Authors: Polly Iyer
Reece started the car and did what Steve told him, feeling part Inspector Clouseau and part James Bond. He realized as he passed the police station what danger he faced if a cop spotted him.
“Take the right fork,” Steve said. They crossed over a small bridge. “Turn left into that drive.” He drove into the parking lot of the sailing club.
Reece pulled into a space facing the harbor. In better times, he would have enjoyed the view of the boats bobbing in the water, the clouds like cotton candy billowing over the sea. But these weren’t normal times, and everything blurred under the weight of his situation. A couple of cars were parked nearby, but he didn’t see anyone. Steve was as slim and athletic looking as he was in college. His light brown hair brushed his shirt collar and framed a spare, angular face.
Steve studied him. “I wouldn’t have recognized you if your picture hadn’t been all over the front pages of the newspaper, and if I didn’t know you were coming. You don’t look the same, but you look good.”
“Mark called you?”
“Yeah. He felt me out first before he told me. He said he almost had to gag his wife. She wanted to call the cops.”
“That was clear when I was there.”
“Do you know what you’re doing?”
“Other than possibly getting people like yourself in trouble if anyone finds out? Probably not. If I had any faith in the law, I’d turn myself in. But I have a hard time believing the law is on my side. I can’t go back to prison.” Reece caught Yarrow squinting at him, making him uneasy.
“I’m not even going to ask if you did it. If I were guilty, I’d have headed straight for the border. I assume you would have too. I never thought you killed Karen. None of us did, and we made ourselves clear during the trial.”
Reece glanced at Steve. “Yes, you did, and I always appreciated that. Until these latest murders, I’d been trying to put that ugly chapter of my life behind me and build another one. Someone doesn’t want me to.” Reece stared at Steve. “I came here to see if it was you.”
“Taking an awful chance.”
Reece shrugged. “I didn’t feel like I had a choice.”
“So you know, I didn’t kill her.”
Wouldn’t Reece say the same thing if he were guilty? Considering the consequences, who would admit guilt? But the vet could have called the police, knowing Reece was on his way. Steve punched a number into a high-tech cell phone. Reece held his breath.
“Gina, I’m going to be late this morning. Tell Randy, will you? And tell him I’ll be there as soon as I can.…Yes, I know my car’s there. I’m with a friend.…Thanks.” He punched off the phone.
“Am I safe here?” Reece asked.
“Keep your glasses and hat on. No one’s around. I’m a member of the club. If anyone comes over, I’ll say you’re thinking of joining. They’ll leave us alone.”
Reece felt a current of anxiety shoot through him and he tensed, expecting some twist in the scenario. The cops surrounding him so Steve wouldn’t involve his practice. Steve pulling a gun. Could he ever trust anyone? Would he fight or go quietly?
“That leaves Jordan.” Reece turned toward Steve. He’d learned to read body language out of self-preservation and didn’t see anything threatening. Relaxing, he said, “You knew him better than I did. In fact, I really didn’t know him at all. You were all more Carl’s friends.”
“I haven’t seen Jordan in years. When we graduated vet school, I thought we’d go into practice together, but something happened in his last year of school. He changed, withdrew. He reneged on our plans and never said why other than he had personal issues. It’s not like we had a falling out either. I called him a few times to get together, find out what he was doing, but he always gave some lame excuse why he couldn’t. After a while, I stopped calling, and we lost touch. I wondered if he had depression problems or something.”
Or guilt over killing a woman?
“What was his connection to Karen?”
“He slept with her once to my knowledge. If he had more going with her, I didn’t know about it. Jordan and Mark never had trouble getting women.”
“Yet you slept with her too, didn’t you?”
Steve smiled. Reece thought he smiled more to himself than to Reece.
“I knew you were an item, but I slept with her for a reason. Once. During my conflict about my sexual identity.”
Reece looked at him. “You’re gay?”
Steve nodded. “Yes. My business partner is my life partner. Ten years now. I often wondered if Jordan figured it out and that was why he decided not to go into a practice with me. Anyway, Karen was the one who told me.”
“Huh? Told you what?”
“That I wasn’t into women. Until that time, I suspected, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. If anyone knew about men, it was Karen.”
“Jesus, what a jerk I was. If only I’d known what everyone else knew about her, I’d be building houses in Portland right now, with Carl.”
“Right, Carl.” Steve hesitated. “Your dear brother.”
The tone of Steve’s voice triggered gooseflesh on Reece’s arms. “What―what about Carl?”
“Man, you must have been brain dead back then. Carl had the hots for Karen. He denied it, but the night Karen clued me in that I wasn’t into women, I saw Carl going into her apartment when I was leaving. You didn’t know?”
Reece’s mouth went dry; words wouldn’t formulate. “Not―not until yesterday when Carl told me. He said if it came out at trial it would have given the prosecution more ammunition for jealousy. Reece Daughtry knew his brother screwed her too, kind of thing.”
“That’s what I thought too, which is why I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should have. But frankly, I thought the killer was probably another of Karen’s conquests. Unfortunately, your lawyer couldn’t come up with anyone. Still, Carl was sleazy not to come clean, at least to you. But that was between the two of you.”
“Could Jordan have been hooked on her too?”
“Jordan wasn’t the type to lose it over a woman, but if he suspected I was gay, he might not have confided in me.”
Reece searched out over the water, at the fishing boats and sailboats moored nearby and a few on the horizon skimming the surface. “I wasn’t the type either.”
Reece caught Steve’s sideways glance. “I didn’t know you well, Reece. I figured you were getting all you could, while you could.”
“I never thought like that. But that’s ancient history, isn’t it? Right now, I’m only concerned with the present and with who’s framing me again.”
Steve shook his head and looked out the passenger-side window. Any place but at Reece. “Jesus, Reece. I’m sorry.”
