Murder of Innocence (Murder Is Forever) Read online

  “I don’t think that’s the solution,” she tells him. “What we need to do is get the hell out of Pikeville.”

  “How much have you had to drink?” Mark asks.

  “Don’t patronize me,” Kathy says.

  “Christ, Kathy. I don’t need this shit right now.”

  He starts to walk out of the room, but Kathy says, “Go ahead. Walk away. Run away from our problems.”

  He whirls around, his eyes filled with anger. “What the fuck do you want from me, Kathy?” he says, practically shouting. “Can’t you see I’m under enough stress?”

  “And I’m not? You think watching the kids all day with no help from you—none at all—is easy? You’re gone now more than ever. I feel like a single mother. Don’t you miss us? Don’t you want to spend time with your children?”

  These questions seem to take some of the fire out of him. At least he feels guilty for being away from us so much, Kathy thinks.

  “I work this hard for us,” he says, his voice lower but still defensive. “To make a better life for us.”

  “Bullshit,” Kathy says. “If you wanted to do what was best for us, you’d find a way to be around more. You’re not gone because you have to be. You’re gone so much because you don’t want to be here with your family.”

  “Oh, go to hell,” Mark says, and Kathy is shocked at the bluntness of his words. “Go pass out and talk to me when you’re sober.”

  Kathy can’t take it anymore. She collapses into a chair, puts her head in her hands, and bursts into tears. Mark sits down next to her.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” he says. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

  Kathy says nothing, just keeps sobbing. Is that an apology? she thinks. Or an excuse?

  Mark takes a deep breath. “This chop-shop case will be a big feather in my cap. Between that and the Cat Eyes arrest, I’ll be able to write my own ticket. We could go anywhere.” He fixes her with his stare and says earnestly, “I need you to hold on a little longer. Can you do that for me, Kathy?”

  We’re both struggling in different ways, she thinks, willing herself to calm down. This is no time to be selfish. I need to support him through this. She gives him a nod.

  When Mark rises, Kathy wraps her arms around him and sobs into his chest. “I was so scared,” she says.

  “We’re in this together,” he says, rubbing her back. “We’re a team.”

  It doesn’t feel that way anymore, Kathy thinks.

  The phone rings. They look at each other.

  “I’ll get it,” Mark says.

  “No,” Kathy says. “I need to be strong enough to answer the phone.” She reaches for the receiver. “But if it’s the same person, I’m handing the phone to you,” she adds. “Putnam residence,” Kathy says, putting on her most no-nonsense voice. “It’s the middle of the night. What do you want?”

  It’s a man’s voice, but a different man than whoever called before. “I want to know if you’re okay with your husband sticking it to my girl?” he says.

  “What?”

  “You know Mark is fucking Susan, right?”

  In the background, Kathy hears Susan’s voice shouting, “He’s lying, Kathy! It ain’t true!”

  “Clint?” Kathy says.

  “Are you going to fix this or am I going to have to do it?” Clint says.

  Mark snatches the phone out of Kathy’s hand. “Clint, let’s just talk about this like reasonable people.”

  But Clint has already hung up.

  CHAPTER 19

  MARK IS BURNING WITH anger as he pulls up in front of Molly Davidson’s house. Susan is waiting for him on the porch, wrapped in her winter coat. She smiles like a high-school girl being picked up by her prom date and practically skips over to the car. She doesn’t come around to the passenger side but motions for him to roll down his window. The cold invades the warm interior of the car.

  “Come inside,” Susan says, her breath white in the winter air. “My sister and her husband are gone for the weekend.”

  “I need to talk to you,” Mark says, glaring at her. “But not here.”

  Susan tries to coax him into the house. “Wouldn’t it be nice to make love in a bed for a change?”

  “Susan,” Mark says, his voice almost a growl. “Get in the fucking car.”

  “Fine,” she says and circles around to the passenger door.

