by Alex Kava
That’s what her walks were for, to relieve stress and tension. No wonder the knot in the middle of her shoulder blades only continued to tighten and grow. She tried to remember when her last walk had been. Three days ago? Two? It seemed like weeks. And now she remembered, that morning’s walk had been hurried, rushed so she could meet Jared at the Cracker Barrel for breakfast. The walk hadn’t relieved her tension at all, only adding to it. Then she remembered the poor storm-battered tree. The one with the strange quote attached to it. She had memorized it: “Hope is the thing with feathers.” She hadn’t been able to figure it out and it bugged her. Even now thinking about it brought back the tension, the unrest she had felt.
She opened her eyes and looked over at Andrew. He was still staring at the TV as if hypnotized.
“Hey,” she called out to him, but stopped. She wasn’t sure what to call him. He didn’t flinch. “Hey, Andrew Kane,” she tried again.
This time he glanced at her, shifted in the recliner then went back to the TV.
“You knew that other poem,” she said. “That one Jared asked you about. Do you know any of Emily Dickerson?”
“Dickinson,” he mumbled without looking at her.
“What?”
“Her name is Emily Dickinson.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Sure, whatever.”
He still didn’t look at her. Melanie propped herself up on one elbow and said, “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
This time he turned, interested or maybe just curious. Melanie didn’t care. She had his attention.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Hey, if you don’t know, just say so.”
“Hope is the little bird inside us that won’t be silenced,” he said, meeting her eyes before he continued. “It’s what sustains us. It’s the thing that keeps us from giving up, even when everything is looking pretty fucking hopeless. It takes something massive to stop that relentless song. Something like watching a plane fly into your tower or knowing an innocent woman was killed because of something stupid. Hope is the thing that sells lottery tickets and enters the Olympics and gets us through illnesses or deaths. That’s what it means.”
Then he looked back at the TV, as if he hadn’t spoken at all.
She didn’t have time to think about what he had said because suddenly a news reporter was talking about them on TV.
“Randy Fulton’s body was found by his wife in the kitchen of their farmhouse just south of Nebraska City. Helen Trebak, a clerk at the Auburn Gas N’ Shop, was also found murdered this afternoon. Law enforcement officials are certain both murders are the work of the bank robbers who attempted to rob the Nebraska Bank of Commerce yesterday and are on the run. This brings the number of their victims to six. The names of the four victims of the bank robbery were released earlier today. They are—”
Melanie fumbled with the remote. She had heard enough. They were lying now. She knew Jared hadn’t killed that farmer. She was with him the whole time. It was impossible. She looked back at the TV and suddenly recognized the picture of one of the victims they were showing. She turned up the volume as she tried to place where she knew the woman from. Or did she simply look familiar because she reminded her of someone? Yes, that was probably it.
“Rita Williams, age thirty-nine, a waitress for seven years at the Cracker Barrel restaurant.”
Then she knew—that was where she remembered her from. A waitress. Their waitress, the one who Jared had harassed.
Melanie looked over at her son to see if he, too, recognized the woman. Charlie had appeared detached from this entire nightmare, but now he sat with his back up against the bed’s headboard, his knees pulled up tight against his chest. He was rocking back and forth as if he was going to be sick to his stomach. And before she could ask, he yelled, “Shut it off. Shut it the fuck off.”
CHAPTER 56
10:15 p.m.
Max Kramer sat in his den, the only room in the fucking house that his wife had allowed him to decorate as he wished. He stared out at the night as he sipped the expensive wine from Lucille’s collection. She hated it when he dared to open a bottle from the reserve she kept for her stuffy, boring dinner parties. Tonight’s selection was an old-style Beaujolais imported by Alain Jugenet, one of a handful of small estates that supposedly still did it the old-style way and were said to even hold the wine for up to ten months before bottling it.
He knew little about wines—almost nothing compared to his wife—however, he remembered reading something about Beaujolais being called “the only white wine that happens to be red.” He liked that. It had something to do with the “vivid color and its expressive, thirst-quenching qualities” or some such crap that Max didn’t really care about. No, what he liked about it was that the wine was different from what it appeared to be, kind of like him. He held up the glass, swirling the wine around the edges, and he smiled, wondering how much this bottle would set his wife back.
His cell phone started ringing. He glanced at the grandfather clock in the corner. It was too late to be anyone he wanted to talk to. He didn’t recognize the caller ID number. He knew he should just shut off the phone and let the voice-messaging service pick it up. He took another sip before setting the glass down and deciding to answer the stupid phone.
“This is Max Kramer.”
“Are you alone?”
He recognized the voice but still insisted on making him tell him. “Who is this?”
“Who do you fucking think this is? Can you talk? Is there anyone else there?”
“I’m alone. Go ahead,” he said while thinking, yes, go ahead and tell me why the fuck I should even listen to what you have to say?
“We’re gonna need some new IDs. Make them driver’s licenses.” Jared Barnett was taking charge. “And cash. Don’t get funny with the cash. Keep it small bills. We’ll probably need about twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Hold on. Where the hell do you think I’m going to get three new IDs?” And twenty-five thousand dollars? Max wanted to slam the phone against the wall. How the hell did this get so turned around? He wanted to tell Jared Barnett that he owed him. That he still owed him.
