Faithless

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Jeffrey watched Lena with Rebecca Bennett, thinking that even after all these years, if someone asked him to explain what made Lena tick, he would be at a loss for words. Five minutes ago, she had sat in this same kitchen as he talked with Terri Stanley, barely speaking, acting as if she was a scared chil d. Yet, with the Bennett girl, she was in charge, being the cop she could be instead of the abused woman she was.

“Tell me what happened, Rebecca,” she said, her voice strong even as she took the girl’s hands in hers, balancing authority with empathy. Lena had done this a million times before, but still the transformation was hard to believe.

Rebecca hesitated, still a frightened child. She was obviously exhausted, the time spent hiding from her uncle wearing away at her like the constant flow of water over a river rock. Her shoulders were turned in, her head bowed as if all she wanted in the world was to disappear.

“After you guys left,” Rebecca began, “I went to my room.”

“This was Monday?”

Rebecca nodded. “Mama told me to lie down.”

“What happened?”

“I got cold, and I pulled back my sheets and found some papers there.”

“What papers did you find?” Lena asked.

Rebecca looked at Terri, and the older woman gave a small nod, indicating it was okay. Rebecca paused, her eyes on her cousin. Then she tucked her hand into the front pocket of her dress and pulled out a neatly folded stack of papers. Lena glanced at them, then handed them to Jeffrey. He saw that they were originals of the insurance policies Frank had already pulled.

Lena sat back in her chair, studying the girl. “Why didn’t you find them Sunday?”

Rebecca glanced at Terri again. “I stayed at my aunt Rachel’s Sunday night. Mama didn’t want me out looking for Abby.”

Jeffrey remembered Esther had said much the same thing at the diner. He looked up from the documents just in time to catch an exchanged glance between the two cousins.

Lena had obviously seen this, too. She placed her hand palm down on the table. “What else, Becca? What else did you find?”

Terri started chewing her lip again while Rebecca stared at Lena ’s hand on the table.

“Abby trusted you to do the right thing with what she left,” Lena said, keeping her tone even. “Don’t betray that trust.”

Rebecca kept staring at Lena ’s hand so long Jeffrey wondered if the girl was in a trance. Finally, she looked up at Terri and nodded. Without speaking, Terri walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the magnets holding some of the kids’ drawings. There were several layers before she got to the metal surface.

She said, “Dale never looks here,” sliding out a folded sheet of ledger paper from behind a child’s stick rendering of the crucifixion. Instead of handing it to Jeffrey or Lena, she gave the page to Rebecca. Slowly, the girl unfolded the paper, then slid it across the table to Lena.

“You found this in your bed, too?” Lena asked, reading the page. Jeffrey leaned over her shoulder, seeing a list of names, recognizing some of them as workers on the farm. The columns were broken out into dollar amounts and dates, some already past, some in the future. Jeffrey mentally compared the dates to the policies. With a jolt, he realized that this was some kind of income projection, a tally of who had what policy and when they could be expected to cash out.

“Abby left it for me,” Rebecca said. “She wanted me to have it for some reason.”

“Why didn’t you show it to anybody?” Lena asked. “Why did you run away?”

Terri answered for her cousin, speaking quietly as if she was afraid she would get into trouble for doing so. “Paul,” she said. “That’s his handwriting.”

Rebecca had tears in her eyes. She nodded to Lena ’s silent question, and Jeffrey felt the tension ratchet up at the revelation, the exact opposite of what he had been expecting when they finally told the truth. The girls were obviously terrified of what they held in their hands, yet giving it to the police did not bring them any relief.

Lena asked, “Are you afraid of Paul?”

Rebecca nodded, as did Terri.

Lena studied the paper again, though Jeffrey was sure she understood every word on the page. “So, you found this on Monday, and you knew that this was Paul’s handwriting.”

Rebecca did not respond, but Terri provided, “She came here that night sick with worry. Dale was passed out on the couch. I hid her in the shed until we could figure out what to do.” She shook her head. “Not that there’s ever anything we can do.”

“You sent that warning to Sara,” Jeffrey reminded her.

Terri shrugged with one shoulder, as if acknowledging that the letter had been a cowardly way of revealing the truth.

