‘O’Reilly never made it home last night,’ Jess said, the scenarios whirling in her head. ‘He worked late.’
Corlew shook his head. ‘He didn’t work late. I called his office and asked for him at six. His secretary said he’d already gone for the day.’
‘His wife hasn’t seen him since he left for work yesterday.’
‘Taylor’s dead,’ Corlew offered. ‘That just leaves the princess. She was banging the first victim and all four of those guys always rallied around her like she was the last female on a dying planet.’
‘There was a cop sitting in front of her house all night last night.’
‘That doesn’t mean she didn’t go out the back,’ he countered.
That was true. A surveillance detail was to help keep trouble away from Juliette, not prevent her from sneaking off to find it. That was her sister’s job.
‘What about Penney? Where has he been all week?’
‘That’s the thing.’ Corlew shrugged. ‘I haven’t been able to locate him again since that first night. The guy is too sharp even for me.’
She opted not to comment on that last part. ‘Anything else?’
‘Ask yourself, Jess, why Penney would kill Carson and Taylor and not Baker? Doesn’t add up.’
That was indeed the question of the day. ‘I need your statement in writing and I need any photos you took of Baker and Penney Monday night.’ If that notebook Baker had been holding was the journal, she wanted to know it.
That might very well be how the killer got his hands on it.
As she headed back to her office, Corlew in tow, she put in a call to Harper. She needed him to ramp up the efforts to find the former manager of that storage facility. So far they hadn’t been able to catch the guy. His cell phone had been turned off and he’d gotten evicted from his apartment. If he could be located, maybe he could identify the person who rented that storage unit.
Jess was pretty sure the person who’d decorated that storage unit and the killer were one and the same.
Kevin O’Reilly or Juliette Coleman? Either one could have easily accessed the material that covered the walls of that unit. But only one had admitted to being with Scott Baker the night he was murdered. Corlew saw Juliette arrive. Baker possibly had the journal in his hand. And they’d had wine and sex.
Jess’s cell startled her. ‘Harris.’
‘Jess, it’s Blake.’
Her sister’s husband. Jess’s heart did a dizzying flip-flop. ‘Is Lily all right?’
‘I . . . don’t know. She collapsed again and we’re at the hospital. They don’t like what they see in some of her blood work, so they’re admitting her. She wants you here.’
‘I’ll be right there.’
Chapter Twenty-Three
University of Alabama Hospital, Noon
J
ess sat on the side of her sister’s bed, worry eating away at her. ‘Has the doctor told you anything?’
Lil shook her head, her own worry palpable. ‘They’re doing more tests. They’ve alerted Dr Collins. My liver numbers are wrong. This doctor said something about hepatitis and cirrhosis. How is that possible?’
‘Cirrhosis?’ Her sister scarcely even indulged in a glass of wine. But then, there were other causes besides alcohol consumption. ‘This is ridiculous,’ Jess said. Why the hell couldn’t they figure this out?
‘Blake is about to have a nervous breakdown. Alice and Blake Junior don’t know the half of what’s going on.’ Lil dropped her head back onto the anorexic pillow. ‘We’re afraid to tell them too much and have them running back here. They need to be focused.’
Blake had gone for coffee and to give them a few minutes.
‘We’ll get to the bottom of this,’ Jess promised.
She couldn’t help feeling guilty for being so busy this week. She’d scarcely managed one brief visit with Lil. She’d always let the job take over everything else. The whole time she’d lived away, she had been too caught up in the job to be here for much of anything. She should be ashamed of herself for letting it happen this time. Things were going to be different from now on. Lil needed her.
And that damned medical history.
‘Dammit,’ Jess muttered.
‘What?’ Lil looked at her expectantly. She looked so tired. So afraid. So vulnerable.
‘I’ve had three murders in as many days and I keep forgetting to pick up that medical history from Wanda. Dammit!’ Jess stood and started to pace. How could she be so negligent? She had one thing to do for Lil and she’d fallen down on the job. What kind of sister was she? Never mind, she didn’t want to know the answer to that question.
‘I doubt anything she can tell us will help,’ Lil offered. ‘Her brain’s probably fried from all the alcohol and drugs.’
Jess made a face. ‘I don’t doubt it.’ Still, she’d made a promise. ‘I’ll do it as soon as I get a break from this case.’ She made the mistake of checking the clock on the wall and suppressed a groan. This day was half over and she had a new victim, leaving her with three unsolved murders and a killer out there somewhere trying to have his revenge.
Corlew’s latest revelation had her leaning away from the possibility that Todd Penney was the killer. Yet, he had the most glaring motive.
