The Truth About Love (5 page)

“No, I guess not.” She took a sip of her water. “So it’s going to be kind of odd, interviewing you for the Cyrus Alexander case,” she said, to fill the awkward silence.

Landon’s jaw tightened. “It’s the Barbara Landon case.” His voice was rougher than he’d expected it to be. “
She’s
the one who was murdered.”

Gina’s stomach clenched at the pain in Landon’s eyes. Of course he would see it as his mother’s case. It was. She shouldn’t have referred to it the way she did. “I didn’t mean to—”

“There are a lot of guys who’ve killed someone.” His voice cracked at the word
killed
. “How do you choose which convictions you’re going to fight?”

“It depends on what’s presented to us.” Good. A general answer didn’t sacrifice the details of the case. “Sometimes it’s prosecutorial misconduct. Sometimes a witness recants their testimony. Usually it’s witness misidentification.”

“You think I didn’t really see him running away?” He bent toward her, inches from her face.

“We’ll want to interview you.” She resisted the urge to lean away from him. “Confirm your testimony.”

He gave a humorless laugh as he straightened. “It was fifteen years ago.”

But a day she was sure he remembered well. A day he’d probably repeated in his mind like a horror movie that wouldn’t end. “We’ll talk to everybody involved,” she said.

“If you can find them.”

“One of the policemen was killed in the line of duty a couple of years ago.”

He stood motionless, his hands clutching the counter behind him on either side of his body. “And the old guy who owned the sawmill next door was already about sixty years old when it happened.”

“We’re studying their original testimony.”

“And eventually you test the DNA.”

“Yes.” She held her breath, wondering where he’d take the conversation next. Silence filled the room.

“So there’s”—he looked away for a few seconds—“there’s a box with her clothes in it? What she was wearing that day?”

Gina nodded, thinking about how she’d gone into her brother Tommy’s room after everyone had left on the day of his funeral. Sat on his bed until late in the evening. Smelled the pillow where he’d rested his head the night before he died.

But Barbara Landon’s clothes were packed in evidence bags. Tagged and labeled like lab specimens—brittle with dried blood instead of infused with a mother’s special scent and softness.

She wondered if Landon had ever had an opportunity to go through his mother’s other belongings. To select items that might have had special meaning to him.

His voice cut into her thoughts. “And her clothes have someone else’s DNA on them?”

“Some blood.” She wondered if this was new information to him. “Not her type.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. Inhaled, then exhaled a huge breath.

“I didn’t see any pictures of her.” Gina motioned to where she’d been standing earlier. “In the living room.”

He stilled and nailed her with a glare, his demeanor turning her as chilly as if she’d stepped into a walk-in freezer. “That doesn’t have anything to do with the case,” he said.

She shrugged. “I would have liked to have seen what she looked like.” Something other than crime scene photos.

“There aren’t many pictures. I have copies of them on my phone.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, making it clear he didn’t plan to show them to her. “I keep the originals in a safe-deposit box.”

She decided to take another approach. “You were adopted by relatives, right?” She’d read it in the file. “In Jacksonville?” She wondered what it must have been like for a nine-year-old to move from rural Pascaloosa County to a large city on the other side of the state.

“They raised me.” His gaze settled on hers, steady and unyielding. “They didn’t adopt me.”

His voice conveyed distance. A lack of belonging. Despite his gruffness, she could sense his pain.

“What do you remember most about your mom?” Her voice was hushed. Reverent. She reached out instinctively, grazing his hand with her fingertips.

He swallowed and pulled away, opening the fridge. His shoulders trembled as he took out a bottle and turned back to face her. At first, she thought it was beer, but then realized it was an old-fashioned grape Nehi. It reminded her that the little boy who’d found his mother’s body still stood in front of her.

He twisted off the cap and shot it across the room with a flip of his thumb and forefinger. It pinged off the backsplash and onto the counter, a jarring noise in the silence between them. “This isn’t really something I want to talk about,” he said.

She waited, hoping he’d change his mind, but instead, he raised the bottle to his lips and took a long drink.

