Gaining confidence, Naomi depicted my young cousin as a man who’d gotten off track, fought demons, and kept the circumstances of his addictions private on his school application because it was his right under the law. He’d come home to Starksville and found his passion as a teacher, and he cared deeply about his students. She described the drug overdoses at the school and Stefan’s efforts to fight and expose the drug dealers.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is the defense’s contention that Stefan Tate was getting very close to uncovering the presence of a major drug ring operating in and around Starksville,” Naomi went on. “For that, my client was framed, as a drug dealer himself, as a rapist, and as the brutal murderer of a boy he loved like a son.
“When you’ve heard the hard evidence, when you see how manufactured it all looks on close examination, you’ll realize without a doubt that Stefan Tate is no drug dealer, no rapist, and most certainly no murderer.”
Chapter
41
Judge Varney called for a recess at noon.
My poor aunts and Nana Mama were exhausted. Patty Converse drove them home. After taking Cece Turnbull home, Bree joined Pinkie and me for lunch at the Bench, a barbecue joint that catered to the courthouse crowd.
“You thought any more about Finn Davis?” Pinkie asked after we took a booth and ordered.
“A little,” I admitted.
“What about Finn Davis?” Bree asked.
As he had with me the evening before, Pinkie filled Bree in on Sydney Fox’s ex. Born and raised in Starksville, Finn Davis had been orphaned when his parents died in a car crash. Marvin Bell, the man who’d hooked my parents on drugs, took Finn Davis in, treated the boy like his son.
“Marvin spoiled Finn, trained Finn, probably abused Finn,” Pinkie said. “You ask me, Finn turned out just like his adoptive dad. They can both turn on the charisma, make you forget what they are deep down.”
“And what’s that?” Bree asked.
Pinkie started to speak, but then stopped and stared over my shoulder. He muttered, “The devil himself just walked in.”
A thin, angular man, Marvin Bell put me in mind of the actor Bruce Dern as he walked up to our booth. Longish steel-gray hair. Gaunt, narrow face. Sharp nose. And opaque green eyes that, as Bree said, roamed all over you.
Marvin Bell ran those weird opaque eyes over me and then Bree, showing no reaction. Then he leveled his gaze at Pinkie.
“My two cents, Parks?” he said. “At funerals, all grudges are off. My boy had every right to grieve for Sydney and pay his respects.”
“Unless your boy shot her,” my cousin said. “Which, in my mind, goes along with his threat to piss on her grave.”
The muscles in Bell’s cheeks flickered with tension, but his voice remained calm when he said, “Finn signed the divorce papers. He’d moved on. There is no reason he’d do something like that to his ex-wife.”
“Oh, I think a case could be made for obsession,” Pinkie said. “But I’m thinking spite. You and your boy have never liked to lose face.”
Bell stood there a moment, looking as if it was taking all his control not to smash my cousin in the face. “Finn’s no murderer.”
Then he walked across the room to another booth.
“Think I’ll go introduce myself,” I said.
Bree said, “That a good idea?”
“Sometimes, you shake something, it rattles,” I said, getting up.
The waitress set a cup of coffee in front of Bell and walked away. I slid in across from him. If I unnerved him at all, he didn’t show it. If he’d been shaken by Pinkie’s accusations, he didn’t show it.
“Didn’t know I’d invited you to sit down, stranger,” Bell said, tearing open a sugar packet and tapping it into the coffee.
“We’ve met, Mr. Bell,” I said. “A long time ago.”
“That right?” he said, stirring the coffee and turning his weird green eyes on me. “I don’t recall you.”
“Alex Cross,” I said. “Jason Cross was my father.”