Criminal (43 page)

thirty-one

July 23, 1975

ONE WEEK LATER

Amanda smiled as she pulled into the parking lot of the Zone 1 station house. A month ago, she would’ve laughed if someone suggested that she’d be happy to be back here. A week of crossing guard duty had taught her a hard lesson.

She took one of the far spaces in the back of the lot. The engine knocked when she turned the key. Amanda checked the time. Evelyn was running late. Amanda should go inside the squad and wait for her, but she was thinking of this as their triumphant return. Having to spend five days in the grueling heat dressed in a wool uniform while lazy children tromped in and out of traffic had not negated the fact that they had caught a killer.

Amanda unzipped her purse. She took out the last report she was ever going to type for Butch Bonnie. She hadn’t done it out of kindness. She’d done it because she needed to make sure it was right.

Wilbur Trent. Amanda had named the baby because no one else would. Hank Bennett did not want to sully his family’s name. Or perhaps he didn’t want the legal entanglement of Lucy having an heir. Evelyn had been right about the insurance policies. With Hank Bennett’s parents dead and his sister murdered, he was now the sole beneficiary to their estate. He’d let the city bury his sister in a pauper’s grave while he walked away from probate court a millionaire.

So, it fell to Amanda to buy Wilbur his first blanket, his first tiny T-shirt. Leaving him at the children’s home had been the most difficult thing Amanda had ever done in her life. More difficult than facing down James Ulster. More difficult than finding her mother hanging dead from a tree.

She would keep her promise to Ulster. The child would never know his father. He would never know that his mother was a junkie and a whore.

Amanda had never written fiction before. She was nervous about the details she’d put into Butch’s report, the blatant lies she’d told about Lucy Bennett’s life before her abduction.

The boy could never know. Something good had to come out of all this misery.

“What’s the skinny?” Evelyn stood outside the car. She was dressed in brown slacks and a checkered orange shirt that buttoned up the front. The bruise on her jaw had started to yellow, but it still blackened the bottom half of her face.

Amanda asked, “Why are you dressed like a man?”

“If we’re going to be running around the city, I’m not going to ruin another pair of perfectly good pantyhose.”

“I don’t plan on doing much running anymore.” Amanda tucked the report back into her purse. She zipped the bag closed quickly. She didn’t want Evelyn to see the application she’d requested from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. Her father had gotten his old job back. Captain Wilbur Wagner would be running Zone 1 again by the end of the month.

Evelyn frowned sympathetically as Amanda got out of the car. “Did you go by the children’s home again this morning?”

Amanda didn’t answer. “I need to wash my hands.”

Evelyn followed her to the back of the Plaza Theater.

Amanda gave a heavy sigh. “I only said that so you would leave me alone.”

Evelyn held open the exit door, releasing the pornographic grunts of
Vixen Volleyball
. The two men standing in the lobby looked very startled to see them.

“Your wives send their regards,” Evelyn told them, heading toward the bathroom.

Amanda shook her head as she followed. “You’re going to get us shot one of these days.”

Evelyn picked up their earlier conversation. “Sweetie, you can’t keep looking in on him every day. Babies need to bond with people. You don’t want him getting attached to you.”

Amanda turned on the faucet. She looked down at her hands as she washed them. That was exactly what she wanted with Wilbur, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to say the words. It was hopeless. She was twenty-five and single. There was no way the state would let her adopt. And they were probably right not to.

Evelyn asked, “Did you get that slide with the skin on it from Pete?”

She patted her face with cold water. She had the sealed evidence envelope in her purse. “I still don’t know why it matters.”

“Pete’s right about the science. They can’t use it now, but maybe one day.” She added, “You don’t want it getting lost in lockup. They’ll throw it out in five years.”

Amanda turned off the sink. “If we had the death penalty, none of this would matter.”

“Amen.” Evelyn took her compact out of her purse. “Where are you going to put the envelope?”

“I have no idea.” She couldn’t very well walk into the bank and ask for a safe deposit box without Duke’s signature. “How about your gun safe?”

