In Silence

CHAPTER 51

Avery sat stone still, heart and thoughts racing, cell phone still clutched in her hands. Dr. Harris had explained. Dr. Badeaux had employed two deputy coroners, all West Feliciana Parish physicians, all appointed by him. The coroner or one of his deputies went to the scene of every death, be it from natural causes, the result of accident, suicide or homicide.

The night of the Waguespack murder, Dr. Badeaux had been winging his way to Paris for a second honeymoon. Her dad had been the closest deputy coroner. When Dr. Badeaux had returned, Sallie Waguespack had been in the ground. He had accepted his deputy's call and it had stood for fifteen years.

"My boys didn 't kill that Sallie Waguespack. They was framed."

"Your father got what he deserved."

Trudy Pruitt had been telling the truth. Her sons had been framed. And her father had been a part of it.

Betrayal tasted bitter against her tongue. She leaped to her feet, began to pace. She couldn't believe her father would do this. She'd thought him the most honorable man she had ever known. The most moral, upright.

The box of clippings, she realized. That was why he had saved them all these years. As a painful reminder.

What he'd done would have eaten at him. She hadn't a doubt about that. All these years…had he feared exposure? Or had he longed for it?

That was it, she thought. The why. He hadn't been able to live with his guilt any longer. But he hadn't killed himself. He had decided to come clean. Clear the Pruitt boys' names. And he had been murdered for it. But why had he done it? For whom had he lied? His best friend. Sheriff Buddy Stevens.

Avery squeezed her eyes shut. Buddy had lied to her. The day she'd gone to see him, about having found the clippings. She had asked him why her father would have followed this murder so closely, why he would have kept the box of news stories all these years. She had asked if her dad had been involved with the investigation in any way.

Buddy had claimed he hadn't had a clue why her father would have clipped those stories, that her father hadn't been in any way involved in the investigation.

He'd been up to his eyeballs in this. They both had been. She recalled the words in her mother's journal. That after the murder everything had been different. That her father and Buddy's relationship had been strained. Hunter had claimed that their fathers never even spoke anymore.

What could cause such a serious rift between lifelong friends?

The answer was clear. For a friend, her dad had gone against his principles. Afterward, he had hated both himself and his friend for it.

That poor woman. And pregnant, too. Pregnant. With whose baby? Avery didn't like what she was thinking. She glanced toward the doorway. Lilah was in the kitchen, preparing dinner. She would know. Like her mother, she had lived through it. Had watched as best friends grew distant, then to despise one another.

Avery grabbed her handbag, with the two journals tucked inside, and slipped into her shoes. She went to the bedroom door and peeked out. The house was quiet save for sounds coming from the kitchen.

She slipped into the hall and down the stairs. From the study came the sound of Cherry and Buddy, talking softly. Avery tiptoed past the closed door and headed to the kitchen.

Lilah glanced over her shoulder at her and smiled. Avery saw that she was grating cheese. She wore a ruffled, floral apron-a flour smudge decorated her nose and right cheek. The blueberry pie, pretty as a picture from Bon Appetit, sat cooling on a rack by the oven.

"You look refreshed," she said brightly.

"At least I don't reek of smoke anymore."

"There's something to the whole comfort-food thing, don't you think?" She turned back to her grating. "Macaroni and cheese, chicken pot pie, tuna casserole. Good, old-fashioned stick-to-your-ribs stuff. Just thinking about it makes one feel better."

If only it was so easy, Avery thought, watching her work. If only life were so simple. Like something out of Life magazine in the 1950s. Or an episode of an old TV show.

Life wasn't like that, no matter how much she longed for it to be. The picture Lilah presented was wrong. She saw that now. A deception. An illusion.

A picture-perfect mask to hide the truth from the world.

But what was the truth?

Avery opened her handbag and drew out the journal from 1988. "Lilah," she said softly, "I need to ask you something. It's important."

The woman glanced at her. Her gaze dropped to Avery's hands. "What's that?"

"One of my mother's journals. I found it in my parents' attic."

"But I thought your father had gotten rid of them."

"No. Mother had packed them away. They were almost all lost in the fire."

Lilah's expression altered slightly. Her gaze skittered from Avery's to the journal. "Not that one."

"No. Or one other."

"Thank God for that."

"Yes." Avery carefully slid it back into her purse. "I discovered something interesting in this journal, Lilah. I wanted to ask you about it."

"Sure, hon." She went to the refrigerator and retrieved a jug of milk. She filled a measuring cup full. "What do you need to know?"

"Whose baby was Sallie Waguespack carrying?"

The measuring cup slipped from her fingers. It hit the counter-top and milk spewed across the country-blue Formica. With a small cry, she began mopping up the mess.

