Last Girl Standing

by Jackson, Lisa

  McCrae didn’t respond. Just waited.

  “Isn’t it time she was arrested?”

  “Not enough evidence,” McCrae said evenly.

  “Is that really the reason?” he said in a tone that suggested they both knew it wasn’t.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’ve heard differently, and I’m going to suggest you pick her up and bring her in. If she’s a black widow, we need her off the street.”

  “That’s for Quin to decide,” McCrae said. His spit had dried up. His mouth felt like dust.

  “Well, no, as an appointed special investigator—”

  “That was before Quin was made chief.”

  “Your mayor has put me in charge of this case. If you don’t want to be a part of it, you can step down.”

  McCrae wanted to argue further, but Mayor Kathy was someone who tended to be dazzled by big personalities like Hurston. She was a wild card, and it was entirely possible she may have given him some kind of special dispensation to override Quin. In any case, McCrae wasn’t the one to fight him.

  Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Corinne step into the hallway behind Hurston and pretend she wasn’t interested in what was going on.

  “I have things to do,” McCrae told the man.

  “None as important as this.”

  McCrae looked over at Corinne. You made a bad choice, he thought.

  As if she’d heard him, she tossed back her head and marched away.

  “Bring her in, or I will,” Hurston threatened.

  McCrae left without responding. The man sure had a hard-on for getting inside the West Knoll police department and asserting his will. Whatever his reasons, McCrae was done placating him.

  Chapter 25

  Gale Crassley followed Ellie into his house as she was trying to make a call.

  “Gimme that,” he told her, yanking the phone from her hand.

  “I was just texting my boss to let him know where I am,” Ellie said. A lie. But he didn’t have to know it.

  For an answer, he moved the rifle up and pointed it at her. Her whole body was quivering, even while she desperately wanted to not show fear.

  “I think you’d better take your clothes off and sit on that couch.”

  “What?” She almost laughed until she looked into his cold, staring eyes. He was only a year older than she was, maybe two, but there were light years of different experiences between them.

  “You have green eyes,” he said, smiling. In fact, he never stopped smiling. It was thoroughly creeping her out. A part of his reptilian self, she decided.

  He very gently pushed the rifle at her, making her stumble onto the couch. A spring popped up to meet her, a hard slap to her derrière.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Shut up. Take off your clothes,” he said mildly. “Ain’t nobody here but you and me. Ain’t nobody gonna be here. You can tell me what you want after you take off your clothes.”

  She held up her hands in front of her, mind whirling, seeking to be free of him. “If I could just say something.”

  “Don’t talk till I tell you to. You got that?”

  She was staring at him, her gaze above the muzzle of the gun, hoping to make eye contact, anything.

  He tucked the gun under one arm again and rubbed his jaw, looking down at her.

  “Take off your goddamn clothes before I rip them off.”

  “And then . . . we can talk?”

  “Not if you keep yappin’ away.”

  Ellie considered her position. C’mon, McCrae, she whispered in her head.

  Very carefully, she began to unbutton her blouse.

  * * *

  McCrae got the text from Ellie that was sent without being finished. At Crassleys. Come and get—

  He was on his way to the Kiefers, determined to put Coach Sutton’s theories about Bailey’s mother to bed. He hadn’t talked to Masterer, not because he believed anything besides flirting had transpired between the man and Delta, just because he should knock it off the list. Now it could appear that McCrae was protecting Delta, and Hurston, with Corinne’s help, was out for blood.

  Why? How did he benefit from Delta being charged with Tanner’s murder? Hurston always had his own agenda, but he couldn’t see how charging Delta would help him. She was a sympathetic figure with a little boy to take care of.

  But Tanner called her Dee, the name or letter he’d called out from the hospital bed . . . and she’d lied about the knife, though Hurston didn’t have that bit of information yet. God knew what he’d do when he did . . . and she wrote a book with the same plot. He’d managed to read two chapters, and the similarities were eerie . . . and the marriage was in trouble because Tanner regularly slept with other women . . .

  All circumstantial evidence, but damning, nonetheless.

