Someone is beeping in on my phone. It’s Chief Logan again. ”I’ve got to run, Dad.“
”Go. Bring Annie by to see us soon.“
”I will.“ I click the phone to take the incoming call. ”Chief?“
”Penn, somebody just told Billy Byrd that he saw Dr. Elliott’s car parked in a vacant lot in Pinehaven on the afternoon of the murder. That lot’s adjacent to St. Catherine’s Creek, and not a quarter mile from where we found Kate Townsend’s cell phone.“
”Mother
”Afraid not. This witness says he saw Drew’s car at about three forty-five p.m. Kate Townsend’s cell phone records show that she answered a text message from a girlfriend at three twenty-two p.m. We found her cell phone in the woods less than two hundred yards from where Drew’s car was parked. That means they were in very close proximity to one another within twenty-three minutes. That’s provable, Penn. What a jury would read into that, you know better than I.“
”My source says Sheriff Byrd’s planning to arrest your man for capital murder. She even heard that with the D.A.’s help, Byrd might try to take Drew right out of my custody.“
Astonishment paralyzes me.
”Penn, are you Drew’s lawyer or not? He doesn’t seem too sure himself.“
”I guess I am for the moment.“
”What do you want me to do if Byrd shows up and tries to take him out of here? I’ve called the attorney general in Jackson for an opinion, but all I got was the same old runaround. Goddamn lawyers…pick any dozen of them and you won’t find a pair of balls in the bunch. No offense.“
”None taken,“ I mutter, searching desperately for a solution.
”What do you want me to do?“
”Penn?“
”Charge Drew with capital murder.“
The silence on the other end of the line is absolute. ”On my own authority?“
”You know what the evidence is. You’ve got the girl’s cell phone. Charge him with murder right now. Don’t wait. Do it the second you hang up.“
”I take back what I said before. You’ve got a pair of balls on you, all right.“
”Will you do it, Don?“
”I’ll do it. But you’d better get your ass down here in a hurry.“
Chapter 17
Drew is a sobering sight today. Gone are the Ralph Lauren khakis and Charles Tyrwhitt button-down he wore to work yesterday morning. Now he wears the orange-striped prison garb I usually see on inmates picking up trash around the city. His handsome face is shadowed by thirty hours’ growth of beard, but it’s his eyes that unsettle me most. They’re no longer the eyes of an accomplished physician in command of his surroundings; they’re the haunted eyes of a man who realizes that the world he once bestrode with confidence may soon contract to an eight-by-ten- foot cell.
”Tell me you have some good news,“ he says.
”I do. But it’s not all good. You’d better put your game-face on.“
He blinks slowly. ”Give me the bad first.“
”The police found Kate’s cell phone in the woods not far from her house.“ I lower my voice to a whisper. ”Also not far from where you told me you found her body.“
He watches me without speaking for a while. ”What’s so bad about that? Had she tried to call me or something?“
”I don’t know. But she had some pictures stored in her phone. Explicit pictures.“
Another slow blink. ”Pictures of what?“
”You. Unclothed.“
Drew closes his eyes but says nothing.
”I saw them. One looks like your penis, another looks like your ass. What I remember from the high school dressing room, anyway.“
”Do any show my face?“
”Yes. In one you’re sleeping naked.“
”Goddamn it. I told her to erase that stuff.“ He grits his teeth and shakes his head, but it’s hard to be angry at a dead girl. ”Is that all the bad news?“
”No. Someone saw you park your car in that vacant lot near the creek after all. Honestly, that’s the most damning piece of evidence they have, because unlike the rest, which only prove an affair, that puts you close to what they may eventually prove was the crime scene.“
Drew lays his elbows on the narrow ledge on his side of the visiting window. ”What about the good news?“
”We’re not done with the bad yet.“
”Shit.“
”The semen that the serology tests say is yours wasn’t swabbed from Kate’s vagina. It came from her rectum.“
Drew looks at me like a man offended by a personal question. ”What are you asking me, Penn?“
”Is your DNA going to match that semen when the big test comes back?“
He looks away, then back at me. ”Kate liked to finish that way sometimes, okay? I don’t know why, but she got a lot of pleasure from that. I did, too, obviously. We probably did that…one out of every four times.“
I don’t speak for a while. I’m trying to judge his honesty about a subject on which Drew is the only living authority.
”Why?“ he asks. ”Did somebody make a big deal of that?“
”Kate was in high school, Drew.
”That’s crazy. It was her idea. Ellen and I never had anal sex.“
”Because you never asked, or because Ellen refused?“
He stares at me with wide eyes, then hangs his head. ”I see what you mean.“
”The autopsy report says Kate had both vaginal and anal trauma indicative of rape. Would you have traumatized her back there?“
”No way. She relaxed totally during that act. If she was traumatized back there, whoever raped her did it.“
I think about this for a while. ”Did Kate ever ask you to choke her during sex?“
His head pops up. ”No. Why?“
I lower my voice to a whisper. ”Did you know Kate kept a journal?“
Drew glances at the door behind him, then turns back to me and nods.
”Kate’s mother brought that to me, with some of her other personal things. She didn’t want the police to find them.“
”That’s good. I told you Jenny understood.“
”Kate wrote in her journal about wanting you to choke her. Apparently Steve Sayers used to do that to her, and at her request.“
Bewilderment. ”She never told me that. And she never asked me to do it.“
I’m almost afraid to ask the next question. ”Did you two ever bring anyone else into your bed?“
”Did she write that we did?“
I’m tempted to lie and try to trap him, but I don’t. ”She wrote about wanting to do it.“
