Seeing Red (3 page)

When Rory proposed, Ellis had been blindsided by raw panic. Her lungs had seized. She’d broken out in a cold sweat. Her heart skittered with the same fear she’d felt the time she’d come close to a head-on collision on the bridge over the estuary. She couldn’t decipher why her reaction was so severe, so extreme, let alone explain it to poor Rory.

He was a good man. He loved her, although their differing ideals of love had often been a subject of nearcontentious discussion. Rory was a romantic in the extreme. She couldn’t count the times they’d debated whether van Gogh’s self-amputation of his ear was a measure of his instability or his devotion. Rory was a true heart and saw only love in grand romantic gestures.

It should be easy for her to open herself up to a sentimental and loving man like Rory. And yet she held back.

Maybe there was something missing inside her, some deficiency that prevented her from feeling the depth of emotions that other people do.

Even so, cutting him loose frightened her only slightly less than his proposal. What if this was her one chance at happiness? She didn’t want to make a mistake. And, if she was totally honest with herself, giving up on Rory felt like she was giving up the hope that somewhere buried deep inside of her, there were those passions, those emotions that inspired poets’ verse and made ordinary men and women sacrifice all for love—well, short of cutting off a body part.

Of course, Rory didn’t understand the dark hole that dwelt in the place that love should light. Her parents didn’t understand it. How could they? They were all normal.

“You can still go north,” her dad said.

“And you can still fish with Rory.”

“You know I can’t stand to look into those sad puppy eyes when he asks about you.” His words were punctuated by mouse clicks in the background. He went on. “Maybe the trip will be a good opportunity for you and Rory to work on your problems.” He paused. “I just don’t think you should spend your entire summer here.”

“I’ll have to be here in August.” Then she added, as if her father would ever forget, “It’ll be time for another hearing.”

“Sweetie . . . ” His sigh rode heavily across the telephone line. “You don’t have to do it. Uncle Greg and I—”

“Save your breath, Dad. You know as well as I do that I have to do this. For Laura.”

“You’ve already done right by your cousin. Laura wouldn’t want you to put yourself through all of this again and again.”

“Okay, maybe I’m doing it for me, then.” She’d never taken the option of videoconferencing her testimony at Hollis Alexander’s parole hearings. It was important for him to see her, to know her conviction to this cause. And she needed to stare the bastard down, to make up for her inability to do it as a teenager.

“It’s not that I don’t think you and Uncle Greg can make our case,” she said. “I just
have
to be there.”

After a few seconds of stone silence, she thought maybe she’d lost the connection. “Dad?”

“Goddamnsonofabitch.”

His tone knocked the bottom out of her stomach.

Something thudded, like books falling off the desktop.

“Dad! What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Was he having a heart attack?

Finally, her father’s clipped words came through. “He’s out. Paroled.”

“No.” The word was no more than a breath filled with dread and childlike fear. Shaking her head in denial, she said, “That’s impossible. His hearing wasn’t even on the schedule last time I checked.”

“Well, I’m on the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services Web site, and it says right here in black and white that Hollis Alexander was paroled two days ago. Two days ago!”

“It has to be a mistake.” The fist that had clamped around her lungs and stolen her breath when she’d opened the sliding door once again squeezed tight.

“Let’s hope,” her father said. “It says he was paroled with ‘conditions.’ I’ll call Lorne Buckley as soon as the prosecutor’s office opens. We’ll get this cleared up.”

Lorne Buckley had led the case that put Alexander away fifteen years ago. He’d been patient and kind as he’d coached Ellis through the nightmare of her testimony. She’d been frightened to the point of nausea as she’d sat on that witness stand. Looking into Buckley’s kind eyes and not those of Hollis Alexander had been the only thing that had held her together.

“Victim Services is supposed to give Uncle Greg thirty days’ notice before a hearing.” As she said the words, she realized she sounded like a whining child. That notification was a courtesy, not a law.

“I’ll have Greg check with their office too. Ellis, until we know for certain what’s going on, I want you to stay home with the doors locked and your alarm on.”

Any normal grown woman would scoff at the suggestion as overly dramatic. Right now she didn’t feel like a normal woman. She felt like a sitting duck.

Ellis watched the sky brighten outside her locked condo, feeling as if she were the prisoner. The sensation had started the instant she’d closed that sliding glass door and reset the alarm. She paced her small living room, stretching legs that demanded to run, trying to fill lungs that wouldn’t expand.

She needed to be outside. Running. Sweating out the fear.

This world was totally upside down, a place where victims were prisoners of the past and criminals went free to threaten innocents’ futures. At moments like this, she was glad Laura had finally let go of life. It had taken nearly four years after the attack, but her tremendous suffering was over; she didn’t have to face her fears anew.

Ellis went to her bedroom and changed into running shorts and a tank top. Even if she couldn’t find the courage to actually go out and run, the act of preparation gave her something to do.

Besides, if Alexander was out of prison, she couldn’t stay behind locked doors forever.

A locked door didn’t keep him from Laura.

But she wasn’t like Laura, young and innocent. Ellis knew what kind of dangers lurked out there, and she was prepared to protect herself in ways Laura had never even imagined. Thanks mostly to the insistence and encouragement of Nate Vance. In a time of vulnerability and fear, he’d given her a sense of power, of control.

But that had been before he’d dropped off the face of the earth.

As diffuse shafts of light from the rising sun poked through the pines, she looked outside again. Her neighborhood was populated mostly with retirees and vacation homes. Her downstairs neighbors were off visiting their new grandchild in Oregon. On an ordinary day, there wasn’t a lot of early morning activity. Today the street seemed to have an unusual air of desolation.

