Erica Spindler (23 page)

“Not necessarily. Her murder was the biggest thing to ever hit this town. It was a shock, a wake-up call. He was civic-minded. He probably followed the story because he—”

“Avery,” she interrupted gently, “he clipped all those newspaper articles and kept them for fifteen years. There has to be a reason. Something personal.”

Avery knew she was right. She had thought the same all along. But no way had he been an accomplice to murder. No way. She told Gwen so.

The other woman didn't argue. “When did you learn your caller was Trudy Pruitt?”

“The same afternoon she was killed. I goaded her into telling me her name. I promised that if she showed me proof of her claims, I'd make it right. That I'd find a way to exonerate Donny and Dylan. We set up a meeting for that night.”

Avery pulled in a deep breath. “She was still alive…she tried to tell me something but died before she could.”

Gwen's expression altered. “Didn't you know? They cut out her tongue.”

“Are you…that can't…” But it was true, Avery realized, picturing the woman's face, her bloody mouth.

They fell silent. Gwen broke it first. “Seems to me that shoots the whole random-act-of-violence thing to hell.”

Avery winced at her sarcasm. Shifted the subject. “Buddy let me look at his records of the Waguespack murder. Everything seemed in order, but I keep coming back to that box of clippings. And my belief that Dad wouldn't take his own life. And now, all the deaths.” A lump formed in her throat; she swallowed past it. “Who are these people, Gwen? Who are The Seven?”

“Put it together, Avery.” She leaned toward her. “You're a reporter…who fits the profile?”

When Avery didn't respond, Gwen filled in for her. “They're probably all men. Though, obviously, since a woman lured me out tonight, women are part of the group. They're no doubt longtime Cypress Springs residents. Pillars of the community. Men who are looked up to. Ones in influential positions or ones who have influence.” She paused. “Like your dad.”

“He would never have been party to this. Never, he—”

Gwen held up a hand, stopping her. “It's the only way this would work. I guess them all to be mature, forty and up. Maybe way up, if the members of today's Seven are the same, or partly the same, as the past's.

“And,” she finished, “if today's group mirrors the one
of the 1980s, they have many accomplices in the community. Like-minded citizens willing to spy for them. Break the law for them.”

Avery frowned. “The past and the present, they're intertwined. The group from the 1980s, Sallie Waguespack's death. I just don't know how.”

“What do you think Trudy Pruitt's proof was?”

“I don't know. But if it was for real, the way I figure it, there's a chance it's still in her trailer.”

Gwen moved her gaze over Avery, her expression subtly shifting to one of understanding. “And you're thinking we should go find it?”

“If you're up for it.”

“At this point, what do I have to lose?”

They both knew, both were acutely aware of what they could lose.

Their lives.

“Besides,” Gwen murmured, smile sassy, “I've got a pair of black jeans I've been dying to wear.”

A
very parked the SUV just outside the trailer park and they walked in. Neither spoke. They kept as much as possible to the deepest shadows. Unlike the previous evening, Avery was grateful for the blown-out safety lights.

They reached Trudy Pruitt's trailer. The yellow crime scene tape stretched across the front, sagging in the center, forming an obscene smile. Avery shivered despite the warm night.

“How are we going to get in?”

“You'll see.” She quickly crossed to the trailer. Instead of climbing the steps, she stepped into the garden. The frog figurine was just where she had expected it to be. She picked it up, turned it over, opened the hidden compartment and took out a key. “My bet is, this is a key to her front door.”

“How did you know that was there?”

“I noticed the figurine, thought it was concrete until I accidentally knocked it off the porch. Why else would someone have a fake concrete frog on the front steps?”

“Good detective work.”

Avery lifted a shoulder. “Journalists notice things.”

They climbed the steps, let themselves in. Avery retrieved her penlight, switched it on. Gwen did the
same. No one had cleaned up the mess. In all likelihood, even when the police gave the okay, there would be no one to clean it up. She averted her gaze from the bloody smear on the back wall.

From her back pocket, she took the two pairs of gloves she had picked up at the paint store that afternoon. She handed a pair to Gwen. “This is still a crime scene. I don't want my prints all over the place.”

Gwen slipped them on. “We get caught, we're in deep shit.”

“We're already in deep shit. Let's start in the bedroom.”

They made their way there, finding it in the same state of chaos as the front room: the bed was unmade, the dresser drawers hung open, clothes spilling out. Beer cans, an overflowing ashtray, newspapers and fashion magazines littered the dresser top and floor.

They exchanged glances. “Wasn't a neat freak, was she?” Gwen murmured.

Avery frowned. She moved her gaze over the room, taking in the mess. “You're right, Gwen. The killer didn't make this mess, Trudy Pruitt was simply a slob.”

“Okay. So?”

“Last night I thought the place had been ransacked. Now I realize that wasn't the case. Why search the living room but not the bedroom?”

“What do you think it means?”

