Page 26

DAY THREE

I partially woke when Teague got out of bed.

Not wanting to let him know his obvious efforts to be quiet failed, I didn’t stir or say anything.

Drifting between sleep and wakefulness, I thought about the videos.

They’d included what must have been family photos of Derrick and Jaylynn, both burnished with youth and confidence.

Then Derrick’s booking photo — Payloma was right about how he’d changed by then — followed by snippets of people arriving or leaving the courthouse.

Dova, very attractive, had kept her head up and looked straight ahead.

Derrick’s parents were more inclined to drop their gazes and hurry.

Payloma and Olive talked to the cameras now and then, showing their anger, and appearing more unified than now.

Emil and Evan barely rated cameos as their younger selves.

The one who’d changed the most since then, of course, was Robbie, from cute toddlerhood to heading toward manhood.

There were only a couple snippets of him with Dova — not at the courthouse, but once arriving at the jail and another time walking into the Dorrios’ house.

Dova turned toward the camera in the last frame and you could see her protectiveness in full force.

****

I groaned when Clara pulled into the Riddle Road entry to Kentucky Manor again.

The dogs might have, too. There certainly was increased restlessness in the back. These stops before the dog park were not popular.

“What do you hope to—?” I tried to ask.

“Maybe Rose Gleiner will be here again or—Oh. Look. Beverly Dorrio.”

She came out of the building backward, pushing the door open with her butt and carrying a box.

It’s probably a sign of a weak character to find that less-than-dignified exit satisfying, but I did.

Indulging my weak character and possibly chuckling a little bit slowed me enough that Clara was out of the van and reaching for the box before I’d cleared the passenger door.

“Let me take that for you, Beverly.”

Clara matched action to words. Beverly allowed it without expressing thanks, then smoothed down her coat.

“This must be so hard for you, collecting Derrick’s things...”

No response.

But she did graciously allow us to trail behind her.

Rude, but on the plus side, it gave me a chance to scope out what was in the box, aided by Clara slightly tipping it toward me.

There was a folded quilt that seemed to take up the bottom of the box and looked old, possibly from Derrick’s childhood.

It was only visible in snatches beneath a box of tissues, an empty vase, a mug with — yeah — cabbage roses on it, a scattering of papers, plus corners of a few other things I couldn’t identify.

Taking up most of the room on the top layer was a photo enlarged to an eight-by-ten of a young Robbie — the two-dimensional rendition of my half-awake memories of the videos from the time of the trial.

In the corner of the frame someone had slid in what looked to be a class photo from a year or so ago.

We’d reached Beverly’s glossy sedan. She’d popped the trunk and now she watched me looking at the photos of Robbie.

“I had to give Derrick that newer photo or he would have still been looking for the child. In vain, as it turned out.” Perhaps not surprising that she didn’t know Robbie had seen his father, since, according to Sally the aide, Derrick himself might not have known.

“As it was, he barely recognized me or his father.”

Yale felt like an afterthought in that concern.

The corners of her mouth pressed tight before she spoke again. “I told him he shouldn’t have kept us away. I did not mince words.”

“What did he say?” Clara asked, straightening from depositing the box in the pristine trunk.

Beverly’s expression this time was neither micro nor ambiguous. It was sharp and deep with sorrow. “He said very little. He did appear surprised, but his disease had progressed such that he had difficulty expressing himself at times.”

“I see you have paperwork—”

“Why Dova didn’t take it... She holds onto every scrap of paper, every receipt. I suppose I can’t complain—” Sure sounded like she was complaining. “—since that habit would have helped if the investigators or jury listened to the evidence of Derrick’s alibi. Thank you.”

The last two words were perfunctory. The trunk was auto-closing and she was getting into the car.

Clara and I started back toward her van. Our path aimed my attention toward the Kentucky Manor doors.

“Uh-oh.”

Emil Dorrio had exited those doors and was headed our direction.

My mutter sent Clara’s attention there, too. She growled low in her throat. “What are the chances he wasn’t inside with her and didn’t purposefully time it so he didn’t have to carry the box for her?”

“Nonexistent. C’mon, let’s go.”

I took a step and a half toward the van. Clara didn’t budge, which put her directly in his path.

He glowered at her.

I moved back to her side.

“What the hell?” He wasn’t the quickest on the uptake, but after his gaze had gone from the departing back of Beverly’s car to us a couple times, he’d put together the pieces. “You two leave the family alone. Derrick brought enough crap down on the family name without stirring it all up again.”