  As he drives away, she keeps talking about how nice it would be to spend the day inside. They could make love—maybe try some new positions—and have time for things like talking. Snuggling. Things normal couples do.

  Mark doesn’t say a word, and finally she gets the message. She goes quiet and waits for him to find a spot to park. Finally, he pulls down an old gravel road where they’re surrounded by nothing but skeletal trees and hillsides spotted with patches of snow. A white-tail buck walks through the frozen leaves about fifty feet from the car, eyeing them suspiciously.

  “Why did you tell your ex-husband about us?” Mark demands.

  “Oh, that,” Susan says, watching as the deer decides it’s time to bound away through the woods. “He was trying to get in my pants when I came over to see the kids. I had to tell him I had a boyfriend. Otherwise, he would expect me to give in. He kept pressing me, asking who it was. I told him it was you just to piss him off. He didn’t believe me. Don’t worry about it.”

  “He called Kathy and told her I was sticking it to his girl,” Mark says, unable to hide his disgust with her. “What the fuck were you thinking? Are you trying to ruin my life?”

  “What did Kathy say?” Susan asks, not sounding concerned.

  Mark had been able to convince his wife that Clint didn’t know what he was talking about. She already knew that Susan liked to run her mouth, make up stories. Kathy had been so exhausted from their earlier fight, she’d finally shrugged it off.

  “She believed me,” Mark says. “But now she might start getting suspicious.”

  “You worry too much,” Susan says. “Everything’s fine.”

  “You can’t go around telling people stuff, especially not that you and I are screwing around.”

  “Okay. I won’t tell anyone else.”

  “Who else have you told?” Mark asks.

  “No one, I swear.”

  “You promised you’d be honest with me. Remember?”

  “Okay, fine,” she says, and she explains that other than Clint, she hasn’t told anyone about their affair since it began—but she did tell her sister Molly and some friends that she and Mark were lovers before they actually started sleeping together.

  “You know me,” she says. “I wanted it to happen but I didn’t actually think you and me were going to get together.”

  “Jesus,” Mark says, running his hand through his hair and looking out at the empty forest. “This is serious. I could lose my job.”

  “No one believed me,” Susan says. “No one ever believes me.”

  Mark is furious with Susan—how could she be so stupid? But he’s also mad at himself. He knew Susan couldn’t keep a secret. “This has to end,” he says without looking at her.

  “What?”

  “This,” he says, frustrated, pointing back and forth between them. “Us. You and me. This has to end.”

  “Fine,” she says, feigning indifference. “We’re just having some fun, Mark. If you don’t want to do it anymore, I don’t care.”

  He knows she’s just telling him what he wants to hear.

  “Take me back to my sister’s house,” she says. “I’ve got better things to do than sneak around in the woods with you.”

  Mark puts the car in gear, hesitates with his foot on the brake, then shifts back into park. He turns the engine off.

  This is how a drug addict must feel, he thinks. I know I shouldn’t, but I just can’t stop myself.

  “Not yet,” he says, and he lunges toward her and plants a hard kiss on her mouth while reaching to unbuckle his belt.

  CHAPTER 20
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br />   THIRTY MINUTES LATER, MARK drops Susan off in front of Molly’s house without a word. She sits on the porch swing and watches him drive away, remembering how hopeful she’d been earlier as she thought about the possibility of actually making love to Mark in a bed for once, taking the time to touch and talk and just be together. She juxtaposes that image with what actually happened—frantic thrusts in a cramped car seat followed by instructions to hurry up and put her pants back on so they could go.

  Usually when she’s with Mark, she feels special.

  Not today.

  Today she feels the opposite.

  Disposable.

  She rises from the porch swing, walks inside, and collapses on the couch. She strips off her coat and leaves it lying on the floor. With Molly and her husband gone for the weekend, the house feels hauntingly empty.

  Susan could say the same for her life right now—it feels empty.

  She picks up the telephone and dials.

  “Hello,” her six-year-old daughter, Samantha, says. “Smith residence.”

