Wild Justice (31 page)

Memory is a strange thing. I guess I should know that better than anyone. But now, reading the trial transcripts, I realized just how many holes my mind had filled in. Maybe that makes sense. My brain had intentionally
made
those gaps as it ripped apart my recollection of that night. To deal with that, I filled in the blanks and came to believe them as fact.

One of those false memories was right here, in my own statement. I said that I’d caught a glimpse of Aldrich strangling Amy and that’s why I ran. Except I hadn’t. I knew that now, from the nightmares and the fresh memories. Aldrich had raped me. When he left me, I’d gotten free of my bindings. I’d heard Amy. I’d known she was being hurt. I’d believed she was also being raped. So I’d run for help. But I’d never looked in that room because I knew if I had, Aldrich would realize I’d escaped and I’d never be able to get help for Amy.

Yet apparently, I said I’d peeked in. I’d identified Drew Aldrich as the man with his hands around my cousin’s throat. Had I believed it at the time? Or had I simply believed I had to say it to put him in jail? I don’t know.

Now I had to admit that to Quinn, without letting him know about the rape. Maybe I should have. But I couldn’t tell him and just move on. It would slam down a stop sign on the investigation while we dealt with that—he’d want to know how I found out, how was I coping, what he could do to help. For now I could only tell him that I
hadn’t
seen Aldrich killing Amy.

“I was tied up in the next room,” I said. “I got free, and I could hear her in trouble, so I ran for help. I don’t know why I said I looked in.”

“Because you wanted him caught and punished.”

“I guess so.”

“No.” He caught my gaze. “I know so, and I’d have done the same. Hell, there have been times I’ve wanted to lie under oath to put a bastard away. If I don’t, it’s only because, as you’ve told me many times, I can’t pull off an act.” A wry smile. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve never fudged the truth, when I knew I could get away with it. You said what you thought needed to be said. Unfortunately, it didn’t work, and I can see why.”

I bristled a little at that, and he laughed.

“No,” he said. “I’m not insulting your acting ability.”

“That’s not—”

“Oh, yes, it is.” He shot a smile my way. “You might ethically worry about having told the lie, but you’d be insulted if I said you didn’t do it well enough. You’re a web of contradictions, Nadia, and that’s what I—” He stopped and the smile vanished. “Dee, I meant. There was nothing wrong with your statement. It’s just that it . . . Well, again, it only added fuel to their theory. The defense painted you as the good girl. The police chief’s daughter. A straight arrow. Fiercely loyal. Loves her family and worries about her cousin. Smart and sensible but sheltered, too. The kind of girl people want thirteen-year-olds to be.”

“The kind of girl Amy wasn’t.”

“Exactly. So your much more worldly cousin tricks you and you end up at some cabin with a guy, and there are drugs and booze and you’re completely out of your element. Confused and terrified. You don’t understand what’s going on, because you’d never think of willingly doing drugs or having sex, so you presume your cousin wouldn’t, either. You certainly wouldn’t understand anything about breath-control play. When you saw him seeming to strangle her during sex, you drew the obvious conclusion and panicked.”

“And by saying I saw Aldrich, that gave the defense the excuse to say that
Amy
panicked. That she spotted me and fought, and, in trying to defend himself, Aldrich accidentally killed her.”

That’s where both theories hit a rough patch, one that only made sense to me now. Aldrich had scratches, which he used as proof that Amy attacked him. Except there was no skin under her nails, so the prosecution claimed he’d been scratched by branches while fleeing the scene. He hadn’t. I’d attacked Aldrich during my rape. That’s how he got the scratches and I got the knife cut.

But the biggest shock in the file? There was absolutely no forensic evidence that Drew Aldrich raped and killed Amy. No skin under her nails. No fingerprints. No traces of semen. No blood, either, despite proof that Amy had coughed blood at some point. As I read that I began to wonder if there may have been a valid reason Aldrich left nothing behind at Amy’s murder scene: if he wasn’t the one who raped and killed her.

