Immoral (17 page)

“What do you mean?” Andrea asked.

“Most human acts leave some kind of trail. You have to get from place to place. You have to eat, buy gas, go to the bathroom, sleep. You leave behind skin, hair, fingerprints, fluids. All of those things can be tracked, assuming you can sift through the things that everyone else leaves behind and find the person you want.”

Andrea smiled. “Like it or not, Jon, that sounds a lot like the scientific process. You couldn’t have slept through all of your classes.”

“I wouldn’t have slept through yours,” he said.

She blushed and looked down at her exams again. They were silent for a while. The only sound was the scritch-scritch of Andrea’s marker on the page and the rustle of paper as she shuffled the tests. Stride let his eyes wander around the classroom, then found himself staring at Andrea, her head down, her narrow fingers nervously pushing her blonde hair back behind her ears. He could see smile lines at the edges of her mouth, like crescent moons. The sleeves of her sweater were pushed up, and he saw her bare, tapered forearms, slim but strong.

She felt his stare and looked up. They held each other with their eyes, but they didn’t say anything.

He wondered what she saw when she looked at him. He knew, because Cindy had always told him so, that women found him attractive, although he never really understood it. He didn’t have smooth, perfect features, but the look of a seaman who had squinted into too many storms. Like his father. Each time the barber cut his hair, he saw more gray littering the floor. He ached when he moved, and he felt the twinge of his bullet wound more intensely now than when he had been shot eight years ago. He was getting older, no doubt about that. But something about Andrea’s honest stare peeled away the years from his mind.

She leaned back in her chair, covering her mouth with both hands, still staring at him.

“I’m a little embarrassed,” she told him quietly.

Stride was puzzled. “Why?”

Andrea laughed and looked at him with a tiny smile. “I hope you don’t think I go around picking up men in casinos and sleeping with them.”

“Oh,” Stride said. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let that happen. You were drunk. It wasn’t fair.”

“We were both drunk,” Andrea said. “And we both wanted it. You don’t have anything to feel guilty about. But the next day, I was scared. I thought I’d made a terrible mistake.”

“You didn’t,” Stride said.

“Do you want to hear something terrible?” she said. “I resented it a little when you told me your wife died.”

Stride looked at her strangely. “I don’t understand.”

“Cindy died, and there wasn’t anything you could do about it. It wasn’t about you. At least you can still feel good about yourself. That’s what my husband took from me.”

Stride shook his head. “That isn’t your fault. It’s his. He sounds like a selfish son of a bitch.”

“I know. But I still miss him. You must think I’m a fool.”

“Join the club,” Stride said. “Look, how about we go to dinner right now? I’m hungry as hell, and Briar Patch makes a one-inch steak that melts in your mouth. And the beer is ice cold.”

Andrea nodded. “I’d like that. I think I’ve had enough for the day. Let me lock these in the department office, and then we can head out.”

They walked out together into the empty hallway of the school. He heard distant sounds, like the thump of a basketball, but he didn’t see anything or anyone around them. The lights seemed dim and shadowy, and the night outside yawned in at them through the windows like a giant black creature.

They climbed the stairs to the second floor of the school and found themselves in another dark, empty hallway. Andrea unlocked the door opposite the stairs and flicked on the light switch inside. The office was crowded with metal desks and filing cabinets and bookshelves lined with science textbooks. She chose the desk closest to the window, opened the bottom drawer, and dropped the stack of tests inside. He saw a photograph of a man on the wall beside her desk, and he assumed it was her ex-husband.

“All set,” she said.

They turned off the lights, and Andrea locked the door behind them.

As they headed for the stairs, Stride saw a crack of light glowing from one of the offices at the far end of the hallway.

Andrea saw him hesitate. “What’s up?”

“Probably nothing.” But he suddenly felt a wave of anxiety. It came that way after a few years, a sixth sense that something wasn’t right.

“Is that light coming from Nancy Carver’s office?” he asked.

Andrea noticed the light in the hallway for the first time. “Looks like it.”

