Shadow of Doubt (30 page)

F
ighting back his panic, David ran through the thick woods behind Stan's house, tripping over vines, swiping at spider webs and hanging moss. A bayou cut between him and his car, and he tore through the brush and the brambles, ducking under limbs and leaping over fallen branches, until he reached the edge of the bayou. He plunged into it, hoping the water would throw the dogs off his scent, but the murky water wasn't deep enough. It only reached his waist, and his shoes clung to the mud bottom like suction cups, slowing his progress across. He couldn't see where he was going, and a tree branch stopped him, knocking him back, but he rallied. Knocking the Spanish moss out of his way, he sloshed through the murky water, trying to follow the bayou to Clearview Street, where a bridge crossed. Maybe he could hide under the bridge until they gave up on him, or until the dogs got to him first.

Behind him, he could hear them closing in, and he thought of diving under and swimming, but the water was too muddy and dark, and it wasn't deep enough. He shivered at the thought of alligators lurking nearby, watching him though he couldn't see them, or snakes curling through the water, wrapping around his legs…

He saw a flashlight beam up ahead, and he tried to turn back, but there was another one to his right and another one behind him. The dogs, held back by their leashes, howled and barked as they led the cops straight to him.

He took a deep breath and plunged under water and began to swim with all his might along the bottom of the bayou. When he came up for air, the dogs sounded farther away. He forced himself to go under again. He swam until it got too shallow, then sloshed up onto the grass of the bank. The sirens sounded miles away now. He saw the lights of a house and headed toward it. A man's bicycle was parked on the patio.

He kicked at the stand, flung his leg over, and took off into the night, pedaling the bicycle as fast as he could as the sirens grew farther away. They were still looking for him in the bayou. If he could just get out of these wet clothes and call the police to report his car stolen, he knew he could still make them think that Celia was the one who'd broken into Stan's house tonight. They had believed everything else he'd thrown at them.

He reached the Bonaparte Court apartments and looked up at the apartment he had rented for Lee Barnett. The light was off—Barnett wasn't home. Perfect. He parked the bike under the stairwell and hurried up the steps. He pulled his keys from his wet jeans pocket and found the apartment key. He was glad he'd had a copy made.

He opened the door and slipped inside, paying no heed to the mud he left on the carpet as he headed for the bedroom. He turned on the light and saw Barnett's suitcase lying on the floor in the corner, near a pile of dirty clothes. He dug through and found a pair of jeans, then discarded them. They'd never fit. Barnett was taller and broader than he.

He found a pair of gray gym shorts and a T-shirt. Good enough. Quickly, he stripped of the wet clothes, left them on the floor, then hurried into the shower. He rinsed the mud and muck off of his skin, and quickly shampooed the bayou out of his hair. He got out and dried off, then got dressed. The clothes fit fine.

He picked up Barnett's blow dryer and dried his hair, then ran back to the suitcase for socks. He pulled them on, carefully avoiding the wet, muddy places on the carpet. Shoes, he thought, looking around. He needed shoes.

A pair of Nikes lay on their sides beside the bed, like a gift waiting to be worn. He slipped them on. They were a size too big, but they served the purpose.

He grabbed a towel and hurried out the front door, grinning as he ran back down the stairs. He wiped off the seat on the bike, dropped the towel, then took off into the night. Now all he had to do was get to a phone and report his car stolen. He'd claim that Celia and Lee Barnett took it and left him stranded, that it had taken him this long to get to a phone to report it.

They'd buy into it, because it was evidence. And everybody knew that evidence superseded common sense. And when they came to check out Lee Barnett's apartment, they'd find the wet, bayou-soiled clothes. There was only one conclusion they could jump to.

He laughed as he rode down Rue Matin and turned onto Jefferson Avenue. The Newpointe Inn, where his parents were staying, was up on the left, so he pulled into the parking lot, abandoned the bicycle, and dashed inside. He rode up on the elevator, then ran down the hall to their room.

He banged on the door, knowing he was waking them up.

“Who is it?” his father asked through the door.

“David,” he said. “Let me in, Dad.”

His father opened the door, and he hurried in, breathless. “You're not gonna believe what she's done now,” he said as he headed for the phone. “She stole my car. Celia and that ex-con. Left me out on the street. I had to walk all the way here.”

“What?” his mother asked, coming out of the bedroom as she tied the belt of her robe.

He held up a hand to stem their outbursts, and waited as 911 answered.

“911, may I help you?”

“Yeah, this is David Bradford. My car was stolen a little over an hour ago. My sister, Celia Shepherd, took it and left me on the street. I had to walk to a phone.” He paused, waiting for the dispatcher to recognize his name. Surely they had an APB out on him.

“Mr. Bradford, where are you right now?” the woman asked.

