River's Edge (9 page)

I
didn’t think she was dead. She was somewhere in trouble, but not dead. Not Lisa.” Ben’s words seemed to echo in the large great room of his home. Jonathan and Morgan had managed to convince him to let them bring him home, and now they wondered what comfort they could give the man in his shock.

“She would never have killed herself.
Never.
She had no reason…”

Morgan wondered if he was right. Could her despair over her marriage have driven her to suicide? Had the hormones and the stress over the IVF procedure and the mayoral race pushed her over the edge?

“I can prove it!” he said suddenly. “Have you seen the nursery?”

She wiped her face. “No.”

“Let me show you.” He started through the house, his gait angry and determined, his breathing hard. She and Jonathan followed.

Ben led them into a sage-colored room, with a junglelike mural painted on the wall and characters from Disney’s
Jungle Book
hidden among the trees. A custom crib with legs that looked like little tree trunks sat in the center of the room, and a green rocker and chaise lounge sat at angles across from it.

“Lisa did all this herself.” His voice was raspy and trembling. “She wouldn’t take her life when we were right on the verge…” He sat down in the rocker. “Having a baby was what she lived for. It was her goal…and we were close to reaching it. If I’d known that she wouldn’t live to see it, I wouldn’t have let her waste all those years.”

“But you didn’t know,” Morgan whispered. “How could you know?”

He reached out for the bed, touched the sheets, then crumbled again. “Who did that to her? I can’t even imagine.”

The assault of those words surprised Morgan, reviving her own helpless, rabid, broken questions in the aftermath of her parents’ murders. Jonathan seemed to sense her memory and set a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Morgan shook herself out of her own stroll down murder lane, and drew on her store of tried and true helps in tragedy. “Ben, is there anyone you want me to call?”

Ben looked up, his face stricken. “Oh, God help me, I have to call our families.”

“I could do it, Ben.”

He shook his head. “No, I have to. They have to hear it from me.”

As he picked up the phone, Morgan went back into the kitchen, and she and Jonathan prayed quietly for those poor family members he called.

L
isa Jackson hadn’t killed herself. Cade was certain of that. The medical examiner had ruled out suicide almost immediately. The marks on her neck indicated that she’d died of strangulation with a telephone cord they’d found on the floor of the car. Because there was no water in her lungs, it was clear she died before entering the water. The lividity on her skin—the purplish pooling of blood at the lowest points of a corpse—indicated that she was killed before being placed in the car.

Cade tried to puzzle the pieces together. Had someone come into her home after Ben left, murdered her, loaded her body into her own car, and driven her into a river in broad daylight? Granted, it had gone in at a secluded part of the river, in a place where no one was likely to see. Still, it seemed like a tremendous risk…

Unless the driver of the car had been its other owner. If Ben killed her and drove her across town, no one would have noticed anything out of the ordinary. He would simply have driven through the trees to the quiet fishing hole,
strapped her into the driver’s seat, put the car in neutral, and given it a shove into the water.

But why would he kill her? Could it have anything to do with those letters?

And what about Carson Graham? How had he known where Lisa could be found?

Could
he
have committed the murder?

The shoe prints were a clue, but they hadn’t gotten a match just yet. They’d determined the prints came from a size eleven men’s shoe—the same size Ben wore.

Cade put Ben’s house under surveillance until he could get over there to question him further. If Ben was guilty, he didn’t want him making a run for it.

While the forensics team from the State Police worked the crime scene, Cade went to pay Carson Graham a visit. He pulled up on the dirt parking lot in front of the peeling blue house, and before he could knock, Graham opened the door. He grinned as if he’d been expecting him. “You found her body, didn’t you?”

Cade hadn’t expected him to be quite so delighted with the find. “I want to talk to you, Graham.”

“Certainly. I’m always eager to help. You know that.”

Cade walked into the dark house, which smelled of incense, and looked at the lit candles clustered around the room. A few fake Tiffany lamps provided a little more lighting, but the place had a carefully created air of dusty mystery.

The man lowered himself into a Chippendale chair and gestured for Cade to take the one facing him across a small round table. “Want me to do a reading for you, Cade? Perhaps I could aid in finding the killer.”

