Seeing Red (25 page)

Ellis thought of her thick waist—the Fun Killer wouldn’t let her drink diet because of the chemicals. “No, thanks.”

While Laura was in the kitchen, Ellis heard a car outside. Her guilty eyes cut to the door. It was too early for the parents to be back.

She went to the window and looked out. Her uncle’s car was in the drive.

“Laura! They’re home!” Ellis hurried back to the sofa, casting a panicked eye toward the nasty activity frozen on the TV screen.

Crap! She couldn’t find the remote.

In the kitchen, she heard the
thunk
of a glass on the counter and a cabinet door slam.

“Where’s the remote?” Ellis called.

She had her hand shoved deep in the cushions when the front door opened.

“Girls?” Uncle Greg was in the living room before Ellis could straighten up. She raised her eyes and waited for the reprimand.

Laura came back into the room. “Daddy. You’re home early.” She didn’t even sound worried.

“Your mother and Aunt Marsha want to take a walk down the beach . . . full moon, you know. I came in to get Mom’s sweatshirt.” Then he headed upstairs to the master bedroom without a word about what was on TV.

Ellis finally found the remote on the floor and flipped the TV off before he came back. “Holy crap,” she whispered to Laura. “You think he saw?”

Uncle Greg’s voice preceded him down the stairs. “Of course I saw.” He came trotting down the steps with Aunt Jodi’s sweatshirt in his hand. “You girls might want to put that away before your mothers come in, especially if you want to go to the stables tomorrow morning.”

He disappeared out the front door without another word.

Ellis’s knees felt like rubber. Not going to the stables would be the worst punishment ever. She looked at Laura.

Laura tilted her head, raised an eyebrow, and shrugged. Then she ejected the tape from the VCR.

Holy cow. If that had been Ellis’s mom (or even her dad), there would have been an hour-long lecture about trust and making good “choices.” But Uncle Greg had been totally cool.

Why can’t the Fun Killer be more like her brother?

Looking back on it, Ellis realized she’d asked herself that question many times throughout her childhood. Uncle Greg had been all about fun—without a bunch of lectures about the responsibility that went along with it.

Now Ellis suddenly saw that entire evening in a whole new light. It was possible that Laura had something in that Coke.

Even so . . .

“You’re saying it was
Laura’s fault
she was attacked?” Ellis asked, tight-lipped with blooming anger. “Her bedroom screen was cut. He came in and got her.”

And I was right there. I could have saved her.

Why hadn’t Laura made a noise? Why hadn’t she called for help? If Laura had fought him, Ellis surely would have heard.

“Of course not,” Nate said. “Don’t twist this around. I’m telling you Laura was in trouble. Her judgment was clouded. She took risks she couldn’t even see
were
risks. If anyone is to blame, it’s me. I knew and didn’t tell anyone. More than once, she’d promised she’d stop. I was young and foolish and believed she could. I thought I could help her all by myself.”

Viewing her cousin from this new perspective, Ellis realized that perhaps the signs had been there. She’d just been too naïve to see them.

But her uncle? Had his paternal adoration blinded him to his daughter’s faults?

Or had her uncle known Laura was drinking and ignored it, just as he’d ignored Ellis’s viewing of contraband videos? Had he known and thought it was a simple teenage rite of passage, justified that it was safer for Laura to be drinking at home?

Perhaps Nate was right; Uncle Greg hated him because he needed someone to blame, someone other than himself.

“What did you mean,” Ellis asked, “when you said she needed you to clean up her messes?”

Nate waved his hand dismissively. “You know, cover her tracks, make sure she was where she was supposed to be when the sun came up.”

“So what does that have to do with her not being a random victim?”

Nate clasped his hands together between his knees and drew his mouth to the side, as if deciding. The action made the crescent-shaped scar by his eye more noticeable. “She used to get older . . . people to buy her liquor, people who could get it legally.”

Ellis caught his hesitation. “By
people,
you mean guys.”

Laura having a drinking problem was one thing. What Nate was insinuating here was something more. Had she simply used her beauty to coax guys to purchase her booze?

As much as she wanted to cling to that idea, it didn’t really wash. There had to be more. Why else would Nate have been so hesitant?

He looked incredibly sad as he nodded. “I figure Alexander was probably one of them. Sometimes she went into Charleston, near the colleges. Maybe she came across him there.”

“She traded sex for alcohol?” She nearly choked on the words. How could her beautiful cousin, a girl with everything, have valued herself so little?

“I never wanted any of you to know,” he said quietly. “It wouldn’t bring her back. It would only hurt you.”

The irony of this entire thing twisted her heart. The only guy who wasn’t having sex with her was the one who’d cared the most. The one who shouldered the blame in silence. The one who’d taken the wrath of a grieving father and kept the ugliest part of the truth to himself. He protected the family that vilified him.

Nate said, “She’d make promises that she’d stop drinking. But there was no keeping Laura from doing what she was determined to do. She was sick. She needed professional help. I know that now. I should have known it then.”

He buried his face in his hands, and Ellis could see the emotional toll living with the guilt of failing Laura had taken.

And now he feels responsible for me.

She didn’t want to be the cause of more guilt weighing on his soul.

She wanted to comfort him. But she could tell he wasn’t in any frame of mind to accept comfort. And, to be honest, she was still trying to digest all of this, still searching her memories for signs that she’d missed.

After a moment, he got up and left the room.

She didn’t stop him.

She heard the bedroom door close.

Curling on her side, she grabbed the TV remote and turned on the twenty-four-hour local news channel. She tuned the volume low so she wouldn’t disturb Nate. After four minutes of commercials, Ellis’s eyes were drifting closed. Then the news anchor returned.