His false bravado didn’t fool her. She could see by the way his body quivered that his grief was overwhelming.

“I lost someone close to me, too,” she said.

He lowered the bottle and scowled at her. “Then you understand why it’s private.”

“The more you talk about the person who’s died, the more you keep them alive.”

He scoffed. “I’ve got a little more practical view of the world.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Like once they’re dead and their killer’s been put in prison, there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s closed. Done.”

She felt like the hot anvil of a blacksmith had been thrust through her midsection. How dare he take such a callous view? These were their loved ones, not some disposable relationship that was gone at the moment of death. “You can at least remember them. Talk about them.” It’s what her family had decided to do.

“I like to do my remembering in private.”

“Then why did you invite me to dinner tonight?”

“You know what?” He grabbed his keys off the counter and walked toward the entryway. “My mistake. I guess it wasn’t such a good idea.”

She glanced toward the front door, knowing he was signaling an end to their evening together. But Tommy’s death had taught her that nothing was more important than reaching out to someone in pain. Her brother’s passing had peeled away everything else in life, leaving only the most basic human emotional needs, all of which trumped her professional obligations at Morgan’s Ladder.

She headed toward the entryway, but stopped in front of him. “My brother, Tommy.” Surely she could tell part of her story without spilling the entire ugliness of it out into Landon’s foyer like a bucketful of dirty mop water. “He was murdered when I was a sophomore in high school.”

Landon’s gaze flickered toward her. She thought maybe she’d gained his trust. That he understood their kinship.

“So you know what it’s like,” he said.

“I’ve been right there with you. And I know sometimes you just need someone to give you a hug.”

He scoffed at that. “I don’t need a hug.”

“It could at least make you feel better.” Her voice was slow and even. She stepped forward, challenging him. She saw the grief in his eyes and wanted to do something, anything, to make him feel better.

She took another step toward him.

He didn’t move.

Landon closed his eyes, letting the sensations of Gina’s hug settle into his body.

This was not at all what he’d planned when he’d invited her to his condo.

But this wasn’t a sexual hug. It had been years since someone—anyone—had held him like this. Since anyone had tried to absorb his pain with their own body.

He wrapped his arms around Gina’s back, pulling her tighter against his body. Feeling her kindness and gentleness seep through his skin and into his soul. For the first time in years, tears stung his eyes. Damn it. He squeezed his lids tight, willing the emotion away.

He was supposed to be the tough guy. The one who didn’t need anyone else. But Gina had seen through all that. For the first time since his mom died, it felt like someone saw past the facade. Past the guy he pretended to be. Past the persona the outside world expected.

Gina actually saw
him
.

He’d forgotten how good that felt.

Finally, she pulled away and looked up into his eyes. “I hope it’s okay that I did that.”

He was afraid to speak. Afraid his voice would quiver if he tried to talk. He nodded, but even that simple motion felt choppy and disjointed.

Did she know how deeply she’d shaken him?

She took a step back. His body immediately ached for the closeness again.

“I . . . I’m sorry we have to dig all this up for you,” she said.

His chest heaved involuntarily. She was talking about the case, but she didn’t realize the impact she’d had on him. “I think you should go,” he said.

She stepped toward the front door. “I know it won’t be easy for you when we take your testimony.”

“You could let it all drop. Take on another case.” Good. His voice was steady. He wasn’t giving himself away.

“I’m really not such a bad person.”

“I didn’t say you were.” After how she’d made him feel, he wasn’t sure what he thought about her. All he knew was that he wanted her out of his house and away from him until he got himself together. He stepped to the door and opened it.

Her gaze held his for several seconds, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not she was ready for their evening to end.

Finally, she walked through the open doorway and down the sidewalk, toward his truck. “It really was sweet of you to take me to a Thai restaurant.”

“I’m not in this to be sweet.” He beeped his truck to unlock the doors as he followed her. “I’m in this to get you to drop the case.” He knew his words sounded callous, but for some reason, he felt like she might be the toughest opponent he’d ever faced. And that included the three-hundred-pound linemen who’d wanted to bash in his skull. “I’m in this to win.”