“No, thanks.” Cade took the seat, studying the man’s face. “How did you know, Graham? The truth.”

“I saw it in a vision. That’s a fact. I wish I’d seen the identity of the killer, but I’m afraid I didn’t.”

Cade cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Where were you yesterday morning, Carson?”

“I was right here, sleeping late. I didn’t have any appointments, and I’d had a late show over at the Frankfurt Inn the night before.”

“Do you have any witnesses who could vouch for that?”

“Well, I didn’t have anyone in bed with me, if that’s what you mean. My wife worked a double shift at the hospital that night and didn’t get in until almost noon yesterday. But I can guarantee that you won’t find anyone who saw me anywhere else. Ask the neighbors. My van was here all day.” The arrogance on his face faded somewhat. “I know it’s hard for you to believe, Cade, but psychic phenomena are real. I’ve never met Lisa Jackson in my life. All I know of her is what I’ve seen on the news—and the vision I got when I held her sweater.”

Cade stared at the man for a moment, knowing in his gut that Carson was somehow involved in Lisa’s death. He might not have killed her, but he felt certain he knew who had. How else would he have directed them to her body? “Graham, what size shoe do you wear?”

The man looked surprised at the question. “Size nine. Why?”

Cade studied his feet. He wore a size ten himself, and Graham’s feet did look smaller. He figured he was telling the truth.

Graham seemed to sense Cade’s thoughts and he almost looked amused. “You’re not going to pin this on me, Chief. I’m a bona fide psychic, whether you can deal with that or not. My advice to you is to embrace that knowledge and use it to your advantage. I’m more than happy to work with you on future cases. Of course, we both know that after the election, you may not even have a job.”

He had guts. Cade would give him that much—though he didn’t think much of his intellect. Provoking the police chief wasn’t wise when one was tied up with a murder case and had no alibi. Cade got up. “Don’t leave town, Graham. We might want to question you again.”

“I have no place to go. Don’t worry about it.”

Cade couldn’t help worrying as he limped through the door.

“You take care of that leg now,” Carson called out behind him.

Cade got into his car and glanced back up as he drove away. Carson Graham stood outside his front door, arms crossed, chuckling like a man who’d just won the lottery.

D
espite his suspicions about Graham, Cade had no choice but to center his investigation on the other main suspect—Ben Jackson. The grieving husband was inconsolable when Cade and McCormick showed up at his house with the news that strangulation had been Lisa’s cause of death.

Morgan and Jonathan tried to comfort Ben, but anger, rage, and grief all booked time on his face, glazing his eyes with tortured visions. “My Lisa, she didn’t have any enemies. Everyone who knew her loved her. Who could do this?
Why
?”

Cade didn’t even try to answer those questions. “Ben, Lisa was killed before she was put into her car. It may have happened here.”

Ben’s face changed, and he looked around him, his eyes rapidly darting around the room, as if looking for some sign that a killer had been here. “In my house? You think he came in here and murdered my wife?”

“We can’t say for sure. But we’ll need to search your house.”

“Of course, yes. That’s fine. If the killer was here, maybe some evidence was left.” He walked to the back door and looked down at the lock. “Nothing was stolen. I would have noticed. And there wasn’t any sign of a break-in.” He swung around and settled his wild eyes on Cade. “Do you think it was someone she knew? Someone she let in willingly?”

“Those are questions we’re asking, too. We’ll know more after we’ve had time to go through the house.”

“Go ahead. The sooner the better. I want you to find him, Cade. I want to know what happened…” His face twisted in his anguish.

Cade looked at the floor. McCormick gave him a quiet moment, then said, “Ben, we need to sit down with you and go over a few things.”

“Anything,” Ben said. “Anything you want to know.”

Jonathan got up. “We’ll go, Ben, so you can talk to them.”

Morgan’s face mirrored Ben’s pain as she gave him another hug. “Ben, call us when they’re finished. We don’t want you to be alone.”