“I need Jordan’s address. Do you have it?”
“Yeah, but I have to go into the office to get it.”
“Before we head back, I need to make a call. See what’s going on at my safe house.” Reece laughed. “Can you believe this? Safe house, safe phones. Jesus. I’ve turned into an accomplished fugitive.”
“You do what you have to do. I’ll wait outside.”
But Reece didn’t call Frank’s. He called Clarence’s number. He had debated whether to call at all so Clarence couldn’t talk him out of what he was doing.
The investigator answered. “Are you on a safe phone?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Always.” Both men told the other what he’d learned.
“I’ve just arrived back in Boston. I have an idea. A hole in the case, maybe. I’ll cover the last man. Go back to wherever you’re staying and wait for a call.”
“I understand. But first, I’m going to make one more stop.”
“Where?”
“I’ll call you later. Promise. I want this over with, Clarence. I want my life back.”
“That’s what I’m trying to get for you. Stay out of sight and don’t fucking get caught.”
“I won’t.” Reece flipped the phone shut, wondering if his certainty that he wouldn’t get caught was nothing more than bravado. Could he elude the police for another hour let alone the rest of the day?
“Forget Jordan’s address, Steve. My lawyer’s investigator is on to something and told me to stay away. He’s as good as they get.” Reece pulled out of the club’s parking lot and drove back to Steve’s clinic.
“Let me out here,” Steve said before Reece pulled into the lot. “Take care, Reece. I hope it all works out for you.”
“Thanks. And thanks for not calling the police.”
Steve Yarrow patted Reece’s shoulder. “I couldn’t help overhear. Where are you going?”
Reece had said enough and decided to be as cryptic as possible. “I’m going get rid of some old anger, once and for all.”
O
n his flight home, Clarence had read the transcripts of Reece’s trial for what seemed the hundredth time. Jeri did all she could, but with media attention focused on Reece, and pressure to close the case, he could see how the quiet architect took the fall. Witnesses described Reece as studious, polite, and serious, not possessing characteristics of a violent killer. Then the prosecution cited half a dozen cases where neighbors and co-workers referred to men who’d committed heinous crimes in exactly those terms. The fact that Reece couldn’t remember anything did little to help his cause.
The motive had to be personal. Something that transpired between the Sitton woman and her killer that never came out at trial. Clarence zeroed in on the witness who’d alibied Jordan Kraus. Betsy Ferrar, nee Donagan. She graduated from Boston University the same year Reece went to prison. Now married, she lived in Storrs, Connecticut, with two college-age kids. Her husband taught at UConn. She’d be the first stop on Clarence’s journey, and the most important, which is why he told Reece to forget Kraus for the time being.
He drove to Storrs without calling, sure if he did, she’d refuse to see him. His GPS took him right to her door. She answered, leaving the storm door closed and, Clarence presumed, locked. With a dish cloth clutched in her hand, she studied her visitor with a quizzical expression.
“I don’t need whatever you’re selling,” she said through the glass door.
“I’m selling a man’s life,” Clarence said. “Reece
Daughtry’s
.”
Her rosy cheeks paled, and eyes that at first sparkled dimmed at the sound of Reece’s name.
“I think you can help him, Mrs. Ferrar.”
“I told everything I knew at the trial.”
“Did you? I think not.”
“Well, he’s done it again. Isn’t that proof enough?”
“Not if he’s being framed, which he is. Please. I’ll only take a few minutes of your time.” Clarence saw the conflict in her body language. “Please.”
Her hand reached for the door, then pulled back. “Who are you?”
He pulled out a card. “I’m the investigator for Reece Daughtry’s attorney, Jeraldine De Bolt.”
She hesitated, wiped her hands on the towel, which she’d been doing nervously the whole time. Then she opened the door. “Come in, but I don’t know how I can help.”
She bypassed a neat living room—the kind used only for company or special occasions—and led Clarence into a comfortable but lived-in den. He smelled something baking—an apple pie, maybe, or a cobbler. A collection of Hummel figurines clustered under a framed landscape that looked as if the artist painted it with cotton candy. The requisite family photos shared space with other accessories on an overstuffed bookcase. He’d obviously interrupted her because a book lay open, spine up, on the sofa table. She gestured to a stiff-looking wingback chair. Clarence sat while she perched at the end of the sofa. He usually made small talk to put his subject as ease, but with time running out, he went straight to the reason he’d come.
“You lied at the trial,” he said.
Betsy Donagan Ferrar squared her shoulders and straightened. “If you’ve come here to accuse me of lying under oath when a man’s life hung on my testimony, I suggest you leave.”
“I believe you thought you were telling the truth, but you weren’t.”
“I was.”
Her words said one thing but without the indignity Clarence expected from someone just called a liar. “The truth as you remembered it. But you didn’t remember everything from that night, did you?”
“Of course I remembered everything.” She stood. “I want you to leave. If you don’t, I’ll call the police.”
“Give me a minute, please. Let me back up. You said you were with Jordan Kraus that night, correct?”
Hesitating, she lowered herself into her seat. “Yes, I was. Are you telling me I wasn’t? Is that what I’m lying about? Because there were other people who saw us together. You must know that.”
“Yes, I do. You met Kraus at the bar and went to the Daughtry party with him. The two of you stayed awhile, then he invited you to an apartment he’d borrowed from a friend who was out of town. I guess to have a place to go if he scored.”
Mrs. Ferrar’s face reddened. “Yes. In retrospect, I believe that was his plan.”
“And you had a lot to drink, didn’t you?” Clarence noticed she hesitated before she answered.
“I didn’t think I did, but apparently I drank more than I thought. I said that at the trial. It was embarrassing to do so, not only because of Jordan’s intentions, but because my parents were in the courtroom for moral support.”