Читать книгу Fox River - Emilie Richards - Страница 10

Fidelity Sutherland, her long blond hair woven in a flawless French braid, came to Christian that night. Her smile was as sassy as ever, her throat a gaping caricature, a hideously grinning half-moon that spouted a river of blood down the front of a tailored white shirt.

He awoke without a sound and sat up quickly, but Fidelity would not be purged. In death, as in life, she was tenacious. As a young woman she had found ways to have everything she wanted. Dead almost ten years, she hadn’t lost her touch.

By the faint lightening of the sky Christian saw that dawn was perched on the horizon. There was a small barred window in his cell, too high for any purpose other than to let in slivers of light. He’d often wondered why windows had been included in the prison’s design. To remind the refuse of society that the sun rose and set without them?

Christian pillowed his head on his arms and stared up at the window. One year a red-winged blackbird had taken a liking to the narrow ledge and landed there intermittently all summer, vocalizing his own version of “nevermore,” which had seemed all too appropriate to Christian. He’d found himself looking for the blackbird whenever he was in his cell, but the moment Christian had begun to count on finding it there, the bird disappeared.

Blackbirds had darkened the skies at Claymore Park. Christian had grown up with them. Telephone lines crowded with glistening feathered bodies like endless ropes of Tahitian pearls. Once he had told Julia Ashbourne that her hair reminded him of a blackbird’s wing.

Once he had been a foolishly romantic young man with no idea of how quickly everything in his life could change.

“You awake?”

Christian didn’t take his eyes from the window. His cell mate, a man named Landis, always woke early. Landis, not yet twenty-one, was getting a head start on a lifetime of mornings like this one. Like Christian, his chances of encountering dawn any place else were almost nonexistent.

“Go back to sleep,” Christian said. “You have time.”

“Shit, I don’t sleep. You don’t know what can happen to you when you’re sleeping.”

“Nothing’s going to happen in here. You’re not my type.”

“You got a type?”

Christian’s type had been female and deceptively fragile, black-haired, blue-eyed and much too serious. In the company of the more flamboyant Fidelity Sutherland she had been easy for some people to overlook. He hadn’t been one of them.

He thought the sky was growing lighter quickly, which was too bad. “My type is female. Which means you’re safe.”

“Shit, most people got that idea when they come in here. But look what goes on.”

“Don’t look. You’ll be better off.”

“How you get to be so bored with all this? You don’t care about bein’ here?”

“What good would it do to care?”

“I never met nobody as alone as you.” Landis continued, buoyed by Christian’s silence. “You got no family?”

“All gone.”

“No woman waiting?”

“That would be a long wait, wouldn’t it?”

“You get mail, but you don’t even read it.”

Christian shifted, easing the pressure on his forearms. “You’re paying attention to things that aren’t your business, Landis.”

Landis bristled. “So? You gonna make something out of it?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you notice, but other people might.”

“So?”

“I’ve seen men stabbed for less.”

“I just said you don’t read your mail. That’s all I said. How come you don’t?”

“No reason to.”

“It makes you homesick, don’t it? Mine makes me homesick.”

On a night when he’d been high on drugs and sure he was invincible, the young veteran of the streets of Southeast D.C. had killed a cop in a car chase, just within the Virginia border. Unfortunately he was also the proud owner of a rap sheet as long as the list of foster homes he’d paraded through from the time he was three. This wasn’t Landis’s first time in jail, but it would almost certainly be his last.

“I got me a girl back home,” Landis said. “I’m gonna get out of here someday. She’ll be waiting.”

Christian was silent.

“Your mail from a woman?”

Maisy Fletcher was certainly that. A warm earth mother who had taken Christian under her wing the first time she laid eyes on him. Now, all these years later, she hadn’t given up on him, even though her daughter had tossed him away like so much spoiled paté.

Maisy wrote Christian faithfully, averaging a letter a month. The letters appeared as regularly as beans and corn bread on Wednesday nights. There was nothing else Maisy could do for him.

He had gotten one yesterday, hence Landis’s question. He never read the letters anymore. In the first years of his sentence, he had read them all until he realized that the letters were like acid burning holes through his thickening defenses. She talked about people he’d grown up with, talked around Julia’s marriage to Lombard Warwick, told funny stories about life in Ridge’s Race. As a letter writer Maisy, who in everyday life was often inarticulate and unfocused, came into her own. She captured the life he’d left behind too perfectly.

“Chris, you awake?”

“What chance do I have to sleep with you talking?”

“I’ll stop reading letters, too, won’t I? One day, I’ll stop reading them. Just like you.”

Christian closed his eyes.

“Heel, Seesaw.” Seesaw obediently took up her place beside Christian and started down the track.

She was a particularly pretty puppy, clever and bursting with energy. But Christian knew better than to get attached to any of the dogs who came through the Pets and Prisoners program. He had grown up with dogs and horses. He’d seen both at their best and worst, trained them, nursed them, even put them down when required.

