Authors: Tim Waggoner
Lenora was waiting for them in the library, as was Dale. The first thing Joanne noticed about Marshall’s daughter was that she possessed the same ice-blue eyes as her father. She sat in a leather chair, legs crossed, arms hanging loose over the armrests, head tilted back, face impassive. She was tricked out in a too-tight, too-mini black mini-dress, and a pair of take-me-now pumps. She looked completely relaxed — or like someone trying very hard to seem that way. Dale sat on a couch opposite Lenora, a glass filled with clear liquid and ice cubes resting within easy reach on a nearby end table. Water, Joanne knew. Dale didn’t drink alcohol when he was working.
Marshall must have noted where her gaze had fallen, for he said, “Would you like something to drink, Joanne? Coffee, perhaps? I imagine you’ve had little sleep the last couple days.”
“No, thanks.” She glanced around the room, quickly taking in its décor. Mahogany shelves lined the walls, filled with leather-bound books. Domed ceiling, with a mural depicting people in old-fashioned dress working a primitive printing press. No windows. Polished hardwood floors. Chair, couches, and reading table arranged throughout the room in various permutations. She noted that Marshall had chosen the only arrangement of furniture where Lenora could face her questioners with nothing between them. Calculated to create an impression of openness and honesty. After all, what could Lenora Cross have to hide?
Well, that was what Joanne was here to find out, wasn’t it?
She walked over to the couch and sat down next to Dale. She wanted to see what Marshall would do next. Would he remain standing to assert his authority as male head of the Cross clan? Or would he opt to take the other leather chair, the one set perpendicular to both the couch and Lenora’s chair?
Marshall continued standing for a moment longer, maybe still undecided as to the best strategy. But in the end, he took the second chair.
“We need to get one thing straight before we begin,” Joanne said. Though she was speaking to both Marshall and Lenora, she kept her gaze fastened on the girl. “Despite the fact I’m questioning you here rather than downtown, this is official sheriff’s department business. Do you understand?”
Marshall began to reply, but Joanne held up a hand to forestall him. He scowled but kept his mouth shut.
“I do,” Lenora said. A smile played around her lips as well, and Joanne wondered if she enjoyed seeing her father silenced. Probably, she decided. It wouldn’t be easy to have Marshall Cross as your father.
“In your own words, Ms. Cross, tell me what happened last night between you and Ray Porter.”
Lenora glanced at Dale before speaking. Despite her amusement at seeing her father quieted by Joanne, Lenora turned to him now. He gave her an almost imperceptible nod. Evidently satisfied, Lenora began to tell her story. It was simple and straightforward and in other circumstances, Joanne might’ve accepted it at face value. But these circumstances were anything but normal and this homicide investigation was hardly routine.
“You say there was no special reason why you decided to go to the Deveraux Farm,” Joanne said.
“That’s right. Like I told my father, that’s where people go to park around here, isn’t it?”
Up to this point, Dale had sat and listened without comment, not even taking notes. But now he spoke up. “Teenagers, maybe. But you’re a bit old for cheap thrills like that, aren’t you?” The question held an edge of mockery that was unlike Dale, but Joanne knew he was attempting to put Lenora off balance, to shake her up and — if she’d practiced her story — get her to deviate from the script and perhaps trick her into revealing more than she wished.
Lenora frowned, but she answered calmly enough. “I’m not
that
old. I never went there when I was a teen, though, and I guess I wanted to see what I missed out on. Turns out it wasn’t much.”
Joanne exchanged a quick glance with Dale, and an unspoken message passed between them. Lenora didn’t seem particularly upset that Ray Porter had been murdered a short time after they supposedly parted company.
“And when Ray put the moves on you,” Joanne said, “you tricked him out of the car, took his vehicle, and left him at the Farm.”
Lenora’s mouth pursed in irritation. “You make it sound as if I stole it. I just wanted to make sure Ray didn’t leave me stranded because he was pissed I didn’t put out.”
“So you decided to strand him first,” Joanne said. “And technically, you did steal his vehicle, though I’ll let the point slide. Did you see or hear anything suspicious during the drive to and from the farm? Or while you were there?”
“Nothing. We …” Lenora’s words trailed off. “Now that I think of it, there
was
one thing.”
