Hard Truth

4

The Callen Police Department was housed in the back of a small, one-story, redbrick building, the front section of which served as the municipal offices. The library was in the basement, and the jail-such as it was-was in the annex, a low-slung square of gray block and mortar that connected to the main building through a short corridor.

Lorna parked behind the building and went to the side door, which led directly into a small lobby. Through the glass, Lorna saw Brad Walker leaning against the wall, talking to his father, and when Lorna knocked, he nodded in her direction. Chief Walker stood and waved to her.

“Come on in,” he told her. “Just give that door a push-it sticks in hot weather. Here, let me do that.”

He went to the door and gave it a shove. “Don’t want the air-conditioning to escape. It’s hot as hell out there.”

Lorna pushed a strand of hair back off her forehead. “It is that.”

“You ready to talk to Billie Eagan?” he asked.

“Sure. I’m still not certain why she wants to see me, but sure, I’ll talk to her.”

“She’s in here, in the conference room. Normally, we’d have her in a holding cell while we wait for the sheriff to drive her out to the prison, but the air conditioner out there hasn’t been working, and it’s just too damned hot for man or beast. Joel Morgan, of the PD’s office, was in on another matter, and the judge asked him to handle Ms. Eagan’s case, at least through the preliminary hearing, which won’t be until next week. He’ll be by in a minute to talk to her.”

“She’s been charged?”

“Charged, arraigned, and has a room reserved at the county prison.”

“Can’t she get bail?”

“That’s up to her, I guess, if she can post bail. You can discuss that with her, makes your visit sort of official.”

The chief gestured in Lorna’s direction and she followed him through a door at the end of the room. Billie Eagan sat at the head of a rectangular table, her hands folded in front of her, her pale, thin arms stark against the dark wood. Her hair was straight, stringy, gray, no longer the thick, dark strawberry blond Lorna remembered from her childhood. She wore a sleeveless cotton blouse that was stained on one side. When she looked up at Lorna, it was through watery blue eyes set deep into a gaunt face.

“Hello, Mrs. Eagan,” Lorna said from the doorway.

“Lorna.” Billie’s voice was as flat and low-pitched as Lorna remembered.

“Chief Walker said you wanted to see me.”

Billie nodded. “I do.”

“Lorna,” the chief touched her on the arm, “I’ll be right outside here, if you need me.”

He closed the door behind him, leaving the two women alone. Lorna moved farther into the room, taking a seat across the table from Billie.

“I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your momma.” Billie’s voice still held a trace of the West Virginia hills where she’d been born. “She was as near to being a friend as anyone I ever knew. She was a good woman, through and through. I just wanted you to know.”

Lorna hesitated. She hadn’t recalled her mother speaking of any particular friendship with Billie Eagan.

“Surprised, are you?” Billie looked faintly amused.

“I didn’t know that you and my mother were… friends,” Lorna said awkwardly.

Billie nodded.

“Well, I appreciate you thinking of her.”

“I think about her every day.”

“You do?”

“She used to stop by once or so a week. Drop off a bag of groceries. Sometimes something she might’a baked. She made these little lemon muffins with poppy seeds…”

Lorna nodded. Her grandmother’s recipe.

Her mother used to make muffins for Billie Eagan?

“She always took me to my doctors appointments, stopped at the drugstore on the way home to pick up my prescriptions. She even made sure I got to my meetings at night, said I needed the support if I was to overcome my addictions,” Billie continued. “Every once in a while, she’d bring me a pack of cigarettes.”

“My mother bought you cigarettes?” Lorna’s jaw dropped.

“Oh, she didn’t like doing it, I know she didn’t. But she knew how hard it was for me to quit, especially on top of everything else I was trying to quit at the time. Said she’d gone through that once with cigarettes herself, and she knew how tough it was, so she-”

“My mother never smoked,” Lorna said flatly.

“She tell you that?”

“Well, no, I never asked her, but she hated cigarettes. Hated smoking.”

“Yes, she did. Said she’d been real happy none of you kids ever picked ’ em up. But back when she was younger, she did. Stopped when she found out she was pregnant with you and never picked ’em up again.” Billie leaned back in her chair. “Or so she said.”

“I’m stunned. I never knew that about her.”

“I guess there’s lots of things you didn’t know.”

Lorna stared at Billie, not sure what to say. Billie stared back.

“Like what?” Lorna finally asked.

“Your mother never believed that I had anything to do with whatever happened to Melinda.” Billie’s face hardened. “I know everyone else around here thought I did, but she believed me. Even after Jason ran away-at least, back then, that’s what we thought happened to him. Now they tell me they found him there in the field.”

Billie’s lips tightened. “Can you imagine that? All these years, I thought he’d run away, maybe to the city someplace. And there he was, just a couple’a acres away from where I lay my head every night.”

“No, Mrs. Eagan. They found Jason at the back of our farm, over where the new houses are being built. Your house is over on Conway Road.”

“I lost that house long ago. After all that craziness, after the police started questioning me when Jason went away and they needed someone to blame, I lost my job. I lost my house. I got sick. I lost everything…” For a moment, her eyes seemed to cloud over, and her lips shook slightly.

“Where have you been living, then, all these years?” Lorna asked.

“Here and there, moved around for a long time. I guess I should’a gone home to my family, but I always thought Jason would come back, maybe Melinda, too. Then, a few years ago, when I got really sick, your mother let me move into that cottage out there near the grapes.” Billie glanced up and saw the look of surprise on Lorna’s face. “Oh, I guess that was something else you didn’t know.”

“No. No, she never mentioned it.”

“Maybe she thought you wouldn’t have approved,” Billie said softly.

“It was her property, her cottage. She didn’t need my approval.”

