Her Final Words

by Brianna Labuskes

  “It was Allie,” Lucy prompted.

  “Yeah, but then she got sick.” Eliza swallowed, her mouth sour with the memory of Allie’s eyes when she’d finally acknowledged it, then the quick, determined set of her expression right after that flash of vulnerability. “She was going to get help. She was planning on it.”

  “What happened?”

  “We have a friend—he was part of a family that passed through town years ago,” Eliza said. “We kept in touch. He works in a clinic up north a bit.”

  “She got a diagnosis.” Lucy breathed it out like she knew something, and Eliza looked over, met her eyes. “That’s what she did wrong.”

  So maybe Lucy did know something. “It wasn’t official. There was no reason . . .”

  “But it would have been,” Lucy said. “She would have tried to get care, right? Would her parents have let her?”

  And here they were. “No.”

  “So she would have been on record as having . . .”

  “Cancer,” Eliza whispered, as if the word alone held too much power. Maybe it did. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was her own way of kneeling at the altar before she went. “It would have played out just like that case in Tennessee.”

  “The girl who died?”

  “Yeah.” They all seemed to die. “The parents backed out once they’d gotten a real diagnosis. Everyone went hog wild. Both sides, really. But the public sympathy is against the shield laws. Most places, that is.”

  “Rachel couldn’t let that happen here,” Lucy finished for her.

  “You know, I didn’t realize then that it was a pattern.” Eliza’s eyes found the cross once more, her fingers dragging along the edges of the Bible’s pages. She knew now. There was something in the land or the water. Something that was making them sick. “I just knew my friend hadn’t run away.”

  “You and Molly started digging.”

  Eliza flinched. “She’s okay?”

  She’d already been told Molly was going to be fine. But each time Eliza asked, it was like she was back in those weeks of not knowing if the girl was alive or dead. In the second it took for every person to answer, Molly was still stuck in a hole somewhere.

  “Molly’s going to be okay,” Lucy said, just as patiently as every other person had, and Eliza’s shoulders slumped back against the pew. “She’ll be okay.”

  “Why didn’t Rachel just kill her?” Eliza asked now that she could. She didn’t actually expect Lucy to answer, but the woman nodded as if she’d been expecting the question.

  “We have an expert of sorts, in psychology, religion.” Lucy waved her hand around as if to encompass the human experience. “The going theory is that Rachel was able to justify it to herself when she killed a kid who was already dying. In her mind, they were mercy kills and it served to protect the Church. But with Molly . . .”

  “Molly wasn’t sick,” Eliza said quickly, because it was all she’d been able to think for the past three weeks. “Not like Alessandra. Not like . . . me.”

  “Right.” Lucy nodded. “But when Molly talked to Zoey Grant . . .”

  “What?” It was a stupid thing to be upset about. But Molly had always sworn she wouldn’t bring the police in. “It wasn’t because she saw something she wasn’t supposed to? Like with Kate?”

  “No, she just got cold feet,” Lucy corrected, far more gently than Eliza deserved. “Thought talking to the cops might actually be smart instead of you two handling it yourselves.”

  “It’s not like they could do anything. Hicks . . . He tried, but . . .” It was a fact. The Cooks, the Church, they both held too much sway in these parts. “We didn’t even know who it was. We didn’t even know . . . anything.”

  “You knew where the victims were,” Lucy reminded her.

  “That was Zoey, actually,” Eliza admitted, now that it was out in the open. “She didn’t realize I was following her . . . Or maybe she knew. But she’d been searching the woods. She kept going back to that area. I don’t think she actually found . . .”

  “No,” Lucy confirmed. “You’re right, she was narrowing in on it, but we didn’t find the rest of the bodies until after Noah.”

  Eliza pressed her lips together. “I wanted them found.”

  “When did you know?” Lucy asked. “That there would be others.”

  When? Eliza wasn’t even sure she could pinpoint a moment in time. The doubts, they had crept in like winter, the days getting colder by only a degree or two.