Bullying was a serious matter. If one or all of the Five had taunted Lenny Porter or encouraged him to take his life, they were guilty of intimidation, a hate crime, and possibly other charges. These were smart kids with everything going for them. She hated the idea of what that meant about society.
Some called bullying nothing more than the innate human survival-of-the-fittest instinct. Jess called it evil.
One never knew what the face of evil would look like. She thought of Juliette Coleman and her tight little group. All smart, wealthy, and attractive. Yet, something evil happened that night and all these years the ugly secret had been kept hidden beneath the money and the power. Why had Scott Baker called Todd Penney now? Had something she hadn’t discovered yet triggered Penney’s need for revenge after all these years?
Or had Scott Baker’s own son’s trials at school reminded him of what he’d done to Lenny Porter? His wife was convinced that Baker considered his son’s troubles a penance for some past wrong. Maybe he’d set out to make things right . . . only something had gone very wrong.
A knock on the door had Jess putting aside those worries for another. Was Blake or the doctor back with news?
A large peace lily sitting atop a cart was the first thing she saw. Her heart skipped a beat at the memory of the same plant being delivered to Burnett’s hospital room after Spears stabbed him. Then the young woman who was pushing the cart came into view, snapping Jess back to the here and now.
The volunteer in the pink uniform smiled. ‘Good afternoon, ladies.’
‘Oh my goodness,’ Lily said. ‘Blake must have ordered this.’
Jess hated peace lilies. Reminded her of death and she got enough of that at work. She sure didn’t want to think of it when she was in a place like this with her sister as a patient with some unidentified ailment.
‘There’s a card.’ The girl in pink, whose nametag read BARBIE, plucked it from the ridiculously large plant.
Jess took it from her before she could pass it to Lily. ‘Thank you, Barbie.’ She gestured to the plant. ‘Just put it wherever it’ll fit.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Who sent it?’ Lil demanded. ‘Blake or Dan?’
Jess hadn’t even called Dan. She really had to get better organized this afternoon.
‘Y’all have a great day!’ Barbie called as she pushed her cart out of the room.
Don’t let this be from him
. Jess noted the name of the local florist on the front of the small envelope, then held her breath as she opened it.
It was a simple card.
Get well soon
.
Beneath those generic words was a single letter.
E
Of course Eric Spears hadn’t signed that initial . . . the local florist had.
But he knew her sister was in the hospital almost as quickly as Jess had known.
The memory of staring at the business end of a weapon in the hand of a man whose face she couldn’t see erupted in her brain.
Someone was watching her . . .
and the people she cared about
.
3.00
P.M.
After listening calmly to her update on her sister and getting a heads
-
up about the plant from Spears, Dan sent Sergeant Harper to the hospital to pick Jess up. Corlew had given her a ride over here. She wasn’t sure who was the biggest speed demon, him or Lori. Corlew had promised to write up his statement and get it back to her ASAP. She wasn’t holding her breath. But she had what she needed from him for now.
Since every minute counted, Jess used the driving time to make sure she was up to speed. ‘No one has seen or heard from Kevin O’Reilly?’ She just didn’t get this. If the killer had gotten to O’Reilly, why hadn’t his body turned up? And if he hadn’t, where the hell was the guy?
‘His wife has no idea where he is,’ Harper added. ‘O’Reilly’s father and the mayor are keeping Burnett busy putting out public relations fires.’
Jess would never understand how Dan tolerated his job. Corlew’s accusation nudged at her. She refused to entertain his conspiracy theories when she had far more pressing issues. ‘What happened to the department’s PR liaison? I thought he was supposed to be back from baby leave this week?’ Oh, God, having kids meant taking time off work. She could not have a child. She couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
‘Trent Ward.’ Harper glanced at her. ‘He’s back but the chief feels he should handle this situation himself.’
Corlew’s accusation echoed in her ears again.
Fine, just get it over with, Jess
. ‘You were in the department back when Corlew was on the force, weren’t you, Harper?’
‘I never worked directly with him but I knew him, yes, ma’am.’
‘He said something to me today that just won’t stop nagging at me.’
‘What’s that, ma’am?’
‘He said Burnett was a part of the Lenny Porter case getting shut down without a proper investigation. Do you remember hearing any such thing?’ She felt like a dog even asking that question.
‘May I be candid, ma’am?’
‘Please.’
Harper stared at the road ahead for a moment before speaking. ‘Corlew is a piece of shit alcoholic. I wouldn’t trust a word he says.’ He sent another look her way. ‘Whatever he’s up to, he has an agenda you won’t like and it will benefit no one but himself.’
Jess chewed on that for a minute. ‘Thank you, Sergeant. I appreciate your candor.’
This was a subject she would take up with Dan as well. He had a right to know what Corlew was saying about him.