  But Ellie’s text. Come and get . . . what?

  But anything to do with the Crassleys was bad news.

  “Goddamnit.”

  He was driving one of the West Knoll PD Trailblazers rather than his own SUV, and now he turned it around and sped through the city streets toward the hills on the east side of town, where the river made a lazy turn and headed west toward the ocean. The road to the Crassleys was well known. There was always a Crassley in trouble. That was the way of it, mostly penny-ante stuff. He wondered what Ellie’s connection to them was.

  When he pulled into the driveway, he saw a blue Ford Escort. A pack of dogs set up howling and barking as he tagged the license number and learned that it was indeed Ellie’s car. It was the one vehicle parked in the front of the house, though sunlight was breaking through the clouds and refracting off the chrome and side mirrors of a couple dozen older vehicles. The hounds threw themselves at the fence where they were penned as he walked by, and McCrae, for all of his love of dogs, was glad he had his Glock.

  He walked carefully toward the front door. He’d barely gotten to the bottom step when one of the Crassleys—Gale, he thought, though they all had a similar look: tall, hulking, and jowly with mean eyes—stepped outside. It was Gale, he decided. He was the one closest in age to their class, two grades above. McCrae’s gaze slipped to the rifle under his arm, and Gale, apparently appreciating the finer points of greeting visitors while armed, carefully set the butt on the porch floorboards.

  “Where is Ellie O’Brien?” McCrae asked.

  “Who?” He put a hand to the back of his ear.

  “Owner of that vehicle.” McCrae gestured behind himself, never taking his eyes off the man.

  “Don’t know.”

  From inside the house, he heard a pounding and muffled shrieking.

  “I’d venture to say you do know,” McCrae said. His blood was heating up. If this piece of shit had done anything to her . . .

  “Help! Help!” the faint female voice called.

  “Shut up, Nia,” he threw over his shoulder.

  “Help!” she cried.

  “That’s Ellie,” McCrae said grimly. He spread his feet a bit farther apart.

  “You can’t come in,” Crassley stated. “Gotta have a search warrant.”

  “Not if someone’s calling for help . . .” He pulled his Glock and held it in front of him, highly aware that Crassley could try to flip his rifle up and take a shot. He’d been in a number of tense spots over the years’ incidents, but he’d never had to shoot at anyone. There was always a first time.

  Crassley must’ve picked up on his intentions, because he dropped his belligerent stance, carefully propped the rifle against the wall under McCrae’s watchful eye, spread his hands, then held open the screen. “You just caught us in a little fun time,” he said. “Chasin’ each other around. Pretendin’ we need the cops.”

  “Help!” Ellie’s voice was louder.

  “Where are you?” McCrae asked, his Glock still trained on Crassley, whose hands were up by his ears. The rattle of a locked door tucked beneath the steps to the second floor answered the question even as he was asking it. To Crassley, he said, �
�Open it.”

  “I was just gettin’ there. She was a little quicker to get ’er clothes off than me. Beggin’ for it, y’know? That’s how women are.”

  They walked toward the door together. Crassley pulled a key down from above the jamb and unlocked the door. Ellie tumbled out in bra and panties. Before McCrae could react, she launched herself at Crassley and raked his face with her nails, drawing blood. Crassley ripped her and hit her in the face, and McCrae pushed into him, slamming his gun against the man’s head, dropping him to the ground. Crassley writhed in pain and howled and screamed about police brutality.

  McCrae kept his gun sighted on him. “Get up and I’ll shoot you,” he ground out.

  “Jesus, man . . . ,” Gale sputtered.

  “Bastard!” Ellie shrieked. She hauled off and kicked him in the side.

  “Did he hurt you?” McCrae demanded.

  “No,” she snarled.

  Gale started laughing. “Tell ’im, sweetheart. Tell ’im how you went down on me and sucked my cock.”

  “Don’t,” McCrae said as Ellie launched herself at him again, kicking for his face.

  Crassley grabbed her bare foot, and she went down hard on her butt, and then scrambled to her hands and knees and then her feet, hauling back to kick him again.

