Fatal Intent - Jamie Jeffries Page 0,66
county lockup, Alex had to surrender her clothes and cell phone to the matron, endure an embarrassing search, and then dress in an orange jumpsuit. She was shoved into the holding cell with the other women, who laughed at her indignant glance at the matron who’d done the shoving.
“First time, dear?” said the woman who’d first given her Harvey’s name. Alex was glad to see her. It was almost like having a friend in here.
“Yeah,” she said. “Now what?”
“Now we wait for arraignment, plead not guilty and come back here. Then they’ll give us our phone calls and we can call our attorneys.”
The woman sounded so confident of a good outcome that Alex relaxed. She, too, was confident. After all, she’d tried to warn the authorities. Taking a hint from the other women, Alex leaned against the cinder block wall behind her and closed her eyes. She might as well try to sleep until the next day.
TWENTY-FIVE
Dylan couldn’t settle down after he’d put the boys to bed. He hated not being where he could do something, even if it was only to pace the floor with others who loved Alex. Rick had called when he got to Casa Grande, to tell Dylan where he’d be staying, and that he’d talked to Paul.
Guilt stabbed at Dylan when he realized he should have called Paul himself. He hadn’t meant to shut Alex’s dad out. After he talked to Rick, he called Paul himself to apologize. Alex’s dad had told him he didn’t blame him. Alex herself had shut him out and it was his own fault.
They talked for a while about Paul’s decisions not to tell his daughter the truth about her mother. They discussed whether or not he should have told his daughter years ago. Paul admitted he should have. The habit of the lie had taken on its own life, and the older Alex got, the harder it was to come clean, he said. In the end, his decision had certainly blown up in his face. He’d give anything to have his daughter back in his life.
“You and me both, Paul,” Dylan had answered. That led to a discussion of what was going on between Alex and him, and a sobered Paul told Dylan he’d try to influence Alex to see a counselor if she ever spoke to him again.
Paul couldn’t say where his wife was at this moment, but he strongly suspected she had to have spent at least some time in a mental institution. Maybe after the baby had been born, she’d checked herself in and just walked away from her life when she was ready to come out. If there was any chance Alex’s mental state could be going the same way, they had to have an intervention, for her sake, before it came to the same thing.
Dylan didn’t know whether he felt better or worse after talking to Paul. How could he be true to both his love for Alex and his love and duty toward his boys? He couldn’t subject them to a mentally unstable mother figure, not after what he’d been through and the trauma they’d already suffered in being taken by the state and then losing their mother. What he could and would do was see to it that Alex got the help she needed, if indeed she needed it.
When he finally was able to sleep, he slept so deeply that the text from Lt. Wells didn’t wake him when it came in at three the next morning. Reading it before he woke the boys, his heart did a peculiar leap and roll in his chest. Alex was safe. But she was under arrest.
~~~
Alex’s first hint that things wouldn’t go as expected came less than an hour after her cell door had closed. The matron came to the cell door and called her name. Her real name. As she rose amid glares of recognition, Alex couldn’t move fast enough. Whatever was happening, she had to persuade the powers that be not to put her back in this cell. Hatred oozed from every woman’s eyes as they tracked her progress through the crowd and out the cell door.
“You’re gonna get me killed,” she muttered to the matron.
“Not my problem,” the matron muttered back.
In the room where she found herself, Alex was overjoyed to see Rick. “Rick, am I glad to see you! You got my message.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know what it meant until I talked to Dylan. What have you got yourself into