“It was all about lies, Momma.” Tim raised his voice to his mother for the first time. “If you knew what he was saying about you-” He stopped himself.
“I want to know what he said.”
“He said you were…said you were a whore,” Tim whispered, as if saying it would make it so. “Said he…said he even seen you one time with his own grandfather. I knew it was an ugly lie.”
Jeanette crossed to her son, sat down, and buried her head in her hands. After a few minutes, she raised a tear-stained face and whispered, “It wasn’t a lie, Timmy. It wasn’t a lie.”
The silence in the room grew as seconds ticked on.
“If he told you he saw me and Roy Feeney together, he was most likely telling the truth. Me and Roy, we were together for a long time, Tim.” She wet her lips. “If that makes me a whore, well-”
“That can’t be true.” Tim stared at his mother as if she were a stranger. “You and that old man…” Tim screwed up his face in a look of disbelief. “You…you had an affair with him?”
“Might as well get it all out on the table, since it’s come up.” Jeanette wiped the tears from her eyes and took a deep breath. “Roy Feeney was Eric’s father.”
“That can’t be true, Momma.”
Jeanette nodded. “I’m sorry, son. I never meant for anyone to find out.”
“Wait…is this Mrs. Taylor’s father we’re talking about?” Dorsey broke in. “Chief Taylor’s father-in-law?”
“Yes,” Jeanette answered.
“But he died right about the time Eric was arrested, right?” Dorsey frowned. “I remember someone saying that Mrs. Taylor inherited big time from her father.”
“ Roy was pretty well off, it’s true,” Jeanette said. “I imagine he left quite a bit to her and to his son.”
“I bet if Mrs. Taylor found out her father’d had another child, she would have been one angry lady. She might have wondered if Eric-or you-might be thinking about making a claim on the estate,” Dorsey said thoughtfully.
“I never would have done that. Besides, Eric didn’t know,” she said, speaking to Tim now.
“But Mrs. Taylor wouldn’t have known that,” Dorsey thought aloud.
“You think maybe she thought Eric knew?” Jeanette frowned. “Boy, she sure wouldn’t have wanted that story goin’ around town. She was pretty uppity, you know?”
“She still is.”
“You met her?”
Dorsey nodded. “We went to ask her about the chief’s file on the case. We wanted to read over the witness statements but the file was missing. Chief Bowden suggested we ask Mrs. Taylor if any of the old files were still in the house, but she wouldn’t give us the time of day.”
“Why were you wanting to read the file?” Jeanette asked.
“Because it looked like somehow the evidence had been slanted to make everyone believe that Eric had killed Shannon. And since we know that Shannon didn’t die in 1983, I was trying to figure out what really happened back then, and why.”
“I’m sorry, but I am totally lost,” Matt said.
“When you arrived in Hatton, what were you told by Chief Taylor, Pop?”
“That Shannon had been murdered, her body hidden, and they were pretty sure Eric had killed her. Taylor had the bloody shirt, he had Eric’s admission he’d picked up Shannon that afternoon, and Taylor told me Eric had all but confessed to him.” Matt thought for a moment, then added, “And there was a witness who said she’d seen Shannon in Eric’s car about an hour after Eric swore he’d dropped her off.”
“We now know that was a lie,” Dorsey turned to her father. “Kimmie White admitted to me she made that up. The chief told her that all he needed was an eyewitness. She was pissed off at Eric for turning her down for a school dance, and then going with someone else. She said she just wanted the police to scare Eric, bring him in for questioning, then they’d let him go.”
Matt put the rest together. “And when they searched his car and found the bloody shirt, which Kim had no way of knowing about, they figured they had the killer.”
“You mean that bitch-” Tim clutched at the gun.
Dorsey nodded. “Yeah. She lied.”
“But why would Chief Taylor go after him like that? Why was he so convinced that Eric…” Matt started, then paused, nodded, and said, “Oh, Christ. The wife.”
“Mrs. Beale, you said Roy Feeney died around the time Eric was arrested. Do you remember if it was before or after?” Dorsey asked.
“ Roy died two weeks after Eric was arrested, but he’d been very sick for a while,” Jeanette told her. “It had been months since I’d seen him, but I’d heard he was just going downhill every day. He was in and out of a coma for weeks, and no one knew if he was going to survive or not. I don’t believe he was ever aware that Eric was arrested.”
“Did Roy ever talk about adding Eric to his will?” Matt asked.
“Yeah, plenty of times,” Jeanette said, nodding, “but I kept telling him I wasn’t sure it would be worth all the trouble it would cause for Eric and for me, after he was gone. I figured Eric would make his way in life, just like everyone else had to. Roy ’s wife had been gone for about eight years before we ever got together, but he had those two grown kids. I wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with either one of them. They’re both nasty things.” She grew thoughtful. “I always thought it was so strange that such a sweet man could have such awful kids. Anyway, I figured with Eric not being the wiser, we should just let it be. And of course, there was the fact that my husband would have killed me. We were still living together back then. He would have killed me and Eric without a second thought, if he’d known about me and Roy.”
“But Roy ’s two adult children wouldn’t have known that. So if he mentioned to his daughter that he was going to add another heir to his will, she’d probably have been pretty upset, right?”
“She wouldn’t have wanted to share Roy ’s money, that’s for sure.” Jeanette nodded. “Everybody in town knew she had her heart set on that big house, on fixin’ it up and livin’ like royalty once she came into money.”
“So didn’t it ever strike you as odd that Eric was arrested by Chief Taylor- Roy ’s son-in-law-just weeks before Roy died?”
“No.” Jeanette shook her head. “If I’d known that Eleanor knew, yeah, maybe. But I had no idea that anyone knew except me and Roy. I figured that Taylor being married to Roy ’s daughter was just an unfortunate coincidence.”
“And wasn’t it convenient that Shannon just happened to go missing right around that time,” Matt said. “Then when Kimmie set Taylor onto Eric and they found the bloody shirt-”
“ Roy ’s daughter saw her chance to eliminate the competition,” Dorsey said, finishing Matt’s train of thought. “ Roy probably hadn’t added Eric to his will by then, he was in a coma, but there was no guarantee he’d stay that way. If he survived and wanted to change his will, his daughter would tell him, look, this kid is a murderer, why would you own up to him now? You don’t want anyone to know he’s your son.”
“She must have been counting on Roy dying without coming out of the coma, so the secret would end with him.” Matt nodded. “Even if Eric was acquitted and Jeanette made a claim on the estate, who’d have believed her?”
“But why would Taylor call in the FBI?” Dorsey wondered.
“Easier to wash his hands,” Matt replied. “No matter what happened, he would be clean. He knew Eric was innocent, but if he was convicted, it wasn’t Taylor ’s fault. And if Eric got off, he could tell his wife the FBI had screwed up. He eases his conscience, either way.”
“But wouldn’t he be afraid you’d learn the truth?” Jeanette asked. “Make him look stupid?”
“If I’d done my job the way I should have, yeah, he ran that chance,” Matt admitted. “But as it was, there were no other suspects, no reason to think Shannon would have run away or that Kimmie had lied. The lake outside of town has a lot of caves underneath it. The word was that Shannon ’s body had been dumped in the lake and had gotten into one of them. We had divers go in, but there were too many caves and passages between them to search them all. The police searched the woods for days but came up with nothing. There was no trace of Shannon anywhere except in Eric’s car. If it turned out otherwise, he could always say, he couldn’t override the FBI.”