“It should stay with the baby. Get Edna to hide it somewhere.” She smiled. “Make sure she doesn’t lock it in the pantry.”

Amanda laughed. Edna Flannigan had a reputation around child services, but she was a good woman who cared about the kids. She had taken a shine to Wilbur. Amanda could tell. He was an easy baby to love.

“Can I have one of your textbooks?”

Evelyn stopped powdering her nose. “Why?”

“Edna said we could leave some stuff for the baby to have when he grows up. I thought we could …”

Evelyn knew about the story of Lucy Bennett, star student. She’d helped craft it, giving some inside details about Georgia Tech so the lies seemed more plausible. “If I give you one of my statistics books, will you promise to stop moping?”

“I’m not moping.”

Evelyn snapped her compact closed. “We need to talk about our next case.”

“What’s that?”

“The DNF. We can look into those murders.”

“Are you forgetting Landry’s the one who got us busted to crossing guards?” Duke had found him out in two phone calls. Landry was drinking buddies with the commander who’d signed off on the transfer. It wasn’t a conspiracy so much as a male chauvinist pig who couldn’t take two women trying to do his job. “That’s all we need to do is put ourselves in his crosshairs again.”

“I’m not afraid of that blowhard.” She fluffed her hair in the mirror. “We saved a life, Amanda.”

“We lost three, maybe four.” God knew where Kitty Treadwell was. Probably buried in the city dump. Not that her father cared. Andrew Treadwell refused to return their phone calls, let alone admit that he had a second daughter. “And neither one of us came out unscathed.”

“But we know people now. We have sources. We have a network. We can work cases just like the boys—even better.”

Amanda could only stare at her. The grunting sounds from the porn movie only added to the ridiculousness of her statement. “Is there anything you can’t put a positive spin on?”

“Hitler. World hunger. Redheads—I just don’t trust them.” Evelyn checked her makeup again. Amanda did the same, frowning at what she saw. Evelyn wasn’t the only one who was bruised. Amanda’s neck was still ringed dark from Ulster’s hands. Her ribs were tender to the touch. The cuts on her palms and the soles of her feet were just starting to scab.

Evelyn caught her eye in the mirror.

War wounds.

They were both smiling as they left the bathroom.

Evelyn asked, “Did I tell you about that Green Beret in North Carolina who murdered his entire family?”

“Yes.” Amanda held up her hand to stop her. “Twice. I would rather talk about the case again than hear the details, thank you very much.”

The lobby was empty. Evelyn stopped. She put her hands on her hips. “You know the insurance policies still bother me.”

Hank Bennett. She couldn’t let it go.

Evelyn pressed, “Bennett went to the mission looking for Lucy. It follows that he’d end up at the soup kitchen and meet James Ulster.”

“Maybe they met, but to say they were working together …” Amanda shook her head. “Why? What would be the point?”

“Bennett gets his sister out of the picture so she can’t inherit his parents’ money. He keeps Kitty Treadwell for himself—and her money, because you know there has to be some.”

“You think Hank Bennett’s hiding Kitty somewhere.” It wasn’t a question. She’d been beating that dead horse all week. “To what end?”

“To blackmail Andrew Treadwell.” She had a smile on her face. “Mark my word, Hank Bennett’s going to be running that firm one day.”

Amanda sighed. She wondered if Evelyn’s magazines were to blame for these crazy conspiracies. “Kitty Treadwell is buried somewhere in a shallow grave. Ulster took them to kill them, not rehabilitate them.”

“Someone put that baby in the trashcan.”

Amanda didn’t have an answer for her. Part of Lucy’s body was still sewn to the mattress when they found her. Pete Hanson couldn’t give them an exact window for the time between Wilbur’s birth and Lucy’s death. They could only assume the girl had been free at some point and hidden the baby.

And then Ulster had come home and sewn her back down?

Evelyn said, “I just feel like we’re missing something.”

