Not One of Us(38)

Finally. A tangible connection between the two cases. The men had known each other. Had Cormier followed through with the appointment? What reason did he have for wanting to meet with Strickland? Was it all coincidence?

There was no further information on why Cormier was meeting Strickland or whether the scheduled meeting had ever occurred. I’d be extremely lucky if there was any record of their conversation, since attorney-inmate discussions were supposed to be confidential.

So far in my reading, the police report made no further mention of the appointment. Instead, the investigation had focused on meetings and phone calls between Cormier and his other clients with known criminal backgrounds.

My first order of business tomorrow morning would be to request Strickland’s inmate records and the prison visitation and phone logs for the first three weeks of May 2006. I shut down my computer and swiped a hand across my face, again questioning my decision. Was I doing the right thing pursuing this and risking Oliver’s anger? After all, he had years of experience. My colleagues would be only too glad to jump in and work the Strickland murder should Oliver remove me from the case.

Hours had passed; the twins were already in bed. I rose from the sofa and peered out the living room window. The obsidian darkness of night was punctuated by rectangular cozy glows from a few of my neighbors’ windows. But were those really cuddly gleams of warmth that shone? Even this modest bayou town housed its own dark secrets. Contained within the four walls of individual homes were addicts and thieves and killers and violent persons who hid their dangerous shadow sides during the day.

I’d expose whoever I could, whenever I could. I’d made that vow the day I entered law enforcement, and I wouldn’t forsake that promise now.





Chapter 14


JORI


“No! Not going.”

“Zach, you have to go to your day program. Now let’s get dressed.”

“No!” He backed away from me, flinging his shoes across the floor.

I sighed and put my hands on my hips. I hadn’t seen him agitated like this since I visited at Thanksgiving last year. The midweek holiday from his day program had left him cranky.

“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” I asked, trying to figure out the sudden resistance to his normal weekday routine.

“Sick,” he repeated.

“Where do you hurt?”

He thumped his forehead with the palm of his right hand—hard enough to leave a red mark.

“Headache?”

“Headache,” he agreed.

I stared at him, seeking clues as to what had set him off. His echoing my words didn’t mean he was actually sick. For people on the severe end of the autism spectrum, echolalia was a common phenomenon wherein they either repeated the last word they heard or spoke words and phrases repetitively, whether or not it was situationally appropriate. I bit my lip, trying to decide the right thing to do for Zach. If he really didn’t feel well, what was wrong? Did he need to see a doctor? Or did he just not want to leave the house?

Some days my brother didn’t like going out and preferred to watch TV and play with his LEGOs. Not that he played with them in the conventional sense of building structures. Zach liked to rattle them in a plastic bin or stream them from one hand to another. For hours.

It was so hard to know how best to proceed. Didn’t Zach have the right, like anybody else, to make his own decisions about his day-to-day activities?

“Be right back,” I said, leaving his bedroom to ask Mimi’s opinion.

She was in the den, pacing and muttering what sounded like gibberish words under her breath.

“Zach’s upset this morning,” I told her. “Any idea why?”

She looked up at me, startled. “Who?”

“Zach. He’s upset.”

Her eyes regarded me vacantly. “Zach who?”

The back of my throat burned with dismay, and I swallowed back a swift rush of emotion. I hadn’t ever seen her at the point where she didn’t recognize me. Apparently, Mimi didn’t remember Zach either.

I approached slowly and gently took her arm, felt its frail weight under my hand, the skin wrinkled and loose. “Let’s go in the kitchen. I’ll make you a cup of coffee, and you can take your medicine.”

Surprisingly, she allowed me to guide her to the table and seat her in a chair. I opened the cabinet where we stored medicine and rifled through the wicker basket. Her prescription bottle was gone. My heart dropped as I pulled out the odds and ends on the bottom cabinet shelf to see if it had fallen out of the basket. It wasn’t there. Had she thrown it away? I hurried to the trash can and opened the lid, then dug through the pile of leftover grits and eggshells. Not the most fun way to start a morning. I found the amber bottle sludged in a mess of bacon grease.

I straightened and gave Mimi a stern glare, but the far-off look in her eyes was still there. I didn’t have the heart to scold. Maybe she hadn’t done it on purpose, and it had been an accident. I rinsed the bottle in the sink and started the coffee maker before returning to the meds. I removed Zach’s blister pack, then stared in consternation. Last night’s dose was still enclosed. How had that happened? I thought back, remembering that Mimi had offered to do it last night when we’d all been in the den. Sometime between leaving the den and entering the kitchen, she’d forgotten what she’d gone in there for.