deserves to die the way she did, Liss. To get killed and tossed into the woods like a sack of trash. I wish I’d been with her. I wish we hadn’t gotten so pissed off with each other.”
“What do you mean pissed off?” Evan asked.
“It was nothing, really. We had a—a discussion, you know?”
“A fight, you mean,” Lissa said.
“That’s why I left the party,” Tucker said. “I’m sorry as shit now.” His voice wobbled, and Lissa felt her own tears rise in her throat.
“Was Todd Hite there? Did he know Jessica?” Evan asked. “Could she have been involved with him the way Miranda was?”
Lissa turned to Evan. “Oh, my God,” she murmured. It had been a while since she’d thought of him. Todd Hite had been the other person of interest in Miranda’s murder case besides Tucker—someone else’s brother, son, uncle, source for heartbreak. Lissa had been convinced Todd was guilty. The whole family had thought so. Todd Hite was—or he had been—a stockbroker until a police undercover operation exposed him as the ringleader of a white-collar gang, composed mostly of his clients, who were involved in everything from money laundering and drugs to prostitution. Somehow, because Miranda attended several of the gang functions as an escort, Todd got the idea she was a police informant. He was overheard threatening her life. A month later she was dead.
“Why are you asking about him?” Tucker sounded wary.
Lissa knotted her hands.
“Because, he blamed Miranda when he got arrested, remember?” Evan said. “He accused her of ratting him out. He got fired because of her. He was pretty pissed off. Maybe it was the same with Jessica.”
“Hite’s full of shit.”
“You don’t think Miranda or Jessica were working with the cops?” asked Evan.
“Hell, no. Miranda would have told me,” Tucker said. “Look, there were a lot of people at the party in Galveston. A lot of guys. Hite could have been there, I guess, but I doubt it.” He sounded forlorn now. Pressing his palms together, he knifed his hands between his knees. “Goddamn it, I do not want to see Pop. Do you guys?”
“We could get something to eat,” Lissa said. She wasn’t hungry, but she didn’t want to face their folks, either.
“I could go for a burger.” Evan pulled into the parking lot of Ace’s Grill, a diner and pool hall near Lissa’s parents’ house, and while Evan and Tucker went inside to order their hamburgers and beers, Lissa called home. She was relieved it was her mom, not her dad, who answered, even though she had to reassure her mother a dozen times that Tucker was fine, everybody was fine.
“We’re just getting a hamburger, Mom,” Lissa said.
“I roasted two chickens,” Lissa’s mother said. “There’s plenty for everyone.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. We didn’t know. The guys are already inside ordering. Will it keep until tomorrow?”
Her mother said she imagined it would get eaten one way or another. She said, “You’re sure Tucker’s okay now, he’s in the clear?”
Lissa said she hoped so. She said they’d be there within the hour.
Tucker and Evan were already eating when she joined them. She unwrapped her burger.
“Your folks okay?” Evan asked.
“Mom made dinner for everyone,” Lissa said.
“Uh-oh. Should have known.” Tucker took a swallow of his beer. “Is she mad?”
“No. You’ll have it for lunch tomorrow.” Lissa set down her burger; she wiped her fingers on her napkin. “Listen, Tucker, about this morning, at the house, I didn’t mean anything.”
“I know. It’s all right,” he said, but he wouldn’t look at her.
“It isn’t that I don’t believe in you.”
Now he met her eyes. “I said I know.”
Lissa held his glance a moment, then picked up her burger again. “Where did you go, anyway, after you left? Where did the police find you?”
“Morgan’s apartment. I was taking her car back to her. They got me in the parking lot there.”
“Who’s Morgan?” Evan asked.
“There wasn’t any reason not to go with them,” Tucker said, as if he hadn’t heard Evan, or maybe, Lissa thought, Tucker was ignoring him. Maybe, for once, he was embarrassed to admit he’d been picked up by yet one more woman, a total stranger, and spent the night with her, in her bed.
“I don’t understand why you would talk to them, though, without a lawyer, Tuck.” Lissa rewrapped her burger. She couldn’t finish it, or her French fries, or her beer.
“You’re done?” Evan asked. “Was it bad?”
“No, it’s fine. My head hurts, is all.”
“It’s hurting all the time lately,” Tucker said.
“Too much of the time.” Evan wiped his mouth, wadded his paper napkin and tossed it into his empty burger basket. “Do I have to make an appointment with Dr. White, or will you?”