  “It started with Alessandra,” Eliza said, because that she knew for sure. “Because she would have never run off with the boy the way the note said she did.”

  Allie hadn’t been interested in boys like that, though no one in the Church had obviously known. If she’d actually run away, she wouldn’t have left that note, not when she knew Eliza and Molly would hear about it.

  “Molly and I started wondering,” Eliza continued. “Everyone kind of did, you know? There were a handful of kids who’d just disappeared. Even Peggy could tell you that.”

  “But why did you suspect they were being killed?”

  Eliza met her eyes. “If Allie had been alive, she would have written to us.”

  “And she was sick, just like the others had been,” Lucy said. “So you connected the dots?”

  “I wasn’t certain.” Eliza shrugged. “I watched how my aunt and uncle reacted to news about the cases in other states, how those deaths were enough to influence the lawmakers.”

  “That made you guess it was Josiah?”

  “He had the most to lose,” Eliza said, and she still believed that. “The fight over the shield laws had come to define him, define his status, and his power. I just thought . . .”

  “That he would stop at little to make sure he didn’t lose all that,” Lucy finished for her.

  Eliza had had a lot of time to think in the silence that followed her original confession. She’d thought about battles that were worth dying over. Originally, that’s what she’d believed this had been about. Someone in the Church hadn’t wanted to lose, and so the children were casualties in an unforgiving war that viewed them as expendable. It wasn’t the people that mattered, but the beliefs. How many times had Eliza herself thought that?

  But now that she could see the bigger picture, Eliza had a sneaking suspicion that it all might actually just be bullshit. This wasn’t some holy war, and it wasn’t even a fight over a way of life. This was one sociopath who had seized an opportunity to justify her own violent tendencies.

  The motive mattered in that it never really had. Rachel had constructed one for herself, and they’d scrambled to figure out what it was. Yet in the end, it was meaningless.

  A serial killer had claimed her victims. It was as simple as that.

  “Why Noah?” Lucy asked, breaking into her thoughts. Eliza braced herself for what she knew was coming. “Why not you?”

  “I tried,” Eliza said, the wobble there so clear in the quiet church. “I left my results out in my room.” Eliza’s shoulders hunched. “I thought it was Josiah for a long time. I left my results out.”

  “And yet . . .”

  “Nothing.” Eliza lifted one shoulder, confused still why Rachel hadn’t snapped and killed her. Maybe it was her own self-preservation or pride. Maybe there was a scrap of humanity that had beat in the heart of the monster. One that hesitated to harm the girl she’d raised as her own daughter.

  Eliza didn’t know and never would.

  What she said again was “I thought it was Josiah.”

  “Then what happened, Eliza?”

  At the careful use of her name, Eliza smiled sadly. We all need a reminder we’re human.

  “I thought . . . I thought maybe Josiah didn’t want to kill me,” Eliza admitted.

  “So how did he find out about Noah?”

  “I left his results in the church,” Eliza whispered, guilty for even doing that. “I thought I could force his hand. Molly was . . .” Eliza’s breath caught. “Molly was missing. I co
uldn’t just not . . .”

  Lucy didn’t say anything, and her silence crashed into all of Eliza’s soft places, shredding them.

  “I thought . . . I thought, ‘Oh, I’ll track him,’” Eliza admitted, and she realized how careless that had been. “But still nothing happened.”

  “Rachel was spooked.”

  “Yeah, I think she realized Zoey was helping me by then.” Eliza lifted one shoulder. “I think she realized we knew about Kate.”

  Kate, poor Kate. Eliza could hardly remember her. She’d been so young when Kate had worked for the Cooks. A pretty girl, a kind laugh. That was all that had stuck.

  But she must have been at the wrong place at the wrong time. Witnessed Rachel in action, stumbled on evidence, something. Rachel had been only a budding killer at the time. What kind of a panicked tailspin must that have thrown her into?

  “Kate,” Lucy repeated softly. “She’s why I’m here?”

  Eliza glanced over, but there was only quiet curiosity in Lucy’s expression, not the brutal condemnation Eliza had expected.

