Nick resisted the impulse to shout “Hallelujah.” Instead, he propped a hip on his desk, watching Whitmore pace. “What’s this about, Reverend?”
“It’s about Margaret.”
“Margaret?”
“The marital relationship comes with certain duties.
Among them is a wife’s duty to share her husband’s bed. The Bible is clear on that.”
“Ah, Jes—criminy.”
“Margaret doesn’t fulfill those duties. She hasn’t been in Jack’s bed in years. And so, he’s found other, uh, venues.”
Nick’s antenna went up. “You’re telling me he’s had affairs.”
Whitmore nodded.
“Reverend, did Jack confess something illegal to you?”
“No.” He gave a sad smile. “Ironic, isn’t it? If he had, I wouldn’t be able to share this with you. I would have to hold it in confidence. But since he didn’t—” he spread his hands “—I can ruin his life without betraying my ethics.”
“A girl is dead, Reverend,” Nick said, losing patience, “and a man is about to be put to death for her murder. If you know something—”
“That’s why I’m here.” The pastor closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were the eyes of a tired hound. “Drugs.”
Nick’s blood picked up speed, but he kept his mouth shut. Let him talk.
“One of the outreaches we do at Ebenezer is a regional program involving several congregations. We go into downtown Cleveland to feed and clothe, and to witness. I’ve been to the shelter there on the river dozens of times and had the occasion to learn that Jack Calloway is known to a drug dealer there.” He held up a hand. “No, I will not tell you how. Confidentiality is part of the program. All I can say is that I became convinced Jack had bought drugs on the waterfront there. More than once.”
“What kind?”
“Cocaine, mostly.”
“Did you ask Jack about it?”
“I tried. I told him what I had come to believe, but couldn’t speak in bald terms because confidentiality—”
“Is part of the program.”
“I offered him counsel and spiritual guidance. He denied using drugs. But in my heart, I have always thought he lied to me that day. I have always prayed he didn’t.”
“Holy sh—cow.”
Nick stood. This was getting interesting. Disturbing, rather. He gave his brain a shake and made the distinction. “Did you ever hear the name Lauren McAllister before today, Reverend?”
“No.”
“What about Sara Daniels?”
“The other woman Erin Sims is ranting about? No.”
“So you don’t know whether Jack had affairs with them?”
“No.”
“But the idea doesn’t shock you.”
“It takes a great deal to shock me anymore, Sheriff. But, no, imagining Jack with a pretty young woman? That is not difficult.”
Nick stood, considering what to do with this knowledge. Jack was married to one of the most beautiful women in the world, who didn’t share his bed. He
had
committed adultery, apparently more than once. With Lauren McAllister? Could be, except the other authorities who had dismissed Erin Sims were right: Even if that were true, it didn’t mean he’d killed her.
And Jack had bought cocaine. At least, that’s what Whitmore thought, and Nick didn’t think the pastor would rat out a generous congregant if there was a chance in hell he was wrong.
Cocaine had been Lauren’s drug of choice. What about
Sara Daniels? Something to check. And in a hurry. Sunday was nearly gone.
Nick handed a legal pad and pen to the minister. “Write out what you told me, Reverend—as many details as you can about the drugs. And about the affairs. Sign it.”
Whitmore looked up at him. “What about Margaret? Finding out about his affairs… this would destroy her.”
Margaret. Nick took a deep breath, turned the thought over a few times. “I’ll be careful what I say to her,” he promised, and meant it. “In my experience, though, the wife is usually the first to know.”
“Yes,” Whitmore said. “Mine, too.”
Jack sat on a pew in the center of the chapel, elbows on knees, head bent. He’d never had much interest in praying, despite what Carl Whitmore believed. Could recall only a handful of times in his life when he’d actually done it… After the car accident that nearly killed Claire. After Rodney went into surgery for his eyes. After he’d been accused of Lauren’s death.
It occurred to him now that he ought to have spared a prayer for Lauren herself.
Lauren. Sara. And how many others?
I knew about every one of them.
Oh, Maggie.
And Rodney. Jack didn’t know what to do about Rodney. Maggie meant the world to him.
He left the church in the late afternoon, but found he didn’t want to go home. He drove. He drove for an hour up County Road 219—past the place where Carrie Sitton’s tragic demise had occurred—his knuckles growing white on the steering wheel and his mind tangling with worries. He drove without noticing direction or landscape or speed, and with anger dripping slowly into his veins.