Both Joanne and Dale sat up straighter, like a pair of hunting dogs that had just located a scent. Marshall also seemed to be paying extra-close attention.
“As I was driving away, I had the weirdest feeling like someone was watching — someone besides Ray, I mean. I didn’t think too much of it at the time. After all, it
was
the Deveraux Farm, right? That’s why people go there, to get a spooky thrill. I figured it was just my imagination, but now …” A note of fear crept into her voice. “Do you think the person who killed Ray was there spying on us?”
Though there was no solid evidence to suggest such a possibility, Joanne said, “Maybe,” more to see how Lenora would react than anything else.
The girl’s eyes widened. “If I’d been the one left there, the killer might’ve come after
me.”
From the half-shocked tone of her voice, the possibility hadn’t occurred to her before now.
Of course not
, Joanne thought. Lenora was a Cross, and her family was the center of the universe, at least around these parts. How could anything bad even happen to someone like her?
Then again, maybe she was putting on an act. But if so, she was doing a damned fine job.
Joanne asked a few more questions, getting estimates on time and the like. Liars tended to give too-precise answers —
I left there at 10:17 on the dot, Sheriff, I swear
— but people with nothing to hide had a more vague sense of time. Lenora gave answers like “Around eleven,” and “I don’t know sometime after eleven-thirty, maybe? Eleven forty-five? I’m really not sure.”
Lenora’s imprecision actually added to her credibility. But then again, Marshall had likely coached her ahead of time on how to appear credible.
“One last question, Ms. Cross,” Joanne began. “Did you kill Ray Porter?”
“No.” She answered without hesitation, and without any sign that she was working hard to seem like the answer came easily to her.
Joanne waited a moment to give Lenora a chance to speak further. People with guilty consciences became quickly uncomfortable with silences and began talking just to fill them up, in their nervousness often contradicting something they said earlier. But Lenora just sat and looked at Joanne, waiting to see what would happen next.
Joanne turned to Dale to see if he had anything he wanted to ask, but he shook his head. Joanne nodded, then stood. As if it was a signal that this meeting was over, everyone else stood as well.
“Thanks for your cooperation,” Joanne said. She turned to Marshall.
“Both
of you. If I have any further questions, I’ll be in touch.”
“Um,
I
have a question,” Lenora said.
Marshall, for the first time since Joanne had known him, showed surprised on his face.
Ah
, she thought.
Looks like Lenora has decided to ad lib
.
“Do you … do you think the killer might come after me? I mean, I was there last night. I didn’t see anything, but the killer doesn’t know that. Maybe he thinks I saw something.” She paused and her face paled, as if something awful had just occurred to her. “What if the killer was after
me
in the first place? What if he killed Ray because he couldn’t get to me?”
Joanne couldn’t provide real answers for Lenora’s concerns, so she decided to rely on that time-honored tool of law-enforcement officers everywhere — SOS: Standard Operational Bullshit.
“We have no reason to believe you were ever a target, Ms. Cross. Neither you nor Ray planned to go the Deveraux Farm, so no one could’ve known you’d be there. Right now it looks like Ray’s murder was a crime of opportunity. It’s doubtful the killer ever got a good look at you, and you were driving Ray’s Camaro, not your vehicle. There’s no evidence to suggest you’re in any danger.”
“But even if you were,” Dale added, “all you need to do is remain here. There’s no safer place in the county than within the walls of Sanctity.” Dale gave Marshall a sideways look. “Safe from outsiders, at least.”
Marshall didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s true, Lenora. Nothing on earth can harm you here.”
Joanne thought about the vision of Carl Coulter she’d had at the Deveraux Farm and of Carl’s subsequent appearance in her nightmare.
• • •
It was raining harder when Joanne and Dale left the not-so-hallowed halls of Sanctity, though not quite hard enough to qualify as a full-fledged storm yet. Neither of them carried umbrellas, so they hurried to Joanne’s cruiser and quickly got in.
“So what do you think?” Joanne asked.
Dale shrugged. “It’s hard to know what to think. She seemed to be telling the truth.”
“But she’s a Cross.”
“Exactly. I liked how you reassured her there at the end. ‘We have no reason to believe you were ever at target.’ We have no reason to believe she
wasn’t
, either. Same thing about them not planning to go out to the farm. Someone could’ve followed them.”
“Lenora said they weren’t followed.”
