“No.” Emma’s voice was strong, sure, as she interrupted him. Filling his car with such a presence of her, he could almost believe she was sitting there with him.
Because she was getting that much inside his head?
“If he knows Suzie talked to me...” She started and stopped. “Just no, Jayden, please. The more I think about it, I think talking to him would be the last thing you should do. If he thinks you’re still believing in him, he’s less likely to feel threatened. By me, or Suzie. I thought a truck was following me again this morning. It was only for a block or two, and I’m sure I’m overreacting, but, please...don’t escalate Bill’s tension. Not right now.”
“Luke’s back in custody. That should have taken care of that threat,” he had to point out.
“You still think Bill didn’t do it? Either make the threat at my house or hurt Suzie?”
“I don’t believe he did, no. But I’m watching him as though he did, you have my word on that.”
“That woman is petrified of him,” she stressed.
“A fact for which he takes full accountability and is paying for every day, will pay for for the rest of his life. Bill knows his jealousy was out of
hand, that he created an unhealthy amount of stress for her. He knows he lost the love his life, her, because of it. He’s not going to bother Suzie. To the contrary, he just wants her to be happy. You didn’t put him in jail for the rest of his life, Emma, but he’s there anyway. In his own personal jail.”
“I heard something tonight and I feel as though I need to tell you—” she wavered “—but I don’t know if I can trust you not to tell him.”
Wow. That slammed him. Probably more than it should have done. “Bottom line, we’re on the same side,” he reminded her. “If you tell me not to tell him, I won’t. I’m his champion, his counselor, but I’m also, in a sense, his jailer. I do my job—both sides—with equal fervor.” It was the one given in his life. That work. It wouldn’t change.
“In the transcript from four years ago, when I asked Suzie who Bill thought had fathered her child, she didn’t answer. Tonight she did.”
He was curious, too. “And?”
“It was a teenage neighbor kid. Bill came home and caught her talking to him a time or two. He’d just lost his mother and was having troubles with his stepfather. They never had sex. She paid him to cut their grass. It was sweet. She said it made her feel good about herself to be able to help him.”
“Why didn’t she say all of this then?” he asked.
“She didn’t want him to know that her husband was making sick accusations about him.”
“It could have helped her case, could have showed Bill’s state of mind.” He knew the man had been in a bad way. He hadn’t known how bad.
The whole thing was sad beyond belief, for everyone involved.
“She was afraid even the accusations could ruin the kid’s life. Afraid that if it got out and Bill got defensive, he might convince someone the accusations were true. She said that even the accusations would probably have had his stepfather kicking him out. They were on really tenuous ground.”
Jayden needed to talk to Bill. To know why Bill had left out this piece of information. But he’d given Emma his word. He wouldn’t do it.
But that didn’t make him any less desirous of the answer to his question. Why had Bill left out such a vital piece of information?
Could be, since the information hadn’t come out in court, since it had never come out of Suzie’s mouth until that night, that Bill had chosen not to dig his hole any deeper, by bringing it up.
Kind of like Jayden not telling anyone about Emory. He would never forget. He paid every single day. Would always pay. Not talking didn’t mean he was trying to hide from his truth. It meant it went too deep, hit too hard, to expose it to anyone but himself.
And maybe Bill had been trying to spare the kid, too. Most particularly after DNA came back showing the lie to his fears. And how deeply in trouble his paranoia had gotten him.
“Suzie believes that Bill’s all-powerful,” Emma continued. “That he has the ability to make people believe, say and do what he wants.”
“If that were true, she wouldn’t have testified against him.”
“Suzie didn’t do that for herself. She did it for her baby. Just like she kept quiet about the kid for his sake.”
Jayden got where she was going. He just had no idea how to turn her around on this one. He hoped to God some facts turned up soon. Or that counseling loosened Suzie’s tongue some more.
This Heber case had to end. He turned a corner in the darkness, a block from Harold’s girlfriend’s house, and parked.
“I’m telling you, Jayden, she’s scared to death of him. Sara saw it, too.”