Once, on cable TV, Ellis had seen a person whose body was completely covered in bees—head to toe, fingertip to fingertip, one big undulating, humming mass. That’s how she felt, as if hundreds of thousands of tiny legs walked on her skin, and she had to fight the urge to flail, knowing that any movement would spell disaster.

Her legs twitched. She shifted her gaze to her running shoes sitting by the front door. She was tempted to go out just to prove to herself that she could. Dad would totally flip out if he called and she didn’t answer. And if she called him and told him she was going out, he’d worry himself sick. Even if it was overreaction, she’d give in to it—for now, for Dad.

After making herself a cup of tea, she settled on the couch with her laptop. The link for the DPPPS Web site was in her “favorites” folder. That in itself suddenly struck her as ludicrous.
Favorites?
In what twisted universe was having the state’s Department of Probation, Pardons and Parole in your favorites folder a sane and reasonable thing?

With a quiver of disgust, she clicked on the link. Two selections later, she reached the Pardons and Paroles Schedule page. Clicking on the date of the most recent parole hearing, she saw for herself, right there in the middle of a list of twenty-five names, most of which had denied typed next to them, was hollis alexander, parole—cond.

It had to be an error. A clerk who’d typed in the incorrect inmate number. A glitch in the system. Prosecutor Buckley had assured them that after what that man had done to Laura, no parole board would even consider releasing him a day before he completed his thirty-year sentence.

It struck her then that Alexander had already served half of that sentence. What had seemed an eternity to her when she’d been fourteen now loomed in the not-sodistant future. Another fifteen years. She would only be forty-four. Hardly the old woman she’d envisioned that day in the courtroom.

She looked at the screen again. parole—cond. If indeed this was correct, she wondered what special conditions had been imposed. Was shackled to an immovable object too much to hope for?

Closing her eyes, she could see him as clearly as if he’d been standing before her seconds ago. The soullessness in his ice-blue eyes were the only thing that belied the choirboy façade.

You’ll pay.

The threat had been made. But over fifteen years had passed. She’d been an impressionable child he’d been trying to intimidate.

Over the past four years, she’d faced him twice in parole hearings. Alexander always stared at her with an air of contempt, with loathing in his glacier eyes, but never had he repeated the threat.

As of that last parole hearing, Alexander had been moved from a Level 3, maximum-security facility, to a Level 2. According to the prison official’s assessment recommendation, he’d been a model prisoner during his incarceration and had devoted himself to the facility’s training program for seeing-eye dogs.

Perhaps he was the rare creature that had actually been rehabilitated by his time in prison.

If he’d really been paroled, she could only hope.

Wayne Carr finished his telephone interview with the director of the Belle Island Historical Restoration Society and clicked off his microcassette recorder. He wanted to get this article dashed off and get his ass out onto the golf course. Marie, the
Belle Island Sentinel
’s editor, seemed to have some sort of tee-time radar—it didn’t matter if Wayne was golfing with the mayor, which, of course, made it a working event. She always dumped some worthless assignment on him at the last minute.

Stop the freaking presses! The historical society has decided what paint colors will be allowed on the buildings in the historic district. Now, that’s news!

He reminded himself that he’d made a trade years ago. He’d given up real journalism in exchange for love. Abigail’s family had lived here for generations and would, according to Abi, for generations to come (not that they’d had any luck in adding branches to the family tree, despite thousands of dollars and countless humiliations at the fertility clinic). There had been no room for compromise seventeen years ago when they’d graduated from the University of Virginia; if he wanted Abi, he had to follow her home. And Abi had some mighty fine assets to recommend he do just that.

At least he hadn’t given in to his father-in-law’s pressure to join the family business. Wayne
wrote
for papers; he didn’t work in some smelly paper mill—even as a vice president.

He’d had a few of his freelance articles printed in low-country magazines. And the outline for his literary novel was nearly complete. Maybe soon he could quit the newspaper and not worry about being herded into the papermaking biz.

The phone on his desk rang.

He would have ignored it, but Marie was standing just outside his cubicle.

“Carr,” he said.

“Wayne Carr?” the man asked.

“Yes.” He opened the computer file to get his article going. If he hurried, he’d just make that tee time. The pause went on long enough that Carr stopped typing. “Hello?”

“This is Hollis Alexander.”

Carr’s hands froze over his keyboard. The back of his neck tingled. “What can I do for you, Mr. Alexander?” The sensational trial of Hollis Alexander had been the only ripple in the placid pond of life on Belle Island, the only opportunity for real reporting.

“Do you remember me?” Alexander asked.

“Of course,” Carr said cautiously. Fifteen years. It had been fifteen years. What could the man possibly want? Carr didn’t think they could just call anyone they wanted from jail. “I thought you were in prison.”

“Well, now, I got good news. I got parole.”

“Oh?” After a couple of seconds of expectant silence, Carr added, “Congratulations.”

“Why, thank you, sir.” It sounded like Alexander was drawing on a smoke, then let his breath out in a long stream. “I can almost hear your mind grindin’ away from here. You’re askin’ yourself, ‘Why is ol’ Hollis callin’ me?’ Am I right?”

“You have to admit, it is a bit of a surprise,” Carr said dryly.

Alexander gave a chuckle that shot the hairs on Carr’s arms to attention. “That’s what makes life interestin’, ain’t it, surprises? I really missed surprises while I was in prison. The only surprises a man gets there are the unpleasant kind.”

“What do you want?” Carr picked up his pack of cigarettes and stuck one between his lips. He was halfway to lighting it before he caught himself; no smoking in the office.

“What, no catchin’ up? No how you been these fifteen years?” There was another chuckle that felt like fingernails on a chalkboard, then a drag on a smoke. After Alexander blew it out, he said quietly, “I’ve called to ask a favor. I’d like you to help me clear my name.”