Healing Sands (46 page)

Dan looked at me as if I'd just taken off a disguise. Maybe I had.

“I'm going to go ahead and get started on that,” he said.

He scraped back the chair and stood with his hands on the back of it, opening and closing his fingers. The detritus of his art had gathered in the folds of his knuckles, the only sign of the artist who lived in a dream world. He was now a man very much in touch with the real, and it was taking him apart.

“You're a good man, Dan,” I said.

His eyes misted, and with a final squeeze on the back of the chair, he left.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I
f they would only turn off the lights. Just a five-minute break from their accusing fluorescence. What was there to see anyway?

Sully churned on the flattened mattress that barely covered the concrete slab. Not that darkness would hide where he was. There was no stopping the putrid smells and sounds pressing in from the men he had to share the misery with.

I'm not a criminal
, Sully chanted to himself.
I shouldn't be here.

He reminded himself of that at measured intervals during the day. Just as he told himself today was Wednesday. And that Harlan Snow was pushing for a rush on the source hearing. And that once he was out of here, they would find a way to keep him out.

That was his litany. That and the prayers that sputtered and jerked from
I feel your presence, I know your light
to
Where are you? Where are you?

Why am I here?
he asked now. Was it a crime to try to get some closure?

Sully grew still on the mattress, felt the concrete slab all the way to his spine. He was never going to have that anyway. With Belinda dead, he would never be able to say what he'd been convinced would set him free. All he might ever have was a six-by-six cell in which to regret that he'd believed it would.

He pulled himself off the mattress and went to the front of the cell, a journey of three steps. How did anybody sleep in this place? It wasn't a clear conscience that did it. Sully hadn't dozed for more than fifteen minutes at a time since he'd been in here. Maybe it was revenge achieved, no matter what the cost. Or a twisted sense of justice. Or maybe just nothing left to lose.

Sully returned to the bed and sat with his back to the corridor. He tried the chant again, but it took off on its own. Was he any different? Didn't he want to see Belinda Cox squirm under his accusations? Wasn't it his goal to get justice for Lynn and Hannah— and didn't he want the consequences to be harsh? Hadn't he gone at it as if he had nothing to lose?

Yes to all of that—until the very evening he left the clinic to go to her house in Mesilla. That day it had all come together for him— that if he didn't find her to offer help, he shouldn't find her at all. The irony sucked his breath away.

“Hey. Doc.”

Sully twisted toward the front of the cell. The least surly of the guards stood in the opening and nodded for Sully to come closer.

“Looks like you're gettin' a break, Doc,” he said, voice low.

“Yeah?”

“Your source hearing's tomorrow morning. You got one more night in this hellhole.”

Sully let his head fall forward and closed his eyes. The guard gave his bars a tap.

“Thanks,” Sully said.

“I hope it all works out for you.”

By Wednesday night exhaustion got the better of stress, and I fell asleep in the chair by the fire at seven o'clock. When my phone woke me up an hour later, I could barely focus.

“This murder case is your baby,” Frances said, “so I'm putting you on—what's his name?—Sullivan Crisp's release from jail tomorrow.” “They found the real killer?” I said.

“No—he's just getting bailed out.” I heard the computer keys stop clicking. “What do you mean, the real killer? Do you have a lead on this that I don't know about?”

I sank back into the chair.

“Come on, Ryan. If you know something about this guy . . .”

“I do,” I said. “You know what—yeah, I'll go tomorrow, but on one condition.”

“Which is?”

“Whatever I shoot goes on the front page.”

“I can't promise that, and you know it.”

“Fine. Get somebody else.”

Frances sighed. “Okay—I'll do my best.”

“That works,” I said.

“You are difficult, you know that?”

Only when it serves somebody well,
I thought as I hung up.

The phone rang again in my hand.

“Front page,” I said into it. “I'm not compromising.”

“You seldom do.”

“Dan? I'm sorry—I thought you were my editor.” Suddenly chilled, I pulled the Bears blanket around me. “You don't sound good. What's going on?”

