Sweet Poison (14 page)

“You always leave.”

The words stung, but he brushed them away, thinking it was just the alcohol talking.

Luke helped Christopher out of his bathrobe, then got him settled in bed. Sitting on the edge, he removed his shoes. He slipped under the covers without undressing. Whispering that everything would be okay, he circled Christopher’s waist with his arm, held him tight.

Luke knew it was a lie. He’d been lying a lot lately. What he feared most was that nothing would ever be all right again.

W
ith a brandy resting next to her and the desk light on, Jane sat hunched in front of the computer screen in her study searching for information on the rape Corey Hodge had committed nine years ago. She’d known him almost as long as she’d known Mary Glynn. Not well, of course. But from a distance she’d watched him grow from a stormy, troubled teenager into an impulsive, sometimes self-destructive adult. And yet, through it all, Jane could see that Mary loved and believed in him. It was probably that bond that had kept Corey on the straight and narrow—if anything ever had.

Jane didn’t know much about Corey’s early years, except for the few comments Mary had made. Before he was arrested, Corey was driving a pizza truck, making deliveries of frozen pizza to various outlets throughout the Midwest.

Jane read through various sites until she finally found something that gave her the particulars of the rape charge.

Louisa Timmons, twenty-six, a dental assistant from Bloomington, had been on her way up to see her boyfriend in Cloquet, just outside of Duluth, when the rape occurred. She’d left work at six, gone home to pack an overnight bag, but got waylaid by her sister
who called and asked her to help move some furniture and boxes into her new apartment. She assured Louisa it wouldn’t take long. That hadn’t been the case. She left the cities late, sometime around one
A.M
. She’d always been nervous about driving alone at night, but she set out anyway, thinking that it would be only a few hours until she’d be reunited with her boyfriend.

According to the account, she stopped at a rest area around two thirty. She drove off I-35 into the parking area, closed and locked the door to her Honda, then headed straight for the lighted building. She said she remembered looking over her shoulder into the truck area and seeing a midsized transport truck with the word
PIZZA
written on the side. When asked later how she could see that far away in the dark, she said the parking lot was lighted.

She entered the building, found it quiet and deserted. She thought about looking for the maintenance guy, just to make her feel more comfortable, but instead went directly to the women’s room. When she came out, she heard a small pop, then felt an intense cramping pain that spread through her entire body. As weird as it sounded, she thought she’d been struck by lightning.

The next thing she knew she was on the floor, and someone was on top of her, taping her hands behind her back. She remembered seeing the man’s hands reach around in front of her and tape her eyes shut. He whispered into her ear, told her to shut up. And then he raped her. When it was over, he flipped her onto her back, pulled up her sweater, and wrote something on her stomach. He left her there on the floor. She lay like that until sometime after three, when a man came in to use the restroom. He had a cell phone and called 911.

The maintenance guy was later found outside with a big goose egg on his head where he’d been hit and knocked out. He said he never got a good look at his assailant and couldn’t ID him, except to say that he smelled like he hadn’t had a bath in several years. The maintenance man had been out changing the plastic sacks in garbage bins when he was attacked.

The word the rapist had written on Louisa’s stomach in bold orange
lipstick was
justice
. Just that. The one word and nothing else. Jane wondered if anything had been written on Charity’s stomach. So far, nobody had said one way or the other.

During Louisa’s interrogation, she told the police about the pizza truck. She thought the letters on the side were red but said she couldn’t be positive.

Again, Jane felt guilty for worrying about what effect Charity’s death might have on her dad’s campaign, and yet she couldn’t help herself. Maybe there wouldn’t be any effect at all. She hoped Corey had nothing to do with it and that it wouldn’t become the negative watershed moment, the weight that would finally tip the scales in favor of Pettyjohn. If Corey had done it, it might give the Pettyjohn campaign the magic bullet they were looking for—at exactly the right time. Here was a vivid, real-life example of what Ray Lawless did for a living. He defended rapists and murderers, the kind of man who had just ended the life of a promising young woman. Her dad was hoping the electorate would vote on the issues. Don Pettyjohn was hoping to make the election a referendum on her father’s bad judgment and dirty hands.

Jane looked up from the screen as Kenzie moved into the doorway. “I woke up and you were gone.”

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I couldn’t sleep.”

“What are you looking at?” She moved around behind Jane, began massaging her shoulders.

“That feels so good. Don’t stop.” She closed her eyes. She wanted to concentrate on the feel of Kenzie’s hands working out the kinks in her upper back, but she couldn’t quite let go.

“Come to bed,” said Kenzie, nuzzling Jane’s neck. “All of this … it’s out of your hands. The police are working on it. They’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so,” said Jane. Instead of helping, the Web search had left her feeling restless.

“And if you obsess about this homicide the entire time I’m here, I may have to drag you back to Chadwick in a horse trailer and keep you captive for a week or two in the barn.”

“That sounds … interesting.”

Jane switched off the computer and stood up to face Kenzie. Drawing her into her arms, she kissed her softly. For a split second, she remembered that Julia had been in the house just a few nights ago. She felt a pinprick of unease that she’d never told Kenzie about Julia. They’d agreed early on that neither of them needed to take a walk down the other’s romantic memory lane. But maybe that had been a mistake. All Jane wanted was to sink into the hazy, intoxicating ache she felt whenever Kenzie was around. “Let’s go back to bed,” she whispered.

