J.T. Ellison by The Cold Room (v5) (epub)

Author:The Cold Room (v5) (epub)
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2010-11-30T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

Taylor stood in the front yard of a run-down, ramshackle single-story house on the outskirts of Manchester proper. Another mile into town and all of this would have been under the Manchester Police’s purview; since it was outside the city limits, the Coffee County Sheriff had handled the investigation. It was getting late; they needed to wrap this up so she and McKenzie could get back to Nashville. Sam had called to say she’d be doing the post on the Radnor Lake victim last thing this afternoon. Taylor wanted to witness, had asked her to hold off for another hour or so. She’d really like to wrap Manchester in a tidy bow.

Simmons knocked, and LaTara’s mother came to the door. She was tall and elegant, skin like the deepest espresso, eyes liquid and expressionless. She stared at the contingent of cops standing on her front porch, sighed, and stepped back to allow them entry. Taylor noticed that one of her arms was drastically shorter than the other.

The inside of the house was better kept than the outside. Though the furnishings were worn, they were clean, kept with pride. A sewing machine and bolts of fabric stood unobtrusively in a corner of the wide living room. Drapes, Taylor thought. She spied a card on the sideboard that confirmed it; Marie Bender was a seamstress.

The four of them settled in the kitchen, glasses of homemade lemonade in front of them. Taylor listened while the sheriff explained why they were there, saw the pain flit across the woman’s eyes.

“You have a suspect in my girl’s murder?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. Well, possibly. I don’t want to get your hopes up. I’m just trying to flesh out a few details. Is it okay if we talk about that day?”

“Yes. I want the person who did this to LaTara to be brought to justice. There’s not much I can do for her ’cept fight for that. I watched her slip away from me, into drugs, whoring around. I would like to see some closure for her. She was so unhappy. Nothing I ever did could make up for the…incident.”

“Her uncle?” McKenzie asked gently.

Mrs. Bender’s eyes grew hard. “Yes, damn his soul to hell. He stole the light out of my little girl. She couldn’t ever put it behind her. But she was trying so hard to change. She’d started at a clinic, was trying to get off the heroin. It was just so easy for her to use it to forget. I can’t say I blamed her. It’s not right, and she had to pay too big a price. Her daddy was gone, Eddie was the male figure in her life. When he betrayed her, she was lost.”

Taylor turned to the sheriff, who read her mind. “No chance Eddie Bender’s involved, he got himself killed in jail. They don’t take kindly to child rapists, you know.” Taylor nodded, then turned back to Mrs. Bender.

“Ma’am, when you found LaTara, the report says you took her body out of the tub, held her while you waited for the paramedics to come.

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