“If you don’t do it, Liss, I will,” Tucker said. “You can’t whip up on us both.”
She dipped her glance; she didn’t want them to see that she was afraid.
* * *
Their mother wasn’t more than a silhouette, a dark sketch under the porch light, when they pulled up in front of the house. Still, it seemed to Lissa that she could feel the worry rising off her in waves, or maybe she was conditioned to expect it from long experience. She wondered how many hours her mother had logged on the porch, looking up and down the street for Tucker, consumed with anxiety for him, praying for any sign. Lissa had done time on the porch, too. Hard scary time. She could name the day it started, the first time Tucker disappeared. It had been the week after they were to have celebrated his fourth birthday.
Dad hired a circus clown for the occasion. He bought a movie camera. Unable to sit still, Lissa’s mother dropped her at a friend’s house to play. Lissa ended up spending the night there, and the following day when her mother picked her up, she wasn’t the same. Nothing was. She tried to explain it, how Daddy’s mind broke from all the terrible things he went through during the war, and somehow this made him lock Tucker in a closet. She said she needed Lissa to be very brave, because Daddy was gone for a while to the hospital, and Tucker was still so badly frightened, he wasn’t talking. Lissa remembered her own panic. She remembered Tucker’s hollow stare and the grim set of her mother’s mouth.
She remembered the day a week after her father left when she walked out onto the front porch, hunting for Tucker, anxious about him and her parents, her dad’s absence, her mother’s and Tucker’s terrible quiet. She expected to see her little brother playing in the yard, but instead, she saw the front gate hanging open, idly squeaking on its hinges, and beyond it, nothing.
A white aching space.
As if along with Tucker the whole world had vanished. The police were called in, and they found him just after nightfall, after everyone was good and scared, none the worse for his adventure, in a ravine nearly a mile from their house. The story he told was that he’d been trying to catch a dog, a little puppy. He said he followed it because it looked so sad and lost, and he wanted to bring it home and take care of it.
Lissa remembered Tucker hiding from their dad on his return from the hospital weeks later. Even though he was calmer and seemed to keep a better grip on his temper, it took Tucker a long time to warm up to him again. Thinking back now, Lissa didn’t remember the movie camera ever making it out of the box. It was probably packed away somewhere along with Momma’s habit of humming and Dad’s laughter, which was rare even then.
She didn’t know exactly, because even as a child she’d been reluctant to ask, to talk about her dad’s absence at all. She had always thought there was more to it; she still did.
Evan took her hand, and they followed Tucker up the sidewalk.
Their mother came to the top of the steps. Tucker joined her, and she took hold of him, bending her forehead to his chest. She wasn’t crying, but she was close to it, and Lissa was glad when Tucker slipped his arms around her.
“Come on, Ma. It’s nothing,” he said. “It’s over.”
“Are you sure?” She tilted her gaze to look at him.
“They wanted to ask me some questions, that’s all.”
“You didn’t know her, then? Jessica Sweet? You told the police you didn’t?”
Lissa’s heart sank. She ought to have warned her mother, but there hadn’t been time, and truthfully she hadn’t wanted to. “Mom? I think he’s going to need a lawyer.”
“No, I told you—”
“You talked to the police without an attorney, Tucker. They know you had a relationship with Jessica. Nothing’s over. When they find her killer, then it will be over.”
6
TUCKER SAID LISSA was making too much of it, that it was no big deal. This time he had an alibi—witnesses, receipts, proof that he was nowhere near here when Jessica Sweet was killed and dumped in the woods. Emily wanted to believe him; she did believe him. She gathered herself. “I baked a cake,” she said.
Tucker grinned his foolish puppy grin. “Chocolate?”
She nodded, patting his cheeks, happy to have him home, to have her family together. She didn’t miss Lissa’s sigh of exasperation but chose to ignore it. “Why don’t we all go inside?”
Lissa asked for a rain check. “I’m worn out, and Evan and I have an early day—”
When she broke off, Emily didn’t have to turn around to know that Roy was standing in the doorway. She froze. She had tried talking to him at dinner, forcing herself to say Joe’s name. She had said, “Please, let me explain,” but Roy answered there wasn’t a need, and his voice had been low with hurt. She had no idea what he thought he knew, or where he could have gotten his information, if he had any, and she was beside herself with the worry of it. But there was no way they could pursue it now, in front of the children. She hugged her arms around herself.
