Southern Lights (16 page)

“Until May or June, after the trial.” Her eyes flew open when he answered.

“Luisa must be very upset.” She hadn’t said a word about it, but they hadn’t talked in several days.

“That’s an understatement. She’s ready to kill me. But Savannah is a very sweet girl.” His mother said nothing. “She’s my daughter,” he added. “I can’t just treat her as though I owe her nothing. It’s not right. I never should have let Luisa talk me into keeping her away from Charleston and only seeing her in New York. She’s part of my life too, or she should be, and she hasn’t been for more than ten years.”

“It’s too upsetting for Luisa to have her here.” Eugenie hadn’t wanted him keeping any ties to Alexa, any more than Luisa did. She knew how much Tom had loved her, and she didn’t want him going back to her. Luisa was his wife. And after her “little mistake,” as his mother called it, Luisa had come back. His mother wanted it to stay that way. Luisa was a good southern girl from Charleston. Alexa was a stranger, from a totally different world. She didn’t belong here. And neither did her daughter. But Savannah was Tom’s too. She didn’t want to admit that.

“Luisa will have to put up with it till after the trial,” Tom said firmly. “She owes Alexa that. Alexa took care of the boys for seven years, while Luisa was in Texas. Three months now won’t kill her.” But she might kill him. It looked likely.

“What’s she like?” his mother asked him. “How old is she now?” It seemed like a hundred years since they had left.

“She’s seventeen, beautiful, sweet, polite, kind, gentle, smart. She looks like her mother.” His mother’s mouth shrank into a thin line again, and he decided to give up. “You don’t have to see her, Mother. I wasn’t going to ask. I knew how you’d feel about it. But Savannah suggested it last night, so I thought I’d mention it to you. I’ll just tell her you don’t see visitors anymore.” His mother said nothing, and he got up to leave and gently stroked her hair. He was a loving son, and had always been devoted and respectful, and obeyed her commands. He bent to kiss her cheek then, and she looked at him with steely eyes.

“Bring her to tea on Sunday” was all she said, picked up her book, and began reading again. And without another word, he walked quietly off the porch and drove away. Savannah had gotten her wish. And Luisa would have another fit. He was used to it. She didn’t scare him anymore. Savannah’s visit had given him something back he lost a long time ago. Courage.

Chapter 10

When Alexa got to her office the next morning, she had a message from Joe McCarthy, the district attorney, to come and see him immediately. It sounded important. She went straight to his office, and his secretary waved her in. Joe was sitting at his desk, and Jack was with him. It looked like something had happened. Both men looked concerned. It didn’t look good to her.

“Something wrong?” she asked as she took the seat Joe waved her into. He cut to the chase.

“The FBI wants our case.” He looked unhappy about it.

“What case? Luke Quentin?” Alexa’s eyes widened, but she wasn’t totally surprised. They had been moving in that direction ever since his victims started turning up in other states. Once state lines were crossed, the FBI always got involved. They all knew that.

“They want the credit for the investigation and the conviction.” Joe McCarthy told her what he had just told Jack.

“They can’t have it. They can help us with the investigation if they want, and they have been. But there are other local law enforcement agencies involved. And a task force, which, I have to admit, they’ve been running lately. But we found the first four bodies in New York, and we arraigned him here. The case is ours.” She didn’t want the glory of it, or the press, but they had worked hard on it, Jack especially, and so had she, and she didn’t want to give it up now. And she was determined to put Quentin behind bars. “If they take it, it’ll be a mess, with states crawling all over each other, dragging him around to try him. We need to associate their cases to ours and we have been. It’s all nicely tied up. We’ve arraigned him on each charge here. I don’t see why the FBI can’t sit in on it with us. We’re not hiding anything from them, and we can use all the help we can get on the investigation, but he’s going to cost the taxpayers a fortune if we start shipping him around to eight other states, and the FBI doesn’t want to do that either. He’s ours.” She said it without hesitation, and Joe smiled at her.