“And now our top story. Nineteen-year-old Kimberly Potter was found brutally murdered in the normally peaceful coastal town of Belle Island.”

Ellis’s eyes snapped open.

A photograph flashed on the screen over the anchorman’s right shoulder. “Her body was discovered near the Seaside Apartments around dawn this morning . . . .”

Ellis’s hearing faded as all of her senses honed in on that photograph.

Suddenly, Hollis Alexander’s most recent attack lost all appearances of being random.

The drone of Justine’s washing machine vibrated the floor over Hollis’s head, hiding the small noises he might inadvertently make. Time and again, Providence worked in his favor.

He didn’t normally sneak into the basement during the day, but he couldn’t risk leaving certain things in his van while he was at work in the kennel. The door locks didn’t work.

Everything he’d used last night had been disposed of, except the camera. He was anxious to develop his film, but he couldn’t be late to work. He placed the camera precisely on the shelf, folding the strap just so and tucking it behind.

He was proud of his work space. Every single thing had a place and a purpose. It was neat. Ordered.

He was going to hate to leave it.

But, he thought, he wouldn’t be leaving his precious things behind. They would go with him. It would be like moving a museum.

He looked at the photograph he’d thumbtacked to the back of the door. Laura Reinhardt had been everything he looked for—she knew she was good-looking, and she used it to get what she wanted. Hollis had known she was special the instant he’d laid eyes on her, giving head to some dude behind a liquor store near campus. She was to be his crown jewel and therefore deserved extra attention.

Oh, how he’d savored the anticipation of their time together. He’d drawn out his preparations, each day his excitement growing stronger. Each time he watched her, his anger grew until it was a driving need that nothing but dominating her would sate. He’d lain awake night after night, thinking of how she would beg.

But nothing had worked out as he’d planned. He’d drawn his game out too long.

He wouldn’t repeat the mistake. Ellis Greene was going to receive her just reward sooner rather than later.

C
HAPTER
N
INETEEN

N
ate awakened as he always did, fully alert and functional. There was no moment of temporary disorientation. He knew right where he was. In Ellis’s bed. Alone.

It was nearly time for him to leave, but he remained on the bed for a long while, tormenting himself with a false sense of closeness.

He’d slept on top of the covers, fully clothed except for his shoes. Her pillow was his only intimate contact with her bed. He rolled over and breathed in the scent of her shampoo. It was light, a combination of citrus and fresh-cut grass. Pure. Beautiful. And it highlighted, once again, the vast difference between them, between their adult lives.

Finally, he forced himself to stop lingering in thoughts of the impossible and swing his legs over the side of the bed. It was time to face what had to be done.

When he entered the living room, the sofa where he’d left Ellis was empty. He heard rustling in the kitchen.

He found her sitting at the table, holding a newspaper in front of her.

It was a few moments before she noticed he was there. He sank back into a small fantasy where he arose every day to Ellis looking at the newspaper.

When she looked up, saw him, and smiled, his heart actually hurt.

“Did you rest?” she asked.

“Yeah, thanks for letting me use the bed.”

“I made jambalaya. You hungry?” She folded the paper and set it on an empty chair.

“Starved,” he lied. He had no appetite. Not when he thought of what lay ahead in the dark of the night.

“Sit,” she said.

While she moved around the kitchen, he allowed himself to pretend that this was the first of many meals they would share. In reality, if all went as he planned tonight, it would be the last.

His eye fell on the newspaper Ellis had set on the chair beside him. It was folded through the center of a photograph. His mouth went dry.

Ellis leaned over his shoulder, placing a plate in front of him. She paused there, close enough that he could feel her magnetic pull, as if she were a satellite to his soul.

She asked, “Did you know what she looked like?”

He shook his head and picked up the paper. He unfolded the face of a girl who looked so much like Laura that he felt as if someone had put an ice cube down his back.

As he read of the crime and of the life taken, his stomach burned and his hands gripped the paper so tightly they trembled.

He realized he’d underestimated Hollis Alexander’s sharp, yet twisted mind. Apparently, he was capable of multitasking his crimes, creating new ones while cleaning up business from the past. This nightmare had to end.

Nate turned the paper over to skim the lower half of the front page. There, in the lower-left-hand quarter, was an editorial by Wayne Carr—the man who had relentlessly beat the dead horse of the case surrounding Laura’s attack until it had putrefied and completely poisoned Nate’s life here.

As a staff journalist, I rarely request the privilege of writing an editorial. But I have taken an exception in order to do my part in preventing future crimes against our young women.

Belle Island is a community that relishes the values and peaceful life of bygone days. It’s why those born here stay and why young couples disgruntled with city life come to raise their children here.

So how, I ask, can it be possible that Belle Island has become a hunting ground for crimes against defenseless women? Where young women once walked the night streets without fear, they now huddle behind locked doors.

Although these heinous attacks on Kimberly Potter and Laura Reinhardt (the only brutal crimes our fair town has suffered in its recorded history) have come sixteen years apart, there are so many similarities between them that one has to suspect one villain is responsible for both.

We know that the man convicted of attacking Laura Reinhardt sixteen years ago is out of prison. He’s also working to clear his name, to find justice he claims has been long denied. Statistics prove in cases where convicted criminals are exonerated by DNA evidence that eyewitness identification—the mitigating factor in the Reinhardt case’s conviction—is wrong 75 percent of the time. It’s an astounding figure of inaccuracy, especially when you’re talking about a person’s life and liberty.