Amanda didn’t want to feed the flame, but she had the same bad feeling. “Who else could’ve helped him?” she asked. “Trey Callahan was caught in Biloxi with his fiancée.” The man claimed that he’d only stolen the money from the mission in order to self-publish his book. “Obviously, Ulster was trying to frame Callahan with all that Ophelia stuff. Don’t you think if there was a second killer, then Ulster would’ve framed that person instead?”

“How about this: where’s the money coming from?”

Herman Centrello. Evelyn was determined to find out how James Ulster was paying for the best criminal defense lawyer in the Southeast.

Amanda shook her head. “Why does it matter? No lawyer in the world can get him out of this. Ulster was caught red-handed. His bloody fingerprints are on the knife.”

“He’ll skate on the other girls. We don’t have anything to tie him to Jane or Mary. We don’t have Kitty’s body—if it’s out there. Ulster could eventually get paroled. That’s why you need to hold on to that slide. Maybe the science will be ready for it by then.”

“He’ll be in his sixties. He’ll be too old to walk, let alone hurt anybody.”

Evelyn pushed open the exit door. “And we’ll be retired little grannies, living with our husbands in Florida, wondering why our children never call.”

Amanda wanted to hold on to that image. She wanted to think about it tonight when she tried to go to sleep and all she could see was that condescending look in Ulster’s eyes. He’d been laughing at her. He was holding something back, and he knew that it gave him power over everyone else.

Evelyn asked, “Did Kenny call you?”

Amanda let her blush be her answer. She adjusted her purse over her shoulder as they walked toward the station. There was a commotion going on by the front door. Two cops were wrangling with a wino. He already had a resisting-arrest turban. His hands waved wildly as he was jerked back by his collar.

Amanda said, “We actually wanted to come back to this.”

Evelyn looked at her watch. “Crap, we’re late for roll call.”

So much for their triumphant return. Luther Hodge would probably put them on desk duty all week. Amanda hated filing, but at least she’d have Evelyn to commiserate with. Maybe they could look at some of the cases on the missing black girls. There was no harm in putting together another construction paper puzzle.

“Hey!” The wino was still struggling as they walked to the entrance of the station. One of the patrolmen smacked him on the ear. The man’s head jerked like a sling.

The squad was as smoke-filled and dingy as usual. The room looked the same: crooked rows of tables crossing the room, white on one side, black on the other. Men in front, women in back. Hodge was at the podium. Everyone was seated for roll call.

But for some reason, they started to stand.

First, it was some of the white detectives, then slowly the blacks stood from their tables. It went around the room in a slow wave, ending with Vanessa Livingston, who, as usual, was sitting in the last row. She gave them both a thumbs-up. Her teeth showed in a proud grin.

Evelyn seemed momentarily stunned, but she kept her head high as she walked into the room. Amanda tried to do the same as she followed. The men cleared a path for them. No one spoke. They didn’t whistle. They didn’t make catcalls. Some of them nodded. Rick Landry was the only one who remained seated, but standing beside him was Butch Bonnie, who seemed to have some grudging respect in his eyes.

Then the moment was ruined as the wino was thrown into the squad room. He jumped up from the floor, screaming, “I’ll sue you motherfuckers!”

The room tensed. The drunk’s eyes widened as he realized he was facing down a room full of cops. He nervously glanced at Amanda, then Evelyn. “Uh … s’cuse the language, ladies.”

“Shee-it.” Butch took the toothpick out of his mouth. “They ain’t no ladies, fella. They’re the po-lice.”

The room heaved a collective sigh. Jokes were passed around. The drunk was wrangled out the door. Hodge banged the podium for silence.

Amanda fought the smile on her lips as she walked to the back of the room. She could feel Evelyn behind her, knew she was thinking the same thing.

Finally—acceptance.

thirty-two

Present Day

WEDNESDAY

Will sat on the wooden bench at the top of the rolling hill. He rested his elbows on his knees. He looked down at the street as the police cruiser pulled out of the driveway. His father a murderer. His uncle a murderer. Will had it on both sides.

Footsteps crunched across the gravel driveway. Amanda put her hand on his shoulder, but only to help herself sit.