  Crassley was trying to rise too, but she managed a good one to the groin, though he swiveled to protect himself, and she mostly got him in the hip.

  “Don’t!” McCrae yelled louder as Ellie looked about to body-slam him.

  She stopped herself, turned her glare on McCrae, then turned to grab up her clothes, which were strewn along the couch.

  Crassley, holding a hand to his head, said, “I’m calling my lawyer. You came into my house and harassed me, hit me.”

  “You were going to rape me!” Ellie spit at him as she pulled on her pants.

  “It ain’t rape when it’s consensual.”

  “Wait, wait.” McCrae put a hand out to Ellie, who’d put on her shoes, heels, and was ready to come at him again. “Don’t give him what he wants.”

  “I see the curtains match the drapes.” Crassley grinned as his eyes fastened on the sheer scrap of panty material.

  “Ellie. He’ll sue you. He wants you to attack him.”

  Tears stood in her eyes, and her chest heaved. “It might be worth it,” she said, but she backed up a few steps away from the battle and finished getting dressed.

  McCrae marched Crassley outside, got cuffs from the police vehicle, and put his hands behind his back.

  About that time, the other Crassleys showed up, Booker and Harry. Nia was right behind them. They all glared at McCrae, who was opening the back door of his police vehicle. Ellie stalked outside to her Escort and glared over at Gale, a red-haired virago ready to go at him again.

  The other Crassleys started protesting and griping, glaring at McCrae and Ellie. “Don’t say anything to her,” Nia warned Gale.

  For an answer, Gale made kissy noises with his pursed lips at Ellie, then thrust his crotch at her before McCrae could get him locked into the back seat.

  “It’s me who’s going to go after you,” Ellie told him, stepping forward. “Attempted rape.”

  “Suck my dick,” he told her, grinning.

  “If I ever got that thing in my mouth, I’d bite it off,” she assured him.

  McCrae slammed the back door.

  “Hey,” Booker suddenly yelled in discovery. “You two were the ones fucking the night of the barbecue! Woody told me.”

  “That’s right!” Harry concurred, and they slapped palms.

  McCrae said to Ellie, “I can call for some help and drive you.”

  “Nope. You take this piece of shit and dump him wherever he needs to go. I’ll drive myself.” She peered through the window of the Trailblazer at Gale and said, “Nia said it was ‘a job.’ ”

  “Don’t listen to her!” Nia shrieked as her brothers’ heads turned to look her way.

  “I’m coming after you,” Ellie added as she walked away. Then she slammed into her own car and backed up, creating a spray of gravel.

  McCrae circled his vehicle around the three other Crassleys and followed after her. They bumped down the drive and onto the road.

  “So you had her too, huh,” Gale said. “That makes us brothers, in a way.”

  “Shut up, Crassley.”

  “At the barbecue. Heard all about that one. Everybody was at it, huh. Even that lesbo girl with Tanner. Funny, they’re both dead now.”

  McCrae kept silent by sheer will.

  “I heard Tanner was with every one of ’em that he could get, and that preacher’s daughter was throwin’ herself at him. Killed herself ’cause she wasn’t a virgin, and she had that preacher daddy. Bet he wanted to kill Stahd. I would.”

  McCrae closed his ears. No one had ever said Carmen had sex with Tanner that night. He went back to something Ellie had said.

  “What was the ‘job’ Ellie brought up?” he asked Crassley.

  “Don’t know what you mean.”

  “Nia said it was a ‘job’,” he quoted.

  “Bitch doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” he muttered, and then subsided into silence.

  * * *

  Delta saw Amanda’s interview with Ellie on the noon news. It felt weird to be the subject of their conversation. She’d called Amanda but hadn’t heard from her, which was the way of it, she was learning. Amanda was fairly demanding when she needed something from you, hard to reach when she didn’t.

  And then she switched to Channel Four, thinking of the young, balding reporter who’d dogged her so much. And there he was . . . talking about her!

