The Row Page 17

  “I’m not sure what she told you…” Daddy’s words are carefully chosen, his voice soft.

  “Assume she told me everything,” Mr. Masters replies.

  “When did she tell you?” Daddy seems to be trying to figure out where to start, but Masters doesn’t allow him to get comfortable.

  “That isn’t your concern here,” Mr. Masters says, actually waving a hand to the side, dismissing Daddy’s words like an annoying fly.

  “She’s my daughter. Everything about her is my concern.” Daddy’s voice hovers somewhere between anger and pleading. He is losing his composure and I can see it. He feels threatened and cornered. Isn’t this what I wanted? Still, I feel less sure seeing this look on his face.

  “You told her that you were guilty. That you had killed those women.” Mr. Masters doesn’t seem to know how to relent, and he only pushes harder. “I assume you’re going to say now that this wasn’t true.”

  The color is slowly draining from Daddy’s face. His voice is soft and his eyes turn to me. “It isn’t true. I promise it isn’t.”

  Mr. Masters raises his voice now, drawing Daddy’s attention back on him. “Then why would an innocent man say something like that to his only daughter? Why would you want Riley to believe you were a murderer when you were executed?”

  Daddy opens his mouth to respond, but his eyes are still glued to me. Begging me to believe him. I’m torn and so I just freeze. I do nothing.

  “Because I was trying to set her free.” Daddy scowls at Masters now. His voice is a low growl. “Isn’t that what you’ve wanted me to do with my family for a long time? Let them go? You’ve already tried to take my place with my daughter.”

  Mr. Masters takes a quick, surprised breath, and when I shift to face him, he clears his throat, ignoring Daddy’s question. “How would Riley believing her father is a serial killer set her free?”

  Then Daddy’s tough façade crumples, pain showing clearly on his face. “Even if she thinks I’m the most horrible monster to ever live, at least she wouldn’t be stuck here in Texas fighting an unwinnable fight. Riley has been stationary for her whole life. She’s had no father, no good friends, and she’s trapped in a state where everyone despises her because of the crime they already decided that I committed a dozen years ago.”

  The room is silent now and all I can hear are Daddy’s ragged breaths. When he looks up, his eyes go straight to me. “I hoped that finally pretending to be the monster everyone has decided I am would let her move on and escape this place. If it could, that would be worth anything to me … even if it meant destroying myself in her eyes.”

  My throat closes up and I have to force myself not to cry. Instead, this time, I will save him.

  “No more,” I finally say, my words quiet but firm.

  “I’m done,” Mr. Masters says beside me. I’m surprised when the look on his face seems pleased. “Sorry, David. If what you said to Riley somehow gets out, I need to know you can handle being questioned on the stand about it.”

  Daddy closes his eyes and regains his composure before nodding. “Of course, I understand.” He’s not looking at me and the tension in the air has diminished, but it definitely isn’t gone.

  “I’m sorry this is so hard, Daddy.” It’s all I can think of to say, the only thing I can say to him right now with perfect honesty. There may always be lingering doubts in my mind when it comes to believing anything he says. There are still many things that remain unsaid between us, but for right now, I just want to help him somehow.

  I reach my hand across and place it palm down on the table, but he doesn’t take it. His hands are chained below, so he couldn’t even if he wanted to, and I know he doesn’t want either of us to get in trouble for breaking the visitation rules. Still, the look he gives me tells me he loves me and he’s sorry for everything we’ve both been through.

  For today, that is enough.

  25

  JORDAN’S FATHER IS DOING some paperwork from home on Thursday, and I have no clue what Mama’s schedule is like these days, so Jordan and I meet up at the library closest to my house.

  We sit at the table in the back corner of the history section, staring at a picture on my laptop of a lovely blond woman. Images flash through my mind again of the nightmare I had over a week ago featuring Mama as the victim. I swallow hard. I’m relieved to be certain that no matter what Daddy may or may not have done in the past, he did not murder Valynne Kemp. Someone must’ve snuck closer to the crime scene than the police usually allow or maybe the person who found her body took it. It’s a close-up fullbody shot of the way they found her at the crime scene. It was posted on a social media site. We found it by searching under her name; this one wasn’t attached to any news article.

  The way her body is posed. Exactly like the pictures of others I’d gotten a glimpse of at Daddy’s trial. I feel a chill seep down through my body to the bottoms of my feet. She looks so outwardly peaceful, but if you peel back the layers and look closer, there is so much destruction beneath the calm surface. According to the news articles we’d read so far, the damage done to Valynne’s body was nearly identical to that on the earlier victims of the East End Killer.

  Everything appears serene in the picture, everything but the dark collar of bruising on her neck. Nothing appears to be out of place. Her hands are folded neatly over her stomach. The picture makes it look like being strangled was the only out of the ordinary thing that had happened in Valynne’s otherwise very normal day. Even her hair spreads out softly around her head, a shimmering blond background that makes the angry bruises on her pale neck stand out in even starker contrast.

  I remember vividly from the trial, after they showed a similar picture, the prosecution went through image after image. Each was filled with pictures of bruises, cuts, and burns on the skin. They’re completely hidden by the clothing in the first photograph. Those women were beaten and tortured extensively—all before they’d been strangled.