Stride’s eyes narrowed. “This sounds odd, Andrea, but just wait here, all right? I want to check something out.”

“If you say so.”

Andrea leaned against the wall, waiting. Stride took soft steps down the hallway, approaching the point where the office light shone into the corridor. As he got closer, he confirmed what he had suspected, that the door to Nancy Carver’s office was ajar. He waited, listening, but heard no sounds from inside.

Stride coughed deliberately.

He expected to hear whoever was inside react. But the same silence pervaded the hallway.

He edged toward the doorway, close enough to peer inside and see part of the closet that served as her office. All he could see was a corner of her desk, enough to see a woman’s shoulder and arm. She seemed to be sitting in her chair, not moving.

“Hello?” he called out.

He watched, but the woman didn’t move. Stride gave the door a push. It swung open with a loud creak and thudded against the wall. He moved closer, filling the doorway.

Nancy Carver was inside, sitting motionless at her desk. As he entered, she looked up at him with hollow eyes, rimmed in red. The angry passion he had seen in her brown eyes was gone. Her cheeks were drawn. Her red hair was matted. She looked through him as if he didn’t exist.

Stride was so taken aback by her appearance that he didn’t notice for several seconds that she had a handgun lying in front of her on her desk, inches from her fingers.

“
What the hell is that
?” he said and leaped for the gun. He expected her to reach for it before he could get there, and point it either at herself or at him, but Nancy Carver didn’t move. She just stared at him as he scooped it up in his hand and spilled the bullets on the floor, where they rolled crazily.

Stride leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. The gun dangled in his hand.

“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on?” he asked.

He didn’t add,
Do you want to tell me why two women in Rachel’s life are trying to kill themselves
? Because he had no doubt that was what Nancy Carver was planning to do.

Carver shook her head vacantly. “I could have stopped him,” she whispered.

Stride bent over the desk. “Stopped who?”

She looked up and met his eyes. “I thought she ran away,” she said.

Stride said nothing.

Tears began creeping down her cheeks. “But instead, she’s dead. And I could have stopped him. I knew all about it.”

“I have to go,” Stride told Andrea.

They were seated in his Bronco in back of the school, near her car. The radio was turned down low, playing a song by Patty Loveless.

“Will you get any sleep tonight?”

“Probably not.”

“Why don’t you spend the night at my house tomorrow? It doesn’t matter what time you come. It felt so good sleeping beside you on Friday. I felt better just having you near me.”

“It could be late. I don’t know when I’ll be done, and I probably won’t be much company.”

She smiled. “I’ll leave a light on.”

Andrea opened the truck door. As she got out, snow shook off the roof and dusted her blonde hair with flakes of white. She blew him a kiss, slammed the door shut, and ran to her own car. He watched her climb inside, then saw a match flare as she lit a cigarette. Her car started up on the first try. She waved as she pulled away.

Stride drove home, navigating the empty, slippery streets with less care than they demanded. Twice he lingered at a stoplight, motionless while it turned green, his eyes vacantly staring out of the streaked windows. The windshield wipers squeaked in a determined rhythm that hypnotized him.

I knew all about it
.

He thought again about Nancy Carver and tried to quell his anger. She could have confirmed their suspicions weeks ago. Maybe there would have been something more they could have done. They would have been so much closer.

What if Emily Stoner had died, not knowing? Then again, he wondered if Emily had suspected all along.

There were times when it felt like a game, a puzzle they had to solve. And there were times when he hated knowing everything he did about the dark side of the human heart.

Stride crossed the bridge leading onto the Point. He drove two blocks to his home and pulled into the driveway. Maggie’s car was parked on the street. He saw a light inside the house and guessed she was waiting for him. It saved him a phone call. He was going to need her tonight, and they had a long evening ahead of them at city hall.

He let himself into the house.

Maggie was in his kitchen, her feet propped up on a chair. She was eating a grilled cheese sandwich and reading the newspaper.

“You didn’t answer your goddamn phone,” she told him pleasantly.

“The battery’s dead. Sorry about that.”

“I’ve been waiting here for over an hour.”

