Truth-Stained Lies (7 page)

C
athy took Michael’s advice and showed the police the email that came from Jay’s account.

“So let me get this straight,” Al said, studying Jay. “You want us to believe you didn’t send this email?”

“I
didn’t
send it,” Jay said. “The killer sent this email. This is evidence you can’t ignore.”

“Sure is,” Max muttered, his chin in his palm.

“Not evidence indicting Jay,” Cathy said. “Max, you have to connect the dots here. The email that came to Jay from Annalee’s computer. The email that supposedly came from Jay. It all leads somewhere. You can track down servers. You can use this to find the real killer.”

“And so what if the server they were all sent from was Annalee’s?” Max asked. “That doesn’t prove anything. Jay still could have sent them from the house before he called 911.”

Jay slammed his hand on the table. “Aren’t you listening? Are you deaf?”

Cathy put her hand over Jay’s. “Max, the killer’s jerking you around too. You can check the timing of Jay’s story. What time he sent his reply to Annalee from his office server, what time this email came from wherever it came from. You can talk to his secretary about when he left. You can check his gas station receipt. This clown is playing an intricately planned game. If you don’t follow these leads, he’s going to make
you
look like a clown. He’s probably getting a real laugh out of all this right now.”

“Maybe you’re the one laughing at us, Jay,” Al said.

“Al, you have to listen,” Cathy said. “If you care that there’s a murderer out there getting away with it on your watch, then you’ll check out Jay’s story.”

Max looked at Jay. “We’re gonna need your computer and all your login information.”

“No problem,” Jay said.

“We’ll go get it and bring it back to you,” Cathy said.

“Or we could go get it,” Max said. “You don’t mind us going into your apartment, do you?”

Jay started to answer, but Cathy touched his hand, stopping him. “You don’t have a warrant, gentlemen. We’ll bring you the computer.”

“I don’t have anything to hide,” Jay said. “I’ll give them my key.”

“Absolutely not,” Cathy said.

Max looked at Jay again. “It’s your call, Jay. We can get a warrant.”

Cathy shot Jay an adamant look. “I guess I’ll take my attorney’s advice,” he said. “But I can get the computer to you tonight. I can get Michael to bring it in.”

Cathy wanted to kick herself for offering it at all. It was
sloppy attorney work. In an ordinary case, she would have searched through every email Jay had sent in the last year before she handed over the computer, so she’d know what the police would find. On the other hand, they would have seized it tonight anyway. They had enough to establish probable cause. Any judge would issue a search warrant, if not an arrest warrant, based on the incriminating email alone.

“I’m giving it to you in good faith,” she said. “I know there’s nothing on it that will implicate Jay, because he isn’t guilty. I’m assuming you’re also looking at Annalee’s computer. You’ll be able to tell if the killer signed onto Jay’s account from it, and compare it to Jay’s documented whereabouts at the time. Maybe there are prints on her keyboard. There are tangled threads in all this, and it’s your job to untangle them.”

Her words clearly didn’t smooth out Max’s ruffled feathers. “We’re going to untangle them, Cathy.”

“Did we do a stupid thing by showing the letter to you?” Jay asked. “Are you going to make me regret it?”

Max shoved his chair back from the table and got up. “Go home, Jay. You haven’t been charged with anything.”

“So you’ll follow through on these leads?” Jay pressed.

Max took a deep breath. “Take him home, Cathy. He’s about to make me mad.”

Relieved that they hadn’t arrested him, she walked Jay back out to her car. The midnight air was cool. Cathy crossed her arms and groped for some positive thoughts. But she couldn’t seem to find any.

“They’re going to arrest me tomorrow, aren’t they?” Jay asked in a dull voice.

“Maybe not,” she said. It was the best she could offer him.

C
athy glanced over at her brother in the dark car. His head was leaned back on the seat, his eyes closed. Grief and misery pulled at his face, and in the occasional headlights, he looked much older than thirty.

“Jay, are you sure you didn’t send that email?” He opened his eyes. “You don’t believe me?”

“I do, but it’s been a traumatic day, and you might have forgotten.”

“Cathy, I would never write those words. What could I possibly have meant? No, the same person who sent the email to me from Annalee’s computer also hacked into my email account. And he’s getting away with this.”

It was beginning to rain. She turned her wipers on and tried to see through the blur on her windshield.

