Racing the Devil Read online

  “Oh.” Her voice was weak, her skin suddenly chalky beneath her makeup. “Oh, dear.”

  She laid the phone back in its cradle and slumped onto a tall, three-legged stool behind the counter. Her mouth opened, closed, opened again.

  “Who are you?” she managed. “How do you . . .”

  “I have an interest in finding Amy Hartwell’s murderer,” I said.

  “The police have Amy’s murderer. They took him into custody a week ago yesterday.”

  “He didn’t do it,” I said. “I know this for a fact. What’s more, the police are also finding evidence to that effect.”

  “I don’t understand. I thought . . . Cal said they had DNA. Fingerprints. He said they had an ironclad case.”

  I shrugged. “Unsinkable. Like the Titanic.”

  She nibbled at a fingernail. Squinted across the counter at me. Then she paled as recognition crept across her face. “Oh. Sweet Jesus,” she moaned. She slid off the stool and backed away until her backside bumped into the wall.

  “Don’t be an ass,” I said. “If I meant to hurt you, I’d have come to your house.”

  She shook her hands, as if you could shake off fear as easily as water. “What do you want?”

  “How long have you been sleeping with Cal Hartwell?”

  “I don’t see what—” she started. Then she must have realized what a predicament she was in. She heaved a deep sigh and frowned, counting silently on her fingers. “About four months. Give or take.”

  “And you met—how?”

  “At church.” She lowered her eyes. They were brown with a reddish cast, like Coca-Cola in the sunlight. It was easy to see what Hartwell saw in her.

  “You knew Amy too?”

  “Not well.”

  “How’d the affair start?” I hoped by firing questions at her, I could keep her off guard and answering me.

  “I . . . We were at a church supper. Amy was over at the buffet table talking to some other ladies, and Cal and I got to talking. He said his wife was getting so independent that pretty soon she wouldn’t need him anymore. He laughed when he said it, but I could see how hurt he was. And we just . . . started talking. That was all it was at first. We’d meet for lunch, or dinner sometimes, and we’d talk.”

  “And then?”

  “Then one day, I told him I had always wanted to build a big house in the country. I could see it in my head, but I didn’t know how to make it work. And he said he was an architect, and he could make the plans for me. So he came over to my house one evening after work, and one thing led to another, and . . .” She made a rolling motion with her hand. “He was very unhappy.”

  “Because his wife was working.”

  “No. Because she was no kind of wife at all. He’d come home, and dinner wouldn’t be made. She’d heat up leftovers, or make boxed macaroni and cheese, or even order out for pizza. Sometimes she’d bring home fast food. Calvin put a stop to that. He said he wanted good meals on the table for those children, and if she didn’t fix them, he was going to divorce her, and he’d see that he got custody. He could, you know. And I’d have been happy to take care of them.”

  I tried to keep my tone neutral. “You discussed this? His divorcing her and marrying you? You two taking the girls?”

  “It was never just a cheap affair.” Her chin lifted. “He loves me. And I love him. I would be a much better wife than she was. And a better mother.”

  “You’d quit your job here, I suppose.”

  “If Calvin asked me to.”

  “He asked Amy to.”

  “It wasn’t the job,” she said. “It was the way she started putting everything before him and the girls. And she was cheating on him.”

  “So was he,” I pointed out. “Cheating.”

  The look she gave me would have shattered nails. “She started it,” she said. Then her gaze slid away again, and she sighed. “Oh, I know it wasn’t right. We should have waited. But there he was, so unhappy. And there she was, rubbing his nose in her new liber-ated-ness. It was a sick family, anyway.”

  “How so?”

  “First, Amy gets herself pregnant and snatches Cal from her sister. And then the sister turns around and tempts him right back to her bed. Sick. No wonder he wanted out. And there we were, falling in love and knowing we were perfect for each other. It was like God had given us to each other.”

  “Oh,” I said, nodding. “God told you it was okay.”

  “No,” she snapped. “God didn’t say it was okay. He would have preferred we wait. But Amy was unfaithful, and Cal would have gotten a divorce soon, and we’d be together then, anyway. And I’m sure God would forgive us for . . . anticipating things.”