They both stared into the empty street. Seconds turned into minutes. Will could hear a white noise in his ears. A humming that made it impossible for his brain to hold on to any one thought.

Amanda gave a heavy sigh. “Evelyn’s never going to let me live this down. She always thought there was someone else.”

“Is she going to testify against him?”

“Kitty?” Amanda shrugged with her good shoulder. “I doubt it. If she was going to talk, she would’ve done so years ago. I have a feeling she’s still too much under Henry’s control.” She gave a rueful laugh. “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

Will couldn’t pretend he was all right with all this. He couldn’t brush off tragedy with a wry comment the way Amanda did. “Tell me what happened. The truth.”

Amanda stared at the front lawn, the vast green space that was larger and better tended than most public parks. She obviously needed time to collect her thoughts. Honesty wasn’t a natural act for Amanda Wagner. Will could tell it took effort.

Finally, she said, “You know that there were two victims. Your mother and Jane Delray.”

“Right.” Will had found the reference in his father’s file. There wasn’t enough evidence to tie James Ulster to the murder of Jane Delray, but it was assumed that he was guilty of the act. “It was his pattern. He takes two and decides which one to keep.”

“There were two other girls. Mary Halston and Kitty Treadwell.”

Will gripped together his hands.

She said, “Your mother and Mary Halston showed the same damage. The sewing. The needle marks. But Jane was different. She wasn’t abducted. Her murder was spur-of-the-moment. She was strangled, then thrown from the roof so that her death would look like a suicide.”

“Henry?”

“I wasn’t sure until I saw that check. What I said was the absolute truth. It bothered Evelyn that Ulster had a high-priced lawyer. Frankly, it bothered me. Ulster was never interested in material things. He wanted control, and I guess making Hank mail him that check at the jail exerted some control.”

“Henry’s going to skate on the envelope. You know the check isn’t enough.”

“Henry’s DNA is going to match evidence from Jane Delray’s case. I called the gal who’s in charge of archival evidence the minute I heard your father was out. It’s a miracle the chain of custody was still intact, or we’d never be able to use it.”

“What’s the evidence?”

“It’s what I said in there. Jane scratched her attacker. It’s going to match Henry’s DNA from the envelope.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Aren’t you?”

Will had seen his uncle’s face. He was sure.

“What about Kitty?”

“I can only give an educated guess. Ulster got her off heroin. Hank kept her to leverage money out of Treadwell.” She nodded back toward the house. “Not a bad plan, as you can see.”

Will looked at the house.
Mansion
wasn’t even the right word for it.
Museum
, maybe.
Prison
.

Amanda asked, “Is there anything else you want to know?”

There was a lifetime of questions. “Why are you making me pull teeth?”

“Because this is difficult for me, too, Will.”

He hadn’t considered that. For all her bluster, Will knew that Amanda was close to this. Her first case. Her first homicide. She tried to act like it was nothing, but the fact that they were both sitting here right now belied that assertion.

Eventually, she said, “Hank always hated women. I imagine he hated Lucy for her independence. Her free spirit. That she made choices for herself. She was going to school. Living in Atlanta. Hank thought women should stay in their place. Most men did back then. Not all of them, but—” She shrugged her shoulder again. “All you need to know is that your mother was a good person. She was smart and independent, and she loved you.”

A cable truck drove down the street. Will could hear the hum of the wheels on the road. He wondered what it felt like to live in a mansion, to watch the rest of the world pass you by.

Amanda said, “Everyone I interviewed at the school loved her.”

Will shook his head. He’d heard enough.

“She was funny and kind. She was very popular. All of her professors were devastated when they heard what happened. She had great promise.”

He tried to swallow the glass in his throat.

“I was there when she died.” Amanda paused again. “Her last words were for you, Will. She said that she loved you. She wouldn’t let go until she was certain we heard her, until she knew that we understood that with every breath in her body, she loved you.”

Will pressed his fingers into his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry in front of her. There would be no going back from that.

“She hid you in the trashcan to save you from your father.” Amanda paused. “Evelyn was there. We found you together. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life. Not before or since.”