"Lilah?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes, you do. Whose baby was it?"

Lilah's movements stilled. The kitchen was silent save for the steady drip drip of milk dropping onto the tile floor.

"They're all dead now, Lilah. Everyone connected with the Waguespack murder investigation. All of them but Buddy. Do you know how damning that is?"

Lilah whimpered. Avery took a step toward her. "What really happened that night? Buddy, my dad, Pat Greene, they were all in on it. All covering up for somebody. Who was it, Lilah? Who?"

Avery grabbed her arm. "Those boys were framed, weren't they? They didn't kill Sallie Waguespack."

Lilah's mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Avery shook her. "Those boys were sacrificial lambs. It's in the journal, Lilah! I discovered it this morning. You were the only person I mentioned the journals to. Who did you tell? That's why my house was torched, to destroy the evidence!"

A sound of pain escaped Lilah's lips. "No. Please, it's not-"

"Stop protecting him, Lilah. You have to come clean. You have to make this right." She lowered her voice, pleading. "Only you can do it, Lilah. Only you can-"

"It was Buddy's baby!" she said, the words exploding from her. "He betrayed me, our children. This town. By day, Mr. Morality. Lecturing about how the citizens needed to take action, restore Cypress Springs to a God-fearing, law-abiding place to live. By night fornicating with that…with that cheap whore!"

Her tears came then, deep wrenching sobs. She doubled over. Her small frame shaking with the force of her despair.

"And she became pregnant."

"Yes." Lilah looked up, expression naked with pain. "That's when Buddy confessed to me what had been going on, that the woman was pregnant. I hadn't…I never-"

She bit the words back but they landed between them- She hadn 't known. She never suspected.

Avery's heart went out to the other woman. She had always thought the Stevenses had the perfect marriage. Apparently, Lilah had thought so, too.

"She was going to make trouble for him. She wanted to ruin him. Make it public. Shame him…all of us."

Lilah met Avery's gaze, calm seeming to move over her. "I couldn't have that. I couldn't have my family exposed to his filth. I couldn't let that happen."

"What did you do?" Avery asked softly, though she already knew.

"I went to see her. To beg her to keep quiet. To do the right thing." An angry sound escaped her. "The right thing? I was so naive. Sallie Waguespack wouldn't know the right thing if it hit her with a sledgehammer.

"She laughed at me. Called me pathetic. The stupid little house-wife." Lilah fisted her fingers. "She bragged about how she seduced him, about the…sex they had. She bragged about being pregnant. She promised that before she gave up Chief Raymond 'Buddy' Stevens, she would drag him and his family through the mud.

"We were in the kitchen. I was crying, begging her to shut up. I saw a knife on the counter." Lilah's eyes took on a glazed look. "I didn't do it on purpose. You have to believe me."

"Go on, Lilah. Tell me everything."

"I picked up the knife and I…stabbed her. Again and again. I didn't even realize…until…the blood. It was everywhere."

Avery took a step back, found the counter, leaned on it for support. "So Buddy took care of it for you," Avery whispered.

"Yes. I didn't ask him to. He told me to stay put, that he would take care of everything. But I didn't understand what that meant… didn't know until…the next day."

He framed the Pruitt boys. Manufactured the evidence against them and covered up the evidence against his wife.

He called upon his best friend to help. Pat Greene and Kevin Gallagher, too.

"I've had to live with that all these years. The guilt. The self-hatred. Those boys…what I did-"

She curved her arms around her middle, seeming to fold in on herself. "We were all so close back then. The best of friends. Buddy begged your daddy to lie, to make the medical facts agree with the evidence. To not request an autopsy. It was easy because the Pruitt boys were dead."

"And nothing would have to stand up to the scrutiny of a trial."

"Yes. Phillip couldn't live with the guilt at what he'd done. That's why he did it. Why he killed himself. I wish to God I had the guts to do the same! My children…my friends, I ruined everything!"

The kitchen door flew open. Buddy charged through, Cherry behind him, expression stricken.

"Enough!" he roared, face mottled with angry color.

Lilah cringed. Cherry rushed to her mother's side, drew her protectively into her arms.

Avery turned to the man she had once thought of as a second father. "It's too late, Buddy. How could you?"

"I never wanted you to know, Avery," he said, tone heavy with regret. "Your father didn't want you to know."

Avery trembled with anger. With betrayal. "How do you know what my father wanted? You used your friendship to force him to lie!"

He shook his head. "I only wanted to protect my family. You understand that, don't you, Avery? What happened wasn't Lilah's fault. I couldn't allow her to go to jail for my mistakes. My sins. Your father understood. Sallie's death was a crime of passion, not premeditated murder."