  “Hi, honey,” Susan says, her voice cracking. “It’s Mommy. I just wanted to hear your voice and tell you I miss you.”

  CHAPTER 21

  March 1989

  KNOCK-KNOCK,” KATHY SAYS, poking her head into the FBI office. She has little Evan on one hip and is holding Jenny’s mitten-covered hand. Slung over her shoulder is a tote bag full of sandwiches and sodas. She thought she’d surprise Mark with lunch. She even brought a blanket, thinking they could spread it out on the office floor and have an impromptu indoor picnic.

  But her heart sinks when she sees that Glen Bell is in the office alone.

  “Hey, good-looking,” Glen says. “You just missed the golden boy.”

  Kathy ignores the comments, as always, and asks, “Do you know where he went?”

  “He didn’t say,” Glen says. “He’s probably meeting with Susan. Those two have been thick as thieves. I thought she was supposed to be my informant now, but I guess not.”

  She can tell he’s annoyed but doesn’t want to get into it with him. In truth, she’s growing tired of all the people in Mark’s life who confide in her, Susan included.

  Glen asks how the family is doing and tries to get shy Jenny to open up by asking which show she likes better, Sesame Street or Fraggle Rock. Kathy wants to extract herself and the kids from the situation, but Glen keeps firing questions at her. She lingers, thinking maybe Mark will show up after all. Maybe, wherever he is, it was just a quick meetup.

  Glen shifts the conversation and mentions the chop-shop case, which has finally led to a dozen arrests.

  “I still don’t feel safe,” Kathy says. “Half of them have posted bail.”

  Glen gives her a quizzical look. “Why don’t you feel safe?”

  She replies, “Mark didn’t tell you? I’ve been getting calls at the house. Threats against me and the kids.”

  A sour expression comes over Glen’s face. “Mark didn’t mention that,” he says. “He shouldn’t be keeping it a secret.”

  He presses her for more information. Since the initial call, she’s received several more. And one morning last week, right before the arrests, Mark walked out of the house to find all four of his tires slashed. He downplayed it, saying that for all they knew, it could have been kids playing a prank.

  But Glen seems concerned.

  “And you feel in danger?” he asks.

  Kathy answers honestly. “I do. Mark doesn’t seem to be taking it seriously, but I’m scared. I’ve been keeping our gun next to my nightstand when Mark is away. I just about shot the cable guy the other day when he came poking around our house without a uniform.”

  Glen tells her that if an agent’s family is receiving threats, the FBI will transfer them to a different post. The agency doesn’t mess around when families are at risk. “All you have to do is let the higher-ups know and you’ll be out of here in no time.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” he says emphatically. “Your husband is well aware of this. I don’t know why he wants to stick around this shithole anyway when he knows you’re so unhappy here.”

  Kathy gets that Glen would love to get rid of Mark and have the office—and Susan—to himself for a while. But she can’t help but feel angry with Mark for not explaining this to her. If anything, he made it sound like the opposite was true—that the FBI was in no hurry to transfer him and that they might be stuck in Pikeville for a while.

  She realizes it’s not the FBI that’s holding up their transfer away from Pikeville.

  It’s Mark.

  She’s going to have to take matters into her own hands and make him understand that they need to leave.

  “Anyway,” Glen says, “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

  “Oh, he’ll know I came by,” she says. “Mark and I are going to have a serious conversation when he gets home tonight.”

  CHAPTER 22

  April 1989

  SUSAN IS DRUNK.

  And miserable.

  She sits on a bar stool in a hole-in-the-wall road-house out in the boondocks. The air is thick with cigarette smoke, the jukebox is playing Merle Haggard, and the walls are adorned with posters of scantily clad women in suggestive poses holding beer bottles.

  Two men tried to hit on Susan when she first arrived, but she told them to stick their beers where the sun didn’t shine, and she’s been left alone since then.

