Dark Truth (4 page)

The priest rose.

“If you’ll come outside with me, I’ll give you the box. When—or if—you decide to open it is entirely up to you. For my part, I’ll have done what I’d been asked to do.”

Nina continued to lean against the counter, her arms crossed over her chest. Finally, she nodded. “Fine, Father. Give me the box. Fulfill your duty.”

“You have my number, Kyle,” the priest said. “Don’t ever hesitate to use it.”

“Thank you, Father Tim. I’ll be in touch,” Kyle replied, but remained seated.

Nina jammed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and followed the cleric through the quiet house and out through the front door. He walked directly to the trunk of his car and opened it.

“Here you go.”

The box he placed in her hands was the size of a medium packing box and weighed but a few pounds. She dug the keys to the rental car out of her pocket as she walked to the driveway. Once there, she opened the trunk and dropped the box in. The soft thud it made when it landed gave no indication of its contents.

“Thank you, Father Whelan,” she said as she closed the trunk lid. “Thanks for being so loyal to Olivia. I’m sure she appreciated your friendship.”

“As I appreciated hers.” The priest leaned in to kiss Nina’s cheek lightly. “I’ll say to you what I said to Kyle. Anytime you feel you’d like to talk, please, call me. I’ll always be available to you.”

“Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” She walked him to his car, and stood on the sidewalk while he walked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, and got behind the wheel.

“Father,” she called to him as he was about to pull away from the curb.

He stopped and lowered the passenger-side window.

“Yes, Nina?”

“If Olivia was so convinced of my father’s innocence, why didn’t she visit him in prison? And why didn’t she open the letter he’d sent her? The one you said was in the box?”

“Olivia believed he was innocent of murder, but he’d openly, and very publicly, admitted to his infidelity. And that, she could not—would not—forgive.”

He smiled sadly. “Your father apparently was unfaithful to her within months of their marriage. To Olivia, that was the ultimate betrayal. She stood by him when he was arrested, she stood by him through the preliminary hearings. But I’m afraid once he’d admitted to his affairs, she closed the door on Stephen Madden, and she never looked back. Whatever his last words to her might have been, she never read them as far as I know.” He paused before rolling up the window. “Perhaps you will . . .”

F
ive

Nina paused in the lobby of the stone building that housed her apartment, and turned on the switch that controlled the overhead light on the second-floor landing. The building consisted of three floors, three apartments on each. She couldn’t believe that neither of her second-floor neighbors had arrived home yet. It was well after seven-thirty on a cold, rainy night. Who would want to stay out if they didn’t have to?

She unlocked her mailbox and removed the assortment of catalogs and the few business envelopes and dropped the mail into the brown leather tote that hung over her shoulder. She climbed the steps to the second floor, grateful—not for the first time—that she’d wisely chosen the smaller apartment on floor number two over the larger one on floor number three. There were some nights when she just didn’t think she’d make it.

Tonight was one of those nights. She stopped in front of her door, unlocked the locks, and pushed it open with her foot. Once inside, she reset the locks and dropped the tote on the hardwood floor of the small entry. Kicking off her shoes, she removed her jacket and hung it in the closet just inside the door. She grabbed the tote and took it into the room that served as living room and dining room. She removed the manuscript she’d brought home to work on and dropped it on the coffee table on her way into the bedroom, where she changed from her favorite black wool suit into a pair of soft knit yoga-style pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt. In bare feet, she went into the tiny kitchen and opened the refrigerator to forage for dinner. She’d meant to do some on-line grocery shopping today, but knew she wouldn’t be home in time to take delivery by six, the cut-off time imposed by her favorite store. Perhaps it was time to find another favorite market, she was thinking as she decided upon reheated Chinese takeout.

She’d planned on a quick trip to the gym tonight, but that was before she’d gotten stuck on the phone with a needy author just before six. Some writers were more high maintenance than others, she’d been warned early on in her career. Jess Witherspoon was one of those who needed her hand held pretty much on a weekly basis when she was writing. Jess had been working on her new book nonstop for the past four weeks, which meant that at least once a week, usually on Tuesday or Wednesday and always at the end of the work day, Jess called and cried on Nina’s shoulder. The book was too hard, it wasn’t shaping up the way she’d wanted it to. The characters weren’t cooperating, the book was falling apart. The book was doomed, her career was over.