  “Soooo.” I frowned, trying to absorb this. “You and Cal were having an affair, which was all right, because Cal was unhappy and because Amy was also having an affair, which wasn’t all right, whether she was unhappy or not.”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.” She had almost recovered her equilibrium by then, perhaps having decided that I wasn’t there to kill her. “I’m not saying what I did with Cal is all right. I’m just saying that, as sins go, it wasn’t all that much of one, considering the circumstances. I really feel that God meant for us to be together.”

  “How convenient of Amy to get herself murdered,” I said, between gritted teeth.

  She turned her face away. “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “Tell me, do you know where Cal was the night Amy died? Because some of his neighbors say he didn’t come home until after two.”

  “That old busybody down the street,” she said. “Cal told me about her. The answer is, of course I know where he was. He was with me.”

  What a surprise. The question was, was she telling the truth? And if she was, were she and Calvin busy making the beast with two backs? Or busy murdering Cal’s wife and setting me up for it?

  Again, I came to that sticky question. Why me? Their motive for Amy was clear, but neither of them had a reason to destroy my life. I’d never heard of either of them before Amy’s murder. Maybe they just figured a disgraced cop would be easy to frame.

  And where did Heather come into the equation? Another of Cal’s lovers, maybe? Would Glenda be so anxious to give Cal an alibi if she knew there was a Heather?

  “I take it you’re not married,” I said, though at that point nothing would have surprised me.

  “Divorced,” she said. “It was a long time ago. He was an alcoholic. Not a Christian man at all.”

  “Not like Cal.”

  She gave me a hard look. “No. Not like Cal.”

  “Children?”

  “No. But Cal and I were going to, as soon as we were married.”

  “Do you know if he had insurance on Amy’s life?”

  “I’ve no idea. And I think I’ve answered enough of your questions. Are you going to buy that?” She gestured toward the angel pin.

  “Sure.” I tossed it onto the counter and reached for my wallet. “Never know when you might need a little divine intervention.”

  “It isn’t a rabbit’s foot,” she said, striking the cash register keys with more force than necessary. “It’s just to remind you to live a Christian life. Like the WWJD bracelets. ‘What would Jesus do?’ ”

  “Oh.” I slipped my receipt into my pocket and slid the pin back toward her. “In that case, maybe you should keep it. Here’s another couple dollars. Buy one for your boyfriend too.”

  I left before she could throw me out.

  As I passed her Ford Escort, I glanced inside to see the color of the carpet.

  It was gray.

  AMY AND CALVIN. VALERIE and Calvin. Younger sister tempts older sister’s boyfriend, older sister seduces younger sister’s husband.

  Valerie had said Dakota colicked on the night of Amy’s murder. But what if he hadn’t? Valerie was a beautiful woman, but she was also tall and lean, with strong features and an interest in acting. With facial hair and bound breasts—and a distracted witness—she
might pass for a man. She was smaller than I was, but with a bulky jacket and lifts in her boots . . .

  I laughed aloud at the thought. Not in a million years. Even considering the possibility meant I was more desperate than I wanted to admit. Of course, she could have waited in the car while her boyfriend rented the motel room. I didn’t like having these thoughts, but I couldn’t afford not to have them.

  I called her from a pay phone at the strip mall down the street, in case she had caller I.D., and in a gravelly voice, said I had a rescued Arabian mare with show and breeding potential who had to be re-homed immediately because my other horses were bullying her. I said I’d gotten ValeSong’s number from the folks at Dark Horse Saddlery, and that I’d give the horse away if someone would come and get her. Then, feeling like a heel, I gave her an address that would take her thirty minutes to get to.

  The eagerness in her voice told me she’d taken the bait, and forty minutes later, the red Chevy passed, a white two-horse trailer wobbling behind it.

  There were no other cars in ValeSong’s driveway. Presumably, if there were boarders, they were at work, which was just as well for me.