When I even thought that, my stomach lurched and my brain threw on the brakes. Of course he’d killed her. I’d been there. No one else was in that cabin. I was sure . . .

Or was I?
How
was I sure if I’d never looked in the other room as Amy was being attacked?

What if Aldrich did have a partner? And that partner killed Amy? It would explain the lack of evidence. It would explain the dark-shirted man seen fleeing the scene. It would explain, too, why there was nothing about her murder in the journal, why Aldrich had seemed to dismiss her and focus on me. And it would explain one last piece of evidence, something both the prosecution and defense had ignored.

A small note on the autopsy report said the pressure of the marks was consistent with a right-handed attacker. Aldrich was left-handed. That was in the file, too. Yet in regards to the strangulation report, neither side made anything of it.

“Because they weren’t arguing whether or not Aldrich killed Amy,” Quinn said. “Also left-handedness doesn’t always mean you do
everything
left-handed. If one side argued, the other would bring in experts, and it just wasn’t worth it if Aldrich had confessed to strangling her.”

“But it does mean . . .”

“Yeah. Someone else might have killed Amy.”

Quinn pushed the laptop away. Then he reached over and tugged my chair to face him. He leaned forward, gaze on mine, his eyes dark with concern and I felt . . . I felt terrible. A spark of grief for what we’d had, and a full-blown flame of guilt over Jack and because I hadn’t been what Quinn wanted.

“You okay?” Quinn asked.

I nodded.

“Aldrich was still involved,” Quinn said. “He still lured you girls there and he probably did more than that.”

But it did change everything I thought I knew. Everything I’d been damned sure of, for twenty years, one of the few constants in my life, that kernel of rage blaming Aldrich for killing my cousin. And maybe more important that confusion and internal struggle over him being set free, not wanting to blame my family but, in a little way, doing exactly that.

Now that I saw the file, I knew Neil and Koss were both right. It was a fair trial. Even if Aldrich did do it, it was hard to convict him of murder based on this. Statutory rape? Definitely. Manslaughter? Probably. If they’d bargained down, he’d have gone to jail. But the prosecution must have thought their murder case was sound and Aldrich hadn’t tried to bargain. If he didn’t do it, that gave him all the more reason to be sure he’d be acquitted. So why say he’d accidentally killed her? That I didn’t know.

At a noise beside me, I turned to see Jack.

“You got something?” he asked.

“We do,” I said. “And you?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me.”

Jack had found a reference in one of the more recent entries in which Aldrich wrote that he had “shared” a fifteen-year-old conquest with another man. The details of how that came about weren’t in the journal, just an allusion to the fact that alcohol and drugs had been involved. Aldrich was always careful to avoid details. I suppose he figured if the journal was found, he could claim it was just fantasies. Without details, investigators might be unable to find his victims and prove otherwise. So there was nothing there except a description of the encounter itself. We skimmed that. Like everything else in the journal, this was where Aldrich put his detail in, and no one needed to read that.

Here, he’d written that he’d forgotten how good it could be to “share,” and that he’d missed it, not just the sex but having someone to share the entire experience with, someone who can open you up to things you’d never dare try on your own. “This wasn’t the same,” he wrote. “There was none of that this time. It was just sex. But it made me long for the old days. I got scared off back then. We both did. I know more now, though, and sometimes I wonder if it’s not too late to go back.”

“Damn,” Quinn said as we finished reading. “It really sounds like he’s referring to Amy. Being tried for murder would definitely scare anyone off, even if he was acquitted.”

“What’d you find?” Jack asked.

I told him, and when I finished, we agreed that while it still wasn’t solid proof that Aldrich had a partner it was enough to proceed in that direction. But how the hell would we find his partner? There sure weren’t any clues in the journal. I’d gotten all I could from Shannon Broadhurst, and there was no way of knowing this partner was even the “old friend” he’d mentioned to her. We could start interviewing his other known victims, see if he’d said more, but that was time consuming, risky, and a long shot.

Quinn was quiet for a minute. Then he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking over at me. “We know Aldrich was being investigated under other names. Jack has all that. I’m going to suggest that I start looking into it officially. Obviously, it’s not my area, so I’m not
investigating
officially. But I’d be looking as myself. As a marshal. That will make it a lot easier.”