Lena was gentle when she asked Terri, “Why didn’t you tell your family about this? Why not show them the documents?”

“Paul’s their golden boy. They don’t see him for what he really is.”

“What is he?”

“A monster,” Terri answered. Her eyes filled with tears. “He acts like you can trust him, like he’s your best friend, and then he turns around and stabs you in the back.”

“He’s bad,” Rebecca mumbled in agreement.

Terri’s tone was stronger as she continued, but there were still tears in her eyes. “He acts all cool, like he’s on your side. You wanna know where my first hit came from?” She pressed her lips together, looking at Rebecca, probably wondering if she should say this in front of the girl. “Him,” she said. “Paul gave me my first line of coke. We were in his office and he said it was okay. I didn’t even know what it was-could’ve been aspirin.” She was angry now. “He got me hooked.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because he could,” Terri said. “That’s what he really gets off on, corrupting us. Controlling everybody while he sits back and watches our lives crumble.”

“Corrupting you how?” Lena asked, and Jeffrey knew where she was going.

“Not like that,” Terri said. “Jesus, it’d be easier if he screwed us.” Rebecca stiffened at her language, and Terri moderated her words. “He likes to bring us down,” she said. “He can’t stand girls- hates all of us, thinks we’re stupid.” Her tears started to fall, and Jeffrey could see that her anger came from a burning sense of betrayal. “Mama and them think he walks on water. I told her about Cole and she went to Paul, and Paul said I was making it up, so she believed him.” She gave a snort of disgust. “He’s such a bastard. He acts all friendly, like you can trust him, and then you do and he punishes you for it.”

“Not him,” Rebecca said, though quietly. Jeffrey could see that the girl was having a hard time admitting that her uncle was capable of such evil. Still, she continued, “He gets Cole to do it. And then he acts like he doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Terri wiped her eyes, her hands shaking as she acknowledged the pattern.

Lena waited a few seconds before asking, “Rebecca- did he ever bury you?”

She shook her head slowly. Then she said, “Abby told me he did it to her.”

“How many times?”

“Twice.” She added, “And then this last time…”

“Oh, God,” Terri breathed. “I could’ve stopped it. I could’ve said something-”

“There was nothing you could do,” Lena told her, though Jeffrey didn’t know if this was true.

“That box…” Terri began, squeezing her eyes shut at the memory. “He comes back every day, praying. You can hear him through the pipe. Sometimes he yells so loud, and you cringe, but you’re just so happy to know someone is out there, that you’re not completely alone.” She used her fist to wipe her eyes, a mixture of sadness and anger in her words. “The first time he did it to me, I went to Paul, and Paul promised he’d talk to him. I was so stupid. It took me so long to figure out it was Paul telling him to do it. There’s no way Cole could’ve known all that stuff about me, what I was doing, who I was with. It all came from Paul.”

Rebecca was sobbing now. “Nothing we did was ever right. He was always riding Abby, trying to get her to mess up. He kept telling her it was only a matter of time before some man came along and gave her what she deserved.”

“Chip.” Terri spat out the name. “He did the same thing with me. Put Adam in my way.”

Jeffrey asked, “Paul set up Abby with Chip?”

“All he had to do was make sure they were together a lot. Men are stupid that way.” She blushed, as if remembering that Jeffrey was a man. “I mean-”

“It’s okay,” Jeffrey told her, not pointing out that women could be just as stupid. He would be out of a job if they weren’t.

Terri said, “He just liked to see bad things happen. He likes to control things, set people up and then take them down hard.” She chewed her bottom lip, a trickle of blood coming from the broken skin. Obviously, the years that had passed hadn’t lessened her anger. “Nobody ever questions him. They all just assume he’s telling the truth. They worship him.”

Rebecca had been quiet, but Terri’s words seemed to be making her stronger. She looked up and said, “Uncle Paul put Chip in the office with Abby. Chip didn’t know anything about that kind of work, but Paul made sure they were together enough so that things happened.”

“What kind of things?” Lena asked.

Terri said, “What do you think? She was going to have a baby.”

Rebecca gasped at this, turning stunned eyes to her cousin.