Yada, yada, yada.

Nina smiled to herself, recalling Carlos’s often-quoted comment that it was better to be the editor, with an all-seeing eye, than the author, with limited vision.

It had taken longer than usual to get Jess back on track, which resulted in her late arrival home. Which meant the trip she’d wanted to make to the gym wasn’t going to happen tonight. It was already late; she was hungry and tired and still had several hours’ worth of work to do.

She had just settled down on the sofa with a plate of General Tso’s chicken and a bottle of water when she noticed the light blinking on her answering machine. She leaned over and tapped the play button, and sat back against the sofa cushions. She stabbed a water chestnut and listened to the first message. Charles, whom she’d gone out with twice last month, had tickets for the Jets game on Sunday. Was she interested?

Was she? She shrugged. Not really.

Next, a call from her upstairs neighbor apologizing if her new pup’s nightly crying was disturbing. They were trying to figure out a way to make it stop.

Nina hadn’t realized there was a dog in the building.

Finally, the last message and a familiar voice.

“Hey, Nina, Kyle here. Hey, listen, I’m thinking I might want to stay in the house for a while after all. I mean, with Marcie and me splitting up, and her staying in our house with the kids, it just makes sense for me to stay here, at least until I can get the furniture sold. I think some of the pieces in your dad’s study might be antiques. I think you should take another look at the desk and that map chest he had in there. And some of the books look like they might be worth some serious money. I don’t feel right keeping the money from things like that. So you should rethink what you want to do with those items. I’m happy to sell them for you, but I won’t keep the money from the sale. And that’s not negotiable.” He paused, then added, as if it had just occurred to him, “Oh, and say, I was just wondering if you’d gotten around to opening the letter Stephen wrote to my mom. I guess I’m just curious to know what he’d had to say to her. Well, sorry I missed you. Give me a call when you get a chance.”

The machine clicked to signal the message had ended, and she was glad she’d set it to run until the caller had completed saying whatever he or she had called to say. Few things were more irritating than voice mail that cut you off after an invariably short amount of time.

Well, Kyle was welcome to the letter. She had no intention of reading it. She debated for a minute, then got up and went to the closet and took down the box, which remained unopened. She set it on the coffee table and went to the kitchen for a paring knife with which to cut the tape. She’d done her best to get rid of the damned thing, had gone so far as to deliberately leave it in the trunk of the rental car when she’d returned the vehicle. But some well-meaning, conscientious soul at the rental agency had forwarded it to her at her apartment, and she’d arrived home last Thursday night to find it waiting for her. She’d brought it upstairs and tucked it away, refusing to give it any consideration whatsoever.

She slipped the knife through the tape and opened the box, ignoring the envelope addressed to her in her father’s small, precise script, and looking for the one with Olivia’s name on it. She found what she was looking for, dropped it on the table, and closed up the box, refusing to look upon the photographs that peeked out from under the pair of men’s dark brown leather shoes. Probably the shoes he was wearing when he was arrested, she thought as she returned the box to the shelf.

She sat back on the sofa, pretending not to see the letter on the table that was formally addressed to
MRS. STEPHEN J. MADDEN, 117 OAK DRIVE, STONE RIVER, MARYLAND.

Nina picked up the manuscript and went back to work. Forty minutes later, she finally admitted she’d been staring at Olivia’s letter for at least the past ten minutes.

What if he’d said something terrible to her in that letter?
Nina found herself thinking. Something unforgivably painful, like, I never loved you, I never cared about Kyle.

What if he confessed to having murdered those girls?

What if he told her things that would hurt Kyle to hear?

She was still staring at the letter. Maybe she should take a look . . .

She slit open the envelope with the paring knife and began to read. Before long, her bottom jaw had dropped and her heart had all but stopped beating.

