She's Not There, стр. 60
72
Lisa sat at her desk doodling, feeling at loose ends. Maybe she shouldn’t have cancelled her appointments. Her group met tonight; that should take her mind off things for a couple hours. Catching up on paperwork did little to squelch the distractions in her head. She was about to go across the street for a sandwich when the door from the parking lot flew open.
TJ burst into the room wearing faded jeans under a stressed, gray hoodie, her dark curls matted. Despite the cold, a navy pea coat hung unbuttoned from her thin shoulders. Her blue eyes, streaked with tiny red threads of pain, were circled by dark shadows. She snarled, “You did it.”
Lisa’s pulse stopped. “Did what?”
TJ chuckled as she moved closer to Lisa’s desk. “You’re good. Anyone but me might believe you.”
“What’s this about? I thought you were spending the day with Janeen.”
“Cut the crap. I’m not in the mood for screwing around. You didn’t show up at Eric’s until ten last night—it wasn’t too hard to put together.”
TJ had talked to someone. Shannon? Eric? No use avoiding it, it didn’t matter how she’d heard it. “I was going to tell you.”
“When? When it fucking snows in hell? I thought we had a deal.”
Lisa walked out from behind the desk. “We did. But things changed with Jeff. You know that. I didn’t want to tell you yet—you were so upset. I wanted you to have an alibi and I believed it would be simpler if you didn’t have anything to hide.”
“An alibi? No one knows we had a reason to take out the creep. We’re the only ones who know he killed Jeff.”
Lisa rested her hands on TJ’s arms. “They will—it’s only a matter of time.”
TJ walked over to a chair and flopped into it. “Yeah. Seems like it has to come out, but I dunno, the bastard covered his tracks pretty good. They won’t believe he was our killer unless the bodies turn up.” She shifted in her seat. “Now what? Do we need to be worried about anything?”
“You mean did anyone see me? I don’t think so. But there was someone chopping wood near the trail—it looked like a kid. He might have seen me driving away.”
She relayed everything about her afternoon, including what Bernstein had told her, that in his opinion, Jeff hadn’t been suicidal. Under the circumstances, a breach of confidentiality involving a person already deceased, didn’t seem important.
TJ agreed the kid couldn’t have seen anything linking them to the shooting. She looked at Lisa. “I’m impressed. Didn’t think you had the cajones.”
“I just got lucky nothing went wrong. It had been so long since I shot a rifle, I wasn’t sure my aim was still on.”
“You know this is gonna catch up with you, right? Now you’re all full of yourself for gettin’ it done. You’ll feel like crap when the high wears off.”
Lisa swallowed. “I know. I have an appointment next week with Bernstein.”
“You can’t see a shrink! He’d have to turn you in.”
“No. Not unless he thought I’d be a danger to others—or to myself.” Lisa rubbed her face. “I feel bad we can’t tell Eric and Shannon. I hate pretending we still have to worry about our safety.”
“We don’t have to pretend. Think about it. We could tell them—no, I’d tell them—I suspected Wilson. Then after Geo Turner got me the report on him I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t have hard proof it meant anything.”
“They might buy it. There’s so much to think about. And we haven’t even had to face Jeff’s funeral yet. Do you think they’ll ever have conclusive proof he didn’t commit suicide?”
“He didn’t. We know that.”
“Is Janeen waiting for you?”
“Nah. She took me to get my car. Had to get away from her. You know how it goes—she’d smother me with good intentions and all that warm, fuzzy shit.”
Lisa smiled. TJ was sounding better.
73
The medical examiner’s report pronounced Jeff Denison’s cause of death asphyxia by hanging, manner undetermined.
Positive in her own mind Jeff had been murdered, TJ had mixed feelings about its revelation. Except for the fact the missing women’s bodies might never be found, it would be in her and Lisa’s best interest if Wilson’s career as a murderer never came to light. It wouldn’t be fair to the families of the women though, if their bodies were never found—or to Eric if he could never prove his innocence.
TJ knew if the asshole had left even the tiniest clue linking him to the missing women, Richard would find it. But now she had something else to deal with—Jeff’s funeral.
The service was held in a tiny church just outside of West Bend, a small town northwest of Milwaukee where Jeff had grown up.
Jeff’s face remained etched in TJ’s thoughts, but at least he wasn’t on display, a ritual she detested. She wouldn’t have wanted to see a funeral director’s attempt to make him appear asleep, postured in a coffin, his hands crossed on his chest. He would have been nothing like the real Jeff, who tossed about in his sleep, hogged the bed, and clung to her during the night.
Jon Engel stood by her side along with the members of the group. Eric, their protector, was experiencing Jeff’s death as a personal failure. He stood on her left, devoid of emotion, but TJ knew he was grieving. She knew better than to try and convince him it wasn’t his fault.
After the service, a gargantuan selection of food was on display at Jeff’s parents’ house, another custom TJ abhorred. There must be a lot of people comforted by food when they were sad, but TJ, who normally had a nonstop appetite, thought it barbaric. The sight of all that food made her queasy.
Jon appeared at her side. “Nothing appeal to you?”
She shrugged. “Just don’t get the food after the funeral thing.”
“I never have either, but I suppose bringing food is something people can do for the family other than just ask, ‘Is there anything we can do?’”
“I guess.”
“TJ, I have to tell you something. Let’s go out in the sunroom for a minute.”
Unlike its name, the sunroom’s atmosphere was chilly from its expanse of windows facing the frigid, January wind.
Jon turned to her. “I know this is going to be unexpected, so I’ll come right out and tell you. Jeff made you beneficiary of his life insurance.”
“What?”
“I advised him to change his will after Jamie disappeared. Jeff was too upset to think about practical matters. Since I drafted his will and handled his legal concerns, I reminded him to do it. Most people aren’t aware how complicated an estate can get if everything isn’t in order. So we changed his will and his life insurance. He left everything else to his parents on the off chance Jamie ever reappeared.”
Speechless, TJ stared at him, her eyes wide.
“Jeff had deep feelings for you, TJ. You saved him from himself when he was overcome with grief. He said if anything happened to him, he’d want you to be able to start that business you told him about.”
TJ didn’t know what to say. Jeff had thought enough of her to arrange this gift even before the night they’d made love.
“This is so . . .”
Jon smiled. “Of course it is.”
“Can I turn it down?”
“He wanted you to have it, TJ. The insurance company will automatically send it to you. It’ll take a few weeks, so you’ll have time to decide what you want to do with it.”
When she started to sob, Jon reached out and took her in his arms, his large body dwarfing her. Lisa appeared at her side followed by Eric and Shannon. The group—ever protective. What would happen to their camaraderie if everyone knew what had really happened to James Wilson?
Richard Conlin sat in a back booth of the cops’ favorite watering hole, nursing a beer and wondering why Jerry Chang, the newly appointed head of computer crimes, had left him a message to meet here at the bar.