Dying to Tell (5 page)

He had Ayla now. Ayla was the love of his life.

Sadie had deserted him. And so had Ayla’s mother.

He would never trust another woman again.

Sadie dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands to control the trembling. She dealt with traumatized children, with detectives, with DAs, with violent angry defendants, all the time. She could do this. “Jake, please talk to me. I need to know Amelia’s condition when you found her.”

He hissed a breath, then leaned back in his chair. “When I arrived at the house, I heard crying from upstairs, in the bedroom. Walt was dead, gunshot wound to his head. Amelia was hunched on the floor with the shotgun in her hands.”

Sadie gulped. “He was shot in the head?”

Jake nodded. “Yeah. It was a mess. Blood was everywhere...”

Sadie bit her tongue in denial. Her sister might be crazy, but she wouldn’t kill Papaw...There had to be another explanation.

One of the personalities in her head?

But why? None of them had ever turned violent toward Papaw before.

To one other person, yes, but not to family...

Something wasn’t right.

“Nobody else was there?” she asked. “Maybe someone else shot Papaw and put the gun in Amelia’s hands.”

“Amelia was the only one in the house.” He spread his hands on the file on his desk, covering the folder that probably had photos of the crime scene. “After I took the gun away from her, I searched the house and perimeter.”

Then Sadie spotted another file peeking from the stack and noticed it was labeled “Arthur Blackwood.” A shudder coursed through her. Oh, God, was Jake looking into his father’s disappearance?

Of course he would...

Had he found out anything so far?

A tense second passed, and she tried to pull herself together. “Did my sister say anything?” Sadie asked. “Offer any explanation about what happened?”

Jake shook his head, making a lock of black, wavy hair fall across his forehead. She had the insane urge to sweep it back with her fingers like she used to do. She could almost hear the way he groaned her name when she touched him.

When he touched her...

No, Sadie, you can’t go there. Too many secrets. Too many lies.

Besides, hadn’t she heard he’d married? She couldn’t see who was in that photograph on his desk, but it was probably his beloved wife.

“I tried to talk to your sister,” Jake said. “But she just stared into space as if she couldn’t see me. As if she was lost in her own world.”

Despair threatened...she’d seen her sister like that before. So many times.

Jake continued in a monotone, “I called the coroner for your grandfather, then Ms. Lettie phoned Dr. Tynsdale and he came right away.”

“What did Dr. Tynsdale say?”

“That Amelia was traumatized. She’d slipped into a near catatonic state.”

“But you arrested her and brought her here instead of the hospital?”

Jake’s jaw tightened. “I had to, Sadie. She was holding the damn murder weapon in her hands.”

Sadie felt panicky, as if the room, the walls, the years, were closing in on her. As if they were going to shatter and all the secrets would tumble out and she would crumble and blow away like dead leaves in the wind.

But she couldn’t let Jake see her weakness. “Are you sure there was no one else around? It probably took you a few minutes to reach the farm once you received the call.”

A tense pause. “I did everything by the book, Sadie. My deputy and I searched for footprints and signs of an intruder outside and inside, but found nothing. Then I processed your sister’s hands, checked for powder burns, and collected samples. They’re at the lab now.” He leaned forward, so close she could see the scar above his right eye.

The one he’d gotten defending her in a school fight.

“Your sister fired the gun, Sadie. She killed your grandfather.”

Sadie swallowed hard. If Amelia had shot Papaw, she had to have been confused. Thought he was someone else.

Or that
she
was...

“Have you talked to Amelia or your grandfather lately?” Jake asked. “Maybe one of them hinted there was a problem. Something going on between the two of them that could have triggered this.”

Was that censure in his voice? Did he think this was her fault for not being here? “No...”

“No, you haven’t talked to them,” Jake asked, “or no, they didn’t mention anything was wrong?”

Guilt clawed at her barely leashed control. Jake’s mother had died when he was only four while giving birth to his little sister, who had died as well. Unlike her, he remembered his mother. She had told him that family meant everything.

According to him, Sadie had failed by deserting hers.

If only he knew the truth about his own.

No...he could never know. She would never hurt him like that.

So she squared her shoulders. “No, I haven’t talked to either of them in a while. Ms. Lettie had my number and was supposed to call me if there was a problem.”

“Well, you’re here now. Maybe you can convince your sister to tell us what happened.”

He folded his big hands into fists. Sadie saw the faint line where a wedding ring had once been, but it was gone.

Was he still married?

“You know Amelia doesn’t belong here, Jake. She needs psychiatric treatment, not to be locked in jail like an animal.”

Jake gave a clipped nod in concession. “The doctor is handling the paperwork to have her transferred to the mental hospital. I expect he’ll be here shortly.”

“Good.”

Jake shuffled the file, and the edge of a photograph slipped into view. Blood dotted the carpet in Papaw’s room.

She averted her gaze, her stomach revolting.

“Do you want to see your sister now?” Jake asked.

She couldn’t avoid it any longer. But fear slithered through her. Persuading her sister to talk meant opening herself to the pain of meeting the
others
again.

But she had learned a lot on the job. She simply had to use her skills to unearth the truth.

Then she could get the hell out of Slaughter Creek before her whole world fell apart around her, and she ended up locked up like her sister.