“She said they didn’t
notice
anyone following them. Big difference, but you already know that.”
“Yeah. Her story seems to track well enough, and it provides a possible explanation for why Ray’s wallet was in the barn. He could’ve gone inside on his own, or been taken inside by the killer and dropped it then.”
“And the killer decided to drive him out into the middle of nowhere, slash his throat, and leave the body in the ditch?”
“No blood evidence at the barn or in Ray’s Camaro.”
“Why not just kill him in the barn?” Dale argued. “Especially is the murderer wants to emulate Carl’s MO. Carl killed all his victims in that barn. It’s a perfect place — quiet, isolated, no neighbors close by. Even on a county road at night, someone might drive by and see you. And if they didn’t witness you commit the crime itself, then they might see you driving there before or after. It’s seems too risky.”
“Maybe the killer was worried Lenora might have a change of heart and come back for Ray,” Joanne said.
“Maybe,” Dale allowed. “But in that case, how did the killer get Ray to the murder scene? From what you told me on the plane, Terry found no evidence that Ray was bound in any way — no rope burns or duct-tape marks — and there was no blow to the head to knock him out.”
“Maybe Ray was drugged. We won’t know until the state crime lab returns the toxicology results.”
“Carl didn’t drug his victims. Another possible difference between the killers — depending, as you said, on the test results.”
“From the way you’re talking, it sounds like you think there’s a possibility that Carl himself might’ve committed Ray’s murder.” She tried to make it sound like a joke, but here, sitting in the cruiser in the dark, outside the imposing gothic presence of Sanctity, it didn’t sound funny. Not at all.
“I’m just thinking in terms of a copycat, that’s all.”
“Sure.”
But neither of them sounded very convincing, she thought.
She noticed Dale kept looking through the cruiser’s windows, checking each one in turn — passenger’s side, windshield, driver’s side, and rear window. He didn’t do this in an obvious way, didn’t turn his head all the way around if he didn’t have to, didn’t allow his gaze to linger long. But it wasn’t enough to fool Joanne, though that’s what he was obviously trying to do.
“Looking for something?” she asked.
“What? Oh, no. Just seeing what I can see. I don’t get up this way much, you know. Nice to see how the other half lives, right?”
She didn’t buy his excuse for a second. It was too dark to get a good look at Sanctity’s grounds. Besides, Dale didn’t give a damn about things like that. He was probably the least materialistic person she knew. But there was one part of his reply that she couldn’t let pass without comment.
“I didn’t know you’d been here before.” When he didn’t respond right away, she added. “You said, ‘I don’t get up this way much.’ And don’t tell me it’s a figure of speech. I know you choose your words more carefully than that.”
Dale looked out the windshield again, and this time she had the sense that he did so to avoid meeting her gaze.
“I’ve been a reporter in this county for a long time, Joanne. I’ve had occasion to come to Sanctity once or twice while I was working. If the Crosses had their way, I’d have been up here a lot more often. They’d love to have complete control over the
Echo
. Unfortunately for them, the owner, publisher, editor, and chief reporter are all stubborn, uncooperative jackasses.”
Joanne grinned. “I though you were the only jackass at the paper.”
Dale grinned back. “So
that’s
why I have to sign my own paychecks. I always wondered.”
Joanne knew Dale had avoided giving her a real answer, but she decided not to push it. If he had something to tell her, he’d do so in his own time. She’d been trying to decide whether to tell him about her nightmare, and she almost decided to hold off. She knew at least part of the reason was because Dale was holding back on her. But in the end she decided not to be petty and told him. When she was done, they discussed the dream a bit, but they mutually decided that Carl’s nightmare visit really didn’t have any significance. A dream was just a dream, nothing more.
Their discussion got Joanne to thinking about something else that had bothered her on and off over the years. The Crosses had their fingers in everything that went on in their county. But they’d never tried to control her. Urge, manipulate, and occasionally intimidate, yes. But they’d never attempted to bribe or blackmail her. Or, if some of the stories county folk told could be believed, the Crosses had never tried to persuade her in their “special” way, whatever exactly that was. If they’d love to control the paper, as Dale had said, then how much more would they desire to control the Sheriff’s Department? Sometimes she thought they might well have done just that with her predecessor, though Dale had never said anything to indicate that Stan Manchester had been corrupt.