He kept his distance here. The dogs he trained went on to new masters. He knew from reports how well they were cared for and how invaluable they were. Sometimes he found himself wishing he could watch a puppy like Seesaw grow up, but he knew how lucky he was to have this chance to work with her at all. Training guide dogs was as close to his past as he was liable to come.

Timbo signaled from the side of the track, and Christian stopped and turned. Seesaw waited beside him as he unsnapped her leash. Timbo called her name, and she trotted toward him. Christian followed.

“Okay, Timbo. If you had to rate her chances of getting through the advanced training, what would you say?”

Timbo studied the puppy as he petted her. “Good. No, better than good. I’d say nine out of ten.” He looked up. “What do you say?”

“Eight out of ten. She’s a party girl. We may have some trouble teaching her to ignore other dogs. But it’s a small problem at this point, and I expect it will go away as she matures. I’ll mention it to her new family.”

“They’re taking her tomorrow?”

“In the morning. We’ll get another batch of puppies next week. I’ll finish the paperwork tonight.”

“She’ll have a good home?”

Christian raised a brow. For a man who couldn’t imagine how he’d been assigned to train dogs, Timbo was evolving fast. “All the homes are good. Most have children and other pets to play with. She’ll be fine. And we’ll see her back here in a year.”

“Just wondering.”

“You’ve done your job with her.”

“Never had me no dog. But I fed some, you know? Dogs in the neighborhood nobody took care of. Used to buy sacks of dog food and leave ‘em in the alley at night.”

“You’re all heart, Timbo.”

Timbo grinned. “That’s me.”

“Do a good job here, and when you get out Bertha will help find you a job on the outside.”

“What, shoveling dog shit at some kennel?”

“You might aim a little higher than that.”

“I got big plans.”

Christian squatted beside the little retriever, scratching behind her ears. “A man’s plans have a way of changing.”

“Yeah? Looks like yours are about to.”

Christian glanced up and saw the guard on duty motioning for him. He stood. “Take her back to the kennel, would you? Then go on over and help Javier. I’ll see what he wants.”

“What he wants is to make you feel like you nuthin’.”

Silently Christian handed Timbo Seesaw’s leash.

Mel Powers was a skinny man who perspired like a heavy one. He wore an extravagant hairpiece, expensive suits that always looked cheap and gold-rimmed glasses with lenses that were as thick as his New Jersey accent. The effect was more ambulance chaser than high-powered attorney, but Mel Powers was the revered Great White of shark-infested waters. Mel, considered the best criminal attorney in Virginia, had been hired by Peter Claymore to represent Christian. He still took Christian’s conviction as a personal affront.

Peter Claymore, of Claymore Park, was a study in contrasts. At sixty, he was twenty years older than Mel, and if he sweated at all, it was only after hours of riding to hounds. His silver hair was thick and his eyesight so perfect he could detect movement in the forest when everyone else believed a fox had gone to ground. When he wore a suit, it was tailored to highlight the breadth of his shoulders and the good taste of his ancestors. Claymore Park, the largest and most successful horse property in Ridge’s Race, had been home to Claymores long before the War of Northern Aggression.

Christian hadn’t expected to find either man waiting for him in the tiny visitors’ room. Neither the guard who had summoned him to the warden’s office nor the warden who had brought him here had given him any indication. After shaking hands, he seated himself on the other side of the small rectangular table and waited for them to speak.

“You’re looking well, Christian.” Peter sat with one arm on the table, the other thrown over the back of his chair. He looked at home in this unlikely place, but in all the years Christian had known him, Peter had never seemed ill at ease.

“I’m doing as well as you could expect, sir.” Christian’s gaze flicked to Mel, who was patting his forehead with a folded handkerchief.

“I get the heebie-jeebies every time I come.” Mel wiped his hands. “I feel like I’m being smothered in cotton. Can’t breathe at all. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Breathing comes naturally to me.”

“I hear good reports about the Pets and Prisoners program,” Peter said.

“I doubt they’ll cut it any time soon.”

“You might not be here long enough to worry.” Mel shoved his handkerchief in his pocket, then thought better of it. He took it out, folded it and shoved it in again.

“Christian, we’ve had some encouraging news.” Peter put both hands on the table and leaned forward. “Very encouraging.”

Christian, who had been wending his way through the appeals process for too long to be hopeful, waited. But even though he struggled not to feel anything, something inside him tightened, a spring coiling in anticipation.

“Bertha Petersen says she talked to you?”

“About Karl Zandoff? She did.”

“It must have been on your mind ever since.”

In truth, Christian had refused to let himself dwell on his conversation with Bertha. False hope was more dangerous than none, and “long shot” had been coined for coincidences like this one. “It hasn’t been on my mind. Why should it be? Zandoff’s about to fry, and the only thing we ever had in common was his brief residence in Virginia. If he ever lived here at all.”

Mel waved his hand, directing the conversation like a hyperactive symphony conductor. “He seems to think you have more in common than that. You were convicted of Fidelity Sutherland’s murder, but Zandoff was the one who calmly slit her throat.”

For a moment Christian couldn’t breathe. Then he shook his head. “You’re telling me this is what you believe? What you hope for?”

