Rising Darkness (5 page)

“I can’t believe it. Why would Tracy cheat on me with a scumbag druggy? That is not like her at all. She was completely against drugs in every way, just like I am.”

“I don’t know. I’m still gathering some facts and things together. Just sit tight and I’ll tell you what I find out.”

“Ok, thanks.”

The waiting was going to be murder.

****

Alex Denison was surprised by how personable of a guy Robin Lydell was. The man was much more charismatic and charming than the pictures that he had seen of the man. He was well groomed and well-dressed. He looked like any other rich guy who had the world by the tail, except that his money came from his wife.

Robin Lydell was the kind of guy that you both despised and admired. You despised him because he was basically an anti-man. He was a perpetually permanent adolescent whom the world had given the keys to the kingdom so he was able to stay an adolescent for the rest of his life.

He had grown up with a rich mother and father, but when he got really involved with drugs at an early age his parents had kicked him out of the house. They thought they were using tough love to whip him into shape so he would graduate high school, go to an Ivy League school, and become a professional of some sort. His dad was the head partner at one of the biggest law firms in the state and his mother was a trophy wife. Robin apparently took after his mother because instead of the tough love turning into the wakeup call that his father hoped it would he had listened to a different calling.

He had become something of a male gigolo. He had found a few dating websites for rich women who were looking for good looking boy toys. He was one of the more popular guys and eventually Jess took a strong liking to him. What started as a few hot and steamy dates turned into a full-fledged love affair and then into love and marriage. It had all happened quickly.

Robin was basically a kept man. He was a true playboy and did what he wanted pretty much all the time. Jess owned several rental properties around the city and she was also launching a fashion line that was doing quite well. She was often gone and he had the run of the place.

This was both a blessing and a curse for him. He had become a true drug addict and with all the time and all the money in the world it had become a total consuming thing for him. Jess eventually got tired of it and forced him into rehab by offering him the ultimatum that he get clean or she would divorce him. Robin was not about to throw his silver spoon away that easily. He sucked it up and got clean.

Now here he was sitting in front of Alex looking every bit the part of a young entrepreneur or a Calvin Klein model. He had this permanent smirk on his face that made you want to beat him up. It was almost like he was just constantly gloating with every move and every gesture. Alex had met guys like him before who basically had everything in life handed to them and lived life as if it was one great big party. It was insulting to a hardworking guy like himself. He’d had to work his ass off since he was a kid to get into the best schools and then continue to work until he was in the position that he was in today. The work never stopped either; he had accepted that and refused to rest on his laurels.

“So, what can I do for you, Alex?” Robin asked with that smug twinkle in his eye.

“Have we met before?” Alex asked. The way that Robin said his name made him feel as if they had.

“I don’t think so, but I recognize you as one of Tracy’s friends.”

“That is actually why I’m here. I’m working with the police in a legal capacity as a consultant to try to help them find out who might have killed Tracy, so I’m just going around and meeting with all of her friends and everyone that knew her.”

“Ok and how did you pick up that we were friends?” Robin said.

“Well, you just mentioned that you knew her and knew who I was because of that.”

“Right, but you came here to talk to me. You must have found out that Tracy and I were a little more than friends.”

“Yea, I have friends who pulled a few favors and dug up some info.”

“Now, I got to wonder who is following me. Did my wife set this up? Did she ask you to speak to me?” Robin asked getting defensive and a little bit annoyed.

“No, she has no idea I’m here, but she figured you were doing something behind her back so she had a PI follow you. That is where I got these pictures,” Alex said as he tossed the pictures on the glass coffee table in front of Robin.

Robin seemed a little caught off guard as he grabbed the pictures and began to look through them, but he quickly dismissed it and leaned back on the couch nursing his beer.

“Busted!” Robin joked. “Well, guess the wife isn’t too upset because she hasn’t said anything to me about it at all.”

“Well, you don’t find that strange?”

“She knows me; she knows that I dally around a bit. I think she has just accepted that it’s who I am.”

“I doubt she is ok with this. In fact I think that Tracy Payton is dead because of it,” Alex said. He couldn’t believe that he had actually come right out and said it. The words were in the air floating around before he realized what was coming out of his mouth. Of course he figured that Robin would have put it together eventually, or at least he would have if he wasn’t so stoned.

“Wait, you think that Jess killed Tracy? That’s crazy. She isn’t mental. Besides if she was going to kill someone it would have been me,” Robin said.

“Not necessarily. People often think that the rational thing to do is to kill the partner who cheated in this situation, but rationality often gets obscured by intense emotions in times like these. I can’t tell you how many cases I’ve seen it happen this way. The rage that Jess felt for you was passed to Tracy and she took it out on her. It’s a way of removing the object of desire while using a surrogate for the rage that she felt for the betrayal that you had done.”

Alex was starting to think of himself as some sort of a pop psychologist here. Maybe he had majored in the wrong thing.

“I understand what you are saying, but I just don’t see it. I don’t see my wife as a killer. We have our problems and our differences, but when I screw up she lets me have it.”

“But not this time?” Alex asked.

Robin did not say anything for several seconds as he thought about what Alex had just said. Alex could see the gears turning in his mind as he tried to wrap his head around the possibility that he was right. Maybe Jess had murdered Tracy in cold blood because she had found out about the affair.

“Do you know where your wife was at the time of the murder? Monday, the fourteenth between the afternoon hours of one and four?”

“She was at work, I think.”

“Well, she has a few jobs. Can you pin point it down a bit better than that?”

“I believe she was at her main real estate office downtown. Hilman/Bryers building. Twelfth floor.”

“I know where that is.”

“Ok. Look, it’s a bummer what happened to Tracy. She was a great woman and good friend, but I really think you are wasting your time investigating my wife here.”

