Kisscut (31 page)

Chapter Nineteen

Dave Fine had asked for a Bible, and the preacher rested his right hand on top of the book as he stared blankly at Nick Shelton. He seemed almost perplexed as to why he was here.

"I love children," Fine said. "I've always loved children."

Nick leaned back in his chair, balancing it on the back legs. "Sure you do, Preacher."

Jeffrey kept his mouth closed, because Dave Fine was Nick's collar. His fists were itching to do some real damage to the preacher, and there was a buzzing in the back of Jeffrey's mind, telling him that Dottie was still out there, doing God only knows what to Lacey Patterson, and the asshole pervert across the table from him was one of the people who had helped her get away.

"Well," Nick said, holding his arms out in a big shrug. "Tell me your story."

Fine stared at the Bible, as if he felt he could get strength from the book. His hands were sweating, and Jeffrey could see a darker streak on the black cover where perspiration had rubbed off his palm.

"I've worked at the church for going on fifteen years," Fine said. "I grew up in Grant. I was baptized in that very chapel."

Nick bounced the chair slightly, waiting him out.

"I married my wife there," he continued. "I baptized my two little boys there."

Silence filled the room, and Jeffrey let himself look at Dave Fine. He was the type of man who served as a living example of the phrase "pillar of his community." Fine volunteered with the seniors' program down at the Y, delivering meals to the elderly every weekend. His children played Softball on the peewee league, and Fine coached the girls' team.

Jeffrey loosened his collar, thinking about all the young girls Fine came in contact with on a daily basis. His fists clenched again.

"I never touched any of them," Fine said, as if he could read Jeffrey's mind. "I know it's wrong. I know that." He ran his thumb along the spine of the Bible. "I prayed for strength, and God gave it to me."

Nick crossed his arms, and Jeffrey could sense that this was getting to the other man. Nick wasn't overtly religious, but Jeffrey knew that he attended church every Sunday. One of the clunky gold charms around his neck was a cross with a diamond embedded at the center.

"I never touched my children," Fine insisted. "I never hurt my boys."

Nick said, "You understand we can't take your word for that."

Fine seemed shocked that someone would not trust him. "I would never touch my sons," he said. "I would never do that."

"We know you're not into little boys." Nick told him. "But, you gotta understand. Preacher, we gotta check it out."

Fine stared at the Bible. "I would never have acted on my feelings if she hadn't approached me."

"Dottie Weaver?" Nick clarified.

"Jenny was such a sweet child. She had a light in her. A true light that God put there." Fine's lips curved up in a smile. "She sang like an angel. She really did. You could hear God coming through her voice."

"Yeah," Nick said. "I bet you could."

Fine gave him a sharp look, as if he deserved more respect than this. The man seemed not to realize that he was in a police station, about to be sent to jail for a long time.

Jeffrey said, "How did Dottie approach you?"

Fine seemed relieved that Jeffrey was taking over. "She didn't exactly approach me so much as lure me," he said. "Adam never thought to eat of the forbidden fruit until Eve tempted him."

Nick said, "Seems to me Adam's snake had something to do with that."

Fine frowned. "It wasn't like that. It was never about sex for me."

"But, you did have sex with her," Nick said.

Fine chewed his lip. "Not at first," he said. "I just wanted to spend some time with her." He paused, and took a deep breath. "Dottie let me take her to the movies, and sometimes we would go into Macon to get her some clothes." He looked up at Jeffrey and Nick, obviously needing their approval. "Her father had abandoned her," he told them. "I was just trying to fill in, to make her feel loved and wanted."

Nick was silent, but Jeffrey could see the muscles in his arms tense.

"I just wanted to nurture her, to give her some guidance."

"Did you?" Nick asked, not bothering to hide his hostility.

"I know what you're thinking, and it's not like that, it's not like that at all."

Jeffrey tried to remain calm, asking, "What's it like?"

"It's like…"-Fine made a wide gesture with his hands-"it's about love. It's about listening to children, and trying to understand their wants and their needs."

"Did she want sex from you?" Nick asked.

Fine dropped his hands. "I never would have touched her that way. I was content just to have her company."