Erin Sims.
This was her fault.
A horn screamed through his brain and he swerved, just missing an oncoming car. He pulled over, dumping the car on the shoulder, panting for breath. God Almighty, he was going to kill someone if he wasn’t careful. Hadn’t he done enough of that already?
He might have sat in the car for ten minutes or an hour; he wasn’t sure. When he blinked back to the present, he knew what he had to do.
Money. Fake credit cards. Fake IDs. He’d had the stash for years, ready to go, though he’d hoped to never need them. Now, there was no choice. Nick Mann was going to get to the bottom of this. Their reprieve in Hopewell had come to an end.
So it was finally time: He had to face Maggie with the truth. And make sure no one else ever learned it.
S
HERIFF, I NEED TO CONFER
with my client. Surely you wouldn’t deny him that right.”
Dorian. Prick.
Nick glanced at Calvin—who wasn’t making sense anyway—then nodded to Quentin and surrendered the room. Outside, Jensen was just entering the lobby.
“Did Jack do anything interesting?” Nick asked.
“Nope,” Jensen said. “He left the chapel a little before five, then just drove around.”
“Where to?”
“Nowhere. Out on Route 219 a ways, just about caused an accident then pulled over to the side of the road a while—like he was thinking. Then he came back to town, picked up Chinese food, and went home. Looked to me like he was tucking in for the night, but I can keep watching him if you want.”
“Nah,” Nick said. There was no good reason to watch him in the first place. Whitmore had gotten the wheels turning, that’s all.
Jensen pointed at the interrogation room. “I heard you brought in Calvin Lee for the vandalism against Dr. Sims.”
“We found a bucket of red paint in his closet,” Nick said. “It looks like the same stuff in the motel room. But he says he didn’t know it was there.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I don’t know. Calvin’s a hard read, and as soon as Dorian Reinhardt got hold of him, he went into time-and-temperatures mode. Plus, Calvin used that paint around the barn. He painted the wheelbarrow handles yesterday.”
“Who paints wheelbarrow handles?” Jensen asked.
“They were getting old, giving splinters,” Quentin said. “Calvin sanded them down and put a couple coats of paint on top. And,” he added, before Jensen could ask, “I looked: The wheelbarrow handles are freshly sanded and painted red.”
“Hmp.” Jensen ran a hand through his hair, leaving rusty spikes sticking out. “So why is Dorian Reinhardt handling it?”
“What do you mean?” Nick asked.
“I never knew Reinhardt to take on someone who can’t pay, that’s all. Rosa’s not rich.”
Nick hadn’t thought of that. “Favor to Jack, probably,” he suggested. But Jensen was right: Defending indigents was out of Dorian’s character.
And threatening a woman was out of Calvin’s. Nick couldn’t quite wrap his mind around the idea of Calvin figuring out where Erin Sims was staying, stealing a car, and coming to town in the wee hours of the morning while his mother cooked breakfast for guests. He couldn’t fathom Calvin slinging red paint all over a motel room. Calvin may be unusual and may have a deep sense of protectiveness for Jack and Margaret, but he wasn’t violent. Plus, someone would have noticed him. He wasn’t the type of kid people didn’t notice.
Nick walked over to a desk and dialed the cell number Sims had given him. It rang five times before she picked up. “We have a suspect for your vandal,” he said. “If he’s the one, it’s just a kid acting out. He wasn’t really trying to hurt you.”
“Will his arrest free my brother?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then there’s still work to do. Did you look into the other case?”
“I said I would, didn’t I?”
“Forgive me, Sheriff, but I’ve heard those platitudes before. It’s what police say when they still believe I’ll go away.”
“I don’t do platitudes. I made some calls.” Of course, none of those calls had been answered. In the first place, it was the weekend; and in the second, the Florida court order had frozen the files on the Lawrenceville woman. Tonight, he’d have to call in some favors and see what he could find out. Tonight, when he was supposed to be playing a rousing game of Dinosaur-Monopoly with Hannah. Sunday night was their standard game night, and except for this morning when she’d been asleep, he hadn’t seen her in three days.
Nick closed his eyes, then looked at his watch. Six o’clock, Sunday. Justin Sims’s execution was set for four days and six hours from now.