“I like a woman who knows what she wants,” he said, looking less worried. “You’re not afraid of trying this case, Alexa? You’ve already got a cop at your apartment, and I hear you had to send your daughter away. You wouldn’t rather just give it up?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” she said calmly. “I want to finish what I started. Luke Quentin is a sociopath, and a cold-hearted killer, and I want to try him. I’m not afraid of him. And my daughter is fine where she is. I miss her, but I’ve got too much work to spend time with her anyway. Let’s do this, guys. We can’t let the FBI rip us off. They’re in it for the glory. We’re not. We’re working our asses off here. Let them help us with the investigation. We’ll do the trial. Legally we have the right since we found the first four bodies.” Technically, she was right, but the FBI had a lot of clout, and it could have gone either way.

“I’ll see what I can do. How’s the investigation going?” He hadn’t asked in a few days—he’d been too busy battling the FBI director about the case.

“We’ve got DNA matches on almost every victim. We’re missing two, and we’re waiting for the results from Illinois,” Jack filled him in.

“And he still won’t plead?” Joe looked surprised.

“No,” Alexa answered. “What does the PD say?”

“That he’s innocent and someone framed him,” she said with a contemptuous smile.

“With DNA matches and seventeen victims?

What’s she smoking?”

“Her shoes. He’s very seductive, and I think he cast a spell on her. She’s young, and he knows just how to do it. He’s a perfect sociopath.”

“Do we have a psych evaluation on him yet?”

“We have two. Sociopath right down the line.”

“Does she know that?”

“We’re in discovery now. She has everything we have. No surprises.”

“This is going to be ugly. A jury’s going to hang him, and the judge will sentence him to about a thousand years.”

“I agree,” Alexa said with a sigh. She was tired, but doing a good job on the case, and both men knew it. She always did. She was unbelievably thorough, and the DA liked everything he was hearing. He didn’t want to take the case away from her if he could help it. He was going to fight harder to keep it. She had convinced him. She was the right prosecutor for the case. No federal prosecutor could have done better. “Quentin wants his day in court. I think he likes the media coverage,” Alexa said wisely.

“I hate that,” the DA said angrily, but there was no way to stop it. Luke Quentin was national news now. And so was Alexa. She had been extremely discreet about it. She didn’t want to blow the case with anything she said in the press. She knew better, and the DA liked that too.

He reassured both of them then that he would fight to keep the case, and pull all the strings available to him. And after that they left his office. Both Jack and Alexa were still concerned.

“Shit, I hope we don’t lose the case,” Alexa said as they stopped at the coffee machine for two cups, black. She was living on it, and candy bars, at her desk till midnight every night.

“Hopefully, he’ll use his influence to keep it,” Jack said as he followed her back to her office. He hardly saw her anymore, he was too busy working. He had just come back from Pittsburgh the day before, where he had gone to help with the investigation there, and trade information. “I must say, this sonofabitch is keeping us busy.”

“That’s our job,” Alexa said as she smiled at him and sat down at her desk. She felt as though she lived there.

“Do you ever get tired of it?” he asked with a worn-out look, and sipped his coffee.

“Sometimes. Not this one. It’s the shoplifters and the piddly stuff that gets me. At least with a case like this, I feel useful. I’m protecting society and young women. With the shoplifters, I’m torturing them for stealing panty hose in Macy’s basement. Who cares?” Some of the cases were bigger than that, she knew, but most weren’t.

“How’s Savannah, by the way?” Alexa sighed when he asked her.

“She’s okay. She’s with her father, in Charleston. She’s not loving it, but she’s a good sport about it. I miss her.” It was lonely without her, and Jack knew it.

“If the FBI gets the case, you could bring her back,” he said, but Alexa shook her head.

“I don’t want her back here till this case is over, no matter who tries it. The guy is a maniac. He could still torture her for what I’ve done so far, and I think he would. I think he’ll give it up when he’s convicted and goes back to prison. Then it’s all over, and he knows it. Now he’s King of the Hill.” Jack didn’t disagree with her. Quentin was thriving on the attention. Jack had seen him several times recently, and Quentin got bolder every time. He was drunk with excitement. And his defense lawyer’s blind innocence and admiration just added to it. He thought he had the whole world fooled, but he didn’t. He just thought so. He was suffering from grandiosity in the extreme. Nothing could touch him, or so he thought. Until he was convicted.

“I think you’re smart to keep her there,” Jack said honestly.

