Evidence of Mercy (22 page)

“What's happening to us?” Paige cried, sopping her tears with a wadded tissue. “Everywhere I turn, there's danger. How am I ever going to protect her? Feel her. She's still shaking.”

Lynda laid her hands on the child and felt the shiver. “She must have been pretty scared when she saw him.”

“Well, what do you expect? To have him burst out of nowhere like that and start grabbing her—What is he trying to do to her? Doesn't he realize that a child shouldn't ever have to be that afraid?”

Lynda stroked back Paige's hair where it was matted to her wet face. “It's going to be okay, Paige. Come on. Larry's following us home now.”

Wearily, Paige got up, shifted Brianna more securely to her hip, and with a troubled, miserable expression, regarded Larry. “You have a gun, don't you?”

“Of course I have a gun. I'm a cop.”

“But—you would use it if you had to, wouldn't you?”

“That's my job, Paige. Don't worry. I'm not going to let anything happen to you.”

Her face was pale as they started out of the room. “Larry, do you think I should get a gun?”

Lynda watched Larry's face, for she had wondered the same thing herself. “No, Paige, I don't. Too many accidents happen. Too many people rely on them when their tempers flare. Too many people die because there was a gun too readily available. And I sure don't recommend it with a child in the house.”

“That's what I thought you'd say.” But as they walked to Larry's unmarked car, Paige whispered to Lynda, “If I had the money, I'd buy one anyway. And the next time Keith sprang up out of nowhere, I'd be ready.”

L
arry was quiet later that day as he and Tony prowled St. Clair in their unmarked car, working on a cocaine case that they were close to breaking. The sheriff's department was too small for any of its detectives to specialize in one area, so Larry didn't know from one week to the next what kind of crime he'd be assigned to.

It gave the job some diversity, which he supposed was a plus. But the minus was that they slapped a file closed so quickly the moment they had someone booked that he was never able to get a sense of closure.

“What's on your mind?” Tony asked, glancing over at him as he drove.

He shrugged. “I don't know. I was just thinking about that Doug Chastain kid. Did I tell you we found a Shakespeare book in his apartment?”

“Three times. Why is that bothering you so?”

He sighed. “I didn't say it was bothering me. I just stated a fact. He really is enrolled in night school. And his phone
was
unplugged.”

Tony rubbed his chin in disbelief. “So you think a guy who reads
Hamlet
can't burn down a house? Is this another one of your bleeding-heart theories?”

“No,” Larry returned. “But I don't want to assume somebody's guilty just because he has an attitude and a weird haircut. Especially when his alibi could be true.”

“
Part
of his alibi. The other part was a lie. And what about his mechanic skills and the gas stains and the arson conviction and the gas can? You think some Shakespeare book clears up all that evidence?”

“No, I don't.” He took in a deep breath and shifted in his seat. “I just feel uneasy about things. Like maybe we closed the case too fast.”

“We have an assignment board full of unsolved cases, Larry. Neither one of us has time to dwell on long shots.”

“Well, I'd feel better if we could pick up Keith Varner again. Slap an assault charge on him.”

“There are deputies working on it, buddy.”

Larry was quiet for a few moments. “You just should have seen how scared they were today. The little kid and Paige. Even Lynda. I wish there was something definitive we could do.”

Tony only chuckled. “Lighten up, pal. They'll be fine.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

P
aige tucked her sleeping child into bed in the master bedroom then pulled back the curtain and peered out the front window.

The street was dark, and she wasn't sure she would even know if someone sat out there, watching, waiting. What if Keith had discovered where they were? What if he were just biding his time, waiting until her guard was down to pounce again and snatch Brianna from her hands?

She was getting crazy, she told herself, but she wished the police would go back to guarding the house again. But police never guarded battered, frightened mothers or abused children. They didn't consider the threats wrathful husbands made to be as serious as attempted murder. Paige didn't see the difference.

