Helpless

leaves.

Lying facedown in the dirt, Tom reached forward, searching out a root, a branch, anything to give him leverage to stand. He listened to the prowler’s footfalls as he made an escape into the darkness of the woods. In a few hundred yards the intruder would reach the same ravine where Kelly had died. Tom searched the ground around him for the black ski mask, but like the prowler, it was gone.

“Dad! Dad!” Jill screamed, breaking branches as she rushed to his side. “Are you all right?”

Tom sat on the ground and rubbed his throbbing head. “Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, breathing hard.

“Who was that?” Jill asked, her voice nearing a frantic pitch. She knelt on the ground beside Tom and clutched his shoulder with her hand. Her fingers dug painfully into Tom’s skin.

“I think it might have been somebody your mom and I once knew,” Tom said, still struggling to catch his breath. “We knew him from a long, long time ago,” he continued. “When you were just a baby. A guy from the military named Kip Lange.”

“Do you think he’s the one who broke into our house?”

“Maybe,” said Tom. “I don’t know. I’m not even sure it was him. It just looked like him.”

“I don’t understand. If Mom knew him, why would she have run?” asked Jill. “Why would he have come back?”

Tom locked eyes with his panicked daughter. Her face had a ghostly white pallor, the same color as the moon. “I don’t know,” he said.

He did know.

But he couldn’t say.

Chapter 7

The receptionist jumped a little as Tom Hawkins neared her desk. “Attorney Pressman is waiting for you in his office,” she said, pointing to Marvin’s closed office door.

He took off his Red Sox baseball hat, damp from an August rain, and thanked her. The woman, not yet thirty, did not reply.

I’m the ex-husband of a woman who was murdered three days ago, Tom told himself. People aren’t going to know how to act around me.

Jill shuffled along behind her father. He hadn’t let her out of his sight since the incident in the woods. She had spent the night with him at his house in Westbrook. What she didn’t know, but soon would find out, was that she’d be spending every night there.

Tom paused at the door to Marvin’s office. “I haven’t seen Marvin since high school,” he said. “We’re going to need a few minutes to play catch-up. Then we’ll get down to business.”

Jill had her head bowed and her mouth in a frown. “Whatever,” was all she said.

“Everything is going to be all right, Jill,” Tom said. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” Tom gave Jill a hug, but his daughter turned her head sideways, leaving her arms hanging limply by her side.

Persistence and patience, Tom reminded himself. Persistence and patience. The two Ps formed the foundation of Tom’s well-proven coaching philosophy. Showing frustration with a struggling player was the surest way for that player to lose interest in the game. Tom had made huge strides in repairing their damaged relationship. But he understood that he still had a long way to go. If his daughter sensed his own frustration with her, she could easily lose interest in him.

Tom knocked on the door to Marvin’s office, heard a muffled “Come in,” and went inside.

Marvin was standing behind an expansive desk, reading a document he held in both hands. Back in high school, Marvin had been a good-natured kid with a tangle of unkempt, curly hair. Tom remembered him struggling through several failed bids to make the soccer team. But his former classmate had gone from skinny to heavyset, and his thinning hair looked to be losing the battle.

Sifting through Kelly’s papers, Tom had discovered that she had recently hired Marvin to help her negotiate a settlement for her mounting credit card debt. Tom had called Marvin and confirmed for himself that he was the right man for the job.

“Tom Hawkins,” Marvin said, coming out from behind his desk and walking toward him with lumbering steps. His voice was a deep, pleasing baritone, befitting his large frame. He shook Tom’s outstretched hand with vigor. “It’s great to see you. Though I’m terribly sorry about the circumstances.”

Marvin quickly turned his attention to Jill. “Hi there,” he said, shaking Tom’s daughter’s hand as though she were his peer. “I want you to know how truly sorry I am for your loss. I knew your mother well. This is all just a terrible, terrible tragedy. You have my deepest sympathy.”

“Thanks,” Jill said in a quiet voice.

“Honey, if you want to take a seat on the couch over there,” Tom said, pointing. “Marvin and I have some catching up to do.”

Jill slipped buds into each ear and sat on the couch without verbally acknowledging Tom’s request. Even from across the room, Tom could hear snippets from whatever music was permanently damaging her hearing. Jill took out her cell phone, and Tom could tell that she was texting.

“How’s she holding up?” Marvin asked, motioning with his head toward Jill, who seemed oblivious.

“She’s doing okay. As well as can be expected.”

“The funeral is next Wednesday, right?”

“That’s right,” Tom confirmed.

“Any break in the case?”

“No, nothing new,” Tom said.

“Any theories?”

“Only that she walked in on a robbery in progress, but that’s still speculation. All we know is that somebody was definitely in the house with her. There’s evidence of a struggle and assault. The police think at some point she broke away and ran out the back door, slipped and fell down the ravine, hit her head on a rock, and died instantly. But they don’t know who broke into the house.”

“Any suspects?” asked Marvin.

Tom pointed to the red welt on the side of his head where he’d been hit with the binoculars. “I caught, or almost caught, somebody out back of Jill’s house, surveying the property with binoculars.”

“You think it’s him?”

“Maybe. I told Brendan Murphy about it. Gave him a name, because I thought I recognized the guy. He said he’s looking into it. That’s all I’ve heard.”

“Sounds like progress.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Tom said in a low voice. “I think Murphy is still convinced that I had something to do with what happened to Kelly.”

“What makes you say that?”

Tom glanced over at Jill, still seated on the leather couch, relieved her attention was fully engaged in electronics. “I went to the police station voluntarily, and he did everything but name me as an official suspect. Apparently, he visited Westbrook and interviewed some of my neighbors to see if any of them witnessed me leaving my house when I said I did.”

“Did any of them see you?”

“No idea,” Tom said. “But Murphy paid a visit to my next-door neighbor. She felt bad telling me that she didn’t see me leave.”

Marvin scoffed. “Murphy’s always had a pole up his ass about you,” he said. “But… now, I’m just being curious, mind you…. Do you have an alibi?”

“Well, I was at the Home Depot near where I live, buying a box of nails when it happened, only I didn’t save the receipt and I paid in cash.”

“That’s a drag,” Marvin said.

“Figures my car was parked where the mall security cameras couldn’t see it, and I was wearing a hat, so it was impossible to make a positive ID from the surveillance inside the store.”