Don't Be Afraid Read online

  If someone mentioned being afraid to confront their ex in court about custody, Sheila would show up at the hearing for moral support. Once a member had mentioned how exhausting it was to single-handedly care for both her dying father and her young son and Sheila paid for a local restaurant to provide a month’s worth of free dinners.

  Maybe she hadn’t been universally liked, but surely no one had hated her enough to kill her. Yet Amy couldn’t help viewing the group with suspicion, probably because the police hadn’t made any arrest and because she’d been back to the station at the behest of Detectives Black and Juarez to answer pointed questions about Sheila’s relationships with others.

  “Did she have any disagreements with anybody recently?” Detective Juarez said. “Did she ever mention an altercation with anybody?”

  Put on the spot, she’d been unable to think of any. But sitting here, looking surreptitiously at the other members, she recalled an argument Sheila had three weeks earlier with Richard.

  What had started it was never quite clear to Amy. People were milling about in small groups toward the end of the regular meeting and she’d wandered over to fetch more coffee. One minute there’d been a conversation going on about kids and the next minute Richard was red faced and yelling at Sheila.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Just because you yell louder, doesn’t make you smarter!” Sheila said back. “My opinions are fact based, unlike yours, which are based solely on emotion!”

  What had they been fighting about? Amy didn’t know. She’d pulled Sheila away from the fight, never an easy thing to do, but she hadn’t gotten her to explain why Richard had been so angry. Sheila claimed not to know.

  “He’s overly sensitive,” she’d said when Amy pressed. “He thinks his good looks are enough to carry him through everything, but he needs to learn some manners.”

  Richard was sitting, as he usually did, on the edge of the circle, leaning back in the metal folding chair with his eyes half-shut, as if he couldn’t be bothered to stay fully awake for the conversation. Amy looked at him, trying to picture him hurting Sheila, but it was hard to get past the physical. Despite a day’s worth of beard, ratty jeans, and a ragged fisherman’s sweater, Richard still looked like he’d just gotten done with a photo shoot for GQ. He caught Amy looking and winked. She turned quickly away, trying to pretend she was looking for something or someone else, but she could feel his eyes on her and knew that he wasn’t fooled.

  They were introducing new members and Amy tried to concentrate on that. She listened as a teary-eyed woman named Elaine, with nails bitten to the quick, described her husband leaving her and their four children.

  When Elaine was finished, Father Michael introduced another new member, a boyish-looking man with short-cropped blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses. Paul told them about his wife’s death from cancer, fiddling with his glasses as he spoke in a soft voice. Most of the women and a few of the men were crying when he described holding their infant son at his mother’s deathbed.

  After those stories, everyone needed a break, and Amy wandered over to the refreshment table to get more coffee. Jackson made a point of walking away when she came near and she wondered if the police had interviewed him yet.

  The new member, Paul, joined her by the coffee urn. He smiled at her and she said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, but I’m coming to terms with it. It’s been five months, but I feel as if Beth’s still with me. I mean, I know she’ll always be with me in spirit, but sometimes I feel as if she’s really with me.”

  “How are you managing with your son?”

  “Beth’s sister watches him while I’m at work and then we have our evenings and weekends together. He’s too young to remember Beth, of course, but I keep showing him her picture.”

  “You are so brave.” Audrey joined them at the coffee urn, gripping Paul’s forearm and giving it a little shake for emphasis. “I don’t know many men who could manage as well as you are.”

  “I’m sure everyone has different methods of coping,” he said, gently detaching her.

  “That’s a polite way to put it,” she said with a bitter laugh. “When my first husband’s mother died, he coped by blowing his inheritance on coke.”

  “You’ve been married more than once?” Paul said and Amy knew he was wondering why she was in a single-parent group. Having heard it all before, she hid a smile.

  “I’ve been married three times and they were all big, big disappointments,” Audrey said. “But I’m very positive and I just know that my perfect man is out there, ready to be a family with me and my little girl. I just have to trust that he’ll find me.” She beamed at Paul and he smiled faintly, fiddling with his glasses.

  Amy excused herself and walked over to Father Michael, who was making his goodbyes. “Thank you for the nice things you said about Sheila at her funeral,” she said. “I really appreciated it and I know her family did, too.”

  “Very kind of you to say, my dear,” the elfin priest said, patting her hand. “Though you know as well as I do that Sheila would have hated it.”

  Amy laughed, the first genuine laugh she’d given in days. At the same time, tears sprang to her eyes. “At least you didn’t call her the finest person who ever walked the earth.”

  Father Michael smiled. “I know she’d be haunting me if I did that.” He looked distracted. “I just hope her death doesn’t hurt other people.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The police are asking around, trying to find her killer. Innocent people could get caught under their prying eyes.”

  What did he mean by that? Before she could ask, Bridget pulled him away, urging him to take some cookies home. Were other members complaining about the fact that their names had been given to the police? Father Michael had seemed to support her in that earlier, but something, or somebody, had changed his mind. But what had her option been? Refuse to tell the police? Play dumb?

