Lily talked over him. “He served his country, took his life in his hands, came home wounded—” The threat of tears stopped her. She wouldn’t let these men see her cry.
Lawlor said, “Wounded mentally, right? We heard he’s had emotional issues, problems with anger management, depression. There have been calls in the past. Folks at his apartment complex have complained about him yelling, fighting—”
“He has nightmares—”
“Your son was jailed last year, wasn’t he, Mrs. Isley, and again a few months ago, for assault?” Lawlor’s eyes were hard.
“He didn’t start either fight—”
“But he finished both, didn’t he? Landed one guy in the hospital. He’s lucky his victim dropped the charges.” Lawlor smirked.
Lily didn’t answer.
Detective Hatchett handed her a business card. “If you hear from your son, ask him to give us a call, will you?”
“He’s a person of interest in the matter of Ms. Westin’s murder. We’ve issued a BOLO, a be on the lookout.” Lawlor explained these things as Lily was showing the detectives out. She closed the door and, returning to the living room, picked up her cell phone, hunting through her directory for Erik’s contact information. Her phone went off before she found it.
“Paul?” His name was a question, a plea. “The police have just left—”
“Listen to me, Lily. I don’t have much time.” He talked over her. “If you hear from AJ, tell him to keep his mouth shut. I’ve got a call in to Jerry.”
Paul’s attorney, Lily thought. His corporate attorney. Not Edward Dana, AJ’s former criminal attorney. It was three years since she’d seen Edward. She wondered if he remembered, if he thought of her at all anymore.
“Lily?”
She straightened. “Is it true, Paul? Did you go into AJ’s apartment and find—find Becca Westin—”
“My God, Lily, it was the worst—I’ve never seen anything—even when I was in Nam, Cambodia—she was stabbed. The cops couldn’t say how many times, but there’s blood everywhere in AJ’s apartment, the bed, the floor. She—somebody had pulled down her pants. She was just a kid—just a kid, Lily—”
“AJ couldn’t have done that, Paul.”
“What if she did something that set him off? You know how he can—”
“He couldn’t, Paul,” Lily repeated, tight-jawed.
Paul changed direction. “The detective here, Sergeant Bushnell, says AJ and Becca dated. Do you remember meeting her?”
“Not with him, no.” AJ had seldom brought his girlfriends home. Shea was the exception, the one who, since he’d been back from Afghanistan, had broken through his defenses. “I did meet Becca, though, last month in Wyatt, at Shea’s bridal shower.”
“You think AJ’s been in touch with Erik? Have you heard from him? I tried getting hold of him, but he’s not picking up.”
“The detectives who were here asked a lot of questions about him. I have a feeling they think he’s involved, maybe hiding AJ. But you know, AJ might be with Shea at her mother’s.”
“Bushnell asked me for her contact information.”
“You gave it to them?”
“Hell, yes, I gave it to them. I want them to find our son, Lily, even if he—especially if he—before something worse happens. Something none of us can live with.”
Like what? Lily wondered. A shootout with the police? Or himself? Would AJ kill himself if he had done this thing? Dread fisted in her stomach.
“You know the cops won’t let him go so easily this time.”
Lily went to stand at the bank of windows that overlooked the garden. “I don’t know anything at this point, Paul.”
“He’s not nineteen, not a kid this time, mixed up with the wrong crowd. The cops are going to look hard at him for this. They’re going to think he got away with murder once; now he’s done it again.”
“That was a whole different—”
“I’m just telling you, Lily. He made fools out of them the last time. They won’t stand by and let it happen again, especially now he’s been diagnosed with all the PTSD bullshit. You can bet they’ll use it to burn him. Mentally unstable war vet and all that crap.”
Paul made it sound like a joke, as if the trauma AJ had endured, going to war, had had no effect, and to speak of it in terms of mental and emotional harm was shameful, unmanly. But Lily couldn’t tell Paul anything about war; he’d seen his share of action. He knew about the damage—enough to keep it to himself. The only wounds that were real were the ones he could see, the missing arm or leg, the gaping abdominal wound. AJ had come home in pristine condition. “Not a scratch on him,” Paul had said, and somehow he made it sound like an insult. There was little mention of how, while under siege from enemy fire, AJ had carried a man with half his face shot off to safety, slung over his back like a sack of rocks.
“You think he did it.” Lily’s anger was tinged with disbelief. “You think he stabbed that girl to death.”
She heard Paul’s breath go, and the despair in his voice when he said he didn’t know what to think. “He’s different, Lily.”
“He’s better now. Since Shea,” she added.
“He’s been jailed twice in six months for assault. Have you forgotten? And last month at the restaurant in front of Shea—”
“I’m not forgetting anything, Paul.” She wasn’t going to think about the restaurant incident where AJ had made a scene, shouting at the waiter, even raising his fist to him, when the poor man confused their orders. AJ had been red in the face. “Mad enough to kill,” Paul had said at the time. Shea was the one who had calmed him, who had brought AJ back to himself. He’d apologized then, profusely, to everyone present, including the waiter.
“I think you need to be prepared.” Paul suggested it softly.
Prepared? Lily puzzled over the word. How did one prepare for the eventuality that their son might have strangled and stabbed someone to death?
“I’ve got to go,” Paul said. “Bushnell wants me downtown. You’ll wait there in case AJ comes home?”
“I doubt he’ll come here,” Lily said, looking around. Paul was one of the most successful real estate developers in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. His specialty was commercial property, but he built residential projects, too. They’d lived in several of them. Finished only last year, the condo development was his latest venture. AJ had never really moved in; he’d never called it home. He had told Lily once that while he was overseas, he’d dreamed of the old clapboard house at the ranch almost nightly.
“What do you mean? Lily, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to try and find AJ, Paul, before the police do.”