“So the killer was with her when he got on your account
and wrote the email that went out to us. Then he got on her account and sent the email inviting you over.”

“Or he made her send it.” A haunted expression came over his face. “He must have tortured her before he killed her. How long was he there with her?”

She didn’t want to imagine it. “I don’t think she wrote it. It wasn’t her style at all. When he sent the email inviting you over, she might have already been dead. He turned on the water and waited for you to come. Then bopped out and passed you, so you’d get a good look at him.”

“So I’d sound like an idiot when I told the truth.”

Yes, that was exactly what he’d planned. She drove quietly for a moment, trying to think through the resources the police department would have. They could trace the emails back to the servers from which they were sent. That could prove that they hadn’t been sent from Jay’s home or office. The timeline would surely prove he couldn’t have committed the murder, wouldn’t it? Or would they simply think he’d killed her, then rushed back to his office to create his alibi? Who knew how Max and Al would think or how they would present it to the DA?

“What has he done to me?”

“Let’s just go in and talk to Juliet and Holly.”

She cut the car off. Jay grabbed her arm before she could get out. “Sis, I hope you believe me. Somebody’s setting me up. I’m being framed. They’re going to arrest me.”

“Don’t panic. Just take care of Jackson and yourself. Get some sleep. I’m working on this.”

“What am I gonna tell him? How do I tell my child that he’s never going to see his mother again? I didn’t want to win custody this way. It’ll break his heart and traumatize him for life.”

“He’s probably asleep by now. You don’t have to do it tonight.”

The grief on his face ripped open Cathy’s old wounds. “I just need to say good night to him,” he said. “I need to hold him and talk to him.” His voice broke, and he covered his face again. “What if he wakes up? What if he asks me where his mother is?”

“You just tell him that you’re having a sleepover at Juliet’s. Tomorrow, when you’re fresh, when you’ve had time to think, you can tell him. He has the rest of his life to deal with it.” Her voice broke as she said those words.

“The rest of his life.”

The rain pounded harder, hitting the windshield in dime-sized dots.

“I loved my wife, Cathy. I didn’t want to lose her. I wasn’t the one who started all this. If I could’ve had my deepest wishes, I would’ve saved my marriage. I still love her.”

“I know that, Jay. I believe you.”

“The public’s gonna try me and convict me. They’ll start speculating, and everything is gonna add up to me being a killer. The same kind of person that you talk about on your blog.”

Suddenly, it hit Cathy. The note she had gotten on her windshield that day. The one that threatened her, told her to enjoy the ride, if she survived it. What had it said? She tried to think of the exact words. Did she have a copy in her purse? In all the chaos with Jay, she’d completely forgotten about it. She grabbed her purse and looked through it, but didn’t find the note. She’d left the copy at home. She had gotten the call about Jay and run out.

“Cathy, are you listening to me?”

Her heart raced. “I have to call Michael.”

“About the email?”

“No. Yes … that and some other stuff. I need to think. Let’s go in and I’ll call from inside.”

She followed Jay into the house. He accepted hugs and tears as Juliet and Holly fawned over him, got him something to eat and drink, sat him down and massaged his shoulders. They weren’t pelting him with questions, which was good. They were just letting him talk and unwind.

She took her phone and went into an empty room to call Michael.

He answered quickly. “Cathy, did they let him go?”

“Yeah,” she said. “We’re at Juliet’s. But listen, I’ve been thinking of something. The note on my windshield this afternoon … It said that I was about to see what it felt like to have people speculate and judge. That I’m about to have a bumpy ride. You don’t think it’s about this, do you?”

Michael was silent for a moment. “I hadn’t connected it. With all the stuff with Jay …”

She went to the window, looked out into the night. The families on Juliet’s street seemed to be sleeping. Few lights shone in the windows. No cars drove by. If there were stalkers, she couldn’t see them. “It has to be connected,” she said. “Whoever wrote that note set Jay up. We have to let Max know it might be connected. The prints on that note might be the prints of the killer.”

“I’ll call him right now.”

She hoped his brother would pay attention.

J
ay hadn’t slept a wink, and when Jackson bounced awake that morning, Juliet distracted him with pancakes.

Now, as Jay sat outside by Juliet’s pool with his child, he knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

“I like skipping school today,” Jackson said. “How come you don’t have to work on Tuesday?”

“I took the day off so I could hang out with you.”

