“No! All my life they’ve showed it off like their most cherished possession.”
“That should have been you,” he said.
“Of course it should have been me! Then he came along...” she said, turning to glare at her brother.
“And it was all about him and the bat, wasn’t it?”
“Yes!”
“They took you for granted. They didn’t give you the love and attention you deserved,” Mark continued.
“That’s right! It was always the same.”
“But you got what you deserved, didn’t you?” Mark asked, holding his breath as he pushed slightly.
“I did! That bat was mine, my inheritance.”
“It just came to you a little early.”
“Yes, and I was so glad when it was gone,” Ruth ranted, her face red and swollen, her eyes darting crazily around the room.
“And the money you got for it was going to make your life so much better, was going to be them giving you what you deserved, wasn’t it?”
“Yes!”
“And they would never know that you replaced it with another bat. It looked just the same. What did it matter?”
“They made me stare at that signature so many times! I knew how to write it better than my own name!” she shouted.
She was overwrought, but she had just admitted to stealing the bat
“But then something awful happened,” Mark guessed. “The bat that was always locked up in its display case was about to come out of it.”
“They wanted to loan it to a six month traveling exhibit! Can you imagine?”
“That meant having it reassessed for insurance purposes. That would have been unthinkable,” Mark said.
“Two decades it sat in that case and suddenly they wanted to take it out!”
“You had to do something,” Mark said.
“I did.”
“If it looked like a burglar broke in and stole it then everything would end up just fine.”
“And it would have been fine,” Ruth said.
The anger was giving way to grief and horror. He had seen it happen before and he waited for the confession he knew was coming.
“But then they came home early. They were supposed to be gone all day. All of a sudden I heard them come in the front door, and then they were in the kitchen.”
“You were trapped.”
Ruth was crying now. “And they stayed there and they kept talking and talking and they were talking about the stupid bat. About how much it meant to them.”
“It was too much.”
“I hit dad first and then mom. I just wanted to knock them out, so they wouldn’t see me, and so they’d stop talking. They fell, and the bat was covered in...”
She started sobbing.
“What did you do then?”
“I dropped it...and...and I called...911.”
“And then you left?” he asked.
She nodded.
“But when you came back later, after you cleaned up, you realized something else had gone wrong.”
“Casey,” she said with a gasp. “He was supposed to be next door at the neighbor’s house. They watched him on Tuesdays. He would play with their dogs.”
“He came back and found them. And they weren’t just knocked out.”
She collapsed completely then. Casey looked up finally from his iPad, his face contorting in fear.
“It’s going to be alright,” he told Casey as he pulled his phone out of his pocket.
It was a lie, but he didn’t know what else to say.
17
Cindy was feeling distinctly unsettled. The work day was winding down and she’d made considerable progress on getting the papers filed. One thing she had noticed was that none of them seemed to predate October. She knew from Beau that Rose had worked at the company longer than that, but that her grandmother had died in October.
It made her wonder where all the files from before that were. It was possible Rose had kept them somewhere else and that as she was dealing with her grief she just let the unfiled papers pile up.
She decided that in the morning after her meeting with Mr. Cartwright she’d try to find if there were filing cabinets that Rose might have been using prior to October.
Even though she’d only found a couple more personal things within the papers it still felt morbid, going through someone else’s stuff. Especially when she was half-convinced that something bad had happened to that person.
A sudden horrible memory that she’d done her best for years to forget suddenly bubbled to the surface. Her mom had taken her into Lisa’s room, a few weeks after she had died. Cindy had been forced to go through her sister’s things, deciding what to keep, what to get rid of. Her mom had refused to help with the job, just sent Cindy in and told her to get it done.
Her chest tightened at the memory of it. She’d gone through her sister’s clothes, bagging them all for Goodwill. The thought of keeping any of them had made her physically ill. Then she’d gone through Lisa’s toys and stuffed animals, most of which were already boxed up in her closet. She’d kept a few for her mother and Kyle. The rest she’d put in another trash bag for Goodwill.
After that she’d gone through her sister’s jewelry box. She tried to choose something for herself to keep, to remember Lisa by. In the end she couldn’t do it, though. Every single piece reminded her too deeply of her sister and the pain that brought reduced her to tears.
That tiny jewelry box and its contents were in a box in the bottom of the closet of Geanie’s old bedroom at her house. She’d never brought herself to look at any of it again after that day. Neither had she been able to throw it away, though.
The worst part, though, had been having to go through Lisa’s books and papers. Cindy had found the secret diary her sister kept. She’d only read the first couple of pages, enough to see her sister’s thoughts on life, her parents, their family. She decided that those were the thoughts her sister hadn’t wanted to share in life, so why should she be forced to in death? Cindy had destroyed the book.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks and she hunched over as she tried to wipe them away. She didn’t want anyone to glance over and see her. The half walls that afforded only limited privacy now made her feel like she had been exposed for all the world to see, her soul laid bare.