  The first time they went over what happened to the victims at trial, Mama hadn’t been prepared with the headphones and coloring book she always brought with her later. She had made me cover my eyes, but the prosecutor explained it in far more detail than my young mind needed. I still remember the X-rays. I’d been too young to understand how to read them, but the prosecution described the many broken bones. He said most were fresh breaks from the hours before their deaths. I remember peeking between my fingers at one particularly gruesome shot of a rib broken in two places.

  My mind gets stuck on thoughts of what horrific pain that woman would’ve been in. How terrifying it must’ve been. Had she been relieved when the killer finally strangled her? At what point does death change from something you fear into something you wish for? After the fifth broken bone? The tenth? After you can’t take a breath without absolute agony?

  My fingers start to tremble before me. The motion snaps me out of it and I blink. When I raise my eyes, I find Jordan watching me, his jaw tense.

  “Sorry,” I say softly, and my voice sounds as emotionally drained as I feel. I’d never believed it could be this hard to look at the information and actually try to think about how the details could indicate Daddy’s guilt. I don’t know what I expected, but at the moment everything that I normally rely on for strength feels mangled, raw, and useless. Like someone ran my heart through a meat grinder and then shoved it back into my chest.

  “You don’t have to be sorry, Riley.” Jordan puts one warm hand over mine, rubbing his thumb across my knuckles. “You’re tougher than I’ve seen anyone give you credit for. You are strong enough to handle looking at all of this and truly consider whether you think your own father could’ve done it. Don’t ever feel like you’re weak.”

  I stare at him, a little stunned by his words. I’ve always felt like the people around me think I’m weak. Is this really what Jordan sees in me?

  “So, you’ve spent twenty minutes reading through all the details we could find on Valynne, and I looked at Hillary Vand
erstaff.” He goes straight back to work before I have a chance to say thank you, to respond, to hug him for seeing me that way.

  Clearing my throat, I try to jump right back in, too. “Right, Hillary, okay. So we’ll take turns. You ask me questions about my case. I’ll ask you about yours. We’ll compare notes and see what similarities and differences we’ve found.” I shuffle my notes into some semblance of order.

  “First question, where was Valynne’s body found?” Jordan asks.

  That isn’t one of the details I have to look up. I was there. “East End, by the corner of Barlow and Prairie, in an alley behind a pharmacy.”

  “Who found her? What time of day was she found?” He leans back in his chair and rubs the knuckles of his right hand under his chin. I’m struck by how much he looks like Chief Vega in that moment. Instead of making me want to hit him or run away, like I expect, the thought brings unexpected warmth to my chest. It surprises me so much I completely forget what he asked.

  “Um, ask me again?” I say finally, after pretending to look for the information to hide my embarrassment.

  Jordan gives me a confused half smile, but then repeats himself without an interrogation, and I’m grateful. “Who found her and at what time? And what time do they think she died?”

  “A delivery guy found her just after seven a.m. And the answer to your other question hasn’t been released.” I sigh and put my notes down. Maybe this is pointless. It’s so hard to figure out what I think about everything with so little information. I look over at Jordan. “Same questions about your case.”

  “Okay, Hillary was the last of the three East End Murders from before your father went to prison. She was found in Mason Park by a jogger at six in the morning.” He flips through his notes as he speaks, and I lean forward. Closing my eyes, I press my forehead into my palms and try to compare the details to my case.

  “Why a park?” I muse quietly, massaging my temples gently with my fingertips.

  “What?”

  I sit up and frown at him, thinking out loud. “Well, why a park? An alley like where Valynne was found is more hidden. It’s a place where they might not be found for a while. Was she under a bush or somewhere out of the way in the park?”

  He examines one of his papers before answering. “No. It says she was actually just a few feet from a popular jogging path.”

  “So, why a park, then?”

  Before I say another word, Jordan is flipping through to other pages in his notes. He finds what he’s searching for quickly, flips to a different page, and starts scanning through it.

  “What are you—?”

  “Give me a sec, I’m checking something.” He finds two more papers, then finally looks up at me and says, “Not why a park, why an alley?”

  “What?” I go quickly through our conversation in my head and still don’t understand what he’s saying.

  “All three earlier murders before Valynne are in more public places: the park, a neighborhood path, and a busy skateboarding park near an outdoor mall. The park isn’t the one that stands out, the alley from the most recent murder is.” He watches me for my reaction. This is an indicator of a copycat and I need to recognize it as such. He’s waiting for me to go all in on this method of thinking, and that will mean trusting him to fight for my father.

  I can try to do that verbally at least.

  “That could indicate a difference in preference for the killer.” The words taste bitter with a tang of betrayal in my mouth. I want to take them back, but I bite my tongue and force myself to wait.

  “It could be. Or it could be that being dormant for so long has made him grow timid. After all, watching your father be punished would make most people more cautious about being caught,” Jordan says.

  The bitterness disappears, and all at once my shoulders and chest feel lighter than they have in a very long time. Not only is Jordan keeping his promise and arguing for Daddy’s innocence, but he’s good at it. His argument is very reasonable, one I might not have considered myself.