Jackson beamed and sipped from his juice box. “Would Mommy let us do it again?”

Jay’s heart seemed to have swollen too big for his chest cavity, each beat painful. Yes, now was the time. He couldn’t keep putting Jackson off. “Come here, buddy.”

Jackson abandoned his juice box on a wrought-iron table and came to sit on Jay’s lap. “What?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Okay.”

As his son looked up at him, waiting, Jay blinked back tears and glanced toward the glass patio doors. Juliet stood there watching him. She turned away when their eyes met.

Jay looked down at Jackson. “Buddy, something bad has happened to Mommy.”

Jackson’s round gaze narrowed. “What happened?”

“Mommy … well, she … Somebody hurt her. We don’t know who it was yet.”

“How did they hurt her?”

Jay hesitated. Should he tell his kindergartner that his mother was shot in cold blood? Was it necessary for him to know that she’d bled out in the bathtub? He cleared his throat and hoped Jackson couldn’t feel him shaking.

“The person … well … he had a gun … and he shot Mommy.”

Jackson’s face twisted. “Is she in the hospital?”

“No, son.” He tightened his arms around him, not wanting Jackson to see his face. “Mommy’s not in the hospital. She was hurting so bad that Jesus decided to take her on to heaven.”

Jackson’s mouth fell open. “Huh-uh. She’s not dead!”

“Son, I know it’s hard …”

Jackson jerked away and slid off his lap, glaring at him, red-faced. “She did not go to heaven! She’s not dead! I want to call her!” He grabbed for Jay’s phone in the holster on his belt. “Gimme your phone!”

“Honey, she’s not there.”

“Yes, she is!” Jackson screamed. “I wanna talk to Mommy!”

Jay reached for him, but Jackson wouldn’t come. He backed away, getting too close to the pool. Jay got up and grabbed him, wrestled him, and held him close as he squirmed. “Son, I’m so sorry. I love you. And I loved her.”

“No, you didn’t! You hated her! You never came over. You didn’t even talk to her or call her!”

How could Jackson ever understand that those hadn’t been Jay’s choices?

Unable to hold back his own tears any longer, Jay began to weep. After a moment, Jackson stopped fighting. Jay felt his little boy’s shoulders shaking as a low, sobbing moan erupted from his throat.

“You’re always mad at each other,” Jackson choked out.

Jay couldn’t deny that. Jackson had seen and heard them fighting before the attorneys told them not to talk to each other. Memories flew back of Jay’s reaction to learning Annalee was cheating on him. The rage had overwhelmed him.

Jackson had heard that screaming fight and all the accusations. When Jay packed his things to move out, Jackson locked his arms around Jay’s leg and begged him not to go. Annalee had wrestled him off and ordered Jay out of the house. He’d closed the door to the sound of his son’s anguish. But that was well over a year ago.

“I didn’t want her to die,” Jay rasped.

Jackson wiped his face and pulled back, looking up at him. “Are they gonna put the shooter in jail?”

“They will when they find him.”

Jackson rubbed his eyes too hard. “She didn’t even tell me ‘bye.”

“She wanted to, buddy. She wanted that more than anything.”

They clung together for a long moment, weeping against each other’s shirts. Finally, Jackson said, “Are you gonna come live with me now?”

“Yes,” Jay whispered. “It’s you and me, buddy.”

A
s expected, the police got the search warrant for Jay’s apartment. There was nothing Cathy could do to stop it.

Exhausted after only a couple of fitful hours of sleep, she poured herself a tall cup of black coffee and decided to head to Michael’s for a strategy session.

She went out to her car but didn’t put the key in the ignition. For a moment she just sat there in the darkness of her garage, staring at her windshield.

“God, what are you doing to our family?”

She’d had an on-again off-again relationship with God since she was a child. Sometimes she’d been on speaking terms with him, and other times she’d had the crushing sense that he had something against her. What had she and her siblings done to deserve the way their lives had unfolded?

She closed her eyes and thought of all those sermons
her father had preached, week after week, as she and Juliet tried to keep Holly and Jay quiet on the front pew. The family image was crucial. They were to appear like the perfect children, taught to respect the sanctuary and the man who was speaking. Taught to fear God.

And fear him they did. Questions weren’t accepted about their burgeoning faith, until everything fell apart.