“You’re a resourceful guy, Max. You figure it out.”
“I think you should turn yourself in.”
“What are you, fucking crazy?”
“No, now listen. I can get you off.” Max stood up, staring past his reflection in the window out at the full orange moon. He wondered what a liar’s moon looked like as he said, “I did it before, I can do it again.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not waiting in prison for five more fucking years while you do it. Besides, I thought you were pissed. You sounded pissed. How can I trust a fucking lawyer who’s pissed?”
“I was surprised. That’s all.” Max kept his cool. This bastard could ruin everything. He needed to convince him he was on his side. “You can’t blame me for being surprised. I never expected things to get so screwed up, to go so badly. That’s all. What the hell happened?”
There was silence, and for a few seconds Max thought he had lost him.
“One false move,” he mumbled.
“What’s that?”
“Isn’t that what they say? That all it takes is one fucking wrong move to change everything? It doesn’t matter. Not now. How soon can you get the IDs and money?”
“How am I supposed to get them to you?”
“Don’t worry about that. Just get it. I’ll call back tomorrow.”
“If you tell me—” But he heard the click.
Max stayed at the window, wondering how the hell he’d take care of this. How the hell he’d fix this. One little favor—that’s all he had asked from Barnett to pay off his attorney fee. Who could have predicted it’d get this fucked up.
CHAPTER 57
10:32 p.m.
Andrew leaned against the wall of the shower and let the warm water massage his wounded head.
The throbbing wouldn’t stop. Nor would the image of that Gas N’ Shop clerk, her small body scurrying back and forth from one task to the other. Full of life, and now she was dead because he had tried something stupid. Thanks to Jared, Andrew felt like an accessory to the farmer’s murder. But he felt completely responsible for that poor clerk.
There had to be something he could do to get out of this. It was clear Jared wasn’t going to ever let him go. Eventually, he’d have to kill him. At first, that realization paralyzed as much as it panicked Andrew. But at the moment, he was too exhausted to be either. Especially after examining the bathroom’s contents and being disappointed to find only the miniature shampoo, conditioner, mouthwash and soap. The shower had a Plexiglas door instead of a rod and curtain, not that he had had much success with the rod he had found at the cabin. He had even checked out the insides of the toilet tank, only to find that almost all of the mechanical guts were made of plastic. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He knew hotel rooms didn’t provide razors or nail files. He had spent enough time in the best of them over the course of the last two years, traveling to promote one of his books or do research for the next.
Research. All the research, all the interviews about murder and killers that he had done and yet, what good was it to him now? He had gathered all that knowledge, but without the experience of dealing with the real thing, he wasn’t sure what he could do. Although, he wondered if anything could have prepared him for this.
He wished he could rip off the harness from his shoulder and arm. He wished he had full use of it. Then he would, at least, be on an equal footing with Jared. But, as it was, he couldn’t even wash up under his damn armpit without experiencing a shooting pain. In the beginning, when he hadn’t even dared to lift his arm enough to fit a sponge under it because of the pain, he worried about body odor. A Nebraska summer, with its heat and humidity was not a good time to break a collarbone. Now he scrubbed all over, ignoring the pain and practically rubbing his skin raw, feeling a bit like Lady Macbeth.
His father would tell him it served him right. Of this, Andrew was certain. He heard his voice in the back corners of his throbbing head: “All your fucking book learnin’ can’t get you out of this one, can it?” It reminded him of the reprimands he had endured as a kid when his father found him reading instead of doing some chore like shoveling the crap from the chicken coop, a task that hadn’t even been on Andrew’s to-do list until he was discovered with a book. It was almost as if his father had hoped to drain him, so that he wouldn’t have the energy to read. At the end of the day, Andrew’s young body would be physically exhausted and aching, but there was nothing his father could do to turn off his curiosity, his desire to read and learn and dream beyond the borders of his family’s farm. And that made his father even more angry. He seemed to be forever disappointing the man. John Kane wanted a son to take over the farm when he was gone and instead he got one who couldn’t wait to leave.
That’s when he remembered Charlie with the comic books, quiet and innocent. And then he thought about Charlie’s explosive reaction when he saw that waitress’s face on TV. Andrew had believed that Melanie was the weakest link, but now he realized he might be wrong. His mind started reeling, accessing what he knew about the psychological effects of murder. If Andrew was feeling this responsible and guilty about the gas station clerk when he hadn’t even pulled the trigger, what must Charlie be feeling? And suddenly Andrew wondered what it might take to get Charlie on his side.
CHAPTER 58
11:17 p.m.
Melanie couldn’t sleep. Charlie, in spite of his outburst, was curled up on the bed and snoring. So much for his guilty conscience, and yet, she was relieved. She didn’t like seeing him like that. She didn’t like thinking he had anything to feel guilty about.