“I found a bar of Ivory soap in the guest bathroom, but it was still in the wrapper.”

I could hear the mixture of disappointment and relief stirring.

“I keep gasoline out by the studio for my generator.”

“That doesn't really prove anything, does it?” I said.

“No.” His pause was full.

“Dan?” I said.

“You said the lid on the jar was from powered dye. I use that. And I have a jar missing.”

“Are you sure?” I didn't point out that he had a lot of stuff out there, and keeping close tabs on the inventory wasn't his MO.

“Yeah, but not sure enough to confront Ian with it. I did search his room, though, and I found something—I don't know if it means anything.” His voice dropped. “I don't know if I
want
it to mean anything.”

“I hear you, but—”

“It's a magazine.” I heard pages rustle. “
Proceso.
The whole thing's in Spanish, and Ian doesn't speak Spanish. So unless he's using it for one of his debate arguments—”

“Whoa—what did you—”

“But there's a picture cut out of it.”

“What page?” I said.

“Thirty-two.”

I stood up and threw off the blanket. “Dan, the picture on the note that was thrown through my windshield was from that magazine, that page.”

A stunned silence dropped between us. From within it, I heard Dan whisper, “God help us.”

“Yeah,” I whispered back. “Please.”

God was showing off in Las Cruces at one o'clock Thursday afternoon when Sully walked out of jail. All of the aspens had turned October gold, and the sky was a crisp blue that beckoned his eyes upward to the brilliant flashes of two hot air balloons chuffing above the city.

Once he and Rusty Huff were beyond the reporters and the cameras that had blurred before him down the steps to Rusty's rental car, Sully let the window down on the passenger side and breathed in. Sagebrush, restaurant lard, the exhaust from some guy's Harley—he didn't care—they were the smells of freedom.

“Dude, I'm a happy man,” he said.

Rusty glanced over from the steering wheel and nodded, but there was no real agreement in his eyes.

“Okay,” Sully said. “Dish.”

Rusty ran a hand over his clean-shaven head. “You want to grab something to eat first?”

“I'm not excited about going into a restaurant with this ankle bracelet on. The judge actually sees me as a flight risk?”

“I guess $500,000 doesn't talk as loud as we thought. How about a drive-through?”

Sully wasn't hungry, but he nodded. “Let's take it to the clinic and eat. There must be a lot of damage control to do.”

Rusty jittered his fingers on the steering wheel. “I don't think that's a good idea. We all know you're innocent, Sully, but we feel like it's the best thing for you to stay away from the clinic until this whole thing is cleared up. Besides . . .” He frowned as he looked back to change lanes.

“Besides what?”

“You look like death. You've got to get yourself put back together again physically, my friend. Why don't you take some time to get your head straight?” He pulled the car into a Taco Bell driveway. “You want a couple of burritos?”

“Sure,” Sully said.

Get his head straight. How was that going to happen? He wasn't sure he should call Porphyria. He'd like to run things by Kyle, but if he wasn't supposed to go near the clinic, that was out. The one person he wanted to go to was Tess. He swallowed back a rise of anxiety. She had to have written him off by now. He'd gone over that ad nauseum in jail. She knew he was desperate to find Belinda. He'd insisted on going alone. Why wouldn't she buy what the police believed? He tried not to consider that she may have been the one who told them he was stalking the victim. But that meant not thinking about her at all, and that was impossible.

When Rusty left him at the house and went back to the clinic, Sully tossed two uneaten burritos into the trash, and after one glance at the evidence that his house had been searched, pulled a kitchen chair out to the front porch. He couldn't see the street for the overgrown bushes, but at least he was outside. He wasn't sure he could ever stay in an enclosed room again. He avoided entertaining the possibility that he wouldn't have a choice.

He was gazing up at the Organs, searching their crags for peace, when his cell phone rang. It was Harlan Snow.

