No One Needs to Know (11 page)

Horrified, she gazed at the crimson stream running down his pale chest and torso. It gushed from a large shard of glass wedged in his neck.

Tad was still standing, gaping at her as if he didn’t know what had happened. It looked like he was trying to say something. He brought a hand up to his throat, and collapsed to the littered floor. Broken glass crunched under his weight.

Laurie stood there with the bat clutched in her fist, watching him die. She was afraid to move, afraid his friend was still around.

Blood bubbled from the gash in his throat as he took his last few gasps. But Laurie couldn’t hear him.

She could only hear her son’s cries.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

Thursday, June 5, 9:55
P.M.

Ellensburg

“N
o, you can’t confiscate them as ‘evidence,’” Detective Donald Eberhard said into the phone. He sat at his desk in his small office. Behind him was a bulletin board crammed with “wanted” fliers, restaurant carryout menus (including the Superstar Diner’s), business cards, and newspaper clippings. His desk was just as messy with piles of paper everywhere. A compact digital recorder sat on top of one stack of papers. At the desk corner closest to Laurie was a bobblehead figure of Linus from
Peanuts.

During most of their talk, Eberhard nibbled at the tip of a cinnamon stick. He’d explained that he’d just given up smoking, and gnawing at cloves and cinnamon sticks helped get him through withdrawal.

Laurie sat across from him, her back to the window, which looked into the general office area. There were about ten desks with computers that desperately needed to be updated. Laurie figured most of the cops there had known Brian—or knew of him. They’d spent the morning fawning over Joey, who got passed from desk to desk—until Krista, bless her heart, had come to pick him up about an hour ago.

The notion that she might have to spend time in jail gnawed at her. She’d never been away from Joey for a night, not since coming home from the hospital with him.

Laurie tried to convince herself that everything would be all right. Considering she was a manslaughter suspect, they were certainly treating her well. Of course, being the widow of a local football star and a war hero helped. Plus most of the cops were regulars at the diner. They’d clearly seen she’d been traumatized by what had happened. At the apartment, they’d let her wash her face and change into a black V-neck top and jeans. Once they’d arrived at the station, they’d photographed her, and gotten her coffee and a Croissan’wich from Burger King. But her stomach was on edge, and she’d only been able to eat a few bites.

Eberhard covered the mouthpiece of the phone and peered across the desk at her, one eyebrow raised. “The guys at your place want to know if they can have some of that chocolate cake you left on the kitchen counter.”

She shrugged. “Actually, the cakes are for the restaurant. I was going to take them to work this afternoon.”

“Nope, they’re not
evidence,
Mike,” the detective said into his phone. “I need one of you guys to run the cakes over to the Superstar Diner, and let them know Ms. Trotter probably won’t be coming in today. And don’t sample the evidence on the way. Got that? Now, anything else?” He paused.

Laurie watched for any change in his expression. The detective was a handsome man in his mid-thirties. He had a slight five o’clock shadow, which suited him well, and dark brown hair that probably had too much hair product in it. At least it looked kind of stiff. His navy blue shirt was slightly rumpled and his black tie was loosened around the collar.

She couldn’t help wondering if the cop at her place was telling Eberhard about some new discovery. So far, everything they’d found backed up her story about the bizarre, predawn home invasion and the dead naked man on her living room floor. Taped to his lower back was a holder for the hunting knife found on the floor near his body. The screens had been removed from one window in the kitchen and from another in her bedroom. The police on the scene uncovered two sets of footprints around the outside of the house—one matched Tad McBride’s bare, dirty feet. The other set of footprints appeared to belong to a woman. Most of those prints were on the ground outside Laurie’s bedroom window, and some on the bedroom carpet. Compared to the shoes found in Laurie’s closet, there didn’t seem to be a match. Finally, there were the neighbors who had heard the screams and commotion. One neighbor in particular was pretty certain she’d seen someone dressed in dark clothes running across the lawn in front of Laurie’s duplex around 3:30
A.M.