“I appreciate your concern on that, but I’ve got some leads I do have to follow up on.”

“Isn’t that a job for the cops?”

“Well, as I said I am working in conjunction with the police,” Alex lied. He didn’t want to give Robin too much to work with here. He did not want this little clown to know that Joe was the prime suspect in everything.

Alex excused himself and left to leave Robin wondering about what was going on. Alex expected that Robin might call Jess to give her a heads up or a warning that he was going to be talking to her, but he would probably wait until the evening. That little worm had to think up a way to even broach the subject and break the news to her. By that time Alex would have already have talked to Jess.

Joe could feel the beginnings of a good night’s sleep knocking at his doorstep, but he fought it anyway. He had been dragging hard all day since he had slept barely a wink the night before in the jail. He did not understand how anyone could be expected to live like that and to ever actually get some solid rest on those uncomfortable cots they were expected to use. It was really nothing more than thin metal covered by a very thin mattress and a sheet. It was horrible. He could not let himself go back there. He just couldn’t.

His thoughts kept returning to his good friend Alex and he wondered what sort of progress he was making with his prospects. Alex was pretty crafty and clever. If someone had something to hide or if they were bending the truth any at all he would get it out of them. It was a gift that Joe had witnessed watching in court on several occasions to some of Alex’s more high profile cases that involved a lot of money.

Joe and Kirsten had been having an amazing time talking and getting to know each other all evening after a nice dinner. They had even played some cards the way they had when she was younger. The favorite was Uno and his daughter was a notorious cheat. The worst thing was that she was not very good at it and then she would blatantly lie to your face when she was caught red-handed. It was a thing they had always done. He loved it.

They had just finished up the third game of cards and were debating whipping out the good old chess board when the doorbell rang. Joe had listened to it and wondered why no one was answering, when he realized that the person who usually did that was out of town still with family. He was not sure she was coming back; she had heard about what happened to Tracy and about the media circus that was surrounding Joe right now. He was tempted to start looking for someone else, but he wasn’t sure where he would find someone good and reliable who would not care about any of those things.

He started to get up but Kirsten beat him to it, rushing towards the door. The girl was still young and full of energy, like he used to be. He just wished that he could bottle just a little bit of this thing called youth and take just a bit of it every day.

“OH MY GOD!”

He heard Kirsten’s exclamation a few seconds before he entered the living area. He was shocked and speechless by who he saw standing in the doorway. He would not have believed it if anyone had told him this was ever going to happen, especially not now. But there was his step daughter, Elena.

He could not get over how much she looked like her mother. It was as if she had been brought back to life. He just could not believe that Elena of all people had stopped what she was doing to come and see him during a time of great crisis. She had never really been that fond of Tracy, but then she had never really let herself become fond of Tracy. There was a permanent mental block and a huge wall there that she had carefully constructed so that it would not happen. She would never allow anyone to replace her mother in any way, even though she realized that was not what had happened.

Joe had wished a thousand times a day that he’d had the relationship with Elena that he had with Kirsten. It was something that he struggled with and something that he knew would never be fixed. It was a constant source of pain in his life and he realized that when he stopped to think of it and analyze a few of the decisions that he had made in his life then he could see how he had done it to try to erase this bit of agony that wrapped itself around his heart from time to time.

He walked into the room watching Elena’s smile as she turned from hugging Kirsten to look at him. Her beautiful eyes were so full of hope and innocence. He was so glad that she was there.

“I just can’t believe it,” Joe said as he scooped Elena in his arms. He felt her body tense slightly, but relax under his embrace. He was not sure that he should have hugged her given the history that they had with each other, but he could not help himself. Both of his girls were home and they had come to lend support to him. He was feeling happier than he had felt in days. It was turning around a bit for him. That was what it felt like.

“Well, I figured that you might need us, so I asked Elena to come,” Kirsten said.

Joe smiled at her and then at Elena.

Elena smiled back. “Well, Kirsten is pretty convincing.”

“Yes, she is!” Joe said. “Come on in, we were just playing cards.”

“Uno? You tired of Kirsten’s cheating yet?” Elena quipped.

Joe could not hold back the laughter. He was not used to Elena cracking jokes that way.

The three of them sat down and began to play cards and the hours flew by. It was the most fun Joe had seen in probably years and he knew that Tracy would have enjoyed it so much. She would have loved to have the house full again with the full family. Even though she was neither of his daughter’s natural mother, she had always wanted to be a mother.

Joe still remembered when the doctor had broken the news to Tracy that she was never going to be able to bear children. It was tragic, but it was something they had to deal with together. Joe had always thought that Tracy felt like a failure in his eyes because she was not able to bear him children, but he had tried to explain to her that he loved her and wanted to be with her. He already had two great daughters.

“So, Elena I was actually expecting you a bit earlier. Did your flight get delayed?” Kirsten asked.

“No, I was just hanging around town for a bit. I wasn’t actually sure if dad wanted to see me,” Elena said.

“What? That’s crazy. I always want to see my girls,” Joe said.

“Yea, that’s weird retard,” Kirsten joked. “Did you take an Uber or something?”

“Yea, it’s the best way to travel nowadays,” Elena said.

“You know they used to be called taxis,” Joe said. “Do they not have taxis anymore?”

“Yea, but Uber is faster and cheaper,” Elena replied.

“Oh, I see. I’m glad to know my girls are not totally spoiled and appreciate how hard it is to make a dollar in this crazy world,” Joe replied.

The two girls looked at each other and rolled their eyes. He hoped that they weren’t getting too sick of him yet. He leaned back and took everything all in and for just once since the murder of his beloved wife he had not thought about taking his own.

****