Page 79 of Little Deaths
Lee’s face didn’t change, except to grimace slightly at the sight of the damp leaves being tracked over the rug. “Is this a consultation?”
“It could be.” He pulled his checkbook out of his pocket. “How much?”
“Two-fifty an hour.”
Expensive. Maybe more expensive than his father could afford. Rafe scribbled out a check and slid it wordlessly across the walnut desk. The secretary discreetly got up and disappeared into an adjoining room. Rafe watched her leave, a frown on his face.
“I know my father had you on retainer. You were his lawyer for years. Can you tell me if he was building a case against my stepmother?”
“No. That would go against attorney-client privilege.”
“Even though he’s dead?”
Robert Lee paused. “Even then. I’m so sorry for your loss, by the way.”
Fucking cold-blooded lawyers. Rafe dug into his pocket, searching for the envelope. “I found compromising pictures in my father’s possession. Locked up in his safe. They’re of my stepmother with her abuser. She might have been underage. I can’t imagine how the fuck he could have gotten them, unless they were fromhim.”
Robert Lee looked at the envelope but made no move to take it. “What are you asking me to do? This seems like a matter for the police.”
“You worked with my father,” Rafe said. “All I want to know is if he was planning some kind of revenge scheme against my stepmother. If he blamed her—for these.”
He slapped the envelope down on the desk.
“I’m sorry,” Robert Lee said. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
And yet, Rafe couldn’t help but notice, he made no move to return the check.
“Nice business model you’ve fucking got here,” he said, tucking the envelope back into his jacket with a sneer. “Thanks. This whole visit has been very enlightening.”
Another dead end.
Unbelievable.
He walked back down the gravel lined path, anger burning through his veins like whiskey. Someone had tucked a small white slip of paper under one of his windshield wipers. A parking ticket, he thought darkly, until he turned it over and saw the bloodred letters.
WHYTECLIFF.
Someone wanted him to go to the gravel quarry.
He’d intended to go home, but instead he did a U-turn out of the useless lawyer’s driveway and headed back out of town, towards the highway he’d taken into this place from the airport.
Rafe had only gone to a couple of the parties held up at Whytecliff. The only kids he knew here had been the children of friends of his father. Going to a private school had shielded him from the usual social constraints that plagued kids who had known each other since kindergarten. Nobody had ever known him as anything other than a tall and gangly kid with rich parents.
Rafe parked in the lot. It was off-season for beach-going, and except for a single boat that was out on the water, possibly fishing for catfish in the polluted water, the place appeared to be empty.
Evidence of teenage bacchanalia was everywhere. The skeletal remains of bonfires past, broken glass in amber and green from discarded beer bottles. Rafe picked over them carefully in his boots as he hiked up to the old gauging station. A pipe had burst during a frost year—possibly the same year that Donni had taken him out to look at the ice-encrusted sheets—so the shed had been rebuilt, and the pipes had been moved. It looked like the moldering old shack was still a popular spot for hookups. The more a place changed, the more it stayed the same.
He toed open the door, revealing the shadowy and cramped interior. There were more beer and wine bottles inside, stubbed-out cigarettes. No windows; it must have been like a Dutch oven when everything was closed. You might even suffocate.
He left the door open a crack for light, doing a half-turn to take it in. The walls were covered in graffiti, layer over layer, representing decades of delinquency. Even when this placehadbeen a gauging station, people had probably still come in here to fuck and light up. There was the usual litany ofMaddie loves Jeremyandfor a good time, call Bonnie-type shit, but there were illustrations, as well. Some of them were new. The reek of paint in the poorly ventilated space was an awful lot like being plunged into a chemical bath.
One of the illustrations showed a disembodied vagina, drawn like a clamshell with pubes that looked like hedgehog quills. There was a dick fucking it, shroom-like and deformed, but someone had given it eyes and teeth, so it looked like a creature from a Troma film. Another illustration showed a woman sucking someone off, but her eyes had been blacked out in streaks of red paint that suggested violence.
ADONICA BLAKE IS A MURDERERhad been sprayed on all four walls in electric red, over and over. And then, in black over that,ADONICA BLAKE IS A WHORE.
Rafe whipped out his phone and began taking pictures, edging around a slightly soiled-looking sleeping bag on the floor. There was a musky, human smell surrounding it, suggesting it had been recently lived-in. Rafe wondered who had left the note leading him here. Was this what they had wanted him to see?Adonica Blake is a murderer and a whore.
The door slammed closed.