Tucker lifted his cap, whipped it once, then again, against his leg, saying nothing.
The silence thickened. Someone in the neighborhood called for their dog and now the night breeze carried the sound of a train whistle from the edge of town.
“Roy?” Emily lifted her voice. “I was just saying we should all come inside and have some cake.” She paused, and when he didn’t answer, she turned to him, and she was relieved and not a little amazed when he didn’t argue, when instead, he backed out of the doorway, leaving it open. Gesturing at Tucker and Lissa and Evan, she followed Roy down the front hall and into the kitchen. The cake was centered on the table, underneath a glass cake dome. It had turned out beautifully, and Emily was glad she hadn’t abandoned making it.
“Mmm, looks yummy.” Lissa opened a cabinet and lifted down five dessert plates.
“I hope it’s not too dry.” Emily gathered forks and napkins, taking a moment to circle Lissa’s waist as a way of thanking her for staying, for being amenable.
Lissa tipped her head to Emily’s. They were often the peacemakers, the buffer between Roy and Tucker.
“Is coffee all right? There are soft drinks and milk.” Emily looked around at the men, and she thought it wasn’t only Roy who was humoring her. Every one of them was. Even Lissa was likely wondering if Emily truly believed she could serve them slices of cake like doses of medicine and somehow defuse the tension. She knew better, of course. But she wanted her family to see that regardless of the circumstances they could still come together, just as they had in the past, to share in the sweetness of dessert.
When everyone was seated, she said they should join hands. It seemed important to offer a blessing. “Roy, would you do the honors?” she asked, and her heart almost broke with love and gratitude when he bowed his head, and taking Tucker’s hand in his left and Lissa’s hand in his right, he thanked God for them and for Evan, and for the cake, and Emily, who baked it.
After they said their amens, she squeezed Tucker’s opposite hand. “Thank you, God, too, that our son is home safe.” She smiled at him.
He kept her glance and her hand, and there was something wounded and fraught caging the shadows of his eyes. Some quality or essence had come over him—was it despair? Remorse? She didn’t know, had never seen it before.
“I’ve been a bastard,” he said.
Emily frowned.
“I’m sorry,” Tucker said.
“It’s all right, honey,” Emily said, but panic knotted her stomach.
“It isn’t all right,” he insisted. “It hasn’t been right—I haven’t been right, not for a long time.”
“What do you mean, Tucker?” Lissa asked the question Emily couldn’t find breath for.
“I didn’t murder Jessica Sweet.” Tucker looked hard at Lissa. “Or Miranda. I tried telling you earlier, Liss. The cops can dog me into hell, and they probably will, but they’ve got it wrong.”
“If they’re so goddamn wrong,” Roy said, “why do they keep coming after you?”
Emily tensed, waiting for Tucker to say something ugly; she waited to hear the scrape of his chair, the clatter of his plate when he dumped it into the sink. She waited for him to walk out in a huff, or walk out yelling. But for what seemed an eternal moment there was nothing.
And then Tucker said, “I want to come back to work.”
Emily looked at Tucker in astonishment.
But he had eyes only for his father. “I’ll do whatever it takes, Pop. You can cut my salary, put me on any kind of job. I don’t care. I just want a chance to make it up to you, to get it right.”
A tremor rocked Tucker’s voice, stalling Emily’s heart.
“I meant what I said before,” he went on, “about being a bastard. I’m sick of myself. Sick of living this way. Sick of being so fucked up— Sorry, Mom. There’s no reason you should believe me, but I swear this time it’s different. If you could just let me try—if you could just give me one more shot.”
Roy drew his napkin from his lap. “The only job we’ve got going on is Pecan Grove, and Pederson’s made it clear if he sees you out at the site, he’ll quit. We can’t afford to lose him. I think your sister and Evan would agree.”
“Maybe if we talked to him,” Evan said.
“If we reassure him he won’t have to work directly with Tuck again,” Lissa said. “Either Evan or I can meet with Carl from now on.”
Emily clenched her fists, willing Roy to see the possibility.
He didn’t. “That’s not going to fly,” he said. “If he even sees Tucker out there, he says he’s done. I had to tack five percent onto his original bid to get him to stay as it is.”
“Dad!” Lissa protested. “We’re already upside down on that job.”