“Maybe nothing. Just an observation. Let's get started.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I'll know it when I see it. I hope.”

They began to search, carefully examining the contents of each drawer, then the closet, finally picking through items on the dresser top. Avery shifted her attention to the floor.

The
Gazette
, she saw. Strewn across the floor. Avery squatted beside it. Not a current issue, she realized. The
issue reporting her father's death. Trudy Pruitt had drawn devil horns and a goatee on his picture.

“What?”

Avery indicated the newspaper. Gwen read the headline aloud. “ Beloved Physician Commits Suicide. Community Mourns.'” She met Avery's eyes. “I'm sor—” She stopped, frowning. “Look at this, Avery. Trudy made some sort of notations, here in the margin.”

The woman had used a series of marks to count. Four perpendicular hatchet marks with another crosswise through them. Beside it she had written “All but two.”

“Five,” Gwen murmured. “What do you think she was counting?”

“Don't know for certai—” She swallowed, eyes widening. “My God, five plus two—”

“Equals seven. Holy shit.”

“She was counting the dead. Dad was number five. There are, or were, two left.”

“But who were they?”

“On the phone she said there weren't many of them left. That they were dropping like flies.”

“People who knew the truth.”

“Gotta be.”

Avery carefully leafed through the remaining pages of the paper. Nothing jumped out at her. She carefully folded the page with her father's photo and Trudy Pruitt's notations, then slipped it into a plastic bag.

They searched the living room next, checking the undersides and linings of the chairs and sofa, behind the few framed photos, inside magazines. They found nothing.

“Kitchen's next,” Avery murmured, voice thick.

“That's where…it's going to be bad.” Gwen paled. “I've never—” They exchanged glances, and by unspoken agreement, Avery took the lead.

Using tape, the police had marked where Trudy had died. A pool of blood, dried now, circled the shape.
Several bloody handprints stood out clearly on the dingy linoleum floor.

Her handprints.

Avery started to shake. She dragged her gaze away, took a deep, fortifying breath. “Let's get this over with.”

Avery checked the freezer. It was empty save for a couple unopened Lean Cuisine frozen meals and a half-dozen empty ice trays. The cabinets and pantry also proved mostly bare. They found nothing taped to the underside of shelves, the dining table or trash barrel.

“Either she never had any proof or the killer already picked it up,” Avery said, frustrated.

“Maybe her proof was in her head,” Gwen offered. “In the form of an argument.”

“Maybe.”

Gwen frowned. “No answering machine.”

Avery glanced at her. “What?”

“Everybody's got an answering machine these days.” She pointed at the phone, hanging on the patch of wall beside the refrigerator. “I didn't see one in the bedroom, either. Did you?”

Avery shook her head and crossed to the phone, picked it up. Instead of a dial tone, a series of beeps greeted her. She frowned and handed the receiver to the other woman.

“Memory call,” Gwen said. “It's an answering service offered through the phone company. I have it.”

“How do you retrieve the messages?”

“You dial the service, then punch in a five-digit password. The beeps mean she has a message waiting.”

“What's the number?”

“Mine's local. It'd be different here. Sorry.”

Avery glanced around. “My guess is, Trudy wrote that number down, that it's here, near the phone. So she wouldn't have to remember it.” She slid open the drawers nearest the phone, shuffled through the mix of papers, flyers and unopened mail.

“Look on the receiver itself,” Gwen offered. “Until I learned mine, that's where I taped it.”

Avery did. Nothing had been taped to either receiver or cradle. She made a sound of frustration and looked at Gwen. “No good.”

“Tom had the service,” she murmured. “He programmed it into his—”

“Speed dial,” Avery finished for her, glancing at the phone. Sure enough, the phone offered that feature, for up to six numbers. She tried the first and was connected to the Hard Eight.

She gave Gwen a thumbs-up, then tried the second programmed number, awakening someone from a deep sleep. She hung up and tried again.

The third proved the winner. A recording welcomed her to “her memory call service.”

“Got it,” Avery said, excited. “Take a guess at a password.”

“1–2-3–4-5.”

Avery punched it in and was politely informed that password was invalid. She tried the same combination, backward. She punched in several random combinations.

All with no luck. She hung up and looked at Gwen. “What now?”

“Most people choose passwords they can easily remember, their anniversary, birthday, kid's birthday. But we don't know any of those.”

“Oh yes we do,” Avery murmured. The date Trudy Pruitt had never forgotten. The one she might use as a painful, self-mocking reminder. “June 18, 1988. The night Sallie Waguespack was murdered and her sons were killed in a shoot-out with the police.”

Avery connected with the answering service again, then punched in 0–6-1–9-8–8. The automated operator announced that she had five new messages waiting and one saved message.