“He’s telling you what Zandoff told the authorities in Florida this morning. He confessed to killing Fidelity. He was there, at South Land, the afternoon Fidelity was killed. He caught her alone in the house. He killed her—”

“How does he say he got my knife?” The knife that had killed Fidelity, a specially designed horseman’s knife with several blades and tools, had belonged to Christian.

“Found it in the Sutherlands’ barn on a window ledge. You’d been there that week to ride, hadn’t you? You probably used it to pick a hoof or trim a strap, then left it.”

“What about the jewelry? I’ve read Zandoff’s history. He only killed for pleasure.”

“He always took trophies.” Mel fanned himself with his hand. “And this time he says he needed money to get back to Florida. Nobody was at home, so afterward he took his time looking for something he could sell. She didn’t keep her jewelry under lock and key. We knew that. He found it, pocketed it and went outside.”

“That’s when he saw you,” Peter said. “You were calling Fidelity’s name. He said you were on the way inside and you looked furious. He knew you would find her, and he started to worry that someone might catch and search him before he got far enough away to avoid suspicion. So he dug a hole and buried the jewelry.”

Mel took over. “But not everything. After he heard your voice, he was in such a hurry that he dropped a necklace.”

Christian stared at him.

“That’s the necklace you found on the stairs,” Peter said. “The one that put you in this prison.”

“They’re looking for the jewelry now.” Mel took out his handkerchief again. “He’s told the police where to look. When they find it, it will corroborate his story.”

Christian sat forward. “And if they don’t?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Because it’s been nine years. Where does he say he hid it?”

Peter answered. “Along the fence line between South Land and Claymore Park.”

“Do you know how many people come and go at South Land? Do you think there’s really a chance that if any of the drifters who’ve worked for the Sutherlands found that jewelry they would have turned it in?”

“Zandoff says he was planning to go back for it,” Peter said. “Only he never had the chance. He got scared and took off for Florida without it. But he claims he hid it well. We’ve got a good chance, Christian. A very good chance.”

“And if they do find it?”

“Then we’ll be back in court to have you released while the matter’s investigated further.”

Christian sat absolutely still, but his heart was speeding. He could school his appearance, even his thoughts, but his body remembered what it was like to be free.

Peter reached across the table and rested his hand on Christian’s. “I know how you must feel. Believe me, I know, and so does Mel.”

“How do I feel?” Christian wasn’t even certain.

“Angry so much of your life has been wasted. Hopeful that the worst is almost over. Afraid that it isn’t.”

“Why would Zandoff confess?”

“He doesn’t have anything to lose.”

“He’s got a wife, children….”

“Maybe he wants to do the right thing for once, to show his kids that he had some kind of morals.”

“Maybe he just feels sorry for you,” Mel said. “He knows another man is serving time for something he did.”

Christian knew other men who had killed simply for the pleasure of it. Not a one of them would care if someone else took the rap.

“Maybe he’s bragging.” Peter removed his hand. “Maybe he just wants the world to know how good he was at what he did and how many times he did it.”

“Or maybe he’s hoping if he confesses to a few more murders, he can string the authorities along for a while and hold off his execution date.” Mel put his arms on the table. “Who the hell cares, Christian? That’s not your problem. In fact, as far as I can see, you don’t have a problem right now. You just got to sit tight and wait. They’re bringing metal detectors, and they’re going to start digging holes along the fence line today. Zandoff’s outlined the general area, but this may take a while. Nobody’s exactly sure where or how deep he buried it. We don’t want to miss it by inches.”

Christian said nothing, but his mind was whirling.

“We wanted you to know,” Peter said. “We didn’t want to spring it on you. There’s a chance this won’t come to anything, but it’s a small one. Even without the jewelry to back up Zandoff’s story, we can still get back into court with this. It will take longer, and the outcome won’t be as certain, but the odds are still in your favor.”

“If we have to, we’ll try to find somebody, anybody, who remembers Zandoff being in the area when Miss Sutherland was killed.” Mel took out his handkerchief once more, this time to clean his glasses. “We’ll search the records of local contractors, cheap hotels, ask at bars….”

Everything they described cost money, and lots of it. Every breath Mel took cost money. He had reduced his fees since the beginning, believing he would free Christian, and the resulting publicity would be worth the fees he lost. And to his credit, even after a devastating defeat, he had continued to reduce his fees during the appeals process. But even reduced, Christian’s legal fees could put quadruplets through Ivy League colleges and send them to Europe after graduation.

The money had been paid by Peter Claymore.

Christian switched his gaze to Peter. “If something does happen, and they let me out of here, I’ll find a way to pay you back.”

“You were my son’s best friend. You’re like a son to me, Christian. Robby would have expected me to help you. You don’t owe me a thing.”

But Christian knew he owed Peter everything. Were it not for Peter, his life would be entirely without hope. And despite his better instincts, Christian could feel hope stirring. Despite a past that railed against it. Despite the friends who had deserted him and the detractors who had silently nodded their heads. Hope was light pouring through the broken pieces of his heart.