Chasing The Dead

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Alex fell back in her chair, eyes wide and blinking, stunned like she’d been sucker punched. She looked at Kalena and Rossi, both of them slack-jawed, both of them taken by surprise as well.

She took a deep breath, studying Woodrell for some sign of artifice. His shoulders were soft and rounded, not bunched up around his ears, his face was slack, and his breathing was smooth. His hands were still, cupped around the hook in the table. His body was at ease except for his watery, pinched eyes. She thought about Jared and the name he shouted in his sleep, her stomach clenching at the realization that Woodrell might be telling the truth.

“Was her name Ali?”

Woodrell leaned his head to one side, nodding, the corners of his mouth quivering. “So he told you.”

“He didn’t tell me anything. One of the corrections officers told me that he wakes up during the night calling that name.”

Woodrell sniffed, his eyes reddening. “Ali was her nickname. Her full name was McAllister Woodrell.” He ducked his chin, chuckling. “I know. What a name, but McAllister was my wife’s maiden name. She insisted on naming our daughter McAllister because it reminded her of one of her favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor. Flannery is an old Irish clan and McAllister is Scottish, so my wife said if using the family name was good enough for Flannery, it was good enough for our daughter. Except it was a mouthful and everyone ended up calling her Ali.”

It was impossible for Alex not to smile at the story, told with a father’s sweetness. In spite of what he’d done, she sensed that Woodrell was a good man driven to extremes by a terrible loss, something she understood. He had a story to tell and he’d begun with the ending, though Alex sensed he had more to say.

“Tell me about your daughter.”

Woodrell sighed, smiling softly. “She was a good girl. Full of spunk. Like her mother. A tomboy, but a looker, hair black as a raven and a grin filled with more mischief than a sailor on leave. And she was strong and graceful, you know, like a gymnast or a dancer. And headstrong,” he said, chuckling again. “Like when she decided to join the army. Her mother raised hell about that, but you couldn’t tell Ali anything once she got something in her head.”

“Is that where Ali and Jared met, in the army?”

He nodded. “Yes. I don’t know exactly when or how. All I know is that they were on the same base in Afghanistan. She e-mailed us that a soldier was harassing her, ‘coming on to her’ was the way she put it. She wasn’t interested, but he was real pushy. She didn’t go into a lot of details, but we got the picture.”

“Did you ever find out who that was?”

Woodrell clenched his jaw. “Not till after. The army told me it was Jared Bell.”

“The army told you that it was Jared?”

“They didn’t have to. I could read between the lines.”

“Was Jared prosecuted?”

He tightened his grip on the hoop in the table, his knuckles whitening. “How could they when he was the only witness and they believed the story he told?”

“What story was that?”

Woodrell’s face twisted, his voice rising, his cheeks shuddering. “He said they were off the base and were kidnapped by the Taliban, that they made him watch while they raped Ali and then blew her brains out. And would have killed him too if they hadn’t been scared off by incoming fire from an Apache helicopter. By the time more troops got there, it was just Jared and my dead baby girl.”

“Was there an autopsy?”

He shook his head, puckering as if to spit, thinking better of it. “They put her in a box and sent her home. All we knew then was that she was killed in combat. I had to fight the army to get the rest of the story. By then it was too late to prove Jared raped her because we had her cremated.”

“What makes you think Jared lied about what happened?”

“His story never made any sense to me. What were they doing off base when they were supposedly kidnapped? When the helicopter showed up, why didn’t the Taliban put a bullet in Jared? And what about Ali’s e-mails? And why did the army stonewall me every time I asked questions? I’ll tell you why! They’re covering up for one of their own. That’s why!”

Woodrell banged his cuffed fists on the table, hanging his head and crying. Alex reached across the table, covering his hands with hers. They stayed like that for a moment, until he gently shook her hands away, straightening and sniffling as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Alex looked at Kalena. “Do you have a tissue?”

Kalena was riveted on Woodrell, Alex’s question bringing her back. “Oh, yeah. Sorry,” she said, digging a tissue from her purse and handing it to Alex.

Alex stood and leaned toward Woodrell, who sat stone still as she patted his face, muttering when she finished.

“I’m sorry.”

“You had a terrible loss and that’s nothing to apologize for. Where do you live, Mathew?” she asked, moving their conversation back to the present.

He cleared his throat and rolled his shoulders. “Columbus, Ohio.”

“When did you get to Kansas City?”

“A few days ago.”

“Why did you come here?”

“The army wouldn’t do anything about Ali. I talked to the police at home and they said there was nothing they could do. No one would do anything and Jared was going to get away with murder, which meant it was up to me to do something. I owed that much to my daughter. I’ve been looking for Jared for the last two years. Even hired a private detective until I ran out of money. After he took my last dollar, he told me to set up a Google Alert for Jared’s name, so I did that, and when I saw the newspaper article saying that he’d been arrested, I got in my car.”

“To do what?”

He shrugged. “At first all I wanted to do was talk to him, to somehow make him tell me the truth and admit what he did to Ali. But when I got here, I realized that wouldn’t be enough. I had to make sure he paid. That’s why I went to see the judge handling his case. I wanted to tell him about Ali so he’d be sure Jared didn’t get off on some technicality. But the way Judge West yelled at you and me when he found us waiting for him in his office, I knew he wouldn’t listen. The man was as bad as the army.”

Alex flinched when he mentioned finding her in Judge West’s chambers, stealing a glance at Kalena to see if she picked up on it, uncertain what to make of her blank expression. She sat back in her chair, wrapping it up with as much nonchalance as she could muster, one beat shy of saying “yada, yada, yada.”

“So you robbed the liquor store in order to get arrested so you could deal with Jared on your own?”

Woodrell nodded, his chin down, his gaze fixed on the table.

Alex paused, her palms on the table. There was nothing more to be learned. His only proof that Jared had raped and murdered his daughter was a father’s pain. All she wanted was to get out of there without drawing more attention to herself and Judge West.

“Mathew, I’m very sorry for your loss. I hope you’ll reconsider your decision not to seek counsel. A lawyer may be able to make a good argument about extenuating circumstances that the court could consider at sentencing.”

He looked up at her, his face once again gray and waxy. “I’ve already been sentenced.”

“I’m sure you feel that way. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose-”

“No. You don’t understand. I have end-stage cancer. The doctors give me no more than a few months. I don’t think any lawyer could get me a better deal than that.”