His imagery stirred an eww I quickly suppressed to say, “His parents have been more than willing to talk about him.”

A bit misleading, strictly speaking, but speaking strictly wasn’t my top priority. Sparing Clara from taking the lead in talking to this jerk was.

“Of course they were. They’re still living in a dreamworld where he wasn’t guilty.

And they’re old. It doesn’t matter what he does to their reputations.

” If there’d been any doubt that Emil wasn’t thinking about them and was thinking about himself, his next words removed it.

“As if it wasn’t hard enough to get ahead in business and politics with him all over the news then and now.

If he’d admitted it and quietly gone away instead of dragging it out.

.. And then, he has to get out of prison so he can get himself killed and bring it all up again. ”

“The unfairness of it all,” Clara muttered.

I quickly inserted, “Did you contribute to getting him out of prison on compassionate leave and into hospice here to be near his family?”

I needn’t have bothered with the diversion from Clara. He was paying attention only to his complaints.

“And then he’s here of all places. Couldn’t even stay a decent distance away.

If they’d listened to me, they wouldn’t have—” He caught himself and assumed a mask of sorrow, like the worst example of a bad mime’s face-wipe change of expression I’d ever seen.

“Of course, the parents wanted to see their dying son. It’s natural. And now it’s over.”

Except for the small matter of Derrick being murdered.

Here was a thought... If the murderer expected the death would be taken as natural and word would never get out about Derrick’s release or his presence in North Bend County, how did that affect motives?

“Did you go to see him?” I asked.

His gaze sharpened. “No.”

Clang, clang, clang. Not according to Sally, the aide. Why deny it?

“But you went to see him in prison regularly?”

“Some,” he said grudgingly.

If frequency ended up being vital, we could probably get at it another way.

Keeping him talking felt more important now. I had the oddest feeling we’d have limited opportunities to chat. Or was that hope?

“How was he when you did visit him? Strong? Determined? Or...?”

“He wasn’t happy about much, that’s for sure. Not about being in prison. Not about not seeing his kid much because the wife worried about the kid getting emotionally scarred from seeing him there.

“Not about the wife being around less and less, along with harder and harder to reach. Can’t tell you how many times I heard about him having to leave a message and not hearing back for days after the doctors told him what he had and he wasn’t going to beat it.”

From a quick calculation, that was around the time Dova had her accident.

“Not about dying, either, for damned sure.” There was an odd note of satisfaction in that last statement. “Should’ve stayed in prison to die there. If that visiting preacher hadn’t started taking an interest in him a year ago—”

Right around when Dova had her accident.

“—and sprang him loose.”

“A preacher?” Not the family?

“Guy’s been around a long time, knows all the ins and outs to pull off something like that. Derrick didn’t have to do a thing. Like always.”

Except have a terminal disease that was nearing its end.

Nope, didn’t point that out.

“You’d been close when you were younger, but it sounds like you didn’t get along well after he went to prison?” I asked, trying for Clara’s innocent-as-pie voice.

He instantly looked wary. Either I hadn’t done it right or he didn’t possess much belief in innocence. “Where’d you hear that? That wife of his? We got along fine. I went to see him, didn’t I?”

“Oh, I must have been mistaken. Did you have interests in common?”

“Didn’t need interests in common. Not when we were younger and not when he was in prison.

All those times visiting him because they couldn’t reach Dova’s phone were because of family.

I did my duty,” he said righteously. “You want to know what he talked about when I visited him in prison? Himself. All the time. All about himself. Same thing, over and over and over. How he didn’t kill Jaylynn, how he got framed by law enforcement, how his first lawyer sucked, how his wife was working on getting him some new, hot-shot lawyer that would get him out. And none of it ever got him anywhere.”

“Did you believe him — about his being innocent and being framed by the sheriff’s department?”

“It’s what people in his position say, isn’t it.” Not a question. Not an answer, either. “Over and over, like one of those songs you can’t get out of your head.”

“An earworm,” I provided.

He snorted. Not a bit grateful I’d named the irritant. “I’ve had enough of this. He’s dead. They’ll figure out they’re wrong about it being murder. It’s all over now.”

He stomped away toward the parking lot.

Clara and I looked at each other.

“Not over,” she said.

“Not even close,” I agreed.