Sighing, she closed the curtain and went through the living room to the back door. Through the window, she saw Lynda sitting on the patio with her head resting against the back of her chair, staring up into the stars.

Quietly, she opened the door and stepped outside. “Lynda, are you okay?”

Lynda offered a weak smile. “I'm fine, Paige. Sit down.”

“I don't know.” Crossing her arms, Paige gazed across the yard to the woods behind the fence. “I feel too vulnerable out here. I think I'd rather stay closed up inside.”

“I felt that way at first, too. But I love sitting outside at night, and I decided not to let Doug Chastain take that away from me. You shouldn't let Keith.”

“All right.” Still watching the shadows beyond the yard, Paige took the padded swing across from Lynda and began to move gently back and forth. “I've been so jumpy today since the run-in with him. It feels good to relax.”

“It does, doesn't it?”

Crickets chirped in the yard, signaling that fall was approaching, and Lynda smiled. “Those crickets remind me of college.”

“College? Why? Did you study them?”

Lynda laughed. “Crickets? No. But every fall, the library seemed to be full of them. Especially at night. I'd be there studying, and those crickets would be chirping as loud as you could imagine, and I'd look for them so I could throw them outside. I don't know why they bothered me so much.”

Paige closed her eyes against the cool breeze whispering through her hair. “I always meant to go to college. When I married Keith, he promised I could. But every time I brought it up, he nipped it in the bud.”

“Well, maybe you could try it now.”

Paige shook her head. “No, I'd never make it through. I'm not smart enough.”

“Smart enough?” Lynda asked. “Paige, you have as much upstairs as anyone I know.”

Paige didn't seem to buy it. “Besides, now I have to worry about making ends meet. It's not easy supporting a child alone. The whole time we've been divorced, I haven't gotten one penny of child support from Keith. But I don't really want it. I don't want him having anything at all to do with Brianna.” Hugging herself, Paige scanned the fence.

“I think God's with you on this, Paige.”

Paige chuckled softly. “Oh, really? Why?”

“Call it deductive reasoning. You've come through more narrow escapes than I have. You do believe in God, don't you?”

Paige sighed. “I guess so. I wish I had as much faith as you.”

“Where do you get the idea that I have more than you?”

Paige considered that for a moment. “Well, you live a real decent life, Lynda. You're a good example. Like you really believe.”

“Why?” Lynda asked honestly. “Because I don't have a criminal record, I only let a curse word fly when I'm really mad, my name is on a church roster, and I have a pro-life sticker on my bumper? Is that my example?”

“No,” Paige said. “Because you took Brianna and me in, and you gave us money, and clothes. . . .”

Lynda sighed. “That's nothing, Paige. With my income, I should be ashamed for all I
haven't
done.”

Paige was amazed. “Lynda, you just don't know. Other people aren't like that. Even family.”

Lynda grew quiet for a moment, and Paige diverted her eyes, knowing she'd said too much.

“Paige, you never talk much about your family. Why?”

“Not much to tell,” she said without conviction. “They live in Arizona.”

“But have you contacted them to tell them what's going on? Do they know you're in trouble?”

“Oh, Lynda. They don't care.”

Lynda sat up straighter. “Don't care? How do you know?”

Paige blinked back the tears pushing into her eyes. “Lynda, you have to know my mother. She's lived with my father for thirty years, and no matter how bad things get, she believes in sticking it out. No matter who gets hurt.”

Lynda sat quietly, weighing the implications of what Paige had just said and decided to take a chance. “Paige, were you abused when you were a child?”

Paige looked into the trees for a moment, struggling to keep her face free of emotion, but it wasn't easy, and finally, she covered her face with a hand and squeezed her eyes shut, but the tears pressed out anyway. “I won't let Brianna live that way,” she whispered. “I'm not like my mother. I can't turn my head, and I can't keep bouncing back.”

Lynda moved across to sit on the swing next to Paige, reached out for her, and pulled her into a hug, and Paige laid her head against Lynda's shoulder and wept like a child.