  Keeping my eyes down on the files so he won’t see the intense relief in my face, I say, “Good point.”

  “Riley…” Jordan looks like he can’t decide whether to continue on with his thought or not.

  “Go ahead,” I say, bracing myself for whatever he doesn’t want to say.

  “Did you have any suspicion at all that your dad cheated on your mom?” He winces as he says the word cheated, and so do I.

  “I believed their lie.” I feel deflated just saying it.

  “What about what Mr. Masters said? Do you think your mom might actually believe the lie, too?” His voice is low now, like even the walls might hear us.

  “I’ve been wondering that same thing.” I fold my arms on the table, lay my head on them, and sigh. Memories of Mama’s voice ring in my head from the far distant past. Words like, “They’re lying about him, sweet pea,” and “Your daddy wouldn’t even cheat at chess, let alone anything else.”

  Of course, at six years old, I hadn’t even understood what this kind of cheating meant. I hadn’t even thought it was an important thing at the time. But Mama had to know about the evidence. And if they had presented the firm proof that I’d seen in the file, was she lying to me all along about what he’d done? Or was my mother really that naïve?

  The more I think about it, the more I think there’s only one real answer. She isn’t, she wasn’t, she never could be.

  Mama is smart, tenacious, hardworking, and tough. The idea that she really didn’t know after seeing that evidence at the trial just doesn’t fit her at all.

  So why was she still so loyal?

  “If you don’t want to talk about this, I understand.” I feel his fingers lightly brush through the back of my hair. “I’m sure they went through it all during the trial, though. Do you think she just didn’t believe them?”

  “No.” My stomach feels unstable. “I think she lied to protect him.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “I don’t know. It seems like my mother, my father—everyone I trust—all they know how to do is lie to me,” I say with a shaky voice, not even caring how pathetic it sounds. Sitting up, I look at the picture of Hillary that Jordan had printed out. It sits on top of his notebook.

  I stare at the wispy bangs across Hillary’s forehead. I both resent her for her part in Daddy’s affair and feel terrible about what happened to her. Then a distant memory from the trial comes floating back. We’d been sitting behind Daddy in our normal spot. The lawyers for the prosecution were talking and I heard them say Hillary’s name.

  Mama had leaned down, smiled, and whispered, “Some of the things they say aren’t for little girls to hear, okay?”

  I looked up at her and nodded. Then she slipped a pair of giant headphones over my ears and adjusted them until they mostly fit my head. She pushed a button and my ears filled with a song by the Beatles.

  She put one arm around me and gave me a coloring book and crayons. Music so I wouldn’t hear, and something to look at so I wouldn’t see.

  But she didn’t have on headphones. And her eyes never strayed down to my coloring book. Who was she trying to protect by pretending none of it was real? Was that moment the start of a lifetime of lies she would send in my direction? Does she need psychological help? Or rather some kind of truth serum for every time she speaks to me?

  Suddenly, I’m on my feet and gathering my stuff into a pile.

  “Riley?” Jordan stands up and starts doing the same thing. “Where are we going?”

  “To my house. We’re not accomplishing anything without new information,” I answer quickly. “And since she’s avoiding me and won’t answer any of my questions, maybe Mama has a journal or a diary or some other way we can get into her thoughts.”

  Jordan follows me out of the library without comment, even though he looks like he might have plenty to say about this plan. This time, I’m glad he keeps his thoughts to himself.

  I have enough doubts abou
t invading Mama’s privacy without any additional guilt.

  26

  THE LAST THING I EXPECT to find when I come flying in through the front door is Mama sitting at the kitchen table. Apparently, me coming home unannounced has the same effect on her because when she sees me, she gets up so suddenly that her chair legs screech backward across the floor.

  I freeze in my spot and Jordan looks from me to my mother with a panicked expression. I glance at my watch and see that it reads three o’clock. Too late to come home for lunch—not that she ever does—but way too early to be home for the day.

  Why is she here?

  Mama has a deep frown plastered across her face. She doesn’t speak yet, but instead throws a dish towel over the open box on the table in front of her before moving it down onto the ground beside her chair and retaking her seat.

  “Should I go?” Jordan’s athletic muscles coil inward, ready for me to say the word. His dark eyes are wide as he watches me, poised to bolt in any given direction if I tell him.

  My first instinct is to shout Yes! and start pushing him toward the front door, but I don’t. Instead, I take a deep breath and shake my head.

  “No. You should stay.” My whole body is shaking, but I manage to give him a firm nod. My hands ball into fists at my sides. I can tell from the alarmed look in his expression that he can see the raw fury that’s boiling up inside me.

  “Riley.” His eyes are half pleading, half worried. “Are you sure you want—”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” I answer, with resolve as strong as the steel cages that hold my father. For the first time in a while, I am sure. I have questions for my mother and I’m not at all afraid to ask them.

  Because right now, I am getting the answers that I need—no matter what.

  “I didn’t know you’d be home this early.” Mama’s voice is soft, her eyes are on the table. Even though I know it’s probably mostly in my mind, something about her has changed for me now. She was strong. She had no weaknesses before. Now she is something else … an unknown.