“I'm at the Newpointe Inn, in my parents' suite. Look, I don't know what she might do. She said she was going to finish off her husband. Oh, and Lee Barnett was with her. I've been defending her, but I can't anymore. She's crazy. She even mentioned something about coming after our own parents, that it was time they paid for disowning her…”

His parents gasped, and his father put his arms around his mother to comfort her. They were scared to death, buying the whole thing hook, line, and sinker.

The dispatcher put him on hold, and he could imagine how they were tracing the call to make sure he was where he said he was, how she was relaying the conversation to someone who would weigh what he'd come to believe against the evidence. Again, the evidence would rule.

“We'll have an officer there shortly, Mr. Bradford,” the woman said. “Do not leave.”

“Oh, I'm not going anywhere. But maybe they ought to start looking for her before she kills Stan. There's no telling what she might do.”

He hung up and got to his feet. His parents were gaping at him, horrified, and his mother was crying. He went to hug her, like a dutiful son. “It's okay, Mom. The police are on their way. Dad, do you still keep a gun with you when you travel?”

“Just a small caliber pistol,” he said. “But yes, it's in my bag.”

“Go get it,” he said. “We might need it if Celia gets here before they do.”

His father disappeared into the bedroom, and Joanna began to weep into her hand. “What's gotten into her? She seemed so rational at the funeral. I started to think that…maybe…she wasn't really—”

“She can turn it on and off, Mom. I've been with her all week, and you wouldn't believe the desperate, crazy mood swings. It's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. She's sick.”

His father came in with the gun, and David took it from him and put it in the waistband of his gym shorts, then pulled the T-shirt out to hang over it. “I'll have it, just in case I need it.”

Someone knocked on the door, and his mother made a frightened sound and backed against his father. David went to peer out the peephole. “It's the cops,” he said, and both of his parents dropped onto the couch with relief.

L
ee Barnett pulled his car into a parking space near his apartment and realized that he was parked crooked. He didn't care. He could straighten it out in the morning. Right now, he needed to get to bed and sleep off the booze he'd put away before he was arrested.

He had been too drunk to find his way home, and he'd spent the past hour just driving around town trying to figure out which way to go. Once, he'd run his car off the road into a small ditch. It had taken him twenty minutes to get it out, with the help of a couple of teenagers who'd pushed it while he'd steered it back onto the road.

Now he was here, and he slapped at his pockets for his keys, then remembered they were still in the ignition. He laughed at himself, then got out and staggered toward the steps. He made his way up and went in, turned on the light, and saw the muddy prints across his living room carpet. In his drunken state, he thought he had made them.

He went into the bedroom and failed to notice the wet clothes on the floor. Instead, he stepped out of his shoes, cursed at the wet carpet, and fell onto the bed. He closed his eyes, thankful that he'd finally made it here.

The doorbell rang, followed by a loud knock, and he heard someone shout, “Police, open up!”

He frowned and sat up. What did they want with him now?

He cursed again, got up, and stumbled for the front door. He threw it open. “What?”

“We have a warrant to search your apartment,” the cop said.

He stepped back from the door as they came in. “Wet carpet,” someone said, and Lee found a chair and dropped into it.

“The clothes are here!” someone shouted from the bedroom. “This is exactly what he was wearing.”

He looked up as one of the cops began to handcuff him. “Mr. Barnett, you're under arrest. You have the right to remain silent—”

“You already did this tonight. I got bailed out, remember? I can't get arrested twice for the same fight, can I?”

But the man just kept reading him his rights as they led him out to the police car.

S
id shook his head, puzzled by the news of the theft of David's car and Lee Barnett's arrest. He'd had it figured out, and now, in just a few minutes' time, his theory had been shot all to pieces.

Still, he decided that Stan might not be safe. He headed to Jill's house, where Stan and Aunt Aggie were staying. While he drove, he called Jill back.

“Hello?” She sounded shaken, anxious.

“Jill, I'm on my way to see Stan and Aunt Aggie. I ain't sure what's goin' on or if we got the right man. One minute I'm sure it's David, and then we find David calmly sittin' in his folks' hotel room with some story about a car theft that Celia and Lee Barnett perpetrated, even though I know Celia's there with you.”

“She's not,” Jill cut in.

He didn't hear. “And the next minute we're findin' wet clothes in Lee Barnett's apartment, even though the guys at the station say that right now he's wearin' the same thing he had on when he was arrested earlier tonight—”

“Sid, I said she's not here.”

His words ground to an abrupt halt. “Who? Celia? Jill, where in the world is she?”

“She left. Took my car, while I was talking to you. I just realized she wasn't up in her room.”

Sid felt the heat of a volcano prickling through his skin. “Jill, are you sure you ain't been lyin' to me about her bein' there? Cause if what David says is true—”

“It isn't true, Sid!” she shouted. “She was here! But she found that checkbook, and heard that David had gotten away, and she just left!”