She didn’t want to think about that now. Her father’s unfaithfulness to her mother, his abrupt fall from pastor to outcast, and her family’s sudden homelessness when the church evicted them from the parsonage … had all resulted in a 180-degree turn in her thinking about faith, love, and the body of Christ.

There were times when she blamed God completely. Despite her father’s hypocrisy, hadn’t her mother served God faithfully? Hadn’t the children been behaved and obedient? Why did they deserve to live in the only place they could afford — a garage apartment offered by strangers who heard of their dilemma?

Where were the loving shoulders for her mother to cry on? Why had she been a pariah too?

Cathy shook herself out of her reverie and told herself to snap out of it. She had work to do. Her brother needed her. Her nephew needed her.

Everyone needed her.

She started the car and backed out of the garage, trying to bury her bitterness. She’d buried it when her fiancé was murdered, when his killer walked free, when Michael was the one punished. But this time, it was burying her.

It was as if God had allowed her to be crushed in the avalanche of bitterness, trapped under its weight. Yet he warned against it. How could she escape?

Under it all, she did still have a remnant of faith. “There’s
a purpose for all this,” she whispered. “There must be. I know you’re not mean. I know you love us.”

That knowledge kept her going to God, even when her fists were clenched. Even when there was no human understanding for the things humans did.

Her cell phone rang as she pulled into a parking space in front of Michael’s office. She didn’t recognize the number, but she answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Cathy, this is Max. I know it’s early. Did I wake you up?”

She sighed. “No, I’m just pulling up at Michael’s. What’s up?”

“I wanted you to know there were no other prints on that note that was put on your car. Just yours.”

She sighed. “Great. Is there anything else you can learn from it?”

“Not really.”

“Well, you’ll keep it as evidence, won’t you?”

“We will, but I’m not sure it’s relevant. Gotta go. Just wanted you to know.”

Feeling defeated, she went into the small building that had once been a gas station and convenience store. The front room, which was supposed to look like a small waiting room, had a pea-green sofa Michael had picked up at the Goodwill store. His living area was the old storeroom at the back of the building. At least he had a bathroom and shower there.

“In here, Cathy!”

She stepped toward his office door, a walled-off half of the front area. Michael sat at his desk, still wearing what he’d had on the last time she’d seen him.

“Hey,” she said, dropping her bag on an easy chair in the corner. “Didn’t you go to bed last night?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve been up, trying to figure this out.”

She glanced at the dry erase board, where he’d made copious notes about the case, as he would have if he’d been the detective assigned to it.

She sank into the easy chair, pulled her feet beneath her. “Something you can add to the list. No prints on the note left on my car.”

“Didn’t think there would be.” He got up and wrote “Note on car — no fingerprints” in the evidence column. “But it was handwritten, so that could help us later. When we figure out who it is, we can compare handwriting samples.”

Cathy stared at the list of all the evidence he had so far. The emails, the gun, the clown, the truck, the timeline … She was tired and her head hurt, but she couldn’t let it slow her down.

“Let’s make a column for the cases you’ve been writing about,” he said.

She got her laptop out of her bag, opened it. She pulled up her site and scanned through it. “There are so many.”

“We can rule out the ones who are in prison now. And since Jay seems sure the clown was a man, we can rule out the women.”

She scanned through the list of male defendants. “Okay, Brooks Lewis is free. He was acquitted, but I always thought he was innocent and said so on my blog. Clive Taylor only got a year in prison, and he’s out by now. I did say some pretty stinging things about him, because I thought he was as guilty as sin.”

Michael scribbled “Clive Taylor” on the board. “Who else?”

As she went through the list of possible men who might have a grudge against her, Michael sat down next to her. She
scrolled through her blogs she’d written in the last year, rereading some of what she’d said about the men suspected of horrendous things — murder, rape, child abuse. She’d told it the way she saw it, and that didn’t always make her friends.

“I don’t usually think about how I’m making the suspect feel,” she said. “But looking at this now, I’m surprised I wasn’t the one who was murdered.”

“Good point,” Michael said. “Why doesn’t this guy want
you
dead? Why would he be satisfied to kill your sister-in-law? If Annalee’s killer is the same guy who threatened you, it doesn’t make sense.”

She shook her head. “It’s got to be more than that. I mean, I could see him setting me up for a crime. Making me look like a person of interest. Showing me how it feels to have people speculating and judging. But to kill Annalee, who has so little to do with me, only so he could set up my brother in hopes of hurting me … I agree with you. It’s a stretch to connect those dots.”