D
read ballooned in Sadie’s stomach, but she reminded herself that she wasn’t five years old anymore. She wouldn’t fall apart now. She’d do whatever needed to be done.

Even if it meant lying to Jake.

Or to herself.

Lightning crackled outside, the sky opening to dump rain on the earth, and thunder pounded against the tin roof. She tensed, waiting for the trees to start snapping and for sparks to fly. For the tornado to strike.

“Sadie, are you all right?” Jake asked quietly. “We don’t have to do this tonight if you’d rather wait.”

The subtle note of sympathy in his voice almost brought tears to her eyes. And Sadie hadn’t cried in front of anyone in a long damn time. She had to get a grip.

“No. I need to see her.” She took a step toward the door. She was a professional now, a counselor, an art therapist. She knew tricks to coax people into opening up. But would they work on her own sister? “Don’t expect too much, Jake. If one of Amelia’s alters has taken over, she might not talk to me.”

Jake’s eyes held a sliver of compassion, and she realized she’d said too much. “I don’t understand the alters. How many are there?”

“Amelia has three personalities. The first one that emerged was Bessie. She’s the childlike personality, the innocent little girl. Actually, she appeared when Amelia was little, about three. At first, my grandparents and I thought she was just an imaginary friend, and we went along with it. But when Amelia was eight and she started showing signs that she really believed she was Bessie, Papaw got worried and took her to therapy. Then around age twelve, adolescence hit and Viola, the woman who likes sex, came out. A couple of years later, Skid, the angry belligerent teenage boy, appeared. He claims to protect the others.”

“Does Amelia talk to them?”

“When she was younger, she had no idea the others existed. She completely blacked out when one of them took over. It’s called a transition state. The goal is to merge the alters into one identity.”

“And now?”

“Obviously she still blacks out sometimes, especially during a stressful situation like Papaw’s death.” Sadie ran a hand through her hair. “Although Dr. Tynsdale said she had progressed to the point that the other three personalities had met and started to talk to each other. Now at times Amelia can hear them. Hopefully she’ll become strong enough to stand on her own, and she won’t need them anymore.”

“So you’ll try to talk to each of them and find out what really happened last night?”

“Yes.” Déjà vu struck Sadie, and she wanted to run again. To be back in San Francisco, where the temperature stayed the same all year. Where thunderstorms didn’t rip apart trees...and lives. Where the ghosts of the past weren’t waiting to choke her.

Where no one knew Sadie, and her twin, the crazy lady.

But she couldn’t share any of that with this man.

She had to protect Amelia, just as she always had. “But first, I should call a lawyer.”

“Tynsdale’s already called Chad Marshall.”

“Chad’s a lawyer now?”

Jake’s lips thinned, and she remembered that Jake and Chad had butted heads in high school. In sports and over girls. “Yeah.”

“Good. Then I’ll talk to Chad.”

Jake gave a clipped nod, then gestured toward the door. “Come on, I’ll take you to see Amelia now. But brace yourself. I just took over the job, and I haven’t had time to clean up the cells.”

They turned right out of his office, then walked through another set of double doors. She prepared herself for one of her sister’s notorious, tearful outbursts, for a cuss fight from Skid, for the slutty voice of Viola, or for a stranger she might not recognize at all.

But an ominous silence reverberated off the dingy walls.

Two cells sat on the right, two more on the left. Basic prison decor—stained concrete walls and floor. The place reeked of dust, urine, sweat, and the musty odor of cigarettes. An odor she remembered from the first time she’d visited her sister in jail when she was fifteen, and Viola had gotten caught shoplifting lingerie at the local department store.

A thin thread of light from outside had managed to creep through the narrow windows, which had been carved out above eye level and were too small for a person to crawl through.

Jake stopped at the first cell on the right and reached for the keys jangling from the hook on his belt loop. Apparently Amelia had the place to herself.

Through the metal bars, she stared at the pitiful lump hunched on the cot.

The girl who’d played with her as a child and told secrets to her as a teenager lay curled in a fetal position facing the wall, a
thin wool blanket pulled over her body and head, as if she’d disappeared inside it.

The sight reminded Sadie of the first time Amelia came back from the sanitarium. She’d talked about how awful it had been, about a friend she’d made named Grace. At first Sadie thought Grace wasn’t real, that she was another personality.

But Grace had been real. She’d had as many problems as Amelia, and had been in and out of the hospital just as often.

The keys rattled as Jake twisted the lock, then the metal door screeched open. The concrete floor was cold and bare, the paint peeling off the pea-green walls. Foul words that would make her Gran roll over in her grave had been scratched above the bed, a disgusting figure of two people having violent sex etched above a dingy toilet, which had probably never seen Pine-Sol, much less bleach.

This was what her sister’s life had come to. Locked behind bars. Forced to pee in the open and sleep with the roaches on a disease-infested cot.

A plastic tray from the diner next door holding a cold biscuit and rubbery eggs sat on the floor, untouched. The tray was devoid of silverware, and she assumed Doc Tynsdale had ordered Jake not to let her sister have anything that could be considered dangerous or used as a weapon. The first time Amelia had spent the night in a cell, she’d tried to kill herself with a fork, so they’d learned to be cautious early on.