on the mailbox, too.
At the next comer, he made a left, then three right turns to bring him back down this street. As he passed the house a second time, he saw two women and two children getting into the car and he immediately pulled in ahead of a green van parked at the curb. He waited there with the motor running till the Civic backed out of the drive. Only the little girl’s head turned in his direction when they passed him, and even she didn’t seem to notice as he trailed them through town.
First stop was the middle school where she let off the boy, then the elementary school for the little girl. Finally, she stopped in front of a small house at the end of a shabby, unpaved, semi-rural street and the second woman got out. He was too intent on the driver to pay much attention to her passengers. A quick stop at a convenience store, then she drove straight back to the first house.
He was right behind her all the way, and by the time she got out of the car and went into the house with her purchases, he’d begun to formulate his next move. She had to know about the murder by now, yet he hadn’t been arrested. Either she hadn’t looked at him closely enough to give the police a good description or she hadn’t connected him with the murder room. But how could that be unless she was dumber than dirt? She’d driven around the corner of the motel just as he pulled the door closed behind him. He’d certainly registered a black female face and the car’s religious symbols as she passed within fifteen feet. It seemed impossible that she wouldn’t recognize him the minute she saw him face-to-face again.
He slowed down enough to read the name on the mailbox.
Freeman.
It was a sign.
Take care of that woman and he’d stay a free man.
* * *
The blue LCD numbers on her bedside clock marched inexorably toward eight o’clock. Lying there, watching the numbers reconfigure themselves to show every passing moment, Cyl DeGraffenried wondered dully who it was that first realized it would take only seven straight little segments of liquid crystal to display every digit.
She was supposed to be in court at nine, but she couldn’t seem to pull herself out of bed. All she wanted to do was lie here and watch those little segments light up or then go dark as the numbers changed.
As an assistant district attorney, she’d seen her share of people with clinical depression and she knew that staying in bed was a classic symptom of withdrawal, but knowing it and being able to resist were two entirely separate things.
Like falling in love with Ralph Freeman. She had known it was stupid and wrong, and she hadn’t been able to resist that either.
She considered herself religious, yet she’d never daydreamed of loving a preacher. And certainly not a married preacher.
Two months of unimagined happiness, followed by these last two nights of misery. Just thinking about Sunday night made her eyes fill up again with tears. Such delight when she’d opened her door to find him standing there.
Such grief when he told her why he’d come.
“You don’t love her,” she’d said and he didn’t deny it.
Instead he took her in his arms as if reaching out for salvation and held her against his heart. “If it were just you and me, I’d walk through the fiery furnace to stay here with you forever. I love you more than I ever dreamed I could love anyone. The smell of you, the softness—” His voice broke with sorrow. “She’s the mother of my children, Cyl, and she’s done nothing to be humbled like this.”
“But she doesn’t love you!”
“No,” he said bleakly, as his arms fell away from her. “No. But we both love God.”
Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded sanctimonious. To Cyl, it sounded hopeless.
“What kind of God would keep the two of you in a loveless marriage?” she had wept. “God
“If I left Clara, I’d be turning my back on His love,” he said dully. “Breaking all the vows I ever took. I’d be saying that all the things I’ve preached, all the things I’ve believed in my whole life, were hypocrisy. I can’t do that, Cyl. I can’t live without God in my life.”
“But God forgives the sinner,” Cyl argued, calling upon all the forensic skills that made her such a skilled prosecutor. “He’ll forgive us. If you believe in Him, you know that’s true.”
“Could we forgive ourselves? Could we build a life on the wreckage of Clara’s? Break my children’s trust?” He touched her cheek, wet his fingers in her tears and brought his finger to his lips, almost as if it were a communion cup.
“These are my tears which are shed for you,” she sobbed, seeing the sacrifice in his eyes. “Take. Drink.”
He had crushed her in his arms then with all the intensity of his bitter grief, then, very gently, he had kissed her forehead and walked away.
Leaving her to lie there alone in an empty bed, numbly watching the blue segments come together and fall apart, endlessly marking a time that no longer had meaning.
* * *
The partnership of Lee and Stephenson, Attorneys at Law, had begun in an 1867 white clapboard house half a block down from the courthouse back in the 1920s. More than seventy years later, they were still there. When Dwight Bryant stopped in a little after nine, however, he found that this generation’s Stephenson hadn’t yet arrived.
“Only thing I’m getting’s his voice mail,” Sherry Cobb apologized. “I’m sure he’ll be here directly. Let me fix you