Perhaps making her story even more believable was her report to the police earlier in the week that someone in a silver minivan had been stalking her. The detective told her that Tad’s brother in Cle Elum owned a 2004 silver Town & Country minivan. The local police had already had several brushes with Ryder McBride. “Him and his gang on that farm off Highway 97 have been a major thorn in my side,” Don Eberhard had said earlier, switching off the tape recorder on his desk for a moment. “McBride’s been arrested several times—and each time he’s walked. We couldn’t make any of the charges stick. The scumbag is as slippery as a greased flagpole.”

Laurie figured whatever Ryder had to say, it would be the scumbag’s word against that of the war widow. Still, that didn’t boost her confidence. So far, all she’d told Eberhard about Tad McBride was that he’d been a regular customer at the diner for a while—in the fall of the year before last.

They’d been interviewing her for nearly five hours now. But the detective still hadn’t asked the ten-thousand-dollar question, the one she dreaded:
Exactly how well did you know the deceased?

“Yeah, that’s fine, go for it,” he said into the phone. “Over and out.” He hung up, and then reached over for the recorder again. “Sorry about that.”

Laurie straightened in the hard-backed chair. “Thank you for having them deliver the cakes,” she said. “But I—well, I couldn’t help overhearing that part about me not coming to work today. Does that mean you’ll be keeping me here?”

“Oh, no, don’t worry—”

“I mean, my shift doesn’t start until four. And there’s Joey—”

He gave a wave of dismissal. “We should have this wrapped up before lunchtime. No, I just figured you were in no shape to be cooking John Wayne burgers today. In fact, it’s going to be a little while before things get back to normal for you and Joey. You won’t be able to stay at your place for at least another couple of days. It’s a crime scene now. I’ll make sure you get anything out of there you might need, within reason. I recommend the Hampton Inn—if you can’t find a friend to stay with for the duration.”

All Laurie could think was that she didn’t have to go to jail or be separated from Joey—at least not yet. Nodding, she let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

Eberhard adjusted something on the tape recorder. “So, before Tad started stalking you, he’d been a customer at the diner eighteen or nineteen months ago. To your knowledge, was he ever inside your apartment before the incident early this morning?”

She hesitated. “Yes. I—I had car trouble one night—back in November, the year before last—and he drove me home. I invited him inside . . .”

Eberhard nibbled on his cinnamon stick and frowned at her. “What for?” he asked. “A glass of water? Cup of coffee?” He paused. “A game of Parcheesi?”

Laurie gripped the chair’s armrests. She figured Ryder was going to tell them the whole story anyway—or at least, his version of it. If she didn’t tell the truth now, it could end up biting her in the ass later on. She took a deep breath. “He spent the night.”

Eberhard’s mouth twisted to one side. “Did he crash on the living room couch or . . . ?”

“We slept together—in the guest room bed.”

“Was this a one-shot deal or a long-term thing?”

Laurie sighed. “I really don’t see what this has to do with—”

“I’m trying to determine how well he knew the inside of the apartment, Laurie.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, of course. He was in the apartment on several occasions, maybe eight—or nine. We . . .” Laurie trailed off. The cop didn’t need to know that she and Tad had had sex only three times. “I—I stopped seeing him when Brian came home for a surprise visit during Thanksgiving week.”

“Some surprise,” the detective murmured. Then he cleared his throat. “And you didn’t see McBride again?

“Not intentionally,” Laurie replied. She explained about his vigils outside the diner, and the graffiti on the restaurant’s front window. “I was working full-time in the kitchen by Christmas, and if he came to the diner after that, I didn’t see him,” she said.

Laurie remembered that once in a while she’d get an order for the Kevin Bacon waffle and the Samantha Eggar scramble, and her stomach would automatically clench. But then she’d peek out the pass-through window, and realize it wasn’t him.

“I didn’t see or hear from him again until I was about six months pregnant,” she told the detective. She nervously fingered the Burger King bag on the table at her side. She figured she had to tell Eberhard about the paternity issue. After all, it was the main reason Tad wouldn’t leave her alone.