Avery gave Gwen another thumbs-up, then pressed the appropriate buttons to listen to each. The recording announced the day, date and time of call, then played the message. The woman's boss at the bar, pissed that she hadn't shown up for work. Several hang-ups. A woman, crying. Her soft sobs despairing, hopeless. Then Hunter. He said his name, gave his number and hung up.

Avery's knees went weak. She laid her hand on the counter for support.
Hunter had called Trudy Pruitt the last afternoon of her life. Why?

“What's wrong?”

Avery looked at Gwen. She saw by the other woman's expression that her own must have registered shock. She worked to mask it. “Nothing. A…a woman crying. Just crying. It was weird.”

“Replay it.”

Avery did, holding the phone to both their ears, disconnecting the moment the call ended.

“The woman who called me sounded as if she had been crying,” Gwen told her. “What if they were one and the same?”

“What time did she call you?”

Gwen screwed up her face in thought. “About five in the afternoon.”

Avery dialed, called up the messages again. The woman had called Trudy Pruitt at four forty-five. Avery looked at Gwen. “A coincidence?”

“A weird one.” Gwen frowned. “What do you think it means?”

“I don't know. I wonder if the police have listened to the messages.”

“They could be retrieving them directly from the service. After all, the calls could be evidence.”

“Or the police might have missed them, same way we almost did. Let's get out of here,” Avery said.

They left the way they'd come, reaching the SUV
without incident. Avery started the engine and they eased off the road's shoulder. She didn't flip on her headlights until they'd gone a couple hundred feet.

She couldn't stop thinking about Hunter having called Trudy Pruitt. Why? What business could he have had with the woman? And on the last day of her life? And why hadn't he mentioned it when they'd discussed the woman's death?

The answers to those questions were damning.

“Something's bothering you.”

She glanced at Gwen. She should tell her. They were partners now, in this thing together. If Gwen had been one of her colleagues at the
Post
, she would.

But she couldn't. Not yet. She had to think it through.

“I'm wondering why people like Trudy Pruitt stayed in Cypress Springs? Why not leave?”

“I asked her that. She said some did leave. For others, for most, this was their home. Their friends were here. Their family. So they stayed.”

“But to live in fear. To know you're being watched. Judged. It's just so wrong. So…un-American.”

Avery realized in that moment how carelessly she took for granted her freedoms, the ones granted by the Bill of Rights. What if one day they were gone? If she woke up to discover she couldn't express her views, see the movies or read the books she chose to. Or if skipping worship Sunday morning or drinking one too many margaritas might land her on a Most Wanted list.

“It's not been until recently that things have gotten really weird,” Gwen continued. “For a long time before that it was quiet.”

“Recently? What do you mean?”

“In the last eight months to a year. About the time the accidents and suicides began. Trudy said that after Elaine disappeared she thought about going. But she couldn't afford to leave.”

Avery hadn't considered that. It cost money to pick up and move. One couldn't simply carry a trailer on their back. Apartments required security deposits, first and last month's rent, utility deposits. Then there was the matter of securing a job.

Not like the moves she had made, ones where she'd lined up a job, and her new employer had covered her moving expenses. She'd had money in the bank to fall back on, a father she could have turned to if need be.

To a degree, people like Trudy Pruitt were trapped.

Now she was dead.

“According to what Trudy told me, most of the citizens fell in like sheep. They were frightened of what Cypress Springs was becoming, only too happy to head back to church, rein in their behavior or spy on their neighbors if it meant being able to leave their house unlocked at night.”

“What about her? She didn't fall in line with the rest.”

Gwen's expression became grim. “I don't think she knew how to be any different. And…I don't think she felt any motivation to change. She hated this town, the people. Because of her boys.”

“But she didn't say anything about them? About their deaths, Sallie Waguespack's murder?”

“Nothing except that they didn't do it. That they were framed.”

“How about Tom? Did she say anything about him?”

“I asked. She didn't know anything about him but what she'd read in the paper. She told me she didn't have a doubt The Seven killed him.”

“He hadn't interviewed her?”

“Nope. She found me, actually.”

Avery pulled to a stop at a red light. She looked at Gwen. “Did she say who The Seven were?”

“No. She said revealing that would get her dead.”

She got dead anyway
. The light changed; Avery eased forward.

The square came into view up ahead. “Drop me at that corner,” Gwen said.

“You're sure? I could park around the corner, give you a hand cleaning up?”

“It's better this way. The less possibility of us being seen together, the better.”

Avery agreed. She stopped at the next corner. “Call me tomorrow.”

Gwen nodded, grabbed the door handle. “What's next?”

“I'm not sure. I need to think about it. Lay out the facts, decide which direction to go.”

Gwen opened her car door and stepped out. Avery leaned across the seat.

“Gwen?” The other woman bent, met her eyes. “Be careful.”

She said she would, shut the door and walked quickly off. Avery watched her go, a knot of fear settling in her chest. She glanced over her shoulder, feeling suddenly as if she was being watched, but seeing nothing but the dark, deserted street.