Laura began to shake her. “Tell me. Tell me.”
Serita stepped in and disengaged the two sisters. “Just relax a second, Laura.”
Laura let go and lay back down. “I can’t relax. The killer is still out there.”
“You’re not making any sense, girl. Pictures from thirty years ago. Murderers running around. A suicide that’s thirty years old—”
“Not a suicide!” Gloria shouted.
Laura and Serita spun toward Gloria’s voice. She was huddled in a corner, her whole body quivering and quaking as though she were caught in the grip of a fever. “He didn’t commit suicide,” Gloria said.
Laura could not believe what she was hearing. “What are you talking about? Of course he committed suicide.”
Gloria shook her head violently. “He was murdered. Sinclair Baskin was murdered.”
“What?”
“Stan was hiding behind the couch in his father’s office. He was only ten years old but he saw the whole thing. Somebody murdered Sinclair Baskin.”
“But . . . ?” Laura’s mouth fell open. She stared dumbstruck. “My God,” she finally managed. “Does Stan know who did it?”
“No. He didn’t recognize the killer. But he remembers the face. . . .”
Laura fell back on the bed. Another piece of the puzzle had been handed to her and once again, that piece did not seem to fit. Murdered. Sinclair Baskin. David. Judy. Something had happened thirty years ago—something horrible and evil, something that did not end with the passing of a decade or two. Judy’s haunting words came back to her, tearing at her heart with sharpened claws.
“. . . There are things that you know nothing about. Things that happened many years ago . . . sometimes the past can overlap with the present. That was what happened with David. . . .”
“Serita?”
“Yeah?”
There was only one way to find the answer to what happened so many years ago, to what happened to David. “Would you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Don’t tell my folks or the doctor.”
“I won’t.”
“Can you get me a plane ticket to Chicago?”
26
MARK burst through the door. His breathing was uneven, his chest hitching from the mere effort.
“What the hell happened to you?” T.C. asked. “You’re a goddamn mess.”
“Get me something to drink. A vodka, anything.”
“You don’t drink.”
He collapsed into a chair. “I do now.”
T.C. grabbed two cans of Budweiser and tossed one to Mark. “It’s the best I can do. Jesus, Mark, your clothes are burned.”
Mark ripped open the can of beer and chugged half of it.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
Mark stood, the can of beer nearly being crushed by his grip. His words came fast, his pitch unsteady. “I got to Judy Simmons’s house at seven o’clock, just like she said. I parked my car someplace off campus and walked about a mile before I spotted Judy’s house. Then . . .”
“Then?”
He swallowed. “A taxi pulled up in front of the house. Laura got out of it.”
“Oh, shit.”
“I ducked behind a tree. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what Judy was up to. She must have figured—”
“That if she put you and Laura together,” T.C. finished, “the sparks would really fly.”
Mark chuckled sadly.
“What’s so funny?” T.C. asked.
“Nothing is funny,” Mark answered. “Just ironic.”
“Huh?”
“You’ll see. Anyway, I’m hiding behind this tree, watching Laura ...” He stopped talking, his mind drifting back to the memory. Laura. His eyes had crawled over every inch of her with a yearning so great, he was sure he would die. Just seeing her again, staring at her lovely face turned red from the cold, watching her walk up the path, made his stomach ache with a sense of loss.
“Mark?”
“Sorry,” he said softly. He took a deep breath and continued. “Laura knocked on the door and waited. No one answered. She called Judy’s name. Still nothing. So she tried the lock and opened the door. She went into the house.”
“What did you do?”
Mark looked away. “I just stood there frozen in place. I don’t know why. I should have just turned and left. But I couldn’t. I stared and stared—daydreaming, I guess—until I saw smoke.”
“Smoke?”
“A fire broke out.”
“What?”
Mark nodded as if to reconfirm his own words. “The smoke started to billow out of the cracks in the doors and windows. It couldn’t have happened more than five minutes after Laura entered.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran into the house. What a goddamn mess. It was unbelievable. Flames were crawling up the walls.”
“Jesus.”
“All I could think about was Laura. Laura is trapped somewhere in here, my mind kept repeating like a parakeet, trapped in the middle of this deadly blaze. Nothing else mattered. It was weird. The fire became nothing more than a diversion to me. I scrambled around desperately, hoping against hope that Laura was still alive.”
“Don’t tell me—”
Mark shook his head. “I found her and pulled her out. The fire hadn’t reached her yet. She was unconscious, so I called nine one one and stayed with her until I heard the sirens. I spoke to the hospital a little while later. She’ll be okay.”
“Thank God.”
Mark swallowed hard. When he had lifted Laura, when he had taken her in his arms, he had wanted so much to never let go, to protect her, to tell her everything was going to be okay. Tears found their way into his eyes before he forced them back down. “The same,” Mark continued slowly, “cannot be said about Judy. She’s dead, T.C.”
T.C. shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mark. I know she meant a lot to you.”
“Fires don’t burn that fast, do they, T.C.? Somebody set that fire deliberately. Somebody murdered Judy Simmons.”
“You can’t be sure of that.”
“I want to find that somebody, T.C. I want to nail that son of a bitch to the wall.”
“Or daughter of a bitch.”
“Huh?”
“Think about it a second. Who would want to silence Judy?”
“You’re not suggesting . . .”