  I stopped to give Dakota a pat before ducking into the office. Maybe I’d see nothing on the colic tapes but the colt pacing in his stall, but if she’d gone in to check on him . . .

  I pushed the first tape into the machine. The time and date flashed in the lower right-hand corner of the screen: 4:00 p.m. June 23rd. Too early. I fast-forwarded through half a dozen videos before I found the ones that accounted for the time between ten p.m. and seven in the morning.

  The picture was grainy, but I could see well enough. Dakota stood in his stall, pawing at the ground. He curled his upper lip, butted at his flanks with his nose. A few minutes later, he kicked at his belly. Rolled. Stood up, paced and pawed some more, rolled again. Clearly, he was suffering.

  Valerie had gone into his stall once every half hour to rub his belly and tempt him with a few wisps of hay. No time to drive thirty miles, murder her sister, and stage the scene.

  Relieved, I rewound the tapes and put them back where I’d found them.

  I called Frank from the car and told him about Glenda Mathis and the gray carpet. Thought about telling him about Valerie and Calvin and decided to keep that to myself for the moment. Then, to make up for missing the RC and Moon Pie festival with Paulie, I went by Maria’s to pick him up and keep him until his birthday party on Wednesday. Maria had invited Jay and me, along with Randall and his crew. Oh boy. The first family picnic with D.W. I could hardly wait.

  MY SON, PAUL ANTHONY MCKEAN missed being a July Fourth baby by a mere six minutes. I was twenty-eight, and Maria thirty-two.

  She’d refused the amniocentesis, which her doctor recommended to all pregnant women over thirty, because of the potential for miscarriage. It wasn’t a huge risk, but any risk was more than she was willing to take.

  “I want this baby so much,” she told me. “I never knew I could want anything so much.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I said dryly, and she poked me in the bicep and said, “You know what I mean.”

  Enlightened guy that I am, I accompanied my wife into the delivery room. Piece of cake, I thought. As a cop, I’d seen autopsies and cadavers. I’d seen gunshot wounds and knife wounds and victims of bludgeoning. I’d seen more blood and pain than I knew what to do with, and I felt worldly and jaded and extremely prepared.

  I wasn’t.

  There’s nothing more painful than watching someone you love more than life suffer, knowing there is nothing you can do for her except say, “You’re doing great, honey. Breathe.”

  Then it was over, and I saw a glimpse of my son, limp and blue, slick with Maria’s blood and coated with a waxy substance that resembled nothing else so much as cream cheese.

  The doctor and his entourage of nurses surged around the baby with an urgency I knew meant trouble.

  “Is he dead?” I asked, the fear in my gut like a cannonball.

  “Is he . . . ?”

  Maria clutched at my hand as if she meant to crush it. Tears streaked her face, and I could see her lips were pressed together, holding in the panic.

  I heard phrases like, “Apgar three,” and “. . . parents out of here,” and “. . . poor little thing.”

  Dr. Beach pushed out of the clump of nurses, who were doing something to our baby I couldn’t see and didn’t understand. The look on his face was one I’d seen too many times, on Frank’s face, on Harry’s. I was sure other people had seen it on my own and dreaded what it meant. It was the face we wore when we were bearing news that shouldn’t have to be borne.

  “No,” said Dr. Beach. “He isn’t dead. But it might be better if he were.”

  “DADDY, I GOT BIRFDAY COMIN’,” Paul said.

  “I know. Wednesday. How old will you be?”

  “Seven.” His forehead puckered in concentration as he worked to hold up the correct number of fingers. “I seven.”

  “No, sport,” I corrected. “You’re seven now. Wednesday, you’ll be eight.”

  “Be eight?” He sounded puzzled.

  “That’s right. On Wednesday, you’ll be eight years old.”

  “Eight,” he repeated. Then, “What happen to seven?”

  I shook my head and laughed. “Sometimes I wonder the same thing.” What happened to seven and seventeen and twenty-seven? How did I become one of the men I used to call “sir”?

  We stopped at Blockbuster and rented a video.