“I’m sorry, Landon.” She turned on the sidewalk to face him. “But so am I. I’m in it to find the truth.”

CHAPTER FOUR

G
ina and Suzanne stood silently in the tiny room at the state prison as the guard opened the door. He stepped aside to let the tall, thin prisoner enter first. The interview room, already stuffy, now filled with the smell of a man who was allowed to shower only on certain days of the week.

“Mr. Alexander,” Suzanne said as he studied them.

“My buddies call me Cyrus.” He winked at Gina. “And if you two are going to get me out of this hellhole, then I reckon you’ll be my best friends in the world.”

“Why don’t we sit down,” Suzanne said after the guard had unlocked and removed Cyrus’s handcuffs. “I’m Suzanne Holmes, director of Morgan’s Ladder. And this is Gina Blanchard.”

“You a lawyer, too, pretty lady?” Cyrus rubbed one wrist, then the other. The stringy blond hair she’d seen in his booking photo from years ago was now cropped short. Light from the fixture overhead bounced off his balding forehead.

Gina reminded herself he’d been away from normal society for quite some time. “I’m here to assist.”

Suzanne cleared her throat. “We’ve been reviewing your file, as you requested.” Gina had read the letters he’d written to Morgan’s Ladder prior to her arrival. She understood why the inconsistencies surrounding his prosecution had piqued Suzanne’s interest.

He sat forward, suddenly focused on the reason for their visit. “I know how DNA is clearing all kinds of people. Guys who been in jail for a long time, but didn’t do their crimes.”

“DNA testing is certainly a possibility,” Suzanne said. “But we’d like to ask a few questions today.”

“I didn’t kill nobody. You understand that, right?” His gaze conveyed an unmistakable certainty as it moved from one woman to the next.

Suzanne opened the tattered leather portfolio in front of her. “Did your defense attorney interview the friends who said they were with you on the boat dock that day?”

He snorted. “My defense attorney was only good at one thing—collectin’ a paycheck from the taxpayers. He never did a day of work that I could tell. My buddy, R.J.—who I was fishin’ with that day—says the lawyer never even called him. R.J. lived in the same damn house his whole life and the guy couldn’t track him down?”

Suzanne flipped through the file. “That would be Randall James Madsen?”

Cyrus nodded. “And Jimbo Cline—the other guy I was fishin’ with that day—said that lawyer smelled like a fifth of whiskey when he interviewed him.”

Gina watched her boss’s reaction. Part of their work had been to research the history of the defense attorney assigned to Cyrus’s case. At the time of the trial, he’d already been suspended once for showing up in court drunk. Three months after Cyrus’s conviction, he’d been killed in an alcohol-related single-car accident.

“Let’s start from the beginning.” Suzanne opened her file. “Had you been to the country store before?”

Cyrus snorted. “Everybody’d been to that store. It was the only one around, unless you went into Blackburn, and that was fifteen miles away.”

Gina’s mind jumped to the crime scene photos she’d seen many times. The bloodied body. The old-fashioned fixtures. Nine-year-old Landon on the front porch with a police officer. The shock in those distinctive green eyes still haunted her.

Suzanne sat forward. “So you knew Barbara Landon?”

He shrugged. “Knew her to say hi, but that was about it. Tried askin’ her out once, but just as I got started, her kid—she had this curly-haired little boy—pulled a shelf of green beans down on top of him.”

Gina fidgeted in her chair, suddenly uncomfortable as Cyrus talked about Landon. She still lay awake nights trying to think of what he must have been like as a boy, both before and after the incident that had molded him into who he was today.

Suzanne glanced at her before returning her attention back to Cyrus. “Go on.”

Cyrus’s eyes narrowed. “That little boy’s the one who says he saw me runnin’ from the store that day.”

“Why would he have said that if it isn’t true?”

“Hell if I know. I didn’t even go there much at the end. I got me a girlfriend right after I was gonna ask his mom out. Somebody else. We moved in together right away.”