  “I don’t really remember how I found out about Kate,” Eliza admitted.

  “Zoey Grant,” Lucy supplied.

  “Well, yeah,” Eliza said. “But she was subtle about it at first, you know?” Looking back on it, it had been gradual. Eliza hung around Hicks and the station enough that it hadn’t seemed weird when Zoey had mentioned an old case. Then mentioned it again. Then left the file out for Eliza to find, she now realized.

  Eliza had remembered Kate in a vague sort of way. But once Eliza had noticed the pictures, once she’d seen the cuts, she’d known her death was connected to whatever was happening in Knox Hollow.

  That verse was painted over the inside door of their church. Eliza had been reading it every day for years. She recognized the letters and numbers instantly.

  “You’re saying Zoey Grant slipped you information?”

  Nodding, Eliza picked at the hem of her hospital gown. “I don’t think I realized it at the time. We’d just run into each other. And then once at the library . . . I don’t know, she gave me a number to call her at if I ever needed anything.”

  “It was different than the station’s number?”

  “Yeah, different than her cell even,” Eliza said. “I mean, I knew then. I knew she thought she was manipulating me. I knew she was trying to figure it out. But I was, too. So—”

  “You used each other,” Lucy concluded. “Did Hicks know any of this?”

  “No.” Eliza’s hand had darted out, as if to latch on to Lucy’s arm. She stopped herself, pulled back, tangled her hands in her own lap. This time, she was more controlled. “No. He didn’t even know we ran into each other ever.”

  “What did he know?”

  “That I was sick,” Eliza said carefully. She had no desire to get Hicks in any more trouble than he probably was already in. “He knew I was sick. He tried to kill the legislation this time around because if it got out of committee, whoever was killing kids would have more incentive to make sure my cancer wasn’t found. He even went to talk to Senator Hodge about it. To make sure no one had switched their vote.”

  “He was trying to protect you.”

  Warmth flooded in. “Always.”

  “He didn’t know about Noah.” It wasn’t a question. “That he was sick, that you were using him as bait.”

  “No.”

  Lucy nodded, and some of the tension bled out of Eliza’s body. The last thing in the world she wanted was for Hicks to be caught up in this.

  “So when Rachel didn’t take the bait with Noah’s test results . . .” Lucy pressed her voice lighter than it should be. Eliza supposed it was smart that Lucy was being gentle. Eliza might have collapsed under the grief at the first hint of accusation.

  The cross blurred beneath Eliza’s tired gaze anyway. “I didn’t make the choice lightly.”

  “But you knew what you were doing.”

  Eliza nodded. “He was dying.”

  “You needed a victim,” Lucy said. Not like she understood, not really, but like she was following along. “Because you were worried that the killer had gone dormant?”

  “If we didn’t have another victim . . .” Eliza’s fingers tangled in her lap. It had made so much sense at the time. Now, in the aftermath, she wasn’t so sure. “And then . . . I wouldn’t be around to stop it.”

  “And Rachel would continue killing with no one the wiser,” Lucy finished for her.

  “Noah wanted to stop it, too,” Eliza tried. She knew it was weak, but she needed . . . not forgiveness, never that. She needed . . . something.

  “He was twelve,” Lucy corrected, almost gently. “That was a decision he should never have been in the position to make.”

  Eliza licked her lips, nodded. She knew this. “It was quick.”

  Lucy sucked in a breath, the first sign of a startled reaction. “Eliza . . .”

  She shook her head, tears streaming down her face. She hadn’t realized she’d started crying. “He had weeks left, maybe.”

  There was a second when she thought Lucy was going to slap her. And then in the next she was sure Lucy was at least going to argue the point. To say, Yes, but he should have died with his family. His mother should have been able to hold him, to say goodbye. He should have had those last weeks. But nothing came.

  It didn’t matter, anyway. Eliza had made the decision, traded her soul for the chance, the small chance, that it would matter in the end.