“Well, by then, you were over there near Pittsburgh and setting up your business-she was real proud of that, that you had your own business, but I’m sure you knew that-and your sister and brother had both moved away. I guess maybe she got a little lonely sometimes.”

Billie smiled for the first time since Lorna entered the room. “Or maybe it was that goodness of hers, coming through. She was such a kind soul.”

Lorna’s throat tightened unexpectedly.

“Anyway, I just wanted you to know how much I miss her. Not only the things she did for me, you know? I miss talking to her, miss having her company.” When Billie looked at Lorna this time, there were tears in the corners of her eyes. “I never knew anyone else like her.”

“Neither did I,” Lorna whispered.

The door opened, and Brad stuck his head in.

“The public defender is here to see Mrs. Eagan, Lorna. You about finished?”

“Oh. Sure. I’ll just be a minute.” Lorna nodded, then turned back to Billie after Brad closed the door. “Mrs. Eagan, I have to ask you something.”

Billie looked up, waiting.

“Did you kill Melinda?”

“No. No, I did not.” The answer was quick, and sure. “I do not know what happened to that child, I swear on her life.”

“What about Jason? Did you kill Jason?”

“No.” Billie shook her head firmly. “I thought he’d run away. I wouldn’t have blamed him for that.”

She looked Lorna directly in the eyes and told her bluntly, “I do not deny that I was harder on my kids than I should have been. There were times when I hurt them bad, and I will have to face God with that. He knows how sorry I am for any pain I caused them when I had them. I guess maybe that’s why He took them away from me. Mary Beth always said she didn’t believe that God did things like that, but still. If you don’t take care of what you have, you lose it, that’s what my momma always used to say.” She cleared her throat. “I think about the times I hurt them, and the times I had them so scared, they could hardly breathe. I was a different person back then. I drank too much and I worked too much and I slept too little. I had two jobs and I still had no money and no life. I was fifteen years old when I had Jason, twenty when Melinda was born. And their father left me here with them when she was just a year old. I was left high and dry with two small kids, barely old enough to legally buy a drink.”

Billie took a deep breath.

“I was a lousy mother, I’d be the first to admit that. But I didn’t kill my kids.” She paused, then added, “I swear it on Mary Beth’s memory. I did not kill my kids.”

Brad opened the door again, and this time stepped into the room. “Lorna, I have to ask you to-”

“Yes, yes. I’m leaving.” Lorna stood up. “May I come back to see you?”

“I don’t know where they’re going to take me from here,” Billie told her.

“I’ll find you.” Lorna turned to leave, then looked back over her shoulder. “Thank you. For… for all the things you said.”

Billie nodded, then turned her face to the door, where her lawyer stood. Lorna walked past him into the hallway.

“You were in there a long time,” Chief Walker noted as she passed. “What did you talk about?”

“A lot of things.” Lorna paused, then said, “You don’t really believe she killed Jason, do you?”

His eyes narrowed. “Did she tell you she didn’t?”

“Yes, she told me she didn’t. Didn’t she tell you the same?”

He waved his hand. “Everyone says they didn’t do whatever it is they’ve been arrested for. I never expect anyone to admit to anything anymore.”

The phone was ringing in his office, and he went in to answer it. A second later, he closed the door behind him.

“She didn’t kill him,” Lorna said to Brad when they reached the lobby.

“She convinced you of that?”

“What evidence do you have?”

He raised his eyebrows almost to his hairline. “I’m sorry, I thought that was business school you went to, not law school.”

“Is that your way of saying it’s none of my business?” she asked softly, trying not to sound as if she was challenging him, which she had no right to do.

“We know that she was physical with her kids. She didn’t deny that she’d been the cause of those broken bones he’d had. We know that she did think he killed his sister, and that she had questioned him about it on more than one occasion. She told me that. So what would stop her from trying to beat it out of him? She’d beaten him before, she said she did. Maybe that last time, things just got out of hand. I think it was an accident, I’ll give you that. I don’t think she intended to kill him, but I think she killed him, all the same.”

She started to say something, and he cut her off.

“The last time they questioned her, years ago, they felt very strongly, my dad and the DA did, that she had a hand in whatever it was that had happened to her kids. Back then, they didn’t even have a body. Now we do. It shows signs of abuse that she admits to. The night that Jason Eagan disappeared, he’d been drinking with a couple of guys out at White Marsh Park. He was dropped off at three in the morning and was seen walking up his front steps. No one has reported having seen him since that moment.”

“That doesn’t mean his mother killed him.”

“She admits she got into an argument with him that night after he came home. She admits everything, except the actual murder.” Brad folded his arms over his chest. “It’s good enough for the DA, Lorna. I’d think it would be good enough for you, especially since Melinda was your friend.”

“I don’t know, Brad. I just don’t see it.”

“Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.”

His radio squawked and he responded.

“Accident out there at the intersection.” He started to the door. “It’s gonna cause a major traffic jam. You might want to take one of the back roads home.”

Lorna stood in the lobby for a long minute, then followed him outside. She got into her car and fished around in the bottom of her bag for her keys, then remembered they were in her jeans pocket. When she started the ignition, the radio came on. She snapped it off, wanting silence, and drove home mechanically, without thinking where she was going, and got caught in the traffic jam Brad had warned her about.

Lorna sat behind a dark red pickup while the injured were loaded onto gurneys, her mind still trying to process everything Billie Eagan had told her.

That Billie and her mother had, over the years, become friends.

That Mary Beth had taken Billie in and given her a place to live. That she’d made sure Billie had food to eat and medical care, and the support she’d needed to overcome her addictions.

That Mary Beth had believed in Billie’s innocence.

Had she? Or was Billie just trying to find a sympathetic ear?

She was still debating that point when Brad waved her through the intersection.