Will swallowed again. He had to clear his throat to speak. “Edna Flannigan. You knew her.”

“A lot of my cases took me to the children’s home.” Amanda adjusted the strap on her sling. “No one told me she’d passed away. When I found out—” She looked Will straight in the eye. “Trust me, her replacement was duly punished for his actions.”

Will couldn’t help but take some pleasure in the thought of Amanda annihilating the man who’d kicked him out into the street. “What was in the basement? What were you looking for?”

She stared back at the lawn, letting out a long sigh. “I wonder if we’ll ever know.”

Will remembered the scratches in the coal chute. He’d assumed they had been made by an animal, but now he knew it was probably one of Amanda’s old broads. “Someone went back there while we were at the hospital.”

“Really?” Amanda pretended to be surprised.

Will tried to let her know he wasn’t a complete idiot. There was no way a slide had been in police custody for thirty-seven years. “Archival evidence.”

“Archival evidence?” She had an infuriating smile on her lips, and he knew she was back in full dissembling mode before she even opened her mouth. “Never heard of it.”

“Cindy Murray,” he continued. Will’s caseworker, the woman who’d helped him get off the streets and into college.

“Murray?” Amanda drew out the name, finally shaking her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Captain Scott at the jail—”

She chuckled. “Remind me to tell you stories about the old jail sometime. It was awful before Holly cleaned it up.”

“Rachel Foster.” Amanda still called on the federal judge to sign off on her warrants. “I know you’re friends with her.”

“Rachel and I came up together. She worked dispatch, the night shift, so she could go to law school during the day.”

“She expunged my record when I graduated from college.”

Amanda would only say, “Rachel’s a good gal.”

Will couldn’t help himself. He had to find at least one crack. “I’ve never known you to go on another GBI recruiting trip. Not once in fifteen years. Just the one where you got me to sign up.”

“Well.” She adjusted the sling again. “No one really enjoys those trips. You talk to fifty people and half of them are illiterate.” She smiled at him. “Not that that’s a bad thing.”

“Did I get it from him?” He couldn’t look at her. Amanda knew about his dyslexia. “My problem?”

“No.” She spoke with certainty. “You saw his Bible. He was constantly reading.”

“That girl—Suzanna Ford. She saw—”

“She saw a tall man. That’s all. You’re nothing like him, Will. I knew James Ulster. I talked to him. I looked him in the eye. There’s not a drop of your father inside of you. It’s all Lucy. Everything about you comes straight from your mother. You have to believe me on that, at least. I wouldn’t waste my time on you otherwise.”

Will clasped his hands in front of him. The grass was lush beneath his feet. His mother would be fifty-six years old now. Maybe she would’ve been an academic. Her textbooks were well read. Words were underlined. Asterisks were scribbled in the margins. She might have been an engineer or mathematician or a feminist scholar.

He had spent so many hours with Angie talking about the what-ifs. What if Lucy had lived? What if Angie’s mom hadn’t taken that overdose? What if they hadn’t grown up in the home? What if they’d never met each other?

But his mother had died. So had Angie’s, though it’d taken longer. They’d both grown up in the home. They’d been connected to each other for nearly three decades. Their anger was like a magnet between them. Sometimes it pulled them together. Most times it pushed them apart.

Will had seen what it took to hold on to resentment that long. He read it in Kitty Treadwell’s emaciated body. He saw it in the arrogant tilt of his uncle Henry’s chin. And sometimes, when she didn’t think anyone was looking, he saw it flash in Amanda’s eyes.

Will couldn’t live like that. He couldn’t let the first eighteen years of his life ruin the next sixty.

He reached into his pocket. The metal of the wedding ring was cold against his fingers. He held it out to Amanda. “I want you to take this.”

“Well.” She pretended to be embarrassed as she took the ring. “This is rather sudden. Our age difference is—”

Will tried to take it back, but she wrapped her hand around his.