“Okay,” he said into the phone. “I’m sending a deputy over to bring you to my place. We’ll go through the files on Sara Daniels that came in this afternoon. You can catch me up.”
And then you can go back to Florida.
“Really?” She sounded dubious.
“The sooner I check it out, the sooner things can get back to normal, for both of us.”
He hung up and dialed his mother’s number. Hannah answered, and the grime of the day washed away with the sound of her voice.
“Daddy!” she squealed. “I knew it was you.”
“Because you’re psychic?”
“Because I looked at caller-ID,” she said.
“Ah. How was your weekend?”
“Okay. Jake Snell got in-school suspension on Friday.”
“For what?”
“He called Mrs. Schmedden
eine alte Scharteke
.”
Nick smiled. Mrs. Schmedden
was
kind of an old hag.
“And Leah Reinhardt says she’s getting a kitten for her tenth birthday, but I don’t believe her. She’s a big fat liar.”
Dislike of Reinhardts was genetic.
“I missed you, Daddy. Did you get any work done remodeling the cabin? Grandma says you just go there to think about Mommy.”
Christ. Forty years old and his mother still catching the lies. “I do think about your mom when I’m there.”
“Do you ever cry ’cause she isn’t there?”
“Sometimes.”
“Me, too. Sometimes.” She sighed. “Daddy, are you coming home soon?”
“I want to, sugar, but I’ve got a situation here.”
“You mean that woman who says Mr. Calloway is a murderer?”
News spreads. “That’s the one.”
“You’ll fix it.”
His heart skipped a beat. Nothing like pure, unadulterated confidence to make a man feel like a hero. Or scare the shit out of him.
There’s nothing to worry about, Allison… I’ve got it covered.
“Say, squirt, I was thinking. Since I have to do some work tonight, and you want to play some games, and everybody has to eat supper, what do you say we do all three at once?”
“Okay,” she said with exuberance. “How do we do that?”
Nick pictured her screwing her brow into a frown, the scar on her forehead disappearing into a crease. He’d brought her to Hopewell to keep her safe and just now, he wanted to chase every hint of danger back to Miami and hold Hannah next to his heart. “Why don’t we invite the Vaegas over for dinner? You and I can cook up a meal, and then you can play with Tyler and Marissa while Uncle Quent and I figure a few things out.”
“Okay.” Her delight reached right through the phone lines. Then, “Dad, did you remember this is a school night?”
Nick smiled. “Wild, huh?”
Quent was next.
“Hey, man,” Nick said into the phone. “Can you convince your wife to bring the kids over for dinner tonight?”
“It’s a school night, you know.”
“Jesus.” Nick dropped his forehead in his hand.
“You cooking or are we ordering Domino’s?”
“When was the last time we ordered Domino’s at my house?”
“Right. Iron Chef Mann. We’re working?”
“Yeah, with Sims. Can you swing it? School night and all.”
“Are you kidding? My wife considers your place a five-star dining experience.”
“As well she should.”
A deputy escorted Erin as far as the sheriff’s drive. A Chrysler minivan with a Cleveland Browns bumper sticker sat in the turnaround, and when she got out the smell of dried leaves and charcoal touched her nostrils. The house, a cedar two-story with skylights across the front, was trimmed with shutters and flower beds and a birdbath in the front yard.
Not at all what she would have expected of Sheriff Nick Mann, had she bothered to expect anything at all. Of course, she hadn’t. Maybe there was a wife inside, and a passel of five or six kids—
The front door burst open and a dog the size of a moose bounded out. Three children pushed past each other onto the porch, while the canine skidded to a halt in front of Erin.
“Daddy, she’s here,” cried a voice, and then, “DeeDee, come on. Here, baby, here!”
DeeDee? Baby?
A whistle broke through and the beast bounded away.
“Take the dog inside, sweet pea,” the sheriff said, emerging from the garage. He wore jeans and a Buckeyes sweatshirt, a dish towel slung over one shoulder. In his left hand were tongs the size of a big-game rifle.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “DeeDee’s harmless.”
“Yeah, forget the dog,” Vaega said, joining him from behind. “Beware of the kids.”
Erin glanced to the front porch, where all three children and the dog disappeared back inside. In retrospect, it registered that two of the children were dark-skinned with curly, jet-black hair—the deputy’s kids. The third…
Daddy, she’s here.
Erin stared at Sheriff Mann.