  Noah had agreed to the plan; she wasn’t lying about that. There would be no reason to, anyway. She’d made her peace with the fact that she wouldn’t be redeemed.

  When his results had come back, he’d cried in her arms, asking for his mother. Eliza hadn’t known what to do, so she’d simply rocked him back and forth, whispering words of comfort that were lies. Because everything wasn’t all right. And he wouldn’t be okay. It was all she’d been able to say, though.

  When his sobs had faded to quiet hiccups, he’d looked up with red-rimmed eyes. We can’t let anything happen to Rosie, he’d said. And at the time she hadn’t realized just how much he’d known. But Noah had been whip smart, too smart for his age. And he’d figured out at least the very basics of what was going on.

  Eliza knew she probably could have convinced him to go to his parents, to not worry about the other kids who seemed to disappear whenever they got sick enough. But here, here was a victim. Here was a boy who could end the killings. If only Rachel had taken the bait.

  “They found the others?” Eliza asked again now. She knew they had. But just like with the reassurance that Molly was actually alive, Eliza wanted to hear it confirmed as many times as someone would indulge her.

  “Yes,” Lucy said, and even Eliza knew that was a kindness. If Eliza hadn’t been dying, she doubted Lucy would have given it. But people were softer in these moments than they would be otherwise. Even when they were speaking to monsters. “So why not just tell us all this?”

  “Molly.”

  She heard Lucy shift beside her. “You knew she was being held.”

  “I thought maybe she was,” Eliza said. “Maybe she was still alive.”

  “If you sent the FBI investigating . . .”

  “If I sent you,” Eliza interrupted. “You think Rachel didn’t follow the Kate Martinez case? You think she didn’t know who you were?”

  “She wouldn’t risk killing Molly if I was in town.”

  “I took a chance,” Eliza said. It wasn’t worth much. But maybe . . . maybe she could march into death knowing that Molly had been saved in a very small way because of her. “I wanted Kate’s murder solved, sure. But I wanted whoever had killed her to know that I knew they were connected. I wanted that person to be scared.”

  “Yet you gave me a weapon, a body, and a confession,” Lucy pushed. “I could have simply closed the case.”

  “But I didn’t give you a motive.” The silence. That had been key to the plan.

  Lucy huffed out one
of those breaths again, like she wanted to argue but couldn’t. It had worked. They both knew it had.

  “What now?” Lucy asked as if she weren’t the FBI agent and Eliza not the seventeen-year-old kid.

  But Eliza got it; she understood. Her eyes found the cross once more.

  “I would have just been one more casualty in their war, buried and forgotten,” Eliza said. “Now, they can’t look away. They can’t pretend.”

  “Rachel spent most of her life making sure your side didn’t have any deaths to avenge,” Lucy agreed softly.

  “But now they do.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  LUCY THORNE

  A hush had fallen in the chapel, the rushed footsteps outside in the hospital’s hallway muted by thick, heavy doors.

  Eliza’s breath whistled on the way in, rattled on the way out. Colorless. That’s how Lucy had first thought of her sitting in that interrogation room only a handful of days ago. Why hadn’t she seen what was now so obvious? Eliza was a ghost, clinging to life with a stubbornness Lucy had thought was reserved for herself.

  There was nothing more to say. Eliza had made choices, ones that might have made sense to the life she’d lived, to the experiences she’d had that had informed each one. They might have been ones Lucy wouldn’t have made, but she also wasn’t a seventeen-year-old girl brainwashed since birth. Lucy didn’t have an uncle who’d failed time and again through the normal routes of the police and the courts. Lucy hadn’t been the one who’d thought a close family member was systematically killing off kids in the Church.

  What did it matter now, anyhow?

  Everything became very small in these moments. These last-breath moments.

  “Do you think it will make a difference?” Eliza asked from beside her. It had been an hour, maybe two, since either of them had said anything. Only an old woman had come and gone since then, and now they were alone again.

  “Rachel’s dead.” It was the easy answer, and so that’s the one Lucy gave. She didn’t want to lie. Not right now.