I straightened. “I don’t want you taking any risks—”

“I’m not, and here’s the part you might not like. You know I didn’t keep our relationship a secret. I couldn’t. Friends, family, they knew I was seeing someone. A few even got a name. You and I agreed that was okay. While I wouldn’t announce that I’m looking into Aldrich or why, if it came up, I have an excuse. You had questions after his death. I agreed to dig.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Do that.”

“I was asking Dee.”

“Who is gonna ask me if it’s safe. I say it is. You’re okay with it? Go ahead.”

I kept my mouth shut. Jack was answering because I could not in good conscience tell Quinn to do anything that would even slightly risk damaging his professional reputation.

“Good,” Quinn said. “I’ll get on that. Jack, if there’s anything—anything at all—you can give me from the journal that will help me . . .”

“Few things. Other attacks. Got a list.”

“Thanks.” Quinn looked at me. “This is going to be the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack search, but I think it’s the best we can do for now.”

“I have some feelers out, too,” Jack said. “Got our pro’s fake ID. Got his burner phone. Seeing if that leads anywhere.”

“Great,” Quinn said. “Every potential lead is going to count here.”

Jack nodded, but I could tell I wasn’t the only one who kind of wished Quinn was being his testy, confrontational self instead.

Night comes fast when your day starts past noon, and it was almost nine when we ordered pizza and eleven by the time we finished. Jack called it a day then, though I suspect he was just hinting for Quinn to go to his room.

Except Quinn didn’t have a room yet, and when he went to the desk, they were fully booked for a convention. So he had to crash on our sofa bed, which added a whole new level of awkward.

“I’ll take the sofa,” I said quickly. “You have one of the beds.”

“Nah,” Jack said. “I’ll sleep on the—”

He stopped before offering, as if realizing that meant Quinn and I would share a bedroom. Yep, more awkward.

Quinn insisted on the sofa, being gallant. We agreed and I scampered off to our room at the earliest possible opportunity.

Jack went out after that. I heard the door close, and for a moment I thought maybe Quinn had left for a walk, but I knew by the soft click that it was Jack. A few seconds later, my phone buzzed with a text.
Stepped out. Making some calls. Be in soon.
Then, before I could finish reading it, a second one.
Sleep tight.

I smiled and put the phone aside. I was halfway between waking and sleep when he came in later. I could still hear Quinn moving around in the other room, so I kept my eyes closed. Resist temptation.

Jack left the light off. His footsteps crossed to the top of my bed, and I felt him pausing there. He bent, his lips brushing my forehead, and then he climbed into the other bed.

I hadn’t had a nightmare since I found Drew Aldrich dead. Even discovering that he’d raped me hadn’t brought on the midnight screaming fits. It was as if when he left this world he took that baggage with him. Or enough that I was able to cope with the rest. Except now I had to face the real possibility that Amy hadn’t been avenged by Aldrich’s death.

After reading the file, I finally realized that testifying wouldn’t have helped. Admitting I’d been raped wouldn’t have been enough. Even if he’d been convicted of that, he’d have been out after five years, and from his journal, that’s about as long as he’d been “scared straight” anyway. He’d have left Ontario, changed his name, and gone right back to victimizing young girls. I wouldn’t have saved them.

But I still might have saved Amy if I’d stayed instead of running. I can argue against that during the daytime. At night, though, I was certain if only I’d stayed, she’d be alive. At least if I’d peeked into that room, I’d be sure of who really killed her. But I’d run.

That night the nightmare returned from a fresh angle. Aldrich was walking away, and I was lying on the floor, hurting so bad, hurting everywhere, from the rape and from the knife wound on my neck. I didn’t really know what happened. I did and yet I didn’t. He’d told me to lie still, and I’d thought I could do that, but when he’d pulled my legs apart, I just . . . I just couldn’t. I’d gone crazy with fear and panic and rage and there was no way I was letting him do
that
—I just wasn’t.