Tear Me Apart

by J. T. Ellison

  “I should put some Scotch in, have a hot toddy. There’s a way to go.”

  Liesel laughs absently. “Are you known for drinking?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then we better not. We don’t want to draw any attention away from what the scene is telling the police. We don’t want them asking questions.”

  “How did you learn all of this?”

  “I just have a logical mind. Are you ready?”

  The baby squawks. She’s been so quiet for the past few hours. As if she doesn’t want to disturb her mother’s final moments.

  “If the baby starts to cry...”

  Liesel gets up and puts the pacifier back into the baby’s mouth.

  “She’s probably hungry. We should feed her first. So she doesn’t wake up.”

  Liesel puts her hand on Vivian’s. It’s cool, cold, really. Vivian shivers.

  “I’ve fed her, and changed her. She’s going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine. I promise. I’m here for you. I’m here for her. I will make sure she is safe in Zack’s arms before I go home.”

  “Okay.”

  But Vivian’s hand will not raise the cup. The baby squeaks again, higher pitched this time. Vivian feels her breasts begin to leak in reply.

  “I should feed her again.”

  “That will taste ten times worse if it gets cold. I’ll get her a bottle as soon as you’re gone.”

  Liesel’s eyes are strangely bright. Vivian puts the sheen down to unshed tears.

  She starts to raise the cup, and Liesel smiles encouragingly.

  “That’s it. It will all be over soon.”

  The baby lets out a low howl. She sounds so confused, as if she knows what’s happening, and is begging Vivian to stop, to be with her, even if it’s only for a few weeks. Fear starts, and with it, regret.

  Oh, God. I can’t do this. I can’t.

  Vivian puts the cup down. “I have to—”

  The knife catches her in the neck. Her head jerks to the side. She feels the warm spill of blood begin. She tries to talk, but words won’t come. Liesel fills the empty space between them. Her eyes are still bright, and there’s something in them Vivian hasn’t seen since the first day they met, and Liesel threatened to kill her.

  “I knew you were going to freak out and bail on the plan. Would you just die already?”

  Vivian sees the flash of silver this time, but she can’t move, it comes too quickly. The knife plunges into her stomach. It hurts. Dear God, it hurts. It burns. The pain is incredible.

  Vivian collapses onto the kitchen floor. Panic fills her. What has Liesel done? This isn’t what they agreed on.

  “Help.” Her breath won’t come, something is wrong, so wrong. “Me,” Vivian manages to get the second word out, starts to move. Liesel places a foot on her chest, between the two wounds.

  Now Vivian can’t rise. She can’t do anything. She feels soaking wet and cold, so cold. The edges around her are blackening. The baby is crying lustily, and Vivian can’t do anything to help her because she’s dying. What a mistake she’s made.

  And the last thing she hears before the world goes black is the singsong voice of her best friend in the entire world, her only true friend, as she says, “Thanks for the baby. I’ll take good care of her.”

  92

  DENVER WOMEN’S

  CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

  CURRENT DAY

  “...So Vivian asked me to make sure it was clear someone attacked her. I didn’t like doing it, Zack. It broke my heart. I refused. She wanted to die by the blade—it was something she said to me a few times. It meant something to her, I’m not sure what. But there was no way I was going to stab her. I’d brought a bottle of painkillers, and I begged her, pleaded, that it would be so much easier to just drink something with them crushed up, and she’d go to sleep. She insisted the insurance company could rule that a suicide instead, that it had to be absolutely clear it was murder. She’d done all the research.” She shuddered. “I still couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. And she knew that. She pulled the knife across her own throat.”

  Lauren is crying now.

  “She started to bleed, and went down, but she wasn’t dying. She hadn’t cut deep enough, she was just drowning. There was nothing I could do. She kept pointing at her stomach, slapping it, so I jammed the knife in. It was over quickly after that.”

  She wipes her eyes, pulls herself together.

  “You have no idea how hard it was, Zack. I hated to do it. I hated every minute. She begged me to take Mindy, to make sure she was safe and cared for. She was afraid that without her at the helm, you’d give the baby up. You didn’t even know her, she was practically a stranger. She told me how distant you were those last few months. That you had been fighting. She was worried you might not want the baby after all of that. She begged me, begged me, to save the baby. To protect Mindy.”

  This last bit is enough to shake Zack from his horrified stupor. He’s been listening in disbelief to Lauren talk. Her words make an obscene kind of sense. There had been a major insurance payout. Vivian had increased the policies on their life insurance as soon as she’d gotten pregnant, that he knew. What he didn’t know was how much she’d increased them, nor that she’d gone back when she was seven months pregnant and doubled hers. When she died, he got a payout of almost half a million dollars.

  It was information he hadn’t shared with anyone. He’d put the money in a high yield interest-accruing bank account for Violet, should she ever be found. Statements came, but he never opened them. He assumed it was worth quite a bit now.

  It all makes a sick kind of sense. Why Vivian wouldn’t tell him about her severe depression. Why there were no records of her seeing a psychiatrist. Why no one knew she’d been suffering.

  She was trying to take care of him. Of them.

  “It was only in the end that she agreed to take the antidepressants. I told her she had to. She didn’t want to hurt Mindy, even before she was born, but being off the meds dragged her into the abyss.

  “You do see now, don’t you, Zack? All I’ve ever wanted to do is help you. First Vivian, then Mindy. Now you. I’m giving you the last piece of the puzzle because I am going to die in here. Either they’ll kill me, or I’ll grow old and gray, or someone will knife me in the shower, but however you cut it, I am a dead woman. And now it’s your turn to take care of our girl.”

  Zack sets the phone down on the counter. He sits back in the chair and crosses his arms. Processes. Watches Lauren get antsy. There’s something more happening, but he doesn’t know what it is.

  Finally, he picks up the phone again.

  “I don’t believe for a moment my wife asked you to keep my daughter from me.”

  “Well, she did. She wanted Mindy to have a happy life, a carefree life, and she knew you’d be all thumbs at fatherhood.”

  The words strike deep in his soul. Vivian said that to him once, when they were arguing, but it was in exasperation, not anger. “You’re going to be all thumbs at this, so why even bother to learn how to change a diaper? You’ll get shipped off somewhere and I’ll end up doing it all anyway.”

  “What do you want, Lauren? I listened to your story. What’s your quid pro quo?”

  “She left you a letter. It’s in a safety deposit box. The key is in my closet, taped to the top of the door frame. Everything is ready for you. Her letter, and the letters we shared between us. I want Mindy to know that I only did this for her. That I would never have killed my best friend unless she begged me to do it, and even then, I had many reservations. But I wanted Mindy to be safe. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Yes, maybe I shouldn’t have taken her, should have known Vivian wasn’t entirely in her right mind. But I fell in love with that child, Zack. Surely you understand that. And I’ve given her a good life. A happy life. A solid family. Encouraged all her talents
. Sacrificed everything for her. She adores Jasper, and he adores her. Please don’t take that away from them.”

  “She could have had that with me,” he snaps, standing. “Does Jasper know?”

  “No. I’ve never told him. And that’s your part of the bargain. You need to get him to go with you to open the safety deposit box. You have to tell him about Vivian, you have to explain for me. He won’t come see me.”

  She is pouting. She is actually pouting.

  “Tell him yourself.”

  He ignores the cries he hears through the phone, the fact that Lauren has gone white, that she’s banging on the glass. He ignores it all, slams down the receiver, and signals for the guard waiting outside to let him out of this hellhole.

  93

  THE WRIGHTS’ HOUSE

  Zack rings the Wrights’ bell. After a few moments’ wait, Jasper opens the door, lets Kat out, and shoves it closed behind him with a bang.

  Zack knocks. “Jasper, let me in. I saw Lauren. I need to talk to you.”

  Crickets.

  It takes ten minutes of alternately banging and shouting, but Jasper finally reopens the door.

  “What do you want? Haven’t you ruined enough?”

  “I need to tell you something.”

  Jasper listens, incredulous at the story Zack is telling him, and finally lets Zack into the house.

  It is clear Jasper is still furious, and for good reason. In his mind, Lauren wouldn’t be in jail if Zack hadn’t pressed them so hard. But he’s taken care of Kat since Zack took off down the mountain to see Lauren, and Zack knows he’s going to cool off eventually.

  Honestly, Zack doesn’t care if Jasper likes him. All he’s worried about is Mindy’s safety and security. He has already filed for full custody. His lawyer thinks he might get it, considering. He hasn’t gone so far as to ban Jasper from seeing her, if only because he knows she won’t want that, but it’s been tempting. He and Jasper are never going to see eye-to-eye on the situation.

  But now that Zack knows why Lauren killed Vivian, he is more relaxed. Still livid, still torn to shreds at her stupidity and callousness, but something is settled in his mind. He knows what happened to his wife now, and the idea that she was so sick, and tried to save them financially, that she was trying to be noble and make her suicide as painless as possible, well, it doesn’t make him feel better, but it gives him some closure.

  The key is where Lauren promised it would be.

  “What the hell?” Jasper says, seeing it.

  “Believe me now?”

  He nods, still clearly in shock. “She really did it?”

  “It looks like she did. I need to get the rest of the letters to verify her story. Do you know where this bank is?”

  He flashes the small white-and-green envelope that contains the key.

  “Yeah. First Bank on Vail Road. I’ll take you.”

  The drive is short. Kat sticks her head out the window joyfully, the innocent who saved a child. Zack tries desperately not to think, not to cloud his mind with suppositions. Read the letter. Then you’ll know.

  Ten minutes later, Jasper parks in the bank’s lot. They leave the windows cracked despite Kat’s reproachful whine.

  “Relax, sweetie. I’ll be right back.”

  Inside the bank, he and Jasper approach the first open teller. Zack slides the little white envelope that holds the key to box 615 in it. Strange, he thinks, that’s the area code for Nashville. Another dig? Or a way to remember easily?

  “I need to get into my safety deposit box.”

  “I’ll need some ID, sir.”

  He hands over his driver’s license. A few moments later, the teller hands back his ID and steps from the counter to the cage. He and Jasper follow mutely.

  Inside, the teller says, “Mr. Armstrong, I’ll need you to sign the signature card.”

  He notices the deposit box is in his name. Clever Lauren. So very clever.

  “How long has this box been open?”

  She pulls it from the small index file. “Looks like...2005.”

  “That’s when we bought the house,” Jasper says.

  The teller uses her key, inserts Zack’s into the second slot, then turns them both and opens the small door. She steps away, pulls the door, saying, “Just let me know when you’re done.”

  When they are alone, Zack lifts the lid.

  The box is empty except for three things. A sheaf of papers, folded into thirds, a passport, and underneath them both, a sealed envelope, addressed to Zack, in his dead wife’s familiar script.

  Zack opens the passport first, sees Jasper’s photo.

  “Wait, is that my passport?”

  Zack hands it to him. He opens it incredulously. Flips through a few pages. A tiny piece of paper flutters to the ground. He picks it up, reads it, then shuts his eyes and swallows, hard, like he’s trying not to be sick.

  “What?” Zack asks.

  Jasper hands over the piece of paper. It is handwritten in a script Zack isn’t familiar with.

  It says: I know your secret.

  94

  Jasper is white, and Zack almost feels sorry for him. The passport is obviously a shock and the meaning of the message clear to him.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  “Lauren specifically asked you to make sure I was here when you opened the box?”

  “She did. I assume she wants me to know everything, too?”

  Jasper glances up at the corner of the room, where the camera hangs, a single eye watching them.

  “Can we go somewhere else? Please?”

  “Of course.” Zack is dying to read the letter from Vivian, but also afraid to open it, afraid of what he might find, what truths might be revealed. What if Lauren is lying again? What if, what if, what if?

  Zack sees Jasper’s hands are shaking, offers to drive. Jasper gets into the car without a word. Zack climbs behind the wheel. Kat is happy to see them; she hates being left alone in the back of the car. Both men get licks on the ear.

  “Where to?”

  “Let’s... I don’t care. Just drive.”

  Zack only knows a few places in Vail—the restaurant, the hospital, the Wrights’ house on the hill. But he remembers there was a scenic overlook on the way down the mountain. He heads there. The day is fine, the snow holding off, the sun shining, the skies blue again. He pulls into the overlook, and they climb out. Kat is thrilled for the excursion, and Zack sets her lead to the longest setting.

  They lean against the stone wall. Finally, Zack takes off his sunglasses.

  “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

  * * *

  “There were five of us. All lawyers. All experienced divers. We were off the coast of Baja, on a day trip. There’s a reef out there.”

  He goes silent until Zack prompts him. “And?”

  “We went out with five and came back in with four.”

  “That’s not good.”

  Jasper half laughs. “No. Not good at all. We were all hungover. Had no business going on the dive. I was buddied up with a guy I’d just met that week. We were working on a case, had partnered with a firm out in San Diego. He was a decent enough lawyer, but a blustery asshole of a man, all hat, and no cattle, as they say. A talker, a major talker. He’d been talking my ear off all week. Mostly about how his divorce was final, and that was a good thing, because his stupid ex-wife had managed to get herself knocked up, and he hated kids, wasn’t ready to settle down, so he’d bailed on the bitch, quote unquote.”

  “I take it his name was Kyle Noonan?”

  “Yeah.” Jasper rubs a hand over his face. “You know how guys like that are. They don’t like to be told what to do. We were setting everything up on the boat, and we were all goofing around, getting ready for our last dive of the
day, and I must have misread his tank. I remember thinking it might have been a little low, but nothing dangerous. Either way, I should have warned him he needed to stay close to the boat in case he needed to rise up quickly, but I got caught up in another conversation, and before I could tell him, he went down, and the tank malfunctioned. He couldn’t get back to the surface in time.

  “It was my fault. I was his partner on the dive. We shouldn’t have been geared up at all, we had all been drinking pretty heavily the night before, but that’s no excuse. He was my partner. I screwed up, and a man died.”

  “Sounds like all of you were to blame. Did anyone know? Any of the others?”

  Jasper shakes his head. “Everyone thought it was an accident, we all agreed I’d warned him of the low air. It was an accident, and shit happens, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Hey, don’t judge me, asshole.”

  “I’m not. I’ve screwed up, and it cost lives, too. Get off your high horse, I’m not saying anything.”

  “Sorry.”

  They are quiet for the moment, watching two hawks soar the thermals. “I guess that’s not the end of the story?”

  “No. I came back to Denver and looked up the ex-wife. I was going to say something, I guess to apologize in some way. Assuage my guilt. Make it right for her, offer some cash to cover things while she got set with the kid. Noonan made it clear he’d gotten out of the marriage scot-free, and she was left with nothing. Marital deception, some arcane ruling he managed to talk a judge into. And here she is, with this perfect little baby, and she seemed so lost and overwhelmed, and I couldn’t help myself. I stepped right into the void and never looked back.”

  “Did you love her?”