“No one knows. She’s been missing for four years.”
26
Dean stood in the side yard of Francesca’s house, hopping from foot to foot while he waited for her to go to bed. Constant movement helped him cope with the anxiety that was making him itch all over. Maybe he should’ve taken his medication this morning. It’d been too long since his last dose. He was heading into withdrawal. But if he’d taken his meds, he wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done. That was the reason he sometimes pretended to take them but threw them away. They made him feel as if he was living inside a bubble, looking out at life instead of experiencing it. When he was drugged, he didn’t care deeply about anything, and he had to care about this, had to be able to fix his mistake. Like his mother said, he should never have put those panties in the jockey box of Butch’s truck. If not for that, they wouldn’t have fallen into the wrong hands, and he wouldn’t be here, so far from the places that were comfortable and familiar to him, so far from his family.
Too bad Francesca had capitalized on his mistake. He’d returned her purse. He’d returned her pictures, too, even though he’d desperately wanted to add them to his growing pile of treasures and pretend to be part of her life. Why couldn’t she have left well enough alone? Was it because she wanted to cause him problems?
Maybe not. But she didn’t care if she did. Francesca was like every other woman he’d found attractive. None of them liked him. Look at the way her friend had treated him. Adriana wouldn’t even give him a drink of water.
He didn’t have to feel bad about what he was going to do because Francesca had earned it….
“It’s for Mom,” he mumbled to himself. He’d been saying the same thing ever since he’d left Prescott, and that was hours ago—so many he’d lost track in the fog of panic and preoccupation. He’d been so upset he’d gotten confused, taken the wrong bus and wound up in Casa Grande. He’d had to backtrack an hour and a half.
But he was here now. And he knew what he had to do.
Thank God it was dark. Hiding calmed him. He’d always enjoyed standing in the background, watching….
Finally, the light gleaming around the edges of Francesca’s blinds disappeared. Taking his lock picks, mini-flashlight and flathead screwdriver from his backpack, he imagined himself as invisible, a moving shadow, and slipped silently through the gate and around to the back door.
Fortunately, Francesca had a pin-and-tumbler-style lock, just as he’d expected. Most residences had these, so he’d encountered them before, numerous times.
All he had to do was rake all the pins, then pick any that remained. Getting in would take him two minutes, tops.
“What are you doing?”
Butch froze at the sound of his wife’s voice, coming from behind him. Hoping she was asleep and hadn’t heard his truck, he’d entered the salvage yard through the gate instead of the house. A gruesome task awaited him. He didn’t want her involved in it.
“Don’t worry about it.” Determined to see his decision through, he marched toward the back corner.
It was warm enough that Paris didn’t need a robe, but she was wearing one. Eyes wide, skin chalk-white, she looked small and frightened as she caught up to him. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you get the panties?”
Feeling like a failure for dragging his family into his addiction, he allowed her to stop him. “No.”
“Francesca Moretti didn’t have them?”
“I didn’t go to Chandler.”
“Why not?” she gasped.
“What would be the point?”
Obviously smelling the alcohol on his breath, she sniffed. “You’ve been drinking.”
“Two beers. I’m sober. Listen to me.”
“I don’t understand why you didn’t go to Chandler!”
“Because even if Francesca took those panties, who knows whether she still has them? Maybe she gave them to someone other than Finch or Hunsacker, someone like that consultant. It’s been more than twenty-four hours. She could’ve shipped them to a lab herself. And if she does have them, it’s not as if she’d hand them over to me. I’d have to force her. Then she’d really think I’m a killer and the cops would believe it.”
Paris hugged the collar of her robe to her chin. “But…we can’t let those panties be tested. Not if they belonged to who I think they did.”
She knew. Butch could tell. “How’d you figure it out?”
“The way you’ve been acting.”
After that little confrontation with Dean, he’d explained the situation to Elaine. He shouldn’t have. Paris’s mother must’ve told her.
Placing his hands on her shoulders, Butch tried to reassure her with a squeeze. She had to put up with so much because of him. He felt bad about that. If only he’d curbed his appetites when he had the chance. If only he hadn’t been so careless! “Paris—”
“We should’ve gone to the police,” she whispered. “Right when it happened.”
He lowered his voice. “And tell them what? That you accidentally killed a girl I was having an affair with?”
“Yes! Why not? It was an accident!”
“You were upset when you pushed her. That’s manslaughter. A felony.”
Tears filled her eyes. “I didn’t expect her to fall. I just wanted her to leave you alone. We shouldn’t have let her live here in the first place!”
“I know that, and you know that, but no one is going to understand. The police won’t care. The D.A. will paint what happened in the worst possible light. Are you willing to go to prison for a crime you didn’t mean to commit?”
She shrank even deeper into that fluffy robe. She’d lost weight in the past twelve months, was thin as a rail. The burden of their secret weighed too heavily on her. “Of course not. But living in panic and fear…all the time. I’m not sure that’s any better.”
“I won’t lose you,” he said hoarsely. “I won’t let Champ lose you, either.”
She wrung her thin fingers. “But if they find her body they’ll take me away no matter what.”
“They won’t find anything. I’m getting rid of it right now. That’s our only alternative.”
Her eyes flew wide. “No! You know what my mom said. It’s best to leave the body here, to keep it under our control. We can’t risk someone else stumbling across it.”