CHAPTER 69

LEEWOOD FOLCRUM

I NMATE 82145

He came back the next day, but I told Redd I didn't want to see him.

He came back again.

And again.

I didn't know what to do, and I had too many thoughts in my head to sort them out.

"Folcrum, he's back." Redd stood in my doorway. "What's the verdict? You talking to him or not?"

I was flat on my back in bed, wondering if today was going to be the day I'd die. I'd been wishing for it for the last three days, but apparently no one upstairs was listening to me.

I turned my head until I could see the officer.

"Seems desperate to talk to you," he said. "If you've got anything to say, you might as well do it. I'm not sure you're going to have another chance, because I got to tell you, you're looking like shit lately."

I smiled, then coughed and had to roll onto my side, where I hacked like an old man for a spell. When it finally let up, I stood, then shuffled forward to the head of the cell. "Okay, let's go," I said.

"You sure?" He glanced left and right, down the blocks.

"I'm sure." I stopped at the door and wearily stuffed my feet into my shower slides, too tired to deal with shoes. "Might as well get it over with."

Grant was pacing when I was led in. Stepping up to the glass, he waited until the door clanged behind Redd to speak.

"I just want to make sure I understand everything you told me last time."

I lifted my hands and then dropped them onto the table, defeated. "I really don't want to talk to you about this. Look, my loyalties are with my daughter. No one else."

"Right, I get that, but I also know my wife has a five-inch scar across her neck where you cut her throat."

I met his gaze, daring him to say something else about it.

He raised his palms, as if I was a skittish animal he was approaching, and hell, maybe I was. I was certainly itching to get out of this room. "Look, you probably have some questions for me, right? So you ask some questions, I ask some questions. Win-win." He pulled out his seat and sat down.

"She know that I'm here?" I asked.

"Yes. I mean, she knows you're in this facility. She doesn't know that I'm meeting or have met with you."

"And you live close to here?"

"Little more than an hour away."

I nodded slowly, processing the fact that she was so close yet hadn't come to see me. "She ever talk about me?"

"No. Our daughter thinks you passed away. She doesn't have any idea of what happened."

Not a surprise. I would have kept the details of me from her as well.

"What happened when I was put in jail? What happened to Jenny then?"

"My turn." He leaned forward. "I've gone through every conversation we've had and every letter you've sent me." He moved a stack of pages in front of him and placed his palm on them. "And I believe that—with the exception of the last letter you sent me—you've been honest with me the entire time. Both ‘me' as Tim Valden and also ‘me' as the man you've corresponded with for the last two decades."

I shouldn't have cared that he believed me, but it still did something inside me. Broke off a little piece of my heart because no one had believed anything I had said, ever since the police had barged in and found her body in my arms.

"I don't believe that you killed my sister." His face tightened, and I could see the toll it took, saying that. "But if you didn't, and there was no evidence of an intruder, and you've never been able to point a finger at the intruder, then it really only leaves one possible killer. My wife." His mouth trembled, and he pinned his lips together, his eyes growing moist as he looked to the side, trying to contain his emotion.

It wasn't easy, but I kept my trap shut and waited for him to get himself under control. He finally did, then continued on. "I do believe that you loved her in some fucked-up way, so that's the only logical explanation of why you tried to kill her. You walked in on her ... what? What was she doing?"

I shook my head. "You don't want to go down this path. I'm telling you, you don't."

"I do," he rasped. "I need to know."

"She was your sister, man. You've seen the photos of it. You know what happened." I looked down, trying to block the memories before they pushed into my head. "I was too late when I walked in. There wasn't anything I could do. I tried ... I felt for a pulse. I tried CPR, but they were gone."

She'd pouted the entire time. When I had bent over them, panicking, putting my mouth to theirs, pushing on their chests, shaking them ... She had glared at me from the other side of the picnic blanket. "God, you ruin everything," she had said. "Just like before."

I had never wanted to believe that she'd had something to do with her mom's death. Even after she had dropped a few odd comments. Even after I had caught her skipping and humming just hours after Jessica passed. The thought had been too horrible to even consider. But in that statement ... looking at my daughter, who was drenched in her friends' blood, her face devoid of any emotion other than irritation ... I knew she was evil.

"I didn't think about it. I couldn't, or else I might not have been able to do it. I just asked her to come and sit on my lap, which she did right away. I turned her away from me, then ..." I paused. "Then I picked up the knife. The one she had used. I picked it up and I just drew it across. Real quick. Apparently, not deep enough, but I didn't know. I was too busy breaking down to realize that she was still alive."

And then the doors had flown open, and then the police were there, and then she'd been taken away and I never saw her again.

I lifted my gaze to meet his eyes. He looked nauseous, and I didn't think it was over anything I'd done.

"I have to tell the police," he said faintly. "She killed Lucy ... Kitty ... what, your wife?"

"I don't know that for sure," I said flatly. "But you're not going to go to the police. Or rather, if you do, they won't believe you. What I've told you ... think of it as a favor. From one man to another, a warning. I won't tell it to the police, and even if I did, they wouldn't believe me. No one ever believes the man on death row proclaiming his innocence."

He wasn't an idiot. He understood what I was saying, but it took a minute for him to digest the fact that he wouldn't be getting justice for his sister. He fell silent and stared at the table for a long moment, then shook his head. "Fucking hell."

Yeah, fucking hell was about right.