  All at once Amy felt like she needed a break. She didn’t want to hear any more sad stories or talk about what it had been like finding Sheila’s body. It suddenly seemed as if the whole group existed only as a meeting place for complaints and tales of woe and she didn’t want to be part of that.

  Making an excuse about needing to get home to Emma, she said goodbye to their unofficial leader, Penelope, and waved to the other members of the group before escaping up the steps, through the basement doors and out into the crisp night air.

  She stopped short when she saw that Richard was standing just outside the doors. His back was to her as he spoke quietly but rapidly into a cell phone.

  “No fucking way. I’m not taking the fall on this. That is not the way it’s going down.”

  She stood still, but he whirled around obviously having heard her.

  “I’ve got to go,” he said into the phone while scowling at Amy. He snapped it closed. “Why are you eavesdropping?”

  “I wasn’t,” Amy said, scowling right back. “You’re blocking the exit.” She stepped around him and hurried toward her car, trying to listen without looking back to see if he was following her.

  Only once she was past did the implications of what he’d said on the phone fully hit her. She turned around, sure she could hear his footsteps racing after her, but he was gone and there were only a few leaves scuttling along the empty sidewalk.

  Chapter 12

  The all-points bulletin that failed to produce Trevor Sylvester for almost two weeks finally worked on Friday afternoon. Black and Juarez got a call from the Blacksburg police department that their suspect was in custody and the UPS van he’d stolen had been impounded.

  “Our boy did an O.J. and led staties on a high-speed chase after they tried to pull him over for speeding,” Black said as they drove north to pick him up.

  “So why’s he in custody with them and not the staties?” Mark asked, wincing as Black came close to scraping the side of a pickup truck as he veered ar
ound it. The sun seemed to be shining directly into his eyes. He retreated behind his sunglasses and popped two more aspirin into his mouth.

  “You’re going to get an ulcer, you keep taking those things,” Black said. “Blacksburg got him in custody because it was one of their patrol cars that he hit.”

  “I guess we know what Brown can do for you,” Juarez muttered and Black laughed.

  The shrill ring of Black’s cell phone interrupted his reply and he drove one-handed, fishing it out of his pocket and practically fishtailing the car. Juarez pressed a hand to his head and tried unsuccessfully to ignore the conversation his partner had with his wife.

  “Okay, Maureen, I’ll try. . . . No, I can’t promise to do more than that, I told you I’m working on a case.... Well, then maybe you should send Jimmy. . . . Don’t send Jimmy then, just wait for me to pick it up. . . . Yeah, well, it’s the best I can do.... Really nice, Maureen, really nice.... I don’t have time for this now. I gotta go. See you tonight.”

  He hung up and shoved the phone back into his jacket pocket, casting a grumpy glance over at Juarez as if daring him to say something. Mark kept his eyes on the road.

  “You dating anyone?”

  The question caught Mark by surprise. “Not right now.”

  “Left someone in the city?”

  “Yeah.” He felt Black’s gaze, but wouldn’t look at him.

  “Were you serious with her?”

  The image that came to him was the delicate feet that always kicked free from the sheets at night and ended up inching over to his side of the bed, tucking, like two small ice packs, against his own larger ones. “Yeah, I guess,” he said.

  “Did you live together?”

  A simple question, but it thrust him back into that argument: “Why not share my place? If you’re worried about what your parents think, then we don’t have to tell them.”

  “It won’t work,” he’d said, but it was hard to hold that ground when those large eyes implored him and that smile begged him to reconsider.

  He’d delayed ending the relationship as long as he could, knowing he was making excuses, and then a real one came along.

  “We were going to, but my dad had his stroke.”

  “You got lucky,” Black said. “You think dating’s a bitch, try living with one!” He laughed loudly at his own humor and Juarez tried to laugh along. One of the guys. All of the other single guys on the shift had girlfriends. Even the rookie, pimply-faced and jug-eared twenty-year-old Feeney. She was one of those chubby girls who wore too-tight midriff tops and about whom everybody said, “She has such a pretty face.” They were looking for an apartment together and Feeney was bemoaning the cost of the Vegas wedding they both wanted.

  What would it be like to live like that? To be married, to have kids? He tried to picture himself coming home at the end of his shift, walking in and being grabbed around the knees by a toddler calling him “Dad.” His wife he pictured as a pretty, black-haired Latina. She’d speak to his children in both Spanish and English. This was the life his parents wanted for him.

  “You going to ask that chick out?”

  “Who?”

  Black stared at him. “Who? The witness, you moron.”

  “Oh. No. I think she’s married.”

  “So?” Black grinned. “Seriously, you should call her.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  “And you look like a guy who needs to get laid.”

  “You would know.”

  The older man guffawed and then slugged Juarez on the bicep. “Ain’t that the truth.”

  They brought Trevor out wearing a prison-quality jumpsuit, “special order from the state,” with flip-flops on his feet and nothing else. He stank to high heaven, having refused to bathe since they’d had him in custody, the guard informed them, his own personal protest against his “unjust imprisonment.”

  “We don’t have the equipment like they do up at a supermax,” the guard said, “otherwise, we could just strap him down and hose him off.”