“Is that why you married Keith? To get away from home?”

She nodded. “He ended up being so much like my father. I thought his temper was just normal because that's the way things always were at home, too. But it's not normal, is it?”

“No,” Lynda said. “It's not normal. It's criminal.”

Paige wept for a moment longer until she heard Brianna crying through the door she'd left open, and sucking in a deep breath, she got to her feet. “Brianna's crying,” she said quickly, wiping her face. “I guess I'll go lie down with her.” Paige could see the helplessness on Lynda's face, and she wished she hadn't burdened her with this. “Good night, Lynda.”

“Good night.”

Paige hurried into the master bedroom where Brianna, in the throes of a dream, cried out in her sleep. Lying down beside her, Paige stroked her face and comforted her. “Shhh. Mommy's here. Nothing's going to hurt you.”

As she held her, she felt the terror seeping out of her.

For a while, she lay still in the dark, thinking about the fears that plagued her daughter, and that stalked her as well. They were real fears—fear for her life, fear of losing her child, fear of harm coming to either of them. She had never expected to live in such fear once she left her father's home.

Despair settled into her heart like a slow-moving disease, but as she drifted toward sleep, she thought she heard a voice: “
Shhh. I'm here. Nothing's going to hurt you
.”

And even as she sank into sleep, she realized that the voice, the promise, and the feeling of peace warming through her felt as tangible as that little girl curled up against her chest.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

T
he crowd in the bar where Keith had decided to brood was thinning out, and men and women had begun to couple off with a frenzied desperation, as if going home alone was tantamount to social suicide.

But it wasn't his reputation that worried Keith tonight; rather, it was that he'd driven into the parking lot of his apartment building today to see three sheriff's cars. He didn't have to be Einstein to figure out that they were looking for him.

Never one to linger too long when trouble was brewing, Keith had turned his car around before they could spot him and had headed to this obscure bar across town where people knew him only by his first name.

He'd been drinking for hours, and his head had begun to throb. He needed to lie down somewhere.

Sliding off the bar stool he'd been propped on for the past several hours, he stumbled toward the door, catching the chairs as he passed to steady himself. He heard laughter outside as he fell out into the night and saw a couple of intoxicated men pawing at a woman who cackled loudly enough to wake the dead. Though they weren't looking at him, he suspected that the laughter was directed at him anyway, and he set his eyes on his car and concentrated on getting to it.

Again, laughter erupted behind him, and he swung around, letting a string of expletives tear from his mouth. One of the men cursed back at him and started toward him, and Keith opened his car door and fell behind the wheel.

He heard the man's fist hit his trunk, and groping to get his key into the ignition, he started the car. The man was banging on it now, and the woman's abrasive laughter split the night again.

Cursing because his hands were so maddeningly slow to cooperate, he got the car into gear and took off through the dirt.

Looking in his rearview mirror, he saw the man shouting obscenities at him. Keith rolled down his window and yelled back, “You can't touch me! I'm invincible!”

But that invincibility was meaningless if he couldn't prove it to someone. He wished he knew where Paige was tonight, so he could burst into her house, jerk her out of bed, and remind her who the man of the family is. He would show her what all her whining and running had gotten her. He would teach her how to show a little respect.

The idea became more attractive to him as he wove and zigzagged through town, heading toward the neighborhood where he had lived with her. Maybe she and Brianna were home. Maybe she had run out of money and been forced to go home, and he could walk in and surprise her. . . .

The street was dark, and he chuckled under his breath and tried to focus his blurry vision on the house as he got closer. There were no lights on and no cars in the garage. Blast it all, she wasn't home. She was still hiding.

He thought about pulling into the driveway and going in, just to rest for a few minutes until his head quit hurting. But that voice inside his head that remained the slightest bit rational reminded him that a world of trouble would fall on him if he were caught here after what had happened today. No, he had to keep driving. He had to go home.