She read all three pages again, certain she had misunderstood. But the words were the same, and the meaning was perfectly clear.

My dear Olivia,

I know I’ve been a failure to you in so many ways and have caused you nothing but grief and heartache, and I’m more sorry than I can say for what I’ve put you through. I know an apology alone is unacceptable—there’s no atoning for what I’ve done to you—but I’ve come to the realization that there is one way I can give you peace of mind.

I know your secret, Olivia, and I will keep it. I will go to my grave professing my innocence, but I will never tell anyone what I know about what you did.

I found what you’d hidden, and I immediately knew exactly what the brown stains on the handle represented. I’d meant to talk to you about it the following day, when I returned from my last afternoon class. Unfortunately, that was the day of my arrest.

It never occurred to me that you’d be following me when I left campus at night, that you’d know where I went, and who I met. Was I so caught up in my own fantasies that I never knew you were watching? I cannot begin to imagine how it must have hurt you. For that, I am more sorry than I can say. I never meant to hurt you, Olivia. And if you believe nothing else, believe that I loved you then, and that I love you now.

My addiction was something apart from what I felt for you. For me, sex was nicotine, it was alcohol, it was cocaine, it was heroin. It was all those things and more. I’ve long acknowledged, if only to myself, that this is something I can’t control. Frankly, I never wanted to control it. I was happy enough to allow my addiction to control me. As long as there were willing partners—and there was never a shortage of girls eager to have me—I was very happy. As happy as a gambler who never lost a hand.

I suppose it was inevitable that you would find out, and would want to exact your price. But I never—
never
—thought you capable of such things. When I found the evidence of what you’d done, I admit it made me physically ill.

But all that being said, I know that my actions drove you to do what you did. If I’d been the husband I’d promised to be, none of this would have happened. I know that my sins led to yours, and I am willing to take the punishment for both of us. The fault is all mine.

I can’t even begin to ask your forgiveness for all I’ve put you through. I know I will burn in hell, and that no amount of repentance could be enough to wash this sin from my soul. You, however, can be forgiven.

Talk to Father Tim. It’s no secret he’s loved you for years, that he’d do anything for you. If you haven’t already done so, ask him for absolution, and set your soul at peace.

Your loving Stephen

“Holy shit.”

Nina read the letter through a third time, but the words remained the same.

How could her father have thought Olivia guilty when the girls had been raped?

They had been raped, hadn’t they? The papers all said that they had.

The Stone River Rapist. Right.

She sat on the sofa, chewing on a fingernail, something she hadn’t done since she was twelve and her mother had painted some foul-tasting liquid on her nails to keep her from biting them.

Surely it would have occurred to her father that Olivia could not have raped the four victims. So how could he have concluded that she had been responsible for their deaths?

The more she thought about it, the less sense it made.

And what to do about the letter? She certainly couldn’t turn it over to Kyle, not with its blunt accusations against Olivia.

But what if her father had been telling the truth all along, that he hadn’t killed those girls? Then someone else—how could it have been Olivia?—had committed four murders, four murders for which her father had been sent to prison.

What was the evidence her father had found that had made him believe Olivia was the killer?

She reread the letter, looking for the part about the evidence. Here, on the first page: the brown stains on the handle.

A knife? Had all the victims been stabbed? She had only a vague recollections of the facts. She’d never wanted to know the details. She’d left Stone River to live with her mother’s sister within days of her father’s arrest. She didn’t follow the news reports and had turned off the television any time there was a mention of it. She’d been so afraid of accidentally finding some reference to Stone River that she’d stopped reading newspapers for several years.

She’d pushed all memories of her father, good and bad, to the farthest reaches of her mind, and left them there.

And now, this.

She’d seen the way her father had been led out of Celestine Hall, his head high and defiant, his eyes cold and icy blue, staring straight ahead. Had he already decided to atone for his infidelity by sacrificing his freedom for Olivia’s sake?

After seeing her father’s face that day, Nina had never considered that he might be innocent. Now, sixteen years later, the very possibility took her breath away.

She stared at the letter she’d dropped on the table, and wondered what the hell she was going to do about it.