‘Here we go.’ Harper made the turn onto Pansy Street.
Still no Corolla at the Penney residence. Where was this guy? The APB for him and his car had gotten negligible results. The guy apparently knew how to hide.
Ramona Penney sat in the swing on her front porch. She watched as Jess and Harper got out of the SUV and walked her way. She made no move to stand or to welcome them to her home.
‘Mrs Penney, I’m sorry to bother you again,’ Jess said as she stepped up onto the porch. ‘You may or may not know we’ve had another murder and I’m very concerned about your son.’
‘No need, my boy’s just fine. He called me a few minutes ago and told me he had nothing to do with these murders.’
Jess gestured to the vacant chairs on the porch. ‘Do you mind if we visit for a bit?’
‘Suit yourself.’ She lifted her glass of tea. ‘I’d offer you refreshments but this was the last glass.’
‘That’s all right. We can’t stay long.’ Jess settled into one of the chairs. Harper opted to remain standing near the steps.
There was very little likelihood that she was going to get any cooperation from this lady but there was one tactic that just might work. ‘Mrs Penney, there’s a chance your son is in danger. I mentioned the last time we spoke that I was worried about Todd. We now have reason to believe that someone is attempting to make him look guilty.’ If Todd hadn’t posted those journal pages all over that storage unit, someone had. ‘Whoever that someone is, Todd’s life may be in danger.’
The dismissive expression on her face instantly shifted to one of suspicion laced with a hint of fear. ‘I don’t know what you mean. My son has done nothing wrong. He just wants to be left alone. The world will know the truth soon enough. He told me so.’
Since Penney was no prophet, that sounded like a threat to Jess. ‘Three people have been murdered since your son returned to Birmingham. The one thing they all had in common was Lenny Porter’s death. A journal we’ve confirmed was handwritten by Todd named every one of those victims. The last entry we discovered included threats related to those same victims.’
‘That journal was written when he was in high school. Teenagers are emotional,’ she argued. ‘They say stuff they don’t mean.’
So she did know about the journal. ‘Do you know what happened to his journal?’
‘He kept it all this time but then he decided it was time to let the past go.’ She dabbed at her eyes. ‘He was finally ready. So he got rid of it.’
‘Did he throw it away?’
‘He gave it to Scott Baker.’ She shook her head. ‘I told him it would only stir up trouble but he did it anyway.’
Jess’s instincts moved to the next level. ‘You’re certain he gave it to Baker?’
‘That’s what he said.’
Scott had the journal when Corlew saw him talking to Penney. Juliette had arrived right after that. Their killer was looking less and less like a he and more and more like a she.
Jess put that revelation aside for the moment. ‘Here’s the problem we have,’ she explained to Todd’s mother. ‘If your son is not the person who committed these heinous crimes, then he is most assuredly on the killer’s list. We need to find him for his own safety.’
That got her full attention. ‘Has this killer left some clue about my son or said something about him?’
‘He leaves a page from the journal at each scene. He’s killing the folks, one by one, who were with Lenny Porter the night he died. Your son was with Lenny that night. He left him on that rooftop. Maybe this killer sees him as guilty too. Would a real friend leave like that?’
Her shoulders stiffened. ‘Todd was the only friend Lenny had. They were like brothers. Todd left him on the roof that night, yes. He hoped Lenny would follow him. After he stormed out of the building, he couldn’t get back in. He called up to Lenny and the others, over and over and no one would listen. The drug he took had him freaked out. My boy didn’t do drugs. He couldn’t handle it.’
She fell silent, tears brimming in her eyes. Her chest shook with a shuddering breath. ‘He had to find someone who would let him use their cell phone to call the police after Lenny fell. We didn’t have the money for one and most businesses in that part of town were closed at that hour. It was awful for him. Just awful.’ She looked straight at Jess. ‘I can’t tell you where my son is because I don’t know, but I can tell you one thing for sure. He hasn’t killed anyone.’
‘I appreciate your honesty, ma’am. Just one more question. Did Todd see Lenny fall?’ Jess steered clear of saying Lenny jumped; she needed Ramona cooperative not defensive.
‘He was standing in the parking lot,’ Ramona confirmed. ‘He watched those other kids playing around the edge like fools. Then Lenny fell. But just before he fell, that girl, the selfish little bitch, whispered something in his ear.’
‘What girl do you mean?’
‘Juliette Coleman, who else? Lenny was in love with her. He would have done anything she asked. Even walk off that building, especially since he was all drugged up.’
He loved me
.
Had he loved Juliette Coleman enough to jump?
Jess had suspected Juliette wasn’t being totally open with her but if she really was the reason he jumped, then why wasn’t she the first victim?
Maybe because she was the killer.