“You’re slow, Lawless. But you’re capable of learning.”

C
orey pulled the pillow off his head and yelled, “What?” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and looked over at the clock. Three
A.M
. His room was in shambles, as usual, his clothes lying right where he’d stepped out of them a few hours ago.

“Corey, it’s me. The police are here to see you.” There was a quiver in his aunt’s voice.

“Don’t come in,” he called back, not really sure why he should be concerned that his aunt would scold him for the way his room looked when the freakin’ wolf was at the door. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

“Okay. We’ll be upstairs in the living room.”

He could tell she hadn’t walked away but was still outside the door, listening.

He shoved a bunch of his dirty clothes under the bed, along with a half-empty bottle of bourbon. He pulled on some clean underwear, found a pair of rumpled jeans sticking out from under his dresser, and yanked a sweatshirt off the top shelf of his closet. Sitting down on the bed, he pulled on some socks and his white Adidas. As he drew the shirt over his head, he realized it was the one that said, “Cleverly Disguised
as an Adult.” The only other one he had said, “Boldly Going Nowhere.” With no real choice, he stuck with the first.

Finger combing his hair in front of a small mirror, he decided it was time for the goatee to come off. It looked stupid.

He opened the door and found Mary with her hand cupped to her ear.

“Not cool,” he said, turning her around and pushing her up the basement steps. “Did the cops say what they wanted?”

She gave her head a tight shake. “Don’t you work in the morning?”

“Yeah, at nine.”

When he got to the living room, he saw that both of the cops were actually plainclothes, a man and a woman. “Oops,” he said under his breath, immediately regretting his sweatshirt choice. After his hair, it was the first thing the woman cop looked at.

“Are you Corey Hodge?” asked the male cop.

“Yeah?”

“I’m Sergeant Emerson, and this is Sergeant Hamill.” They flipped him their badges. “We’re here to talk to you about Charity Miller. I understand you know her.”

He took in their expressionless faces. They weren’t going to give him an inch. “We’ve met.” He dropped down on the sofa. His aunt stood in the kitchen doorway, apparently too nervous to join them in the living room.

“We been told you were volunteering at Raymond Lawless’s campaign office,” said the woman. She wasn’t tall, but she was solid, hefty, not the least bit fat.

“That’s right.”

“And that you and Ms. Miller were quite friendly,” she added.

“We talked.”

“We also understand that you visited her at the bank where she works.”

“I needed to open a checking account. She told me to come by, that she’d set it up. It was close to where I live, so I drove over.”

“You still own a motorcycle?” asked the male cop. Emerson.

“Yeah?”

Emerson shifted his gaze to Mary, then over to his partner, and finally back to Corey. “Where were you yesterday morning between the hours of midnight and three?”

“Why?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Well, let’s see. I was at the campaign office for a while. I left around ten, picked up some dinner at a Burger King. And then I drove over to my old girlfriend’s house, must have been close to eleven. I talked to her boyfriend briefly. After that, I drove home and went to bed.”

“Can you confirm that?” asked Emerson, gazing over at Mary.

“I, ah … I was in bed.”

“Did you hear your nephew come home?” asked Hamill.

She shook her head. “His bedroom is in the basement, so he often comes in through the door inside the garage. If he’s quiet, and he usually is, I never hear anything.”

Corey was glad she hadn’t lied for him.

“I take it neither of you listen to the news,” said Emerson.

Mary didn’t reply, she just looked embarrassed.

“You wanna cut to the chase,” said Corey, cracking his knuckles.

Emerson watched him with his tight, cop eyes. “We’re homicide investigators, Corey. Ms. Miller was found dead around six
A.M
. yesterday morning by a neighbor taking out the trash.”

Blinking a couple of times, Corey replied, “Sorry to hear it. But what’s that got to do with me?”

“She was hit with a taser.”

“Tasers don’t kill people.”

“They can.”

“Bullshit.”

“You own a taser, Corey?”

“Nope. And if you’re coming to me with some bull crap story that I used a taser on her, you can forget it. I was home,
here
, in bed.”

“But you have no proof.”

“Can you prove I wasn’t?”

Both cops stood.

“We’re going to ask you to come downtown,” said Emerson, fishing for something in the inside pocket of his raincoat. “Sergeant Hamill will stay here and execute a search warrant.” He handed Mary the papers. “Two patrolmen should be here shortly to help.”

“Search warrant,” repeated Mary, looking like the writing was in Sanskrit.

“For Corey’s bedroom and his motorcycle,” said Hamill.

“Are you arresting me?” asked Corey.

“No,” said Emerson. “I just wanna talk awhile longer.”

“Does he need a lawyer?” asked Mary, her fingers kneading the middle button on her robe.

“That’s certainly his right, ma’am. But like I said, we just need to talk.”

Sure, thought Corey. Like he hadn’t heard that one before. “It’s fine, Mary. I’ll go with him. She won’t find anything in my bedroom. Just let her do what she needs to do.” He kissed his aunt on the cheek, gave her a hug. “I’ll be back before you know it. I haven’t done anything wrong. You believe me, don’t you?”

She searched his eyes. “Yes,” she said weakly.