  “. . . in recent days Blood Dreams sales have skyrocketed. It’s topping the e-book charts. I asked Delta Stahd about her book, but she declined to answer. The story is remarkably similar to the fate that her newly deceased husband, Doctor Tanner Stahd, suffered. The wife of a notoriously cheating doctor concocts a plan to stab her husband to death and inherit his estate. In the book, she gets away with murder, but in real life, Tanner Stahd’s father, Doctor Lester Stahd, is making a claim that Delta should not profit from killing his son, which is what he believes she did. Does the sudden ‘rise to fortune’ of Blood Dreams constitute monies Delta should not profit from as well? Tanner and Delta Stahd also have a young son, Owen Stahd, and Lester Stahd is suing for custody of him. It’s a family tragedy that grows more complicated daily. If—”

  Delta switched off the set. Her mother was standing at the edge of the family room. She’d heard too. “Mom, I didn’t do it,” she said.

  “I know.” Her mother came over and put her arms around her. Delta leaned her head on her shoulder. She closed her eyes, thinking about her meeting with Amanda, who’d asked as they were wrapping up, “Is there anything else? Anything you can think of that might be something we have to spin?”

  She’d shaken her head. She hadn’t thought about the uptick in sales of Blood Dreams.

  Now she pulled back from her mother and tried on a smile. Her father was at the store, and her mother would be too, if Delta hadn’t needed support.

  “Dad’s okay by himself?”

  “For a little while,” her mother agreed.

  “Okay. I’d better get going then.”

  “You sure?” Mom frowned. “I don’t like thinking of you alone.”

  “I’m sure.” As much as she loved and relied on both of them, today she was antsy and uncomfortable. Amanda’s television interview hadn’t really helped all that much. Just hearing about herself made her feel like a criminal.

  She left around 1:00, feeling somewhat lost. Zora was gone. Another one of their group. Owen was at school. It did feel lonely.

  She thought about calling McCrae, but she didn’t know what he thought of her after she’d confessed about the knives. Everything just felt . . . fraught.

  Back at her house—no press outside, thank God—she remembered about checking in with Woody about the guy who’d fought with T
anner over the fender bender. She imagined the police had already talked to him, and there wasn’t anything for her to really do, but . . .

  She had a glass of sparkling water, thought about some rosé, then decided it was still too early in the afternoon and stuck with the water. After listening to the quiet of the house, she headed out. She hadn’t really seen Woody since the reunion, apart from across the street in downtown West Knoll once and at Danny O’s another time, when she’d taken Owen when he was about three. Both times, he’d given her a sardonic smile and a salute, which she’d taken to be a comment on her escalating social status as Dr. Tanner Stahd’s wife.

  Candy had opened the clinic on a limited basis. She’d called Delta and given her condolences, and then had said they really weren’t having much business. Tanner’s father’s screaming decimation of Delta had apparently cooled the community’s interest in the clinic.

  If I’m in charge, it’s not safe to go.

  That was a further depressing thought.

  She went to Woody’s Auto Body, but there was no one there. A clock-face sign on the door had an arrow pointed to a return of 3:00 p.m.

  “One helluva lunch hour, Woody,” she murmured. But maybe he was on the job somewhere.

  She phoned Amanda again, but the call went to voice mail once more. This time she left a message. “Hi, Amanda, it’s Delta. Just checking in. I saw your interview with Ellie. It was nice to be defended. Um . . . I told McCrae the truth about the knife. It just . . . happened. Anyway, thanks. Call when you can.”

  She clicked off and decided to go to lunch herself at Danny O’s. Might as well kill some time.

  * * *

  Amanda came back from her run and drank a full glass of water. She thought she heard something and cocked her head. Something outside, by the garage? She walked out to the back patio and looked to her garage. Nothing. She heard a mower, far away, and scoured the distant fields from west to east. The clouds had burned off completely, and the sky was high and blue. She closed her eyes and drank in the sense of purity that open spaces gave her, fighting the depression that hovered in the corners of her mind ever since she’d heard about Zora.

  After a few moments, she went back inside and up the stairs to take a shower and clean up. She wasn’t going back to the office today, or maybe any day. Hal didn’t want her there. She didn’t want to be there.