“I hope so,” Alexa sighed again. “To be honest, I worry about her falling in love with it, the way I did. The South is very seductive, particularly a city as pretty as Charleston. People are friendly and charming. Everything is beautiful. It’s a different world, a different life. It’s true when they say the South is gracious. I loved it when I lived there. And then it turned on me, and all that warmth and kindness turned out to be bullshit. They stick with their own. They’d rather have a bad Confederate than a good Yankee in their midst. I got screwed over by everyone I knew there.” And she was still bitter about it. Maybe she always would be.

“They can’t all be like that,” Jack suggested.

“Maybe not. But that’s how it shook out for me. Savannah is still in the honeymoon phase. She’s discovering all the beauty of it. The bad stuff comes later.”

“Sounds like marriage to me.” Jack chuckled as he looked at her. “I’m not so sure things are any different here.”

“The South is a special place. It’s from another century. It was a great place to live when I was there. I don’t want Savannah to stay there, or want to. I’m hoping I get her back here before she gets hooked. Hopefully her evil stepmother will take care of that for me. Her father is married to a real bitch.”

“Sounds like he deserved it.” Alexa nodded in agreement, and with that, she picked up her voluminous files on the Quentin case and they got back to work. They sat there till three, and ate sandwiches at her desk. And then Jack went back to his own office. Alexa was in hers until midnight yet again.

Savannah didn’t tell her mother she was going to see her paternal grandmother that weekend. She didn’t want to upset her. She knew Alexa had enough on her mind with the case. And Tom didn’t tell Luisa. It was none of her business.

He drove Savannah there on Sunday afternoon. And he was surprised to see his mother sitting in her drawing room, instead of on the porch. There was a tea tray on the table. Savannah walked in behind him, and was startled by how shabby the room looked. She only vaguely remembered it. The house had been beautiful at one time, but there was an air of decrepitude about it. Like her grandmother, it had seen better days, and was fading.

Tom’s mother was sitting in a large chair, waiting. Her hair was perfectly smoothed into the bun she wore, and her sharp eyes observed them both. She could see instantly that her son was protective of Savannah, and attached to her, and his mother didn’t like it. As far as she was concerned, Savannah didn’t deserve it. She had tried to erase Savannah and Alexa from their lives. And she felt that his feelings for Savannah were a betrayal of Luisa. But she hadn’t told Luisa about the meeting either. They were all in collusion and felt guilty. And his mother resented that too.

“Hello, Grandmother,” Savannah said politely, extending a hand to her, and the old woman didn’t take it.

“I have arthritis,” she said, which was true, but not to that extent. She always shook hands with her minister when he came to visit. And she would have preferred it if Savannah had called her Mrs. Beaumont now, but she didn’t say it. “I understand you’re here until June,” she said directly to Savannah, as her ancient maid came in to pour them tea.

“I might be,” Savannah said quietly, sitting down carefully on a narrow chair near her grandmother. Everything in the room seemed fragile and dusty. Savannah hoped she wouldn’t sneeze. “It might be May, if my mother’s case goes more quickly. But it’s a big case, it could take a while to try.”

“Your mother wasn’t a lawyer when I knew her,” her grandmother said with an air of disapproval, and Savannah nodded. It was hard not to be daunted by this ancient, sharp-featured woman. She was old, but tough as nails.

“She went to law school after the”—she started to say “divorce” and then stopped herself instinctively—“after we went back to New York. My other grandmother is a lawyer too.”

“I know.” Eugenie Beaumont nodded. “I met her. She was a very nice woman.” She was willing to concede that, but nothing about Alexa, out of loyalty to Luisa.

“Thank you,” Savannah said politely, still holding the cup of tea. She had worn a gray skirt and a white sweater, and she looked neat, clean, and demure. Tom was proud of her, for wanting to come here, and being brave enough to do it. His mother wasn’t easy.

“Do you want to be a lawyer too?” Her grandmother scowled at her. She was looking to find fault with her, Tom could see, but had found none so far. She was clearly a northern girl, and lacked the softness of the South, but she was polite and well bred, and Eugenie liked that.

“No. I think I’d like to be a journalist, but I’m not sure yet. I just applied to college, and I don’t have to declare my major for two years.” Her grandmother asked what colleges she had applied to, and was impressed by the list. They were all first-rate schools, including Duke.