“So you didn’t ask Barbara Landon out? You two had no social connections? No relationship?”

Cyrus held out his hands with a questioning look. “She sold me Skoal. That was all the relationship we ever had.”

“This girlfriend you mentioned. She’s now your wife?” Suzanne asked.

He stared at his interlaced fingers for several long seconds, then raised his head slowly. He nodded. “We got married. Our son was born twelve days before my sentencing.” His eyes glistened with moisture. “I got to hold him. Once.”

Gina’s throat tightened at the obvious pain on his face. “Where are they now?”

“Back in Pascaloosa County.” His voice cracked. “Waiting for me to come home.”

Landon’s gaze shot to the Twilight Pub’s front door. Once again, he hated himself for being disappointed when the person who walked in wasn’t six feet tall with strawberry-blonde hair.

Boomer looked at the neon Budweiser clock on the wall. “Her game’s probably only just now over.”

“Whose game?”

“Yeah, right.” Boomer raised his beer bottle to his mouth.

Landon ignored him and motioned for the waitress to bring him another. He’d been watching the door like a sentry for the past hour, and his friend knew exactly why. Gina’s team had the game after theirs, and she could arrive any minute.

Boomer’s eyes raised to someone whose presence Landon felt behind his own chair. Long, manicured fingers smoothed across his collarbone and slid down his chest.

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” a female voice said through a haze of hair-product smell.

He turned to see Ashley—or was it Amber?—beaming down at him behind pale, shiny lips unnaturally outlined in dark plum. “I . . . been around.”

Boomer craned his neck to look around the tavern, as if trying to distance himself from their conversation.

“You going to be around all night?” Her forefinger flitted up to trace his jaw. “Maybe later?”

“I . . . um . . .” The door swung open again, but Ashley’s ample bosom blocked his view of who came in. He fumbled for words. “I’m waiting for someone.”

Ashley’s ultrashiny lips tensed, then spread into a forced half smile. “Shame,” she said as she hoisted her breasts out of his face and stood upright. “Would have been nice to spend some more time together.”

Boomer leaned forward as she slinked away. He watched her shimmy to her next conversation. “Who the hell was that?”

Landon shrugged. Some girl he’d slept with six months, maybe a year, ago. She’d provided an opportunity for sexual release, followed by that same feeling of hollowness. The one that always settled into his chest when he knew the hookup was little more than him using her. And vice versa.

His friend shook his head and laughed. “You must really like this Gina girl. She’s got you messed up bad if you’re going to turn away someone like that.” He nodded in the direction Ashley had gone.

Boomer didn’t have any idea the number of ways Gina was screwing with his mind—and not all of them had to do with Cyrus Alexander. “She works for a nonprofit that tries to get people out of prison.”

“I thought she was in law school.”

“She’s in Tallahassee for the summer. An internship.” He took a long swig of his beer as he decided how much information to share with his friend. “They’re looking into Cyrus Alexander’s case.”

“The guy who . . . ?” Boomer’s eyes widened.

“Yeah.” Landon was glad Boomer knew who Cyrus Alexander was. They’d never talked about it, though the media often talked about Landon’s past. “That one.”

Boomer shook his head. “No wonder you’ve been so hard to get along with. You don’t know whether to hate her or sleep with her.”

Landon glared at his friend, not wanting to admit—even to himself—how close Boomer was to being right. “I need to keep an eye on her. See what they’re doing with the case.”

Boomer chuckled. “And if she doesn’t get here soon, you’re going to track her down like a bloodhound.” He tipped up his beer and took a swig. “Desperation isn’t a good look on you, my friend.”

“Up yours.” Landon pushed his chair back and walked away, hoping they’d have a new topic when he got back.

He rounded the corner on his return trip from the bathroom and stopped midstride. Gina stood talking to her teammates near the door. She laughed at something one of them said. God, she was beautiful. Not in the made-up way that girls like Ashley tried so hard to copy, but in a natural, flowing, the-kind-of-girl-you-wanted-to-hold-all-night sort of way.