Terri apologized quickly. “I’m sorry, Becca. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“The baby,” Rebecca whispered, hand clutched to her chest. “Her baby is dead.” Tears came streaming down her cheeks. “Oh, my Lord. He murdered her baby, too.”

Lena went deadly quiet, and Jeffrey watched her closely, wondering why Rebecca’s words had such an impact on her. Terri had gone just as blank, staring at the refrigerator, the colorful drawings her children had made. Lion. Tiger. Bear. Predators, all of them. Like Paul.

Jeffrey didn’t know what the hell was going on, but he did know that Lena had dropped a serious question. He stepped in, asking, “Who killed her baby?”

Rebecca looked up at Terri, and they both looked at Jeffrey.

“Cole,” Terri said, as if it was obvious. “Cole killed her.”

Jeffrey clarified, “He poisoned Abby?”

“Poison?” Terri echoed, mystified. “She suffocated.”

“No she didn’t, Terri. Abby was poisoned.” Jeffrey explained, “Someone gave her cyanide.”

Terri sank back in her chair, her expression revealing she finally understood what had happened. “Dale has cyanide in his garage.”

“That’s right,” Jeffrey agreed.

“Paul was in there,” she said. “He was in there all the time.”

Jeffrey kept his attention on Terri, hoping to God Lena saw how much she had fucked this up by not getting Terri to answer this simple question two days ago. He asked it now. “Did Paul know about the cyanide?”

She nodded. “I walked in on them once. Dale was plating some chrome for one of Paul’s cars.”

“When was this?”

“Four, five months ago,” she said. “His mama called and I went out to tell him. Dale got mad at me because I wasn’t supposed to be in there. Paul didn’t like me there. Didn’t even like to look at me.” Her expression darkened, and Jeffrey could tell she didn’t want to say all of this in front of her cousin. “Dale made some joke about the cyanide. Just showing off to Paul, letting him know how stupid I was.”

Jeffrey could imagine, but he needed to hear it. “What did Dale say, Terri?”

She gnawed her lip, and a fresh trickle of blood appeared. “Dale told me he was going to put the cyanide in my coffee one of these days, that I wouldn’t even know it until it hit my stomach and the acids activated the poison.” Her lip quivered, but this time it was from disgust. “He told me it’d kill me slow, that I’d know exactly what was happening, and he’d just watch me there, thrashing on the floor, shitting in my pants. He told me he’d look me in the eye till the last minute so I’d know he was the one who did it to me.”

Jeffrey asked, “What did Paul do when Dale said this?”

Terri looked at Rebecca, reached over to stroke her hair. She was still having trouble saying bad things about Dale, and Jeffrey wondered what she was trying to protect the young girl from.

Jeffrey asked his question again. “What did Paul do when he said that, Terri?”

Terri dropped her hand to Rebecca’s shoulder. “Nothing,” she said. “I thought he would laugh, but he did absolutely nothing.”

Jeffrey looked at his watch for the third time, then back up at the secretary posted sentinel in front of Paul’s office at the farm. She was less chatty than the one in Savannah, but just as protective of her boss. The door behind her was open, and Jeffrey could see rich leather chairs and two huge chunks of marble with a glass top that served for a desk. Shelves lined the room, leather law books and golfing memorabilia scattered around. Terri Stanley was right: her uncle certainly liked to have his toys.

Paul’s secretary looked up from her computer, saying, “Paul should be back soon.”

“I could wait inside the office,” Jeffrey suggested, thinking he could go through Paul’s things.

The secretary chuckled at the idea. “Paul doesn’t even like me in there when he’s gone,” she said, still typing on her computer. “Better you should wait out here. He’ll be back in a jiff.”

Jeffrey crossed his arms, sitting back in the chair. He had only been waiting five minutes, but he was beginning to think he should go find the lawyer himself. The secretary hadn’t called her boss to announce the fact that the chief of police was here, but his white Town Car with government plates was pretty easy to pick out in a crowd. Jeffrey had parked it right in front of the building’s main doors.