  I parked in the shade and left the motor running and the air conditioner on so that Queenie, the twelve-year-old Akita I’d had since she was six weeks old, wouldn’t overheat. I got her, like Paulie, every other weekend, plus two weeks in the summer and certain holidays. I’d taken her with me when Maria and I separated, but Paulie cried for her until I had to take her back.

  “Want Annie,” Paul said.

  He’d seen Annie about a hundred times. So many times, in fact, that he knew almost all the songs and most of the lines. Worse, so did I. “You have Annie at home, sport. How about Homeward Bound? Or Hercules?”

  “Annie,” he said. “Or Snow White. Hi ho, hi ho.”

  I sighed. “Okay. You win. Pick the one you want.”

  We went home with both.

  When he saw the Snow White box, Jay tried without success to hide an amused smirk. “Hi ho, hi ho,” he said to Paul, and received a pudgy high five in return.

  While I took care of the horses, Paul helped Jay make veggie cheeseburgers and oven-baked potato wedges. Paul will eat almost anything, unless it’s sticky. His teachers call him “tactilely defensive,” which is a fancy way of saying he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. He hates clay and fingerpaint. When he paints, he uses a brush and makes short, precise strokes, careful not to get any on himself.

  After dinner, we watched the movies for the hundred-and-first time. He took his bath (mostly by himself), I helped him into his Batman pajamas, and after pushing aside a small army of Beanie Babies, tucked him into bed.

  Queenie put her paws up on the bed and whimpered, so I boosted her up too. Before her arthritis, she could jump over a car, one of the few impressive tricks I ever taught her.

  With Paulie in bed, I went downstairs and called Frank.

  “Randall?” he asked, when I said hello.

  “No, it’s Jared. Why would Randall be calling you?”

  “He called earlier to see how the case was going. I thought he was you.”

  “We don’t sound that much alike.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  I filled him in on what I’d learned, which wasn’t much, and pumped him for information.

  “We found pollen in her clothes,” he said. “And a few blades of grass. The lab guys think it’s possible she was killed or drugged someplace else and brought to the motel.”

  “That helps my case, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why would I stage a crime scene specifically to incriminate myself?”r />
  “That’s a good question. I can’t imagine why. If you’re lucky, maybe the Grand Jury will think the same thing. Only, it’s not a given that’s what happened. They said it was possible. It’s just as possible that she went for a walk before she met her killer—I’m assuming it wasn’t you—and picked up the pollen and the blades of grass then.”

  “So we’re still nowhere.”

  “Every piece of the puzzle helps make the picture.”

  Frank’s favorite platitude. It was a good way to work, adding a piece of the puzzle here, another piece there. Only this time, I had little patience with it. I wanted a bolt from Heaven to illuminate the real killer—or killers. I wanted to be cleared of Amy’s murder, and I wanted it now.

  As my mother used to say, People in Hell want ice water, too, but they ain’t gettin’ it.

  “What about the time of death?” I said.

  “A little after one.”

  Which gave Cal Hartwell plenty of time to kill his wife and get back home by two-thirty to haul the girls out of Ms. Birdie’s spare room. If he were guilty, I wondered, would it have been smarter to leave them where they were and say he’d gotten home at midnight?

  “And the body? There was semen. I know that. But was she penetrated?”

  Frank coughed. “There was vaginal bruising and abrasions. The forensics boys think it might have occurred post-mortem.”

  “Necrophilia?”

  “Maybe. Or the perp might have used an object of some kind. Bottle, maybe. The body was posed. Spread-eagled. So the first thing you’d see coming in the room was her crotch.”

  I winced at the image. That kind of posing sent a message: This woman is a whore.

  “There was something else, too,” Frank said. “Someone laid a pillow across her face.”

  So the killer had a moment of remorse. Or at least some sense of guilt. Usually, a killer covers his victim’s face because he knows her, or at least thinks of her as human, and doesn’t want her corpse to look at him. With her eyes covered, she can’t accuse him anymore. No accusation, no more sense of guilt.

  I’d read somewhere that people were murdered because they got too close to evil. But evil doesn’t always have horns and a tail. It’s not always easy to recognize.