“He did mention Leonard Miller.” That name was already written at the top of the board, in a different color ink. Cathy figured it had been there for the last two years.

She winced at the reminder of the man who’d murdered Joe. “Would Miller do this, knowing we’d love nothing more than to nail him for another crime?”

“I know it’s unlikely,” he said. “But sociopaths can’t be accused of logic.”

“But what would he have against me? And how would he even know about Jay’s divorce problems? Besides, there’s no evidence that he’s in town. His face was all over the news here, and the town hates him. I don’t think he’d come back.”

“I wish he would,” Michael muttered. “I’d just love to find him.”

“Well, let’s not let him get us off track,” Cathy said.

“The note warned me something would happen. I can’t help but think the two situations are connected.”

“But it could just be a coincidence.”

She breathed a laugh. “Thought you didn’t believe in coincidences.”

He rubbed his tired eyes. “Well, I don’t think things happen out of the blue. Everything has a purpose. But as a detective, I think when there’s this much reach to connect two things, maybe we’re on the wrong track. Maybe this person had it in for Annalee and just set up Jay to keep the heat off himself. Maybe it has nothing at all to do with you.”

Cathy didn’t know whether to be relieved at that prospect, or disappointed that one of their leads led nowhere. “It was another clue. And we don’t have all that many.”

Michael got up and went back to the board. “I’m still waiting to hear if security video caught the person putting the note on your car, if any of the security cameras on the main roads from Annalee’s house might have caught a white truck, and where this clown suit might have come from. But I can’t guarantee Max and Al have pulled those tapes.”

He went to his desk and pulled out Jay’s crude drawing of the clown. “I’ve been googling clown suits, looking for one that looks like this.”

“You’ll probably find dozens of stores that carry that style.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It’s not just the costume. It’s the wig, the makeup, the shoes. If I can find the store that sold any of that to our zip code in the last few weeks …”

She sighed. “Michael, how do you have time to do all this? You have to make a living.”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do best. It’s better than spying on Medicare frauds and cheating husbands.”

“We could pay you.”

He looked insulted. “I don’t want money. I just want to help you out and get your brother off. And I have to admit … if Leonard Miller’s involved, then I’m all over this.”

She swallowed and met his eyes. Sorrow connected them for a moment too long. He looked away. “So where do we go from here?” she asked.

“Keep looking through the blogs and figuring out who may have had the potential to do this. It feels like a rabbit trail, but there might be something there. I’ll keep pressuring Max to find any videos, even if he won’t let us see them. And I’ll keep working on finding the costume.”

She closed her laptop and got up. “I’ll let you know when I get the list of what they confiscated from their search of Jay’s apartment.” She started out, hesitating at the door. “Jay told Jackson about Annalee this morning. Juliet said it was really heartbreaking.” Her voice broke, and she blinked back tears. “Jackson needs to be back in his own home, but with the investigation, it’s impossible for them to get back in there. The divorce wasn’t final, so the house is still Jay’s. But with him as a person of interest and the house sealed …”

“We’ll have to help them rule him out as soon as possible.”

Tears seeped through her lashes. “Yeah.”

“And in the meantime, I want you to hire a bodyguard for yourself.”

“I’m not doing that, Michael.”

“Cathy, if this is connected to you, this guy’s dangerous. He could hurt you.”

“I’ll be careful. I’m carrying my gun in the car. I’ll be all right.”

He rubbed his forehead. “Will you at least promise me that before you go anywhere predictable, you’ll call me so I can go with you?”

“Michael …”

“Cathy, promise me.”

She sighed. “All right. I will. This whole thing is just … surreal. Like I’m living through a foggy nightmare.” She got her bag, slid the strap on her shoulder, and dropped her laptop in.

“Cathy?”

She looked up at him and pulled the bag to her chest, holding it like a shield.

“Are you all right?”

She forced a smile. “Yes, I’m fine.”

As more tears pushed to her eyes, she turned and left his office. She got into her car, grabbed one of the wadded tissues on the passenger seat, and dabbed at her eyes.

This was almost as bad as she’d felt two years ago, when she learned Joe had been killed on a drug bust. Almost as bad.

Michael was one of the few who understood, because it was his grief too.

As she drove out of the parking space, she glanced back at his office. Michael stood at the window, watching her drive away.