Amanda Wagner was not an affectionate woman. She rarely touched Will in kindness. She punched his arm. She smacked his shoulder. She’d even once pulled back the safety plate on a nail gun and feigned surprise when the nail shot through the webbing between his thumb and index finger.

But now, she held on to his hand. Her fingers were small, her wrist impossibly tiny. There was clear polish on her fingernails. Age spots dotted the back of her hand. Her shoulder leaned into his. Will gently returned the pressure. Her grip tightened for just a second before she let go.

She said, “You’re a good boy, Wilbur.”

Will didn’t trust himself to respond without his voice cracking. Normally, he would’ve made a joke about crying like a girl, but the phrase was a contradiction to the woman sitting beside him.

Amanda said, “We should go before Kitty turns the hose on us.” She dropped the ring into her purse as she stood from the bench. Instead of hefting the bag onto her shoulder, she gripped it in one hand.

Will offered, “Do you want me to carry that?”

“For God’s sakes, I’m not an invalid.” She pulled the bag onto her shoulder, as if to prove a point. “Button your collar. You weren’t raised in a barn. And don’t think we’ve had our last conversation on the subject of your hair.”

Will buttoned his collar as he walked with her to her car.

Kitty Treadwell stood at the open front door, watching them carefully. A cigarette hung from her lips. Smoke curled up into her eye.

She said, “I paid the property taxes.”

Amanda was reaching for the car door. She stopped.

“On the Techwood house.” Kitty walked down the stairs. She stopped a few feet from the car. “I paid the taxes. Worth every penny. It chapped Henry’s ass when James sold it.”

“Mine, too,” Amanda admitted. “Four million dollars is quite a profit.”

“Money’s the only thing Henry understands.” Kitty took the cigarette out of her mouth. “I thought it would go to Wilbur.”

“He doesn’t want it,” Amanda said.

“No.” Kitty smiled at Will. It gave him a cold feeling inside. “You turned out better than all of us. How on earth did that happen?”

Will couldn’t answer her. He couldn’t even bear to look at her.

Amanda asked, “Hank met Ulster at the soup kitchen?”

Kitty reluctantly turned back to Amanda. “He was looking for Lucy. He wanted to make sure she wouldn’t lay claim to their parents’ estate. It must’ve seemed like a match made in heaven.” She held the cigarette to her lips. “They struck a grand bargain. Hank gave him Lucy, no strings attached. In return, Ulster got me off the dope. Though I don’t recommend his methods.” She smiled as if this was all a joke. “I suppose James thought Lucy was a good trade. A fallen angel with no parents or family to make a stink.” She huffed out some smoke. “And besides, Mary wasn’t really doing it for him anymore.”

“Why did he kill her?”

“Mary?” Kitty shrugged. “She couldn’t be broken. Something about being pregnant changes you. At least it seems that way from the outside. Commendable, but look where it got her.”

“And Jane Delray?”

“Oh, they fought constantly about Jane. Henry wanted her out of the way. She wouldn’t shut up. She kept telling anyone who would listen about Lucy, about Mary, about me. I suppose I was lucky I didn’t meet the same end. I was constantly throwing around my father’s name.” She stuttered a laugh. “As if anyone in the ghetto gave a rat’s ass who my father was.”

“They fought about it?” Amanda echoed.

“James didn’t care who that little slut talked to. He got quite high and mighty about it, unsurprisingly. He was doing the Lord’s work, after all. He wasn’t a hired killer. God was going to protect him.”

Amanda made the obvious connection. “You were kept in the house with Lucy.”

“Yes. I was there the whole time.” She seemed to be waiting for Amanda to ask another question. “The entire time.”

Amanda said nothing.

“Anyway.” Kitty tapped some ash onto the driveway. “I reconciled with my father at the end.” She huffed a bitter laugh. “More money for Henry’s coffers. What’s the saying? God doesn’t close a door without first nailing shut all the windows?”

Amanda offered, “If you testify, I can—”

“You can’t really do anything. We both know that.”

“You can leave him. You can leave him right now.”

“Why would I do that?” She seemed genuinely perplexed. “He’s my husband. I love him.”