Gina looked over her friend’s head, her eyes locking on his as he moved toward his table. She said something to the group, then walked toward him. Landon took his seat, across from Boomer.

“Hey, guys,” she said, standing next to them.

Boomer’s gaze moved from her to him. “Aren’t you going to ask her to sit down?”

“We have a difference of opinion on something,” Landon said.

She sat down anyway. Gutsy woman.

“Doesn’t mean you can’t have a beer together.” Boomer held his beer bottle up to a passing waitress, signaling her to bring another one.

Landon glared at his friend. Since when did he need Boomer’s help in talking to girls?

Gina turned to Boomer. “The organization I work for is trying to get—”

“I already told him.” Damn it if she was going to drag Boomer into this. Landon kept his life private for a reason.

“Maybe you two should just . . . agree to disagree,” Boomer said.

“It’s not like I’m a Red Sox fan and she’s a Yankee fan,” Landon said. “Something minor like that.”

“You spent the whole night watching the door for her and now that she’s here, you pick a fight?” Boomer asked. Landon made a mental note to kick his friend’s ass next time they were somewhere with a little more room.

A half smile crept across Gina’s face. “You watched the door for me?”

Landon glared at Boomer as he spoke. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

Gina leaned in and ground out her words. “I am not the enemy.”

“You’re in trouble now,” Boomer said under his breath, his beer bottle poised at his lips.

“You’re not really helping here,” Landon said to him.

Gina ignored them. “How can I be the enemy if all I want is the truth? How can someone think the truth is wrong?”

The breath in his chest quickened. “The truth has already been established. The truth”—he leaned in closer—“is what I saw running out of the back of that country store.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “Eyewitnesses can be wrong sometimes. Actually, they’re wrong a lot of the time.”

“Oh, yeah? And how do you know that?” Landon didn’t raise his voice, but knew his low, close tone was more menacing than any shout. “Because you’ve worked at Morgan’s Ladder for a whole three weeks now? I don’t think that makes you an expert.”

The server arrived with a round of beer on her tray. Gina grabbed one, squeezed her eyes closed, and took a long sip. She slowly lowered the bottle. “I have to go.”

Landon watched her hurry to the door. The guy at the next table craned his neck to follow the sight of her butt.

“You’re a total fuckup,” Boomer said to Landon.

Landon raked his hand down his face. His stubble rasped. Why did he feel the need to go after her? “I’ll deal with you later,” he said as he rose to follow her.

“And you”—he pointed his forefinger in the face of the guy at the next table who’d leered at her ass—“you stay away from her.” The guy held both hands up in the air and scooted his chair as far away from Landon as he could.

Landon turned and rushed toward the door as a voice rose from the table full of guys. “Hey, wasn’t that Landon Vista?”

He ripped open the door to the bar and glanced around the parking lot. A group of drunken college-age women bumped into him as they passed, arm in arm. A Dodge Charger roared out of the entrance and onto the road.

His chest clutched. Had he missed her? And why did he care so much? He turned to go back inside when Gina came into his view, across the parking lot. He broke into a sprint before he knew what he was doing.

“Wasn’t that Landon Vista?” he heard the guy say as a couple walked toward their car. Jeez. These people really needed to get a life.

Gina sniffed as he approached, trying to hide her emotions. She held her chin high.

He reached out to touch her arm. “Kind of tough to be a badass if you can’t find your car.”

She smiled a bit, though he could tell she didn’t want to. “I never said I was a badass.” She held up her key fob and watched as the lights of her SUV blinked a couple of rows over.

“So what did I say in there that made you leave?”

“Nothing.” She shook her head. Her hair glinted in the light of the streetlamp. Tears glistened in her eyes. She started walking.

He followed alongside her. “Seriously. You always want me to talk about my private stuff. Now it’s your turn.”

She took a deep breath and blew it out. He got the impression she was thinking about telling him.

“Something about eyewitnesses . . .” he said, coaxing her.