He looked at his watch again, marking another minute gone by. He had left Lena at the Stanley place so she could keep an eye on the two women. He didn’t want Terri’s guilt to make her do something stupid, like call her aunt Esther or, worse, her uncle Lev. Jeffrey had told them Lena was there to protect them, and neither of the girls had questioned this. Brad had run Dale in on a resisting charge, but that wouldn’t stick more than a day. Jeffrey doubted very seriously Terri would help with the prosecution. She was barely thirty, trapped with two sick kids and no discernible job skills. The best thing he could do was call Pat Stanley and tell him to get his brother’s house in order. If it were up to Jeffrey, Dale would be lying at the bottom of a quarry right now.

The secretary said, “Reverend Ward?” and Lev stuck his head in the room. “Do you know where Paul is? He has a visitor.”

“Chief Tolliver,” Lev said, entering the room. He was drying his hands on a paper towel and Jeffrey assumed he’d been in the bathroom. “Is something wrong?”

Jeffrey sized up the man, still not completely certain Lev didn’t know exactly what was going on. Rebecca and Terri had insisted he was oblivious, but it was clear to Jeffrey that Lev Ward was the leader of this family. He couldn’t imagine Paul getting away with this kind of thing right under his older brother’s nose.

Jeffrey said, “I’m looking for your brother.”

Lev looked at his watch. “We’ve got a meeting in twenty minutes. I don’t imagine he’s gone far.”

“I need to talk to him now.”

Lev offered, “May I help you with something?”

Jeffrey was glad he was making this easy. He said, “Let’s go to your office.”

“Is this about Abby?” Lev asked, walking down the hallway toward the back of the building. He was wearing faded jeans, a flannel shirt, and scuffed cowboy boots that looked as if the soles had been replaced about a dozen times since they were made. Clipped onto his belt was a leather sheath containing a retractable carpet knife.

“You laying carpet?” Jeffrey asked, wary of the tool, which held an extremely sharp safety razor capable of cutting through just about anything.

Lev seemed confused. “Oh,” he said, looking down at his side as if he was surprised to find the sheath there. “Opening boxes,” he explained. “Deliveries always come on Thursdays.” He stopped in front of an open door. “Here we are.”

Jeffrey read the sign on the door, which said, “Praise the Lord and come on in!”

“My humble abode,” Lev told him, indicating the room.

In contrast to his brother, Lev did not have a secretary guarding his space. As a matter of fact, his office was small, almost as small as Jeffrey’s. A metal desk stood in the center of the room, a rolling chair without arms behind it. Two folding chairs were in front and books were stacked around the floor in neat piles. Child’s colorings, probably Zeke’s, were pinned to the walls with thumbtacks.

“Sorry about the mess,” Lev apologized. “My father says a cluttered office is a sign of a cluttered mind.” He laughed. “I guess he’s right.”

“Your brother’s office is a little… more grand.”

Lev laughed again. “Papa used to get onto him all the time when we were little, but Paul’s a grown man now, a little old to be taken over the knee.” He turned serious. “Vanity is a sin, but we all have our weaknesses.”

Jeffrey glanced back out into the hall. There was a short corridor opposite the office that held a Xerox machine. He asked, “What’s your weakness?”

Lev seemed to really give it some thought. “My son.”

“Who’s Stephanie Linder?”

Lev seemed puzzled. “Why would you ask that?”

“Answer my question.”

“She was my wife. She died five years ago.”

“Are you sure about that?”

He turned indignant. “I think I know whether or not my wife is dead.”

“I’m just curious,” Jeffrey said. “You see, your sister Mary came in today and told me she has a daughter. I don’t remember anyone mentioning that before.”

Lev had the wisdom to look contrite. “Yes, that’s right. She does have a daughter.”

“A daughter who ran away from her family.”

“Genie- Terri- that’s what she likes to go by now- was a very difficult teenager. She had a very troubled life.”

“I’d still say it’s a bit troubled. Wouldn’t you?”

“She’s straightened up,” he defended. “But she’s a proud girl. I still have hopes for a reconciliation with the family.”

“Her husband beats her.”

Lev’s mouth opened in surprise. “Dale?”

“Cole put her in a box, too, just like Abby. She was about Rebecca’s age when he did it. Did Mary ever tell you that?”