"Pat Greene didn't see the Pruitt boys leaving Sallie Waguespack's that night, did he?"

"No. I told him I did. Confessed to having an affair with her. Asked him to help me out. Because of how it looked."

"And he believed you?"

"He was my friend. He trusted me."

She made a sound of derision. "And the murder weapon in the ditch behind their trailer-"

"I planted it. The prints on the weapon and the blood on Donny's shoe as well. Pat didn't know."

She had looked up to him. Loved him. To know he had done this hurt. Her vision swam. "And Kevin Gallagher?"

"Kevin prepared Sallie for burial. All he knew was she was pregnant. I asked him to keep it quiet. Why exacerbate the situation? Why smear the poor woman's name any further?"

"And my dad?"

He drew a heavy breath. "Your daddy was hard to convince. In the end, he did it not just for me, but for Lilah and the kids."

"Those two boys," she whispered. "They were-"

"Trash. Delinquents. Only nineteen and twenty and had been busted a half-dozen times each. For drugs, attempted rape, drunk and disorderly conduct. They were never going to amount to anything. Never going to contribute anything to society but ills. To sacrifice them to save my family, it wasn't a difficult decision."

"You don't get to play God, Buddy. It's not your job."

His mouth twisted. "Your daddy said the same. I guess that old saying about the apple not falling far from the tree is true."

"What about Sal?" she asked. "Why include him, Buddy? You needed the Gazette, but for what? Swaying public opinion?"

"He wasn't included. He thought the crime went down exactly as officially reported. But I was able to use Sal and the Gazette as a way to focus the public's attention on the social context of the crime. Whip them into a state of outrage over the crime rate, the immorality of the young, the drug epidemic, and take their attention away from the crime itself."

"You bought into your own spin, didn't you?" Avery all but spat the words at him. "And The Seven was born. You and your buddies all got together to decide what was appropriate behavior and what wasn't. You took the law into your own hands, Buddy. You and your group became judge and jury. And things got out of hand."

"It wasn't like that. We loved this community, all of us did. We had-have-its good at heart. We only want to make life better, to keep things the way they had been. We keep watch on our friends and fellow citizens. Monitor the important things. If need be, we pay a friendly visit. Use a little muscle if necessary."

"Muscle? A palatable euphemism for what? A brick through the window? The threat of broken bones? Financial ruin through boycotts? Or just good old-fashioned cross burnings on the front lawn? What's the criteria for a death penalty in Cypress Springs?"

He looked shocked. "Good God, Avery, it's nothing like that. We're not terrorists. We're not killers. We offer help. Guidance. If that doesn't work, we suggest a change of residence." He lowered his voice. "If we didn't make things a little uncomfortable for them, what would their motivation for change be?"

She made a sound of disgust. "Motivation for change? You make me sick."

"You don't understand. It's all done in the spirit of caring and community concern. Nobody gets hurt."

"Actually, I think I understand too well." Avery glanced at Cherry. She was holding her mother, crying quietly. She returned her gaze to Buddy. "You're such a hypocrite. Making like you're Mr. Morality. Persecuting others for their sins, when all the while you're the biggest sinner of all."

Tears glistened in his eyes. "Do you think I haven't suffered for my sins? A day doesn't go by that I don't wish I could go back, do it all over. I had everything. A beautiful family. The love of a wonderful woman. The respect of my friends and the community. If I could make that choice again, I wouldn't go near Sallie Waguespack. None of this would have happened."

He held out a hand to her. "Don't look at me like that," he pleaded. "Like I'm some sort of monster. I'm still Buddy, you're still my baby girl."

"No." She took a step back. "Not anymore. Never again."

"You have to understand. I was afraid for my family. I did what I had to in order to protect them." He took another step toward her. "I had to do it, don't you see? A man protects his family."

"At all costs, Buddy?" she asked. "What lengths would you go? From covering up a murder to committing one?"

"No, never."

"Everybody involved in the cover-up is dead now, Buddy. Everyone but you. What am I supposed to think?"

"Daddy?" Cherry whispered. "What's she talking about?"

Buddy glanced nervously at his daughter. "It's not true, sweetheart. Don't listen to her. She's had a shock. She's confused."

"I'm not confused. You killed all your old friends. Why? Did they threaten to come clean? Go to the Feds because the guilt had become too much for them to live with? Is that why you killed your best friend, Buddy? Why you immobilized him, doused him in diesel fuel and-"

"No!" Lilah cried out. "No!"

Buddy darted his gaze between the women. "It's not true! I didn't have anything to do with that. I couldn't! I-"

"You went in the middle of the night. He opened the door because he trusted you. You immobilized him with a stun gun. Then you carried him out to the garage, doused him with fuel and set him on fire!"