“Lucky for you I came home alone,” he said. He wondered how he was going to break it to Maggie that she would need to be a little more cautious about using his house as a second home. He didn’t think Andrea would understand their relationship.

He looked at her skirt, which was bunched up almost to her waist. “You look hot.”

“I’m freezing,” she said. “And it’s your fault.”

“Well, it was worth it if you got anything out of the boys.”

Maggie smiled. “Nothing from the boys. But it turns out we were heading in the right direction all along. Family first.”

Stride sat down opposite Maggie. “Graeme?”

She nodded. “Sally gave him up. Turns out Graeme took her on a little field trip to the barn last summer.”

“Was she raped?”

“No, they were interrupted. But she thought that’s where things were going.”

“There’s more,” Stride told her. “How’s this? Rachel told Nancy Carver she was sleeping with Graeme. She said it happened a few times, and then she cut it off, but Graeme wanted more.”

Maggie’s eyebrows shot skyward. “No shit? Do you think Emily suspects?”

“I’ll bet she does, but she won’t admit it to herself.”

“Graeme’s a cool customer,” Maggie said. “Everything about him came up clean, right down to the polygraph. He’s going to be hard to nail.”

“Yeah, but him and Emily? No way. I think he was after Rachel from the beginning. And Rachel probably thought that fucking Graeme would be the perfect punishment for her mother. These two were made for each other.”

“Except how do we prove it?” Maggie asked.

“We’ve got Carver’s story. That’s a start.”

“It’s hearsay,” Maggie said. “We’ll never get it in.”

Stride nodded. “I know. But it’ll get us a warrant.”

Stride swore his team to silence as they prepared for the search, but it didn’t help. As a battery of police cars pulled up outside the Stoner house, Bird Finch took to the airwaves, painting Graeme Stoner as a Jekyll-and-Hyde who had seduced his teenage stepdaughter and then killed her. Stride heard it on the radio and turned off the news in disgust.

Maggie, seated next to him, shook her head. “How the hell did he do that? No one knows about this.”

Stride shrugged. “Let’s go,” he told her.

They headed up the long walkway to the front door of the Stoner house with a swarm of uniformed officers. Stride gestured to one of the cops, pulling him closer.

“The word is out,” he said. “You can expect the press to begin descending on this place in droves. I don’t want them anywhere near here, okay? Tape it off, and keep them away. No curious neighbors, either.”

The officer nodded and retreated to one of the squad cars, motioning for three other policemen to join him.

Stride whispered to Maggie. “Let’s keep a close eye on the search, okay, Mags? I want everything by the book and witnessed. No screwups. If we end up charging this guy, he’s already got Archie Gale in his corner, and you can bet everything we do is going to be second-guessed.”

“Signed, sealed, and delivered,” Maggie said. “Count on it, boss.”

Stride didn’t need to ring the doorbell. As he climbed the steps, Graeme Stoner swung the door open. Stride could see icy fury in the man’s eyes.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Graeme said. “I see you’ve brought a few of your friends with you.”

“Mr. Stoner, we have a valid warrant to search these premises for any evidence related to the disappearance and possible murder of Rachel Deese.”

“So I gathered. And is it ordinary police practice to engage in character assassination before you have any evidence? My phone is already starting to ring, thanks to Bird Finch’s little report a few minutes ago. I called Kyle personally to complain.”

Stride shrugged. Graeme’s contacts at city hall weren’t going to help him now. “I’ll stay with you while my officers conduct the search.”

Graeme turned on his heel and retreated through the living room without looking behind him. Stride followed him, and Maggie gathered the officers in the foyer, issuing instructions. Guppo would lead the team in the basement, she would handle the rooms upstairs, and they would do the first floor and the exterior and vehicles last.

“By the book,” she told them, reiterating Stride’s warning. “Stay in pairs at all times. Find it, photograph it, bag it, label it. You got all that?”

The sturdy police officers, all of them a foot and a half taller than the tiny Asian detective, nodded meekly and set about the search. Their footsteps sounded like thunder as they took different paths up and down the steps.