Jeffrey asked, "What changed that?"

"Dottie." He spit the word out of his mouth as if it was poison. "I had always thought about it, always. Not with Jenny, but with other girls. Some girls that I saw just around town." He blinked his eyes several times, and Jeffrey was struck by how easily these men cried for themselves. They never seemed to cry for the children they hurt.

Fine said, "But I've always been content with my fantasies. That's always been enough for me." His voice rose. "I'm a happily married man," he told them. "I love my wife and my sons."

"Sure you do," Nick said, the flippant tone back.

Fine shook his head. "You don't understand."

Jeffrey leaned over the table. "Explain it to me, Dave. I want to understand."

"She was such a smart girl, and so well-spoken." He picked up the Bible. "She read the Book with me. We prayed. We understood each other."

Jeffrey glanced at the Bible. While at some level Jeffrey had always believed in the presence of good and evil, he had never really attached a biblical significance to it. Seeing Dave Fine's hand on the Bible, hearing his tale of se-ducing Jenny Weaver through prayer, struck him as the highest form of blasphemy.

Nick said, "Okay, you prayed with her. What happened to change that?"

Fine set the book back on the table. "Dottie changed that," he said. "She called me in the middle of the night."

"When was this?"

"Around Thanksgiving," he said. "This past Thanksgiving."

"Then what?" Jeffrey asked, thinking the bastard was probably lying.

"I went to her house, because she said that Jenny wasn't doing well. She said she was upset, and that she needed to talk to me." His eyes filled with tears again. "I was her friend. I couldn't ignore a plea for help."

Jeffrey nodded for him to continue, trying to block the image that came to his mind of Sara pointing out the pelvic fracture in Jenny Weaver's X ray. The girl had been brutally raped. Dave Fine could have been the man who did it.

Dave cleared his throat. "I had never really been inside the house before. Jenny always waited for me on the front steps." He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. "When I got there, Dottie led me upstairs. Upstairs to Jenny's room."

Fine fell silent, and neither Jeffrey nor Nick prompted him to continue. After what seemed like a long while, he picked back up where he had left off.

"We did things," he said, his voice low. "I'm ashamed to say that we did things."

"
You
did things," Jeffrey told him, wanting to make that point.

"Yes," Fine agreed. "I did things."

"Did the acts only take place in Jenny's room?" Jeffrey asked, thinking that this would explain why Dottie would risk not stripping Jenny's room. The only evidence they found would point back to Dave Fine.

"Yes." He swallowed hard. "Only in her room."

The men were silent as Fine seemed to get his thoughts together. He was certainly good at painting himself as a helpless victim. A thirteen-year-old girl might have bought his act, but the more excuses Fine made for his actions, the more Jeffrey wanted to kill him.

Finally, Fine said, "Dottie took pictures. I didn't know until later." He gave a humorless chuckle. "She brought them to the church the next day, and threatened to expose me if I didn't do what she said."

"What did she want you to do?"

"Make those deliveries," he said. "I used the church van." He put his hand over his mouth. "God forgive me, I used the church van."

Jeffrey crossed his arms, willing himself to calm down. Nick Shelton was so angry there was almost a heat coming off of him. How this sick fuck could cry for himself was beyond him. Dave Fine felt sorrier for himself than he did for the kid he raped.

Jeffrey asked, "Where's Dottie now?"

"I have no idea," Fine said, tapping his palm on the Bible for emphasis. "That's the God's truth."

"When did you see her last?" Jeffrey asked, knowing he could not trust the answer.

"Monday. She had Mark at the house. They stripped everything. They painted the walls, they moved the printing press."

"Where did they move it to?"

"I don't know," he said, and he seemed to be telling the truth. "They put it in a truck, an unmarked truck."

"And then?"

"She told me that I still had to make this last delivery or she would send the pictures to the police station."

"What about Lacey Patterson?"

Jeffrey wasn't sure whether or not something registered in Fine's eyes. The man said, "I have no idea. Dottie wouldn't tell me something like that. I wasn't involved in that end of things. I only did what she said to protect my family. Our lives."