“Sorry I didn't get to talk to you after the hearing,” he said. “Things got stacked up. How are you doing?”

“I don't know,” Sully said.

“That's to be expected. Listen, Sullivan, we have some time before your case goes to trial, so I'm going to continue to flesh this thing out.”

Sully waited.

“Aside from the fact that they found nothing on the clothes they took from your house, the DA has a strong case. Hernandez has a good track record, but I don't think she can knock down extreme emotional distress as a defense.”

Sully let that sink into a cold place in his brain. “You think I did it.”

“I didn't say that. But I have to be prepared if this thing starts to go south.”

There was no way Sully could process that right now. “I'm going to get some rest,” he said.

“Do it. I'll call you tomorrow.”

Sully hung up and dropped the phone into his lap. Extreme emotional distress. He hadn't been feeling it the night he walked up Belinda Cox's front walk, but he was getting there now.

A vehicle pulled to the curb, and Sully stood up to peer over the tops of the bushes, anxiety immediately pumping. God, please don't let it be Baranovic, coming to tell him there'd been a mistake about the bail.

It was a small SUV with the name of a courier service emblazoned on the side. The driver left the motor running and started up the path with a large white envelope in his hand. He stopped and squinted at the numbers on the mailbox and then at the package.

“Yeah, somebody lives here,” Sully called to him.

“Sullivan Crisp?”

“Yeah,” Sully said, but he wondered if he was going to regret this.

Palms sweating, he signed for the thing and waited for the driver to take off before he slit it open. Unwelcome possibilities flipped through his mind until he pulled out a white sheet with a line drawing penned across it.

For the first time in more than a week, Sully felt a grin spread slowly, deliciously across his face—the same grin, he was sure, that smiled up at him from the drawing. An expert had sketched him in caricature—short hair askew, eyes dancing, grin loping from lobe to lobe. It was Sullivan Crisp himself, right down to the too-wild Hawaiian shirt.

She'd signed it unnecessarily. No one else but Tess could have drawn it. But the note she'd written at the bottom he did need.

I did you in ink,
it said.

Sully propped a foot on his opposite knee and spread the paper on his calf. When another vehicle pulled up and its motor died, he shook his head.
Leave me alone,
he wanted to call to it.
I'm falling in love.

I practiced my spiel all the way up the ragged front walk to Dr. Crisp's house:
I know I'm crossing some kind of therapist-client boundary, but I don't care. I had to see you face-to-face and tell you I don't believe you're any more guilty than Jake is.

Tucking my laptop under my arm, I used one hand to part the bush that hung over the steps and jumped a foot when I saw Sullivan himself sitting on the front porch.

“I'm sorry!” we said in unison.

He stood up and put his hand down to me. I grabbed it and held on until I got the tears to back off. He didn't look like he needed anybody crying right now.

Even though I'd seen him earlier from afar, his appearance up close was a shock. His eyes seemed to have sunken into the dark crescents under his eyes, and the grin he was attempting now curved into gaunt cheeks. If he had eaten or slept in the last week, I would be surprised.

“I know I'm not supposed to be here,” I said.

“Actually, I'm not sure what the rules are in this situation,” he said, “so let's just make them up as we go along. Have a step.”

I sank down onto the edge of the porch beside him and hugged my laptop to my chest to hold in the pain. I hoped I was keeping it off my face.

“Tell me about you,” he said.

“You sure you want to hear, with all you're going through?”

“I do.” He looked down at a folded piece of paper he was creasing over and over. “I'm so sorry I haven't been there for you.”

“But you
have
been. I've been using everything you've taught me.” I tried to smile. “I haven't destroyed any property since the last time we talked.”

He tried to smile too. Neither of us made it work.

I lowered the computer to my lap. “I really came to tell you that I know what injustice feels like. For what it's worth.”

“It's worth a lot.”

“I'm just glad you got bailed out. We didn't have that option with Jake.”

“I looked for him in there, but they don't let you mingle much.”