Trial Junkies (A Thriller) (17 page)

That some random douche nozzle could take these shots and, within seconds, broker a deal and see them posted online with such unbridled, sophomoric glee, made him wonder what the hell had happened to the world.

Had it always been like this?

But his bigger concern right now was Ronnie. These photos would only accelerate the media's already rabid interest in her. Now that they knew she was back home, reporters and news vans would be flocking to her house, setting up camp, making her life—and her mother's and son's—a living hell.

"Fuck," Hutch muttered, then snapped the Macbook shut, nearly tossing it across the room.

Nadine grabbed hold of it. "Easy, cowboy, I paid good money for this thing."

"I've gotta get Ronnie out of that house."

She waved the laptop. "Looks to me like you're more interested in getting her out of her pants."

He frowned. "I told you, it's not what you think. We were dropping her off and she planted a kiss on me. End of story."

Nadine set the computer on the coffee table, then moved to a wet bar in the corner and poured some coke into a glass filled with ice. "I like the way you skipped around the whole posting her bail thing."

"You have a problem with that?"

"Of course I do. I think she's guilty. I've said that from day one."

"You're wrong," Hutch told her.

Nadine doctored the coke with a healthy splash of rum, then turned. "I doubt that very much. And I hate to see her seducing you into thinking—"

"Seducing me?"

"What else would you call it?"

"Believing in a friend," he said. "The same way I'd believe in Matt or Andy or you."

She snorted again, then swirled the ice and took a sip of her drink. "You want a soda or something?"

"I'm fine," he said.

She nodded, then took another sip and sank into a nearby chair.

"Look," she told him, "Tom called me earlier tonight and I know I'm the odd man out now. I know you came here thinking you could change my mind about her, but trust me, it isn't going to happen."

"And why's that?"

"Because I know the real Ronnie, okay? You share a room with someone, you tend to get to know them better than anyone else."

"That was ten years ago."

"She's no different now than she was in college, and back then she was a manipulative little bitch. Not to mention borderline psychotic."

"Come on, Nadine, that's ridiculous."

"Is it?" She took another sip of her drink. "Did I ever tell you about the night she nearly shot me?"

"
What?
"

"Okay, to be fair, it wasn't a real gun, just one of those air pistols that looks like the real thing. You remember that kid she dated for a while? Liam?"

"The one who wanted to be a cop?"

She nodded. "He used to carry one in his backpack and pull it out every once in a while, flashing it around like he was Mel Gibson or something. One night he left without his pack and Ronnie fished out the gun and started waving it at Jenny and me, saying, 'Watch out, girls, I'm armed and dangerous.'"

"That's it?" Hutch said. "That's
nothing
."

"Yeah, except later that same night—or I guess I should say early the next morning—I woke up and saw Ronnie sitting on the edge of her bed, playing with the gun again. I don't know if she knew I was awake, but all of a sudden she gets this look in her eyes, then points it at me and pulls the trigger. It wasn't loaded, but still..."

Hutch thought about this a moment, then shook his head. "That's all you've got?"

"You didn't see that look."

"It's a wonder you did
—
unless you sleep with a light on."

"We were on the far side of the house, remember? A lot of moonlight coming in through the window."

"Uh-huh," Hutch said. "You're not exactly convincing me here."

"I know what I saw, and it scared the hell out of me."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" He shook his head again. "I have a feeling it scares you more now than it did then. Back then it was just a stupid prank, but you're filtering the memory through what's happening today and reading all kinds of significance into it—whether it's warranted or not."

She raised her glass. "Thank you, Dr. Hutchinson."

"I'll send you a bill."

He knew he could stand here and debate with her all night, but she wasn't about to budge. Unlike himself, she wasn't a flip-flopper, and he had to give her that. There was something admirable in her ability to take a stand and stick with it, even if they disagreed. Even if it isolated her.

Another trait she shared with Jenny.

She drained the glass and got to her feet. "You sure you don't want something to drink?" She teetered slightly and he suspected the one in her hand wasn't the first of the night. Far from it.

"I think I'll head out."

She squinted at him. "I'm sorry, did I scare little Ethan away? You just got here."

Hutch shrugged. "Like you said, I came to change your mind, stop you from testifying against Ronnie. But I can see that isn't gonna happen, so what's the point?"

"We can talk about something else. About Jenny, if you like. I'm sure you're feeling pretty guilty lately."

That wasn't the half of it, but he had no interest in discussing it with her. "I'm done talking. Time to start doing."

"Meaning what?"

"I wish I knew. But despite what you think, Jenny's killer is out there somewhere and I feel like I need to do something about it."

Nadine balked, a mocking tone in her voice. "Like what? Play detective? This is real life, Hutch, not one of your movies."

He turned and started for the door. "Thanks for the reminder."

"Stop letting your dick do your thinking for you."

He paused mid-step, turned. "I beg your pardon?"

"It's all right there in the photos."

"I
told
you, it's not what it—"

"You can protest all you want," she said, offering him an inebriated, know-it-all smile that annoyed the hell out of him. "But words don't really matter, do they? Your body's saying something completely different."

Then she dismissed him with a wave and crossed to the bar to pour herself another drink.

— 28 —

H
E CAUGHT THE
train back to the courthouse district, needing time to decompress, not wanting to take the direct route home. He stood on the platform waiting for his connection, and thought about heading down the steps, stopping in one of the nearby bars and ordering himself a single malt. Preferably Jameson.