It was almost too much for her.
How on earth did Rose cope with this?
If she was grieving the death of the woman who had raised her then Rose must have shed many tears at this desk. Who would have seen, noticed? Who would have tried to bring her comfort?
Cindy felt her heart begin to race. Who indeed?
Beau had said a change came over Rose just before Christmas. She became happier, glowing even. She thought about the picture of Rose sitting on Santa’s lap. She looked like a woman in love.
Who comforted you, Rose? she whispered the words out loud.
She swiveled her chair around, forgetting about her own embarrassment over crying at her desk.
“Leo, did you go to the company Christmas party a few months ago?” she asked.
He looked up. His eyes looked dull and he still looked quite the worse for wear. “Um, yeah, why?”
She bit her lip. “Do you know who was playing Santa Claus?” she asked.
“Sure. Every year Mr. Rayburn chooses one of the executives to play Santa at the party. This past Christmas it was Mr. Cartwright.”
~
There were days Mark really hated his job and this was one of them. While it was a relief to have a killer in custody, he was deeply saddened that was Ruth. She hadn’t gone to her parents’ house that morning planning to kill them. She hadn’t planned on seeing them. Now with their parents dead and his sister going to jail for their murder, Casey had no one.
Casey’s doctor was with him and a man from Protective Services trying to sort out where Casey was going to go. Apparently there were som
e cousins that were a possibility. The older couple who lived next door and watched him once a week had even come forward to express their willingness to take the young man in.
Although he was hoping for the best there was no telling how long Ruth would be in jail. Once she was out she wouldn’t be able to get custody of Casey, but maybe they could start to rebuild a little of what they’d lost. At least, he liked to think so. The reality, though, was that there was no hopeful future for that sibling relationship.
He still wasn’t sure whether it had been Ruth’s idea or her lawyer’s to go ahead and let Casey take the fall for the murders. That was the part of this whole mess that irked him the most. Casey had been able to tell him and the doctor that Ruth had said if he was willing to go to a hospital that she could visit him and they’d still be together.
It was unclear to Mark if Casey knew that his sister had murdered their parents or not. Either way, it wasn’t his job to make sure he understood. Heck, if it were up to him he’d never tell the kid that his sister was the cause of the whole mess.
His phone rang and he grabbed it from his pocket. It was Traci.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Hi, hon. I’m just checking up on you,” Traci said in her perkiest voice.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, sitting up straight.
“Not with me. Is something wrong with you?” she asked.
“I...no, I mean, rough day. Why do you ask?”
“I just got this feeling that I should call you and make sure you’re handling all the dirty work okay.”
“It’s dirtier than usual, but I’m hanging in there,” he said.
“I’m making my lasagna for dinner.”
“Wait, do you mean the frozen lasagna you get at the store or your actual lasagna?”
“My actual made-from-scratch recipe,” she informed him proudly.
“Oh, man, you haven’t made that in months and months,” he said, feeling himself already beginning to salivate at the prospect.
“Not since before we got pregnant,” she confirmed.
“How long until it comes out of the oven?”
“An hour.”
“I will be there,” he vowed. “I don’t care what happens where in the universe tonight, I’m going to have some of that lasagna straight out of the oven.”
“It’s true, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Or, rather, his taste buds in this case,” Traci said, sounding quite smug.
“You laugh now, but just you wait until I eat all the lasagna by myself and don’t leave you a single piece.”
“Oh, I see how it is. You want to engage in smack talk now?”
“I thought it might be appropriate.”
He couldn’t help but chuckle at that.
“Listen, Mark, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you yesterday on the phone.”
“No, you were right to do so,” he said. “I’ve been holding onto Pa- er, the past far too long,” he said, changing his phrasing at the last moment because he was not going to mention Paul’s name in the precinct. “It’s time I got whatever other answers I can and just let go.”
“You know I’m here for you.”
“You always are, and I don’t think I thank you often enough for that.”
“You’re cute,” she said, and he could tell she was grinning.
“If you think I’m cute now, wait until you see me attack that lasagna,” he said.
She started giggling and it warmed him up inside. The evils of the world seemed to melt away as he concentrated on that laugh. He closed his eyes and let it envelop him.
“I love you,” she finally said.
“I love you, too. I’ll be home in time for lasagna.”
“You better,” she teased.
After she hung up he called Taylor. It went to the man’s voicemail and Mark left a message. Then he tried calling Jeremiah’s phone, but it also went to voicemail.
“You know what they say, no news is good news,” he muttered to himself.
~
“Help!” Jeremiah shouted at the top of his lungs.
Beneath him Rebecca was convulsing, her body going into shock. He was laying across her legs and pinning her right shoulder with his left hand as he held a fistful of hospital sheets down on the stab wound in her abdomen that was gushing blood.
“Nurse! Emergency!” he shouted again. “Woman’s been stabbed!”