“I don't believe this. She sure don't make it easy to clear her.”

“Sid, listen to me. David's doing it again. He's getting away with it. If you found the wet clothes in Lee Barnett's apartment, couldn't he have put them there? I mean, if he's the killer, he'd have the key to that apartment. He'd be the one who rented it in the first place!”

“That's far-fetched, Jill. I ain't buyin'.”

“But he had the checkbook, Sid. And he's saying that Celia and Lee Barnett stole his car? Lee was in jail, and then someone was following him, weren't they? They would know if he'd gone and turned on the gas starter at Stan's house.”

“R.J. lost him,” Sid said. “There was about an hour there when we didn't know where he was.”

“And you believe that in that time he went home, changed clothes, picked up Celia, stole David's car, broke into Stan's house, waded down the bayou, went home, and changed back into what he'd been wearing before? Come on, Sid!”

“All I know is that David Bradford ain't wet. He's sittin' in his folks' hotel room dry as a bone. The guys just took the report of the stolen car and left him. I talked to 'em myself.”

“They left him there? Are you telling me that he's free to go back out?”

Sid realized that probably wasn't the wisest thing, after all. He was confused. He didn't know what to think. “Look, I'm at your house. I'm gon' go in and talk to Stan. Maybe he can help me sort all this out. Meanwhile, I'm gon' have to put an APB out on Celia. You say she's in your car?”

“Yes, although I can't see how that could be, if she stole David's car.”

“Maybe she stole your car because she couldn't go back to David's, since we'd found it.”

“Sid, for this to be true, I'd have to be lying about her being with me all night. Are you calling me a liar?”

“She's your friend, Jill. You're tryin' to keep her outa trouble.”

“I'm not a liar, Sid!”

Sid cut the phone off and dropped it on his seat, then got out of the car and dashed to the front door.

 

S
tan answered the door, and saw Sid standing there. “What's going on?” Stan asked. “I heard sirens over an hour ago. I tried to call the station to find out what was going on, but I got put on hold—”

“Somebody broke into your house and turned on the gas starter in your fireplace, so you'd die in your sleep.”

Stan's eyebrows lifted. “And you were there, right? Caught him?”

“No,” Sid said. “We botched it up, man. Whoever it was got away. We found David Bradford's car on the other side of the woods, and thought sure it was him. And Celia claims she found the checkbook in his briefcase, but she's disappeared, and I don't even know if Jill was tellin' the truth about her bein' at Aunt Aggie's all night, and David's reported his car stolen, claimin' Celia and Lee Barnett took it, and we found wet clothes in Barnett's floor, even though he really couldn't have had time to do all this since the time he was in jail for the bar fight…and whoever the killer is would have a key to Barnett's apartment anyway…”

“Wait a minute,” Stan said, cutting him off. “David said that Celia and Lee Barnett stole his car?”

“Yes,” Sid said.

He backed off, trying to think. David had the checkbook. David's car was at the scene of the crime. David had lied about Celia stealing his car.

“What is it?” Aunt Aggie called as she came up the hall in her robe. “Somethin' happened?”

Sid nodded, but Stan grabbed his arm and made him look at him. “If David said that, Sid, then he's the killer. Celia didn't do it.”

“But man, I don't know where she is.”

“The question is, where is David?”

“He's at the Newpointe Inn, with his folks. Two of the boys took the stolen car report and left him there.”

“Left him there? Just like that? Sid, are you crazy?”

“They arrested Barnett. Celia's missin'. All the evidence points back to—”

“Sid, there is evidence, and then there is evidence.” He tried to catch his breath. “You're falling for all of it, just like he wants. You aren't using your head. Think! He got away and had to change clothes so he could refocus the suspicion. He had a key to Barnett's apartment! He had to go somewhere!”

“But it's too far-fetched. It ain't as obvious…”

“Sometimes evidence can be too obvious, Sid!” Stan shouted. “Come on. We've got to get to the Newpointe Inn. If it's David, he's not going to stay there for long. And if Celia's out there somewhere, she's probably looking for him. If she gets to him before we do, her life is in danger.”

“Or his,” Sid said.

Stan grabbed his gun and shoulder holster, which had been lying on the table, jerked the keys out of his friend's hand, and headed for the door.

“Wait up, you!” Aunt Aggie shouted. “I'm comin' too.”

“You can't, Aunt Aggie,” Sid said, hurrying out the door. Stan went to the driver's side. “Stan, you can't drive in your condition. I'll drive. Just wait up.”

Stan grudgingly gave him his keys back and got in on the passenger side. Aunt Aggie ran out behind them and jumped into the backseat.

Sid stopped her from closing the door. “No way, Aunt Aggie. Get out!”

“You gon' drag a ole lady outa the car?” she challenged.

“If I have to!” Sid shouted.

“Shut up and get in the car!” Stan yelled. “Celia's life is in danger!”