“Yeah, well, do you think losing Pederson is going to put us right side up?”
“Look,” Evan said, “we could use Tucker’s help out at our place, right, Lissa? He could lay the floor in your art studio, for one thing.”
“That would be great,” Lissa said. “I’m dying to have a real place where I can paint again.”
Evan found Tucker’s gaze. “We can’t pay you much.”
“I don’t want any pay. I’ll just be glad for a job, the chance to show everyone I mean what I say.”
“It’s a deal, then,” Evan said. “You want to start tomorrow?”
“Is eight o’clock too early?” Tucker said, sounding as eager as a child.
Evan laughed, and Lissa said it was fine. She said, “The floor tile for the studio is at the office,” and a discussion ensued among the three of them about the logistics of transporting it to the house.
Emily looked at Roy when he shifted his fork from one side of his plate to the other, the noise drawing her attention. She knew what he was thinking, that this was another of Tucker’s empty promises. He would say people don’t change, that they were incapable of it. She didn’t know how much he based his opinion on his own experience, the ongoing war he waged with his own demons. She didn’t hold his gaze when their eyes met. She couldn’t. She was too afraid of what she might reveal. Why hadn’t she told him immediately when Tucker was arrested last fall? A confession now would sound so much worse. She stood up, and began stacking plates, pausing when Evan mentioned the lake house.
“I think I know how we can engineer the deck off the master bedroom to extend over the water the way you want it to,” he told Roy. “If you’ve got a set of plans here, I can show you.”
Emily exchanged a wondering glance with Lissa, who shrugged.
Catching them at it, Evan grinned. “Roy did say he wanted to be able to fish from bed.”
“Please tell me that’s a joke,” Emily said, feeling a warm surge of delight mixed with relief. Suppose Evan could convince Roy to take up his project again? Suppose Tucker did even half of what he promised? Suppose he was right and the police were finished with him? Suppose her worry over what Roy might or might not know about Joe Merchant was needless? Then life might be as it had once been. She wondered if she was asking for too much.
Tucker said the house plans were upstairs, that he’d get them.
Lissa stored the leftover cake.
Emily carried the dishes to the sink. “I don’t have a clue how Evan can fix the problem with the deck, but I’ll be beyond ecstatic if he can get your dad back to work on that house.”
“Me, too. Evan’s as worried as we are about him. He thinks Daddy’s in a lot more pain than he’s letting on.”
“He is, but we both know how he feels about seeing a doctor. He won’t even let Dr. White look at him.”
“If only Tucker would get his act together, that would help.”
“Maybe he will this time. I’ve never heard him sound quite so—” Emily paused, hunting for the right word.
“Committed? Contrite?” Lissa supplied two. She dampened a dishcloth and wiped the countertop. “He has to grow up sometime.”
Emily opened the dishwasher. “He said he has receipts, proving he was in Austin over the weekend when Jessica was murdered. Did he give them to the police, do you know?”
“They’re in his glove box. He has to get his car back first.”
“That should take care of it, right?”
“Maybe, but you know, if it doesn’t, if the police insist on pursuing him, we’ll have to get a lawyer.”
Emily wouldn’t say it aloud; she didn’t want Lissa to worry, but she wondered where the money to pay a lawyer would come from. She wondered why the police focus on Tucker continued. It was as if they wanted him to be guilty. A year ago, when the police fixated on him, the media raised the outrageous possibility that whoever killed Miranda had likely killed the other two victims who’d been found at the same location in previous years.
More than one reporter speculated that the I-45 serial killer had moved his base of operations from the Galveston area north, seventy or so miles, to the piney woods. They associated the location with Tucker’s home—her home—by describing it as “near where Tucker Lebay, a person of interest in the murder of Miranda Quick, lives.”
It horrified Emily, the very idea that her son’s name was forever linked in some people’s minds to such brutal crimes. And it was complete insanity, anyway. The math didn’t work. Tucker wasn’t old enough to have committed the first two murders. He wasn’t capable of such violence in any case. These crimes were the work of a monster, one who was still out there, still on the loose, which could only mean more women would disappear, more bodies would be found. And more families, good families, like the Quicks, would suffer heartbreak and loss, while the police wasted time hounding Tucker, while they drove him even further back into the black cave of his unhappiness and frustration.
Lissa came to stand beside her.