He heard a commotion as several people arrived in the room at once. He glanced up for a fraction of a second and saw a young, female doctor, two nurses, one man and one woman, and the police officer who hadn’t been at his guard post moments before.
He heard the doctor exclaim.
“Help me! She’s been stabbed and she’s losing blood fast!” he screamed, praying that they could understand him. He could hear his voice and his accent was thicker, brought out by the stress of the moment and his need to communicate quickly.
“Get a gurney!” the doctor ordered the male nurse.
The man bolted from the room.
“When did this happen?” the doctor barked.
“Couldn’t have been more than a minute ago,” Jeremiah said, trying to enunciate clearly.
Rebecca was still fighting him and he was struggling to keep hold of her. She was laying diagonally across Liam’s hospital bed, with Liam underneath her. Why he wasn’t waking up Jeremiah didn’t know. He should have with the weight and the noise and all the thrashing about. He should be awake and screaming in pain and fear.
But he wasn’t.
And the way they were rolling about on top of him there was a very real chance that one of his damaged organs could take a fatal blow. For all their sakes he needed to get Rebecca off of Liam.
The nurse came sprinting back in with the gurney. It slammed against the one wall before he could turn it. The other nurse scrambled to help him and they got it into position on the other side of the hospital bed toward the foot. Jeremiah looked across at them and saw something out of the corner of his eye that sent chills through him.
The IV bag that Liam was hooked up to had been full of clear liquids since he got into the room after surgery. Now, though, there was pale green liquid swirling around in it.
With a shout Jeremiah let go of Rebecca’s shoulder and lunged further across her to grab hold of the tubing leading from the bag to the IV in Liam’s hand. He bent it, stopping the flow of liquid.
“What are you doing?” the doctor shouted.
“That’s not his medication,” Jeremiah grunted.
She turned wide eyes to the bag. She reached up and shut off the drip. “Get off her, we have to transfer her,” she snapped as she turned back.
Jeremiah slithered back as far as he could. His feet had a precarious purchase on the floor which was slippery from the coffee he’d spilled moments ago. In order to stand up far enough so they could move her onto the gurney he was going to have to let go of the wound.
“1, 2, 3,” he said.
He jumped back, grabbed her knees and helped the other two nurses lift her free of the hospital bed and onto the gurney. The female nurse put pressure back down on the wound as the doctor grabbed the foot of the gurney.
“Operating room, now!” the doctor shouted as the male nurse began to back out of the room pulling the gurney.
He wanted to go with them. He took a step forward and then turned to look at Liam. “Send in another doctor! We don’t know what he’s been dosed with!” Jeremiah shouted.
“I need a team in that room now!” he heard the doctor roar as they made it into the hall with the gurney.
He could hear feet scrambling, alarms blaring, someone speaking over a PA System paging specific doctors by name.
He glanced again at Liam. There was blood on him, but Jeremiah was relatively sure it was Rebecca’s.
He turned toward the police officer who was just standing there, gaping at Liam. Jeremiah took
three strides forward, grabbed the man by the throat, and slammed him into the wall.
“Where were you?” he growled.
Chapter 18
The police officer was clawing at Jeremiah’s hand around his throat, but to no avail. The man should have instead tried to jab Jeremiah in the eyes or the throat, but he didn’t have his wits about him enough to do it.
“I asked you a question,” Jeremiah hissed. “Where were you?”
The man’s eyes bugged out of his head as he gasped for breath and clawed more frantically at Jeremiah’s hand. Jeremiah loosened his grip just enough so the man could get words out.
“The nurse’s station. I was just gone for a minute.”
A minute was all it had taken.
Jeremiah had arrived at the hospital ten minutes earlier. He’d checked in with Rebecca and then went downstairs to get both of them some coffee. When he had left the room the officer had been sitting in his chair. When he came back with the coffee the officer had been gone.
He’d rushed inside, seen Rebecca laying diagonally across Liam with the blood pumping out of her stomach wound. He dropped the coffee and leaped instantly on top of her to try and staunch the flow of blood and to restrict her movements.
He heard running footsteps and a startled oath.
“Sir, let the police officer go,” a shaky voice said moments later.
Jeremiah turned and saw a doctor standing there, wearing scrubs, gloves, and a mask. He looked like he’d been just prepped for surgery.
Jeremiah released the officer and stepped back. He would finish dealing with him afterward.
“A foreign substance was introduced into this IV bag,” Jeremiah said, moving over to indicate it. “I don’t know if it’s a paralytic, some sort of poison, or what. There has to be some already in his system given that he didn’t wake up a minute ago.”
The doctor gaped from him to the IV bag.
“Let’s go!” Jeremiah boomed, his voice filling the room.
The doctor scrambled forward and unhooked the bag. He handed it to a nurse who had followed him in. “Take this to the lab, give it to Sergei for testing. Tell him it’s an emergency.”
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