A cold wind rustled the bushes next to the house, the breeze containing flecks of sand. So many thoughts rushed through Laurie’s mind that she struggled to compartmentalize them all. Her main focus was naturally on finding Grace’s killer, but she couldn’t shut out her worry about David and Rebecca Whitehead, and the more immediate problem of finding Frank. Remi’s revelation about Glen Harrington’s teenage lover was an interesting development, but nothing beyond finding Frank today would be considered a success. She needed to reexamine Annie Randall’s murder, but without Frank in custody it was going to be too easy for everyone to jump to conclusions.
Sheltering from the blustering storm in her car, she found the number for Maurice Randall’s church. She hesitated when the call rang through to voicemail, before hanging up and calling the state police. She spoke to a detective there who agreed to assess the situation at Maurice Randall’s house and to hold Frank, if he was there, at the premises until she arrived.
Chapter Eighteen
Laurie called in her destination before leaving for the church on the outskirts of Dickinson. Sandra, Glen, and Tilly would all have to be brought in for official questioning at some point soon, and leaving the island town at that moment felt like a dereliction of duty. But bringing in Frank Randall had to be the priority, whether she was sure of his guilt or not. State police had arrived at Maurice Randall’s church and were waiting for her to arrive.
Images of Grace and Annie played through her mind as she drove over the causeway, the refineries burning in the evening gloom like some dystopian nightmare. Despite the decades separating them, the visions of the two victims merged into one. Both bodies with their long, willowy limbs broken and arranged into the strange running pose. Annie’s injuries had been attributed to the wild, so-called sudden passion attack by her husband. When Frank had finally pleaded guilty, he’d been questioned about the positioning of the legs, but part of his sudden passion mitigation was denying he remembered attacking Annie. No doubt due to the plea bargain, which had meant an easy prosecution for the DA, no significance had been given to the multiple fractures to Annie’s legs, beyond the uncontrollable rage attributed to Frank during the attack. “Not everything has to mean something complex,” Jim Burnell had told her at the time. “He went crazy and started hacking at his wife’s limbs.”
Things were different now. If Frank Randall had killed Grace, it all but proved that both killings were premeditated, and that was something Laurie struggled to understand. She found it difficult to believe that Frank Randall would have not only planned to kill Annie, but purposely mutilated her body with foresight. The sudden passion angle she could just about buy, but not that. If nothing else, Frank would have known how killing Annie would impact David, and she didn’t believe he was capable of such horrendous forethought.
The words of Jim Burnell came back to her once more. Don’t trust anyone. It was a lesson that had taken her a long time to accept, and again she worried she’d let her guard down with Frank. So eager had she been to hear stories of David’s youth, it was feasible she’d given too much credence to the role Frank Randall had been playing for her.
Her stomach lurched as she left the causeway. It was a feeling she’d endured every time she had to leave the island, ever since Milly’s death. It was as if the cord connecting them both was being stretched to breaking point, and she had to fight the urge to turn back round every time she made the crossing. The trauma of the separation was manifested in her body, her limbs going stiff and uncomfortable in the cramped confines of the car. It felt like ages since she’d exercised, and she rested a hand on her bloated stomach, sensing the fat congealing in her flesh.
A message appeared on her dashboard twenty minutes later as she approached the town limits of Dickinson. It was David, telling her he was coming back early from work and would be home tomorrow. Laurie tried to fight the image of him already back in town, nestling into the tall and slender body of Rebecca Whitehead. She wondered why she continued to punish herself with these perverse fantasies as she drove through the quaint village on the outskirts of Dickinson toward St. Saviour’s church, where the blinking lights of a Texas state police vehicle were waiting for her.
The smell of woodsmoke and the sight of floating tendrils of ash in the fireplace failed to distract Randall from the commotion by the front door. Since the police had arrived thirty minutes ago, Maurice had marched ceaselessly through the house, seething about how their rights were being violated by the authorities’ presence on his property, or as his brother had so vehemently put it, “my place of worship.”
So far, the two uniformed officers had been content to wait outside. This had struck Randall as odd, and he’d looked away as one of them peered through the dusty windows and caught sight of him by the fireplace.
This house of Maurice’s played tricks on Randall. Time was a tricky customer nowadays, but in this place—in this town as a whole—it had utterly stopped making sense. It sped up and slowed down, distorting Randall’s memories of the last few days. Maybe that was what had so freaked out Annie during their visit here, though every time he asked Maurice about the source of the friction between them, he sensed that wasn’t the case. There was a look in his brother’s eyes Randall didn’t much care for every time Annie’s name was mentioned, and Randall was determined to get to the reason why.
“How dare they come here, to this holy place,” said Maurice, passing by once more on his agitated circuit of the house. His pale skin was close to translucent as he moved toward the fire, his insubstantial body shivering as he rubbed his eyes.
“What do they want?” asked Randall, moving to the window and sneaking a look outside where the police car was still waiting, the blue lights flashing silently like a lighthouse warning others not to approach.
“They want to know if you’re here, dear brother,” said Maurice. “I told them you were, but they were not allowed to enter. I should call my lawyer.”
That much Randall had heard. He recalled the lawyer he’d seen in the kitchen earlier and wondered what use a lawyer working for the church would be in a situation like this.
Why they should be so interested in his whereabouts was a mystery to him. He looked back toward the fire. Maurice had his back to him, phone in his hand, and Randall noticed the curve in the older man’s spine and briefly wondered what sort of pressure would force those bones to crack. Somewhere within him, he sensed a different type of breaking. His stomach was tight, his bad knee flaring in pain as if there was a change in the weather. He tried to hold on to the memory of the last few days, but every time an image or memory came to mind, it faded like dust in his hands. He pictured himself in various incarnations—on the beach, alone in the house, lying on the sand when Maurice had first found him, back at the house with Laurie for company—but nothing remained solid. Instead, his mind turned to firmer, more distant memories. Getting married to Annie, holding David for the first time, being led to the Camino Real area where Annie’s corrupted body was waiting. He coughed, the woodsmoke invading his lungs, making him breathless. What have I done? he thought for the millionth time, as a second car appeared in Maurice’s driveway.