“I wish Tucker could be more like Evan.” Emily was sorry even as she said it. Even as she felt Lissa’s arm slip around her waist, the surge of her love was tainted with regret. She shouldn’t compare them, these three who would always be children to her.
She had mothered Evan, too, the same as Lissa and Tucker, ever since Roy gave Evan a job when he was barely seventeen, nothing more than a scrawny boy. As a nine-year-old, Tucker almost instantly idolized Evan. But even Lissa, at thirteen, was drawn to him, although she had pretended the opposite. Still, the seed of their attraction for each other had been visible from the beginning. Tucker’s admiration was less self-conscious. So often when he needed someone strong, when he needed a sure and steady guide, Evan was there.
He possessed every admirable trait a parent could want in a son, despite his own complicated upbringing, which involved a father who’d walked out and a mother who was indifferent. Emily would never understand it. Evan’s parents were so careless with him, and yet, he never caused them, or anyone, one moment’s worth of worry or doubt.
“Some people seem to lead a charmed life, while others struggle,” she said now, and there was a bite in her voice that was unintentional, and she rued it.
Lissa moved away. “Evan hasn’t led a charmed life, and neither have I. Tucker has the same opportunity as anyone to make better choices. Not even Daddy can stop him.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know, Momma. It’s okay.”
Emily glanced sidelong at her daughter. “I know you’ve pretty much decided not to have children, but if you were to change your mind and become a mother, you’d understand. There’s just this drive to protect, especially when your child is—” Emily shrugged. She didn’t want to say impulsive or high strung, or oversensitive or—she didn’t know. Just hardwired, differently, in some nameless, unfathomable way.
* * *
Lissa and Evan had left, and Roy had gone upstairs to bed, when Tucker found Emily, as she had hoped he would, outside on the porch, tucked into a corner of the swing.
He sat down beside her. “What are you doing out here? It’s cold.”
“I think that woman is calling your dad,” Emily said without preamble.
“What woman?” Tucker asked, as if he didn’t know.
“The one who had you arrested for stalking her last fall,” Emily answered shortly. “Revel Wiley.”
“What makes you think—?”
“I’ve been getting calls on my cell phone from her number, and I’ve ignored them. Now, in the past few days, the same number has started coming up on the landline caller ID. When I answer, she hangs up. But if your dad answers, he talks away. He’s acted odd when I ask about it. I’m afraid it’s her, that she’s stirring up trouble again.” Emily couldn’t keep the edge from her voice. “Every time I think how you involved me in that mess, Tucker, I’m angry all over again. I wish you hadn’t put me in the middle of it.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“I posted your bail. I paid Revel a thousand dollars to drop the stalking charge altogether because you said that would end it. I should have known better.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“No! For heaven’s sake, Tucker, if you can only do one thing for me, please, please promise me you’ll stay away from those women, the clubs, that life.”
He scrubbed his hands down his thighs, shifted his feet, jarring the swing.
Emily’s initial jolt of exasperation was softened by her regret for his inadequacies and his struggles, his aura of unhappiness. It was the constant war of her own emotions that weighed on her, that rendered her nearly useless when it came to making a stand. At one moment she would feel she didn’t love Tucker enough, or in the right way, and then at another, she would feel as if she loved him and catered to him too much. She slid her palm over the back of his hand. “You know I want to believe what you said earlier, that you want to change, to take responsibility, but for that to work out, you’re going to have to stay away from Miranda’s friends—”
“Revel misunderstood me, Mom. I only wanted to help her get out of the business and out of the rat hole she was living in.”
“Yes, but she and the rest of those girls aren’t your responsibility. You can scarcely take care of yourself.”
Even in the half-light, Emily could see his shoulders sag. She saw his defeat and his aggravation written into the line of his jaw, the crease of his brow. He hitched forward, setting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll be up a shit creek with Pop if he finds out.”
Emily was worried, too, for the possible consequences, which was why she’d talked to Joe and solicited his help. She felt as though the slightest pressure could send Roy reeling off an edge. A breeze kicked a hash of dried leaves mixed with road grit along the curb, making a ruckus, and she looked in that direction. “He’s done so well for so long,” she said.
