Cold feet(26)
Author: Brenda Novak

Madison pulled her blanket a little higher. "I’m ashamed to admit she was probably the reason my dad didn’t get more involved with them. He didn’t think it was fair to expect her to clean up a mess she hadn’t done anything to create."

"Wow." He poured a little more wine into his glass and lifted the bottle to her in question, but she shook her head. "So you didn’t get to know your brothers until they came to live with you?"

"I didn’t have any contact with them until then. Once Peg’s mother died, Peg called my dad to tell him she couldn’t handle the boys anymore."

Caleb leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "How did it go once they came to live at your place?"

"They didn’t stay long. Johnny got busted for drugs and went to a juvenile detention center within the first eighteen months. Tye shut himself up in his room and listened to stoner music for hours on end. He didn’t do his homework or interact with the family. He didn’t have friends. It drove my mother nuts that he could simply cut everyone off like that."

"Was he on drugs, too?"

"Probably," she said with a shrug, and surprised Caleb by accepting when he once again offered her more wine. "Dad and Tye argued constantly."

"Did it ever come to blows?"

She sat back and faced him, her expression thoughtful. "Occasionally. Usually over schoolwork. My dad didn’t want Tye to end up without an education, like him. And he didn’t like the way Tye treated my mother." She sighed. "On the other hand, Tye didn’t think my father had the right to tell him anything. Sometimes I could see hate flickering in his eyes when he spoke to my parents, and it was almost–" she hesitated, seeming to grope for the right words "–frightening."

Caleb couldn’t help marveling at how different Madison was from the woman he’d expected her to be–and wishing she wasn’t so nice. Then maybe he wouldn’t have to feel like such a jerk for taking advantage of her. "Did you get along okay with Tye and Johnny?" he asked, feeling a bit protective in case the answer was no.

"I was only eight when they came to live with us, so I didn’t really have much to do with them. I felt like a spectator most of the time. I heard the yelling and watched the fighting, but I couldn’t do anything to stop what was going on around me. So I tried to tune it out."

"You and your brothers make my childhood seem like a party," he said. "Between the situation with Tye and Johnny and the investigation, how did you survive?"

He’d switched topics as smoothly as possible, but when she didn’t answer right away, he feared she was going to say something about calling it a night.

Instead, she drank a little more wine. "I don’t know. It all seems like a bad dream–a bad dream that lasted a very long time."

Her answer was too vague. He needed more. "How did your father deal with the investigation?"

She threw the blanket aside and started clearing up the mess. "At first he tried to protect my mother and me by cooperating with the police. But when he agreed to take a lie detector test and they claimed he failed it, he wouldn’t cooperate anymore."

"They claimed he failed it?"

She looked up at him. "There’s no law that says the police have to be truthful during an interrogation. Did you know that?"

Caleb tried not to think how darn pretty she was….

What was wrong with him? This was business. If only she’d put on her damn bra. "I didn’t," he said, feeling more like Judas by the minute.

"I guess once my father learned that they didn’t have to be honest, he assumed they weren’t and never trusted them again," she said. "He thought they were out to get him."

He could tell she was no longer enjoying the conversation, but he had to keep pushing. Partially because he refused to let her beauty distract him from his real goal. "What did you think?"

"I believed him," she said. "I saw how the police were acting, knew they were definitely out to get somebody."

"But why your father?"

She shrugged and shifted positions, but he kept an expectant expression on his face, and she finally said, "He worked on the third victim’s house, doing a renovation. Her name was Tatiana Harris. She lived pretty close to us, so that shouldn’t have been particularly unusual. But the lady across the street claimed she saw my father’s truck leaving Tatiana’s house the night she was murdered."

"You mentioned something about that before. But you don’t believe she saw what she claimed she saw?"

"I think she could’ve been confused about when she saw my father’s truck. Or mistaken it for someone else’s in the dark. I tried talking to her about it once, and she seemed a little dotty to me. But the police thought they’d found the connection they’d been searching for, and kept digging. From there, circumstantial evidence made my father look even guiltier. And then another woman, years later, claimed she saw my father’s truck leaving another crime scene."

That was Holly, of course, who’d even managed to remember the first three digits of Purcell’s license plate number. But Madison didn’t add that license plate detail. Maybe she didn’t want to face it.

"You don’t believe her, either?"

"I don’t know what to believe now." She toyed with her hair. "At the time I thought the second woman was just jumping on the bandwagon. The media had publicized the details of the case so much, everyone knew my father’s blue Ford had supposedly been spotted at one of the crime scenes. Anyone who’d seen him in town or simply driving down the street could note his plate number."

So she did acknowledge the plate detail. Caleb set his glass on the table and leaned back. "But the police didn’t look at it that way."

"No. Nine women had already been sexually assaulted and then murdered. Public pressure was such that they needed to solve the case as soon as possible." She gathered up the pizza box, on which she’d set their dirty plates, but before she could head to the kitchen, he stopped her with another question.

"Did your father ever think about hiring an independent specialist to administer a separate lie detector test?"

"Why would he bother?"

"To prove the police were wrong."

"I don’t think it would’ve made any difference."

Caleb knew he should probably let the subject go–for tonight, anyway. She was growing agitated. But he needed answers, and he needed them fast. If only she’d tell him something he didn’t already know…"Why wouldn’t it?" he pressed.

"My father wasn’t a very sophisticated man. He just wanted to be left in peace."