“I didn’t realize he’d been watching me,” she explained. “But I guess he had been, because he called me one night after work. He said, ‘That’s my baby you’re carrying, isn’t it?’ I told him that he was mistaken. But the truth is once I found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t really sure if it might not be his. I thought we’d been using protection, but—well, it’s a long story. Anyway, the time I was with him and when Brian had returned home—it was just too close to call. I told my doctor my predicament, and he advised me just to focus on taking care of myself and my baby. We could work out the paternity issue with a simple test once the baby was born.”

“Did you consider having—” Eberhard stopped himself. He sat back in his chair and quickly waved away the question. “Sorry. It doesn’t have anything to do with the investigation. Go on . . .”

Laurie figured she’d answer his question anyway. “I wasn’t going to terminate the pregnancy just to keep covering up what happened.” She shrugged. “Then there’d have been one more awful thing I’d have to hide from my husband.”

“While you were pregnant, did McBride call you again—or harass you in any way?”

She nodded. “There were a few more calls—basically the same thing over and over. He asked me when I was due, and he threatened to tell Brian. He was convinced the baby was his.”

Her throat went dry, and Laurie took a sip of the bottled water they’d gotten for her. “In my eighth month, someone left a used high chair in front of the restaurant one morning. My coworkers figured it was some nice customer who had spotted me in the kitchen and thought they were doing me a favor. But I have a feeling it was Tad. Anyway, I didn’t keep the high chair. I didn’t even take it home. I dropped it off at Goodwill.”

“Did you ever spot him outside your house during this time?”

“It was hard to be certain,” Laurie replied. “I never saw him sneak up to the duplex or anything like that. But several times, I wondered if it was him driving by. Tad had an old, red VW Bug. And—well, you know, this is a college town . . .”

“Crawling with VW Bugs,” Eberhard said, nodding.

“Every time I saw one come down the block, I couldn’t be sure.”

Laurie let out a sad little laugh. In a strange way, she was glad to tell someone—at long last. Yet she was trembling inside, and she perspired so much that her sweater stuck to her skin.

It was sort of how she’d felt when she’d told Brian the truth. She’d decided to wait until his next furlough home. It wasn’t exactly something she could tell him over the phone or in an e-mail. Just deciding to come clean with Brian had given her an edge over Tad and his threats.

Joey was born on September first. Brian finally saw his baby son on Halloween. By that time, Tad was calling with more frequency, demanding to see his child. By then, she was almost certain Joey was Brian’s son. Still, that wasn’t enough. She’d need Brian to take a paternity test to get Tad off her back. Though she hated breaking Brian’s heart and risking their marriage, she had to tell him. Besides, she owed him the truth.

She told him in the kitchen while they were washing the dinner dishes together. They’d already put Joey to bed. It was Brian’s fourth night home. Laurie had considered it a minor miracle that Tad hadn’t called to harass her during Brian’s stay. Or had he been watching the house? Brian had another three days left before he shipped back.

Laurie tried to brace him for what she had to say. “I have something to tell you that’s going to be really difficult, Brian.” She took the pot and the dishtowel out of his hands and pulled him over to the breakfast table. Brian had a sort of mystified half smile on his face—as if he thought this might be a joke.

“First off, you should know, this—
thing,
it was like a blip. And I’m so sorry. It was over with by the time you came home last year. But I need for you to know about it.” She sat him down in one of the chairs, and watched the smile run away from his face. “I don’t expect you to forgive me,” she continued, tears in her eyes. “What I did was utterly stupid. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been so lonely . . .”

“Oh, Jesus,” was all he said. She’d seen that same look of hurt in Tad’s eyes on the Friday after Thanksgiving when she’d tried to apologize to him.

She told Brian everything—including the perforated condoms and Tad’s recent harassment. Brian just kept shaking his head. Then he finally got to his feet and slammed his fist into the kitchen wall. Laurie flinched at the loud crack. There was a small explosion of plaster particles and dust.

Then Brian stormed out the front door.

An hour later, the phone rang, and she’d snatched it up. “Brian?”

“I’m coming over there. It’s time I saw my son!”

“Oh, God, Tad,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Would you leave me the hell alone? Brian’s here and the baby’s asleep. What is wrong with you? Does your therapist know you’re doing this? Are you still seeing him?”