Ben was unresponsive as Morgan and Jonathan whispered goodbyes and left. Instead, Ben kept his eyes on McCormick, seemingly anxious to talk. “Okay, go ahead. What do you want to ask me?”

McCormick pulled out a stool at the counter, but Ben kept standing. In a quiet voice, McCormick asked him the question that had plagued Cade all day. “Ben, is there something you failed to tell us about your marriage?”

Ben clearly looked perplexed. “Like what?”

“Like the letters Lisa got from someone claiming to be your mistress?”

Ben groaned and pulled out a stool. Dropping into it, he rubbed his face. “I might have known. Who told you that? Rani? Had to be Rani.”

McCormick didn’t answer.

“Ben, who is she?” Cade asked.

“Nobody! I’m telling you, I was not having an affair. There
is
no other woman.”

“Then how do you explain the letters?”

“Exactly the way I explained them to Lisa. Some crackpot was trying to cause problems for me before the election.”

“You realize that if you were seeing someone, we’ll find out.” McCormick’s tone was still soft, steady. “It wouldn’t be wise to withhold that kind of information, Ben.”

Ben leaned forward and locked his eyes into McCormick’s. “I told you, I’m not lying. There is no woman! Trace those letters. I’d
love
to see where they’re from. Maybe it was a way of luring Lisa somewhere. Maybe the killer sent them.”

Cade just stared at him for a long moment, studying his face and his body language for some sign of guile, but he saw none. “Ben, was there anyone who might have had designs on you? Anyone who may have harbored some secret fantasy? Anyone you’d gotten to be close friends with, even if it was platonic?”

“No. I’m a busy man. I don’t have time for stuff like that.”

“Did Lisa believe that?”

“Of course she did. She knows how I am. She had no reason to suspect that I was having an affair until those letters started coming.”

“And then she did suspect it?” McCormick asked.

“Well, yeah, she suspected it when she first got them. She came home all upset, crying her eyes out, accusing me of all sorts of things. It took some doing to convince her that they weren’t true. And then they kept coming. Every week I had to mount a new defense, but ultimately I always convinced her.”

Ben leaned back in his chair. “The last letter came a few days ago. I think by the time that one came Lisa resolved herself to the fact that it was a pack of lies. It wasn’t an issue. We had other things to think about.”

Cade could see that Ben wasn’t going to change his story. They’d know more when they sent the letters out for a handwriting analysis and tested them for fibers and prints.

“You know, you should search her office, too,” Ben said. “If he didn’t do it here, maybe it was there. Or some other clue…Last night I went there and checked her desk for a note or anything, or a notation on her calendar. I didn’t find anything, but maybe I missed something. I don’t even know what to look for.”

“We plan to do that,” Cade said. “But for now, we’ll need you to leave the house. Where will you be in case we need to contact you?”

Ben breathed in a ragged breath. “At the office, I guess. Do I need to stay overnight?”

“Probably,” Cade said. “We’re going to be a while.”

“All right. I’ll pack a bag.”

Cade felt a surge of pity for the man. If he was innocent, he was being run from his home even as he struggled to absorb his shock. On a night when he would need to curl up with Lisa’s things, he was exiled to a cold warehouse that smelled of shrimp. “You could probably stay at Hanover House if you wanted. Morgan and Jonathan wouldn’t want you sleeping on a cot somewhere.”

“I’ll be fine. I have a lot of phone calls to make. I have to make arrangements…” He looked around as he spoke, as if trying to decide what to take with him. “I think I need to be alone. I need to think…”

Thinking was just what Ben didn’t need to be doing. Cade walked with Ben to his bedroom and watched as he packed a few things into a small suitcase.

As he watched Ben pull away in his car, Cade turned all of the man’s reactions and behaviors over in his mind. There was nothing there to indicate that he was lying. At least, nothing apparent.

“What do you think?” McCormick asked him.

Cade looked back at his detective. “I don’t know. He’s acting like a man who’s just lost his wife.”

“Yeah, seems genuine to me, too. But you know things aren’t always the way they seem.”

Cade knew that better than anyone, so he pressed past his own gut feelings and called for the detectives the State Police had loaned him to help with the search of the house.