  “That’s what you think,” Trevor said, straddling the chair in the interrogation room as if he were in some old-time Western. The guard rolled his eyes and grinned at Juarez and Black.

  “Whatdya want?” Trevor said, stretching his tall and lanky frame. His arms were sinewy ropes of muscle that Juarez could easily picture wielding a nail gun. His head was shaved and he had a small blond goatee that looked carefully trimmed.

  “When was the last time you saw Sheila?” Black said, sitting down across from him.

  “Sheila who?”

  “Sheila, your ex-wife,” Juarez said, taking the other seat.

  Trevor made a hacking noise and Juarez thought he’d actually spit on the floor, but he seemed to think better of it. “I haven’t seen that bitch in months.”

  He had a meanness to him that was evident in the coldness of his muddy brown eyes and the stubborn set of his small mouth. Juarez thought of what his ex must have endured and about the sad bloated woman and her vacant-eyed child at the town house.

  “That’s not what Mandi told us,” Black said. “Mandi told us you talked to Sheila a few weeks ago. She said you were mad about not getting to attend the graduation of your son.”

  “What the fuck business is it of yours?” Trevor said. “Mandi’s a stupid bitch if she’s talking to you.”

  “Were you upset about Sheila refusing to allow you to attend your boy’s graduation?” Juarez said.

  Trevor looked away for a minute, then stared back at them and Juarez was surprised to see a shine in his eyes. Trevor crying? It didn’t fit with his image.

  “I’ve got a right to see my sons,” he said. “A father should be allowed to see his sons. That’s basic, man, a basic right.”

  Not if he’s beating the crap out of the boy’s mother, Juarez thought, unmoved. It was one of the first things you learned as a cop, to stay immune to the self-pity of perps. He’d interviewed a perp who’d sliced open his own mother without showing any emotion while she begged for her life, yet cried like a little boy remembering the loss of his favorite dog. It wasn’t his job to understand that madness. Leave it to the defense attorneys and the psychologists to unravel and explain what made someone that way.

  “Wow, that sucks. Must have really pissed you off,” he said, faking sympathy he didn’t begin to feel. “Women like that, makes you wonder why someone hasn’t shown them.”

  “They need to be taken down a peg,” Black added. “They need a real man to show them who’s in charge.”

  “Got that right,” Trevor said with a smirk, leaning back in his chair. He looked unconcerned and that wasn’t where they wanted him, Mark thought.

  “Do you own a nail gun?” he said, abruptly changing the subject.

  The smirk left Trevor’s face. “Yeah,” he said slowly.

  “Where is it?”

  “Who knows? My house, my garage? I’m not doing construction now.”

  “When was the last time you used it?” Black said.

  “How the hell should I remember?” Trevor said. “Why are you asking about my nail gun?”

  “You hated Sheila, didn’t you, Trevor?”

  “Fuck, yeah.”

  “You wanted to make sure she couldn’t keep you from your boys.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You wanted her to hurt, the way you were hurt. You didn’t mean to kill her—”

  “Kill her?” Trevor sat upright. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “You took your nail gun, maybe just to threaten her, but then she was arguing with you and you put it to her head—”

  “No!”

  “—and you pressed that trigger. Pop! Pop! Two shots—”

  “No fucking way, man!”

  “—and she was gone.”

  “I did not kill Sheila! I didn’t even know she was dead!”

  Black slammed the table with his fist and Sylvester jumped. “Don’t lie to us, Trevor!”

  “I’m not l
ying!”

  Mark stood up and leaned over Trevor. “You shot her and you took off in your van because you knew what you’d done, you’d killed your ex. And that’s why you ran from the police, too.”

  Trevor’s mouth hung open and he whipped his head from Black to Juarez before turning to look at the guard who was leaning casually against the wall closest to the door. “They’re trying to frame me, man!”

  “Just tell them the truth, Sylvester.”

  “This is bullshit. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anybody!”

  “If you didn’t kill anybody, then why did you run from the police?” Black said.

  “I was drunk!”

  Black hesitated and Juarez felt the truth of that resonating in his gut.

  “You got drunk after you killed Sheila,” Black said slowly, making it more of a statement than a question, but Trevor shook his head hard.

  “I had a fight with Mandi and I got drunk and didn’t go to work on Monday morning. I just took off in the van.”

  “Monday?” Juarez said. “You disappeared on Tuesday.”

  “No, Monday. I called off sick and then I just took off. Didn’t want to deal with no shit from nobody. Rolled over the line into another lane and bang. Just like that I’ve got some cop on my tail. I can’t get another DUI conviction. That’ll mean jail time. I left on Monday and they picked me up Tuesday morning.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Black said under his breath. Sweating and scowling, he went to confer with the desk sergeant who’d placed the call. He was back looking just as annoyed a few minutes later.

  “He was arrested early Tuesday morning,” he confirmed. “He can’t be the perp.”

  “Told you I didn’t do it,” Trevor said with satisfaction.

  “Shut up!” Black turned on Sylvester and grabbed him by the front of the jumpsuit, yanking him out of his chair. “We’ve wasted more than a week looking for your sorry ass! I’m going to personally see to it that you lose your license.”