"No!" His face went white.

"Hunter had nothing to do with any of this. You set up your own son."

"No. You have to believe me!"

"I can't believe anything you say. Not now. Not ever again."

It all made sense now-Lilah's depression and addiction. Hunter's break with the family. Cherry's dedication to keeping the family together, to making them look happy and normal.

"No one needs to know, Avery." Buddy lowered his voice, tone soothing. "We're a family. We're your family. We love you."

Tears choked her. She shook her head. She had believed that once. Had thought of this family as an extension of her own. "It's over, Buddy."

"We're all you have left, Avery." He took a step toward her, forcing her backward. "Cypress Springs is your home."

He took another step. He had her cornered, she realized. Had backed her into a wall, the only way out through him. She tamped down her rising panic.

"I'll need those journals." He held out a hand. "Laurie called me. Told me you'd been there. That you'd left Lancaster a note."

"One of your many spies."

"She was worried about you."

"Right. Worried about me."

"We love you, Avery," Lilah whispered. "You're one of us."

"Yes," Cherry piped in. "Give Dad the journals and everything will be okay."

Avery moved her gaze between the three, heart racing, struggling to stay calm. To assess her options. Three against one. One of them the size of a tree and packing a gun. Lilah looked on the verge of falling apart. Cherry seemed stunned, her reactions wooden. The little focus she possessed seemed directed toward supporting her mother.

Only Buddy posed a threat to her escape. Immobilize him and she could make it. But how?

Her pepper spray! She hadn't taken it out of her purse.

"Come on, baby girl." He stretched his hand out. "You know we only want the best for you. It's all in the past. We'll be one big, happy family."

"A family," she repeated, voice shaking. "You're right." She reached into her handbag. Her fingers closed around the cylinder of spray. She drew the can out and lunged forward, shooting the spray directly into Buddy's eyes, blinding him.

With a cry, he stumbled backward, clawing at his eyes. Avery darted past him. Out of the kitchen, into the front hall. She heard Lilah and Cherry calling her back.

The front door was locked. She fumbled with the dead bolt; after what seemed a century, it slid back and she raced out onto the porch. She paused there, realizing she didn't have a vehicle.

Behind her she heard the kitchen door fly open, heard the thunder of footfalls.

She leaped forward, hitting the stairs, racing down them. Into the yard. Avery glanced back. Buddy had gained on her, she saw. He called her name.

Headlights sliced across the dark road. Avery changed direction, running toward them, waving her arms wildly.

The white sedan pulled over. She grabbed the passenger door, yanked it open.

"Thank God! Can you giv-"

She bit the words back, a cry springing to her lips.

"Get in, Avery," Matt ordered. "Quickly, before it's too late."

She froze. Behind her, Buddy closed in.

She saw Matt had his gun. He motioned with it. "It wasn't Hunter," he said. "It was Dad. Come on, he's almost here."

She glanced back. Buddy was calling her name, going for his gun. She dived into the vehicle, yanking the door shut as she did.

Matt hit the autolock and floored the accelerator. The vehicle surged forward, fishtailing, tires squealing. Avery swiveled in her seat, craning her neck to see Buddy. He ran into the street, gave chase for a moment, then stopped.

She brought her shaking hands to her face, fighting hysteria. The urge to fall completely apart.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded, dropping her hands. "When did you…how did you find out-"

"About Dad?" He shook his head. "I love my dad. He's got a good heart, but he's weak. A total fuckup, Avery."

She didn't understand. "You're not making excuses for him, are you? He's a murderer, Matt."

Matt smiled. Oddly. Avery frowned, becoming suddenly aware of the closeness of the vehicle, that Matt kept one hand on his weapon, lying on the seat beside him.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled. "Aren't you going to put that away?"

He ignored her. "You were right to trust me, Avery. Dad's over-emotional. He means to do the right thing, but emotion gets in the way. It's what makes him weak."

Matt was in cahoots with his dad. One of The Seven. An accomplice to murder.

And she had gotten into the car with him. He had a gun.

She saw a stop sign ahead. She shifted slightly in her seat in an attempt to hide what she was about to do. As he slowed the sedan, she inched her hand toward the door handle, grasped it and yanked.

The door didn't budge. Matt laughed and eased through the intersection without stopping. "Childproof locks, Avery. How stupid do you think I am?"

"I don't know what you're talking about, Matt. I didn't__"

"Say good-night, Avery."

Before she realized his intention, he struck her in the temple with the butt of his gun. Pain jackknifed through her skull; in the next instant, she felt nothing at all.