Andrew Kane had given in and stretched out on the other side of Charlie, but Jared had insisted on tying together the author’s feet and wrists, cutting in half and using the cord from the hotel’s phone. Of course, he didn’t care about the phone. He still had Andrew’s cell phone. She wondered if that was why he’d left the room. Did he need to call his outside contact? And who the hell was it? He was being secretive, when they couldn’t afford to have any more secrets. It felt like a betrayal.
She watched her brother in the dim light from the TV. She had convinced him to let her keep it on with the sound off when he was turning out all the lights and pulling the curtains tighter. He sat with his elbow on the small table, his fist bracing up his head. That’s how he slept. Every once in a while his head rolled off his clenched hand but without waking himself.
She wished she could sleep so easily. When they were kids, Jared had taught her what to do when she couldn’t sleep. How to go away in her mind to a place with all the things she loved. He’d made her list them—cotton candy, the Bee Gees, Ferris wheels and corn dogs. That was the summer he had taken her to the county fair, so all her favorite things were associated with that experience.
His tactic helped her fall asleep many nights. It became her weapon against the obstacles that invaded her sleep, the biggest one, of course, being fear. The fear that her father would come up and wake them, ripping off the covers and pouring ice-cold water on them or yanking them out of bed by grabbing onto their ankles and pulling until there was nothing left to hang on to. Melanie could still feel it, her head bouncing off the mattress, hitting the bed rail and cracking against the floorboards. But that was the easy part. Over the years she had tried to erase from her memory the sting of the whip or the smell of scorched skin, her own skin burning under the flaming red ash of his cigarette.
Melanie shook her head. She didn’t need to be remembering all that now. What she needed to remember was that Jared had cleaned up the mess that night. She owed him. That was a debt she’d never be able to repay and he knew it. Even if she had supplied him with an alibi for Rebecca Moore, they still wouldn’t be even. They’d never be even. And now here they were in yet another mess. How could Jared have let this happen? Only this time it was worse. This time he had involved her boy, her baby, her poor Charlie. She wondered if she would ever be able to forgive her brother for that.
She got out of bed to go to the bathroom and noticed that Jared had left the cell phone on the dresser. She glanced back at him. His head was down, his breathing heavy with sleep. She snatched the phone and took it with her into the bathroom, carefully closing and locking the door. She flipped it open and started looking over the buttons. Somewhere there had to be one that would tell her what she wanted to know.
She hit Menu and there on the list was Call History. This was easier than she’d thought. She clicked on Call History, bringing up yet another list. She chose Outgoing Calls to see if Jared had, indeed, gone off to call his secret contact. And there it was: the date, the time—only an hour ago—plus, the phone number and the person’s name. She clicked back to find the earlier call—the one from this morning in the car—just to check, to make certain. There it was again. The same number, the same name.
Why was Jared keeping in touch with his attorney? Why in the world did her brother trust Max Kramer more than he trusted her?
PART 5
Point of No Return
Friday, September 10
CHAPTER 59
7:45 a.m.
Comfort Inn—Hastings, Nebraska
Melanie awoke to the sound of slamming doors. It took her a while to realize where she was. Sunlight filtered in through the crack between the curtains. Somewhere, not far away, she could smell freshly brewed coffee. The last thing she remembered was being stretched out on top of the bedcovers, watching a late-night horror movie—a giant tarantula invading a desert town—and she remembered thinking about pink cotton candy. Someone had pulled the covers up over her, and she curled into them, hugging a pillow as if for security. Which reminded her of Charlie. She raised herself onto her elbow to see that Charlie was gone. Andrew Kane still lay on the bed tied up, only now he had pushed himself into a sitting po
sition, leaning against the headboard.
“Where’s Jared and Charlie?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Jared’s in the bathroom. I’m not sure where he sent Charlie.”
“He sent Charlie somewhere?” Melanie sat up, scanning the room in a panic until she saw Charlie’s backpack.
“You love him a lot, don’t you?”
She met Kane’s eyes, looking for sarcasm and surprised to find none.
“You wouldn’t get it,” she said. “It’s been just the two of us for a very long time. We watch out for each other.”
“And Jared?”
“What about Jared?” she asked, glancing at the bathroom door without meaning to.
“Nothing.” He shrugged his one shoulder as if it didn’t matter. “It just sounds like he’s gotten you and Charlie into a real big mess.”
“Sometimes things don’t go exactly the way you think they will.” Her mind flew back to another time, another mess. Why was it so much on her mind? She thought she’d removed it from her memory, gotten past it. And yet, Jared’s reappearance less than two weeks ago seemed to bring it all back.
“What is Charlie? Eighteen? Nineteen?”
“He’s seventeen,” she blurted out as if needing to defend her baby before she could even figure out why Andrew Kane wanted to know.
“Geez! He’s still a kid.”
Her thoughts exactly. Charlie was too young to be involved in such a mess. What the hell was Jared even thinking? And the guns. She’d never forgive Jared for bringing along guns.
“I could help you and Charlie,” she heard Andrew Kane say, but her mind was focused on the image of all that blood on their coveralls when they came running out of the bank. It had reminded her so much of that night with her father, the bloody drag marks, all the blood seeping in between the cracks of the linoleum, the splatters on the white wall. She never knew how Jared cleaned it all up. But he did. He took care of it.