He wasn't sure why he suddenly felt the urge. Maybe it was seeing Nadine well on her way to that special place where everything in the world seemed so crystal clear, even as it swirled around you. Where the doubts melted away with each sip, and the instinctive being took over—the one without fear, the one who knew right from wrong, fact from fiction, and didn't hesitate to express himself.

The invincible drunk.

But Hutch had seen that guy immortalized on video enough times to know that, beneath the cocky exterior, he was pretty much an inbred idiot. Their friendship had been brief, fruitless, and often destructive, and Hutch had no desire to revisit it.

So he resisted the urge and quietly waited for his train. Fished a cigarette out of the crumpled pack in his pocket and lit up, thinking it wasn't much of a substitute for booze, but it would do.

He stood there wondering why Nadine hated Ronnie so much. She had always been fiercely protective of Jenny, but there seemed to be more to it than that—and the incident with the air gun was complete bullshit. Not even worth considering.

Had something else happened between them back in college? Something only the girls had known about?

Jenny certainly had never talked about it. But then Hutch and Jenny hadn't spent a lot of time discussing the other people in the house. Especially not in their first year or so together. They were too caught up in the excitement of a new and blossoming relationship, and external conflicts rarely caught their attention.

And when Hutch thought about it, if Nadine had a problem with anyone, you'd think it would be Jenny herself. They had been best friends when Hutch came along, and Nadine had been promptly relegated to third wheel. Not intentionally, of course, but that was just the way things worked.

Still do.

If anything, Nadine and Ronnie should have bonded at that point. Because Ronnie had been
Hutch's
friend and had suffered a similar fate. Why they hadn't immediately become BFFs was a mystery to him.

A clash of personalities, he supposed. Although it seemed to have worked for Matt and Andy.

As he stood there, wondering about all of this, these thoughts were forcefully wrenched from his brain when two things happened simultaneously:

First, his train, the green line, came roaring to a stop in front of him, its doors hissing open. And at that very same moment, he saw a familiar figure scurrying up the steps to the train platform.

It was the creepy guy with the crew cut and thick black glasses, his ever present book bag slung over a shoulder as he made a beeline for the opening doors.

He was in a hurry, but didn't seem stressed, his black eyes showing about as much emotion as the battered Chatty Cathy doll that Jenny had inherited from her aunt. The thing had sat atop her dresser in the room she and Hutch shared, staring blankly at them as they made love, looking like something spawned in hell.

Funny he should think of that now.

He pulled back as the creep swept past him and found a seat in the nearly empty car.

Ditching his cigarette, Hutch stepped aboard and moved down the narrow aisle as the doors closed behind him and the train lurched into motion. He nodded politely to the guy as he passed, but the creep merely blinked at him behind those glasses, then opened the bag and pulled his book onto his lap, dropping his gaze to it.

Hutch glanced at the title, but most of it was obscured by the guy's left hand. The word
DEATH
was clearly visible, however, and the thing had the plain, dry look of a textbook without its dust cover, an old-fashioned tome like the ones you'd find in the archives section of the UIC library.

Whatever it was, Hutch doubted he'd be able to buy a copy at his local Barnes and Noble, and that one word—
DEATH
—summoned up an irrational sense of dread that was hard to ignore. Hutch wasn't sure why he felt this way, but it was strong enough to compel him to take the seat directly behind the guy, in hopes of getting a closer look at that book.

The creep was sitting close to the aisle, so Hutch slid all the way over to the right side of the seat, then glanced around quickly before leaning forward an inch or so to peer over the guy's shoulder. He was trying like hell not to be obvious about it, but the creep was so absorbed in what he was reading it probably didn't matter.

And what Hutch saw made him wish he hadn't been so goddamn curious.

His stomach lurched, the beef sandwich he'd eaten earlier doing a quick and nasty three-sixty before worming its way up toward his esophagus.  

He stared at the pages just long enough to see two images that could never again be unseen. The kind that take the direct route from eye to brain, burn themselves onto the cerebral cortex and remain there like scar tissue for the rest of your natural life. On those pages were two of the most gruesome photographs he had ever laid eyes on, each rendered in a stark, clinical black and white—which only intensified the horror.

The first was a photo of a blond woman who must have been in a devastating car accident, because there was a steering wheel
embedded in her face—
so deep that it looked as if her flesh was growing around it.

And if this wasn't enough to get the upchuck express on the move, the photo on the page facing it featured a corpse of indeterminate origin whose body was half eaten away by maggots, several of which had nested in what was left of the victim's right nostril.

Hutch slammed back in his seat, squeezing his eyes shut, feeling his gorge rise, the acidy burn of bile in his throat. But closing his eyes was a bad idea, because the imprint of what he'd just seen was still floating in the darkness behind his lids. He immediately opened them again and looked out the window at the night rushing by, trying to focus on the lights in the distance.

Jesus H. Christ and all his disciples.

He sat there, trying to purge himself of this optic assault, when something unexpected happened—even more unexpected than the sight of those horrific photographs.

Beneath the clatter of the wheels on the tracks, he heard a faint, high-pitched mewling sound. A quiet keening whimper that wasn't truly a keen
or
a whimper. A sound not fueled by pain, but by...