Jeffrey crossed his arms, asking, "When did you get the magazines?"

"That night," he answered. "I put them in the basement of the church until this morning."

"You already knew about the meeting in Augusta?"

"No," he shook his head, vehement. "She called me last night. It sounded like she was on a cell phone."

"You said the last time you saw her was Monday," Jeffrey reminded him.

"It
was
the last time," Fine countered. "You said the last time I saw her, not the last time I spoke with her."

Jeffrey let this pass. "What did she say?"

"She told me about the hotel, when to meet Joe, what the code word was for the next pickup." Fine paused. "She said she was still around, watching me."

"Do you believe that?" Nick asked. "You think she's still in town?"

Fine shrugged. "She's capable of anything," he said.

"Capable of what, for instance?" Jeffrey asked. When Fine did not answer, he asked, "What do you think she's going to do to Lacey Patterson?"

Fine looked away. "I don't know what she does. I was only involved with Jenny."

Jeffrey stared at the other man, trying to understand him. Fine was so good at justifying his actions, he could proba-bly pass a lie detector test. Jeffrey seriously doubted the man even believed what he had done to Jenny Weaver was wrong.

Fine volunteered, "I know Dottie needs money. She told me she had to wait around for the next payoff." His voice rose as he tried to defend himself. "I was being blackmailed. I had no choice."

Jeffrey ignored the excuse, instead thinking about Dot-tie's post office box in Atlanta. Dottie had no way of knowing that they knew about the drop. She would think she was safe. They might have a chance of catching her before she had time to rape another kid, or sell off Lacey Patterson.

"So," Nick said. "You packed the magazines in the church van this morning and toddled on over to Augusta?"

"I had a bad feeling about it," he said, picking at the pages of the Bible. "I guess I wanted to get caught. I couldn't go on with this hanging over me."

Jeffrey said, "Mark felt the same way."

Fine snorted. "Mark," he said, as if he were talking about the devil himself.

Nick exchanged a glance with Jeffrey.

"You know why Jenny wanted to shoot him?" Fine asked them, a slight grimace on his face. "Because he was going to end up doing the same thing."

"Doing what?"

"He enjoyed it," Fine told them. "Mark didn't have any qualms about what he was doing."

"And you did?" Nick shot back.

Fine ignored the question.

"You're saying Mark liked posing for the pictures?" Jeffrey asked, and in his mind he saw Mark's pained expression in the magazines they had found. This was not the face of a kid who was enjoying himself.

"He didn't just like it. He wanted to do it." Fine tapped his finger on the table. "If you ask me, it was just a matter of time before he started in on his sister. Jenny knew that. As cruel as that family was to her, she knew what Mark had become. She knew he would end up abusing Lacey." He sniffed, as if holding back tears. "Jenny was trying to protect Lacey from that animal."

"You have proof of this?" Jeffrey demanded.

"Grace had him in the game since he was six," Fine told them. "It was only a matter of time. Jenny knew this."

"You have no way of knowing what Mark would've ended up doing," Jeffrey said. "If every kid who was raped by some freak like you grew up to molest children-"

Fine interrupted him. "You don't know Mark very well, Chief Tolliver. Trust me, he would've been hurting kids, just like his mother." He shook his head, giving a snort. "He learned from the master."

Jeffrey countered, "He was just a kid himself."

Fine held up his finger, as if he was making a good point. "He was a grown man. He could've stopped."

Nick barked, "So could you."

The comment cut, and Fine showed it by looking down at the Bible, his lips pursed in a classic pout, like he had been falsely accused.

The room was quiet as they all seemed to take a deep breath.

Jeffrey tried to keep his tone even, asking, "Did you tell Jenny your theory about Mark? Is that why she wanted to shoot him?"

Fine stared at the Bible.

Jeffrey took his silence as a confirmation. "What else did Dottie have you do?"

"Just the deliveries."

"No, before that."

"She made me come over when she was taking the pic-tures," he said. "I didn't want to, but she held my life in her hands." He held out his hands to illustrate the point. "If those pictures ever got out," he said, "it would have ruined me. My wife, my children…" Tears welled into his eyes. "I have responsibilities."