There had been episodes of irrational behavior as the result of lingering post-traumatic stress, but none so terrifying as what occurred on the occasion of Tucker’s fourth birthday. That awful day when she left Roy and Tucker napping to run last-minute errands, only to come home and find Tucker locked in a closet, and Roy pacing the house with a loaded gun, drunk, and raving about shelling from the enemy. When she tried to reason with him, he angrily informed her that she was a fucking idiot if she didn’t realize they were at war in a country where even the women and children carried weapons. Couldn’t she see that he had secured their position to save her and their home? It took every ounce of her strength and diplomacy to convince him to hand over the key to the closet and scoop Tucker, eerily quiet, alarmingly covered in blood, into her arms.
Weary by then, and sobering, Roy slumped to the floor. He allowed her to take the gun, his old Colt service revolver that he’d carried in Vietnam, and to bring Tucker around the corner to Anna’s, where they found he was bleeding from a cut on the heel of his bare foot. When Emily asked how he’d gotten hurt, he only stared at her, eyes stunned, uncomprehending. He didn’t speak again for six days.
The single saving grace that came out of the whole ordeal was that it frightened Roy badly enough that he finally sought help. It wasn’t until after his six-week stay in the VA hospital that Emily found out Tucker inadvertently set off the whole tragic sequence of events when he wakened before Roy and went into the bathroom for a drink. It was the sound of the water glass exploding against the tile floor when it slipped from Tucker’s small hand that jerked Roy upright. Caught in the throes of one of his war dreams, the nightmare came with him as he rose, terrified, into an altered reality.
For him the house was a battleground, Tucker the enemy.
To this day, Emily couldn’t bear to think what might have happened had she not come home when she did. She would have taken the children and left Roy then, and he knew it. He stopped drinking entirely. He packed away his collection of guns, only getting them out again, years later, when Lissa and Tucker expressed an interest in learning to shoot. As a family, they took every recommended step, and eventually they mended. Normal life resumed.
A new normal, Emily thought now, scarred by a feeling that, as parents, she and Roy had failed Tucker, failed to protect him, to keep him safe. She flattened her palm on his back, remembering the awful days when he hadn’t spoken, remembering, too, the sore number of weeks that passed before he would stay even for a moment in the same room with his dad. Tucker’s trust had been broken, and it had made her heart ache, watching Roy work to regain it, watching his hope fade a bit more each day that Tucker didn’t reach out to him. They hadn’t forced it; they’d been advised to give it time. And then one day, Tucker wasn’t a little boy anymore, and Emily realized he wouldn’t ever reach out to either Roy or her in the way that small children do again. They were out of time.
She rubbed a circle between Tucker’s shoulder blades. “Maybe I’m wrong, and it isn’t Revel who’s calling your dad. She did tell me she was going back to Oklahoma, where her folks live. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Emily didn’t know why she was saying any of this when she knew perfectly well Revel was the caller, and while Revel had made a promise about leaving Texas, Emily had no real hope she’d kept it.
Tucker didn’t look as if he believed it, either. He said he didn’t really care anymore what Revel did.
“The trouble with people like her is that when you give in to them, it’s only the beginning.” Emily repeated a line from the lecture Joe had given her when she’d called him for advice after Revel made a second, nerve-jangling demand for more money. He’d gone with her to meet Revel, and flashed his badge at her, warning her not to contact Emily or Tucker again or there would be legal consequences, all of which was completely false. Even Emily knew Joe acted outside his authority. He claimed it was nothing, but Emily was still angry at herself and at Tucker that Joe had put his career in jeopardy for them.
She wanted Tucker to know this, to know the cost of his actions to others.
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Barbara Sissel
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: At the heart of every crime, there′s a family…My son is a murderer…. So begins this chilling and emotionally charged mystery from highly acclaimed author Barbara Taylor Sissel.Emily Lebay had always thought of her family as ordinary. Sure, they′ve endured their share of problems, even a time of great trouble–what family hasn′t? But when a woman′s body turns up in the dense woods near their home, and Emily′s grown son, Tucker, is accused of murder, Emily is forced to confront the unfathomable, and everything she believed about her life is called into question.This isn′t the first time Tucker has been targeted by the police; a year ago he was a person of interest when another woman was found dead in the same stretch of woods. Still, neither Emily nor her daughter, Lissa, can reconcile their Tucker with these brutal crimes. Terrified, convinced there′s been a tragic mistake, Emily and Lissa set out to learn the truth about Tucker, once and for all. And while his life hangs in the balance, what they discover proves far more shocking than their darkest fears…."A gut-wrenching mystery…enjoyable and insightful." –RT Book Reviews on Evidence of Life