  Mark has gone to Florida to start a new life with his family, and Susan is heartsick over it. She knows it was stupid to fall for the guy, but she couldn’t help herself. She’d never had a man take such an interest in her.

  Never had a man make her feel she mattered.

  “Another,” she tells the bartender, her words slurred, her vision blurred.

  “You sure?” he asks. “How you getting home, little lady?”

  Susan glares at the mountain of a man with a neck like a Christmas ham. “I work for the FBI,” she sneers. “If you don’t want a dozen agents coming down here and seeing what goes on in your back rooms, you’ll pour me as many damn beers as I want.”

  He shakes his head, more irritated than scared by her threat, and gives her another draft. “Last one,” he says. “On the house.”

  She yanks the beer toward her, sloshing the liquid on the bar top, and takes a big sip.

  What hurts the most is that he didn’t even say goodbye.

  After their argument about her mentioning the affair to Clint, they’d gotten together only a few more times. The sex had been quick and loveless. In the beginning, their rendezvous had felt romantic. But by the end, Mark seemed angry with her and was clearly just using her to get off, quickly and dispassionately.

  Susan kept her distance, not wanting to seem desperate or scare him away. She badly wanted him to realize on his own how important she was. But earlier today, after almost a month of silence, she’d finally given in and visited his office. She’d had a good cover story too—she wanted to talk to him about a dirty cop she’d known in Chicago when she lived there with Clint. She was going to propose that she and Mark take a trip up there to see the guy. Mark’s supervisors would love it if he busted a dirty cop. Plus, it would be a chance for the two of them to get away, have some one-on-one time, make love in a hotel room for once.

  Maybe she and Mark could reconnect.

  But when she walked into the office, she could see Mark was gone; his desk was empty of the file folders and family pictures that used to be there. Glen Bell, happy as a pig in mud to see her, told her that Mark and his family had moved to Florida.

  Susan had rushed out of the courthouse and headed straight to the closest bar.

  She knew getting involved with a married man was a bad idea. She knew it wouldn’t last forever. But she’d never thought he’d leave her without even saying a proper goodbye.

  Despite the logical part of her brain telling her that he’d used her, that she didn’t mean half as much to him as he did to her, she finds herself
wishing she’d told him that she loved him. Even if he didn’t say it back—even when he didn’t say it back—at least he would know how she felt.

  Susan finishes her beer and rises from the bar stool. She doesn’t know what time it is or where she’s sleeping tonight. She can’t stand the I-told-you-so looks she knows she’ll get from her sister Molly right now, and Clint’s place is no longer an option. Susan filed a restraining order against him last week, and he retaliated by telling the welfare offices in Kentucky and West Virginia that she’s been double-dipping. The final few hundred-dollar bills from her last FBI payment are all that she has to live on unless she can convince Glen Bell to go for the idea about the dirty cop she was going to pitch to Mark.

  As she staggers across the concrete floor, she pictures Glen Bell trying to kiss her, and suddenly the contents of her stomach feel like acid burning to get out. She runs into the parking lot, collapses to her knees in the gravel, and retches up hot foamy beer.

  When her stomach is finally empty, she stays on her knees, eyes closed, breathing in the fresh air.

  “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she hears a familiar female voice say.

  Susan squints into the glare of the building lights, seeing the blurry shapes of a group of people.

  One is Clint.

  Another, walking toward her, is Crystal Black.

  Susan rises to her feet, wiping vomit off her lips with her sleeve.

  “I hear your boyfriend moved to Florida,” Crystal says snidely.

  “I hear yours moved to prison,” Susan quips.

  “You bitch!” Crystal snaps, pushing Susan with both hands.

  Susan feels weightless for a moment, then her back collides with the gravel, and Crystal is on top of her. Susan tries to fight back, but she’s too wasted. Crystal rains blows down on her.

  “Clint,” Susan pleads, looking around for the father of her children, “help me.”

  “Sorry,” he says insincerely. “I got a restraining order that says I can’t get near you.”