Lev put his hand on his desk as if he needed help standing. “Why would…” His voice trailed off as he obviously began to realize what Cole Connolly had actually been doing all these years. “My God,” he whispered.

“Three times, Lev. Cole put Abby in that box three times. The last time, she didn’t come out.”

Lev looked up at the ceiling, but Jeffrey was relieved to see it was to try to staunch the tears in his eyes instead of to break into spontaneous prayer. Jeffrey gave the man some space, letting him wrestle with his emotions.

Finally, Lev asked, “Who? Who else did he do this to?” Jeffrey didn’t answer, but he was glad to hear the fury in Lev’s tone. “Mary told us Genie ran away to Atlanta to have an abortion.” Obviously, he thought he could anticipate Jeffrey’s next remark, because he said, “My father has strong feelings about life, Chief Tolliver, as do I. Still…” He paused, as if needing a moment to collect himself. “We would never have turned our backs on her. Never. We all do things that God does not approve of. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’re bad people. Our Genie- Terri- wasn’t a bad girl. She was just a teenager who did a bad thing- a very bad thing. We looked for her. I looked for her. She didn’t want to be found.” He shook his head. “If I had known…”

“Somebody knew,” Jeffrey said.

“No,” Lev insisted. “If any of us had known what Cole was up to, there would’ve been stern repercussions. I would have called the police myself.”

“You don’t seem to like getting the police involved in anything.”

“I want to protect our workers.”

“Seems to me you’ve put your family in jeopardy while you were trying to save a bunch of strangers.”

Lev’s jaw tightened. “I can see why you view it that way.”

“Why didn’t you want to report that Rebecca was missing?”

“She always comes back,” he said. “You must understand, she’s very headstrong. There’s nothing we can do to…” He didn’t finish his sentence. “You don’t think…” He faltered. “Cole…?”

“Did Cole bury Becca like he buried the other girls?” Jeffrey finished his question for him, watching Lev closely, trying to figure out what was going on in the other man’s head. “What do you think, Reverend Ward?”

Lev exhaled slowly, like he was having trouble absorbing all of this. “We need to find her. She always goes into the woods- my God, the woods-” He made to go, but Jeffrey stopped him.

“She’s safe,” Jeffrey said.

“Where?” Lev asked. “Take me to her. Esther’s beside herself.”

“She’s safe” was all Jeffrey would tell him. “I’m not finished talking to you.”

Lev saw that the only way out the door was past Jeffrey. Though he would certainly win that fight, Jeffrey was glad the bigger man didn’t push it.

Lev asked, “Will you at least call her mother?”

“I already did,” Jeffrey lied. “Esther was very relieved to hear she was safe.”

Lev settled back down, relieved but still obviously conflicted. “This is a lot to absorb.” He had the habit of biting his bottom lip, the same as his niece. “Why did you ask about my wife?”

“Did she ever own a house in Savannah?”

“Of course not,” he replied. “Stephanie lived here all of her life. I don’t even think she’d ever been to Savannah.”

“How long has Paul worked there?”

“About six years, give or take.”

“Why Savannah?”

“We have a lot of vendors and buyers in the area. It’s easier for him to do business with them face-to-face.” He seemed a bit guilty when he added, “The farm is a slow pace for Paul. He likes to be in the city sometimes.”

“His wife doesn’t go with him?”

“He has six kids,” Lev pointed out. “He’s obviously home a great deal of the time.”

Jeffrey noticed he misinterpreted the question, but perhaps in this family it was normal for husbands to leave their wives alone with the kids every other week. Jeffrey couldn’t think of a man out there who wouldn’t be happy with this kind of arrangement, but he was hard-pressed to think of any woman who would be.

He asked, “Have you ever been to his house in Savannah?”

“Quite often,” Lev answered. “He lives in an apartment over the office.”

“He doesn’t live in a house on Sandon Square?”

Lev roared a laugh. “Hardly,” he said. “That’s one of the wealthiest streets in the city.”

“And your wife never visited there?”

Lev shook his head again, sounding slightly irritated when he said, “I’ve been answering all of your questions to the best of my abilities. Is there ever going to come a point when you can tell me what this is all about?”

Jeffrey decided it was his turn to give a little. He took out the original insurance policies from his pocket and handed them to Lev. “Abby left these for Rebecca.”

Lev took the pages, unfolding them and spreading them flat on his desk. “Left them how?”

Jeffrey didn’t answer, but Lev didn’t notice. He was leaning over his desk, tracing his finger down each page as he read. Jeffrey noticed the set to his jaw, the anger in his stance.

Lev straightened up. “These people lived on our farm.”

“That’s right.”

“This one”-he held up one of the pages-“Larry. He ran off. Cole told us he ran off.”

“He’s dead.”

Lev stared at him, his eyes moving back and forth across Jeffrey’s face as if to read where this was going.

Jeffrey took out his notepad, telling him, “Larry Fowler died from alcohol poisoning on July twenty-eighth of last year. He was removed from the farm by the Catoogah County coroner at nine fifty P.M.”

Lev stared another second, not quite believing. “And this one?” he asked, lifting another page. “Mike Morrow. He drove the tractor last season. He had a daughter in Wisconsin. Cole said he went to live with her.”

“Drug overdose. August thirteenth, twelve forty P.M.”

Lev asked, “Why would he tell us they ran off when they died?”

“I guess it’d be a little hard to explain why so many people have died on your farm in the last two years.”

He looked at the policies again, scanning the pages. “You think… you think they…”

“Your brother paid for nine bodies to be cremated.”

Lev’s face was already pasty, but his face turned completely white as he absorbed the implication behind Jeffrey’s words. “These signatures,” he began, studying the documents again. “That’s not mine,” he said, stabbing his finger at one of the pages. “This,” he said, “that’s not Mary’s signature; she’s left-handed. That’s certainly not Rachel’s. Why would she have an insurance policy on a man she never even knew?”

“You tell me.”

“This is wrong,” he said, wadding up the pages in his fist. “Who would do this?”

Jeffrey repeated, “You tell me.”

A vein was throbbing in Lev’s temple. His teeth were clenched as he thumbed back through the papers. “Did he have a policy on my wife?”

Jeffrey answered honestly. “I don’t know.”

“Where did you get her name?”

“All of the policies are registered to a house on Sandon Square. The owner is listed as Stephanie Linder.”

“He… used…” Lev was so livid he was having trouble speaking. “He used my… my wife’s name… for this?”

In his line of work, Jeffrey had seen plenty of grown men reduced to tears, but usually they were crying because they had lost a loved one or- more often than not- because they realized they were going to jail and felt sorry for themselves. Lev Ward’s tears were from sheer rage.

“Hold on,” Jeffrey said as Lev pushed past him. “Where are you going?”

Lev ran up the hall to Paul’s office. “Where is he?” Lev demanded.

Jeffrey heard the secretary say, “I don’t-”

Lev was already running toward the front doors, Jeffrey close behind him. The preacher didn’t look particularly fit, but he had a long stride. By the time Jeffrey made it to the parking lot, Lev was already at his car. Instead of getting in, the man stood there, frozen.

Jeffrey trotted over to him. “Lev?”

“Where is he?” he snarled. “Give me ten minutes with him. Just ten minutes.”

Jeffrey wouldn’t have thought the mild-mannered preacher had it in him. “Lev, you need to go back inside.”

“How could he do this to us?” he asked. “How could he…” Lev seemed to be working out all the implications. He turned to Jeffrey. “He killed my niece? He killed Abby? And Cole, too?”

“I think so,” Jeffrey said. “He had access to the cyanide. He knew how to use it.”

“My God,” he said, not just an expression but a genuine entreaty. “Why?” he pleaded. “Why would he do this? What did Abby ever do to anyone?”

Jeffrey didn’t try to answer his questions. “We need to find your brother, Lev. Where is he?”

Lev was too angry to speak. He shook his head tightly from side to side.

“We need to find him,” Jeffrey repeated, just as his phone chirped from his pocket. He glanced at the caller ID, seeing it was Lena. He stepped back to answer the phone, snapping it open, saying, “What is it?”

Lena was whispering, but he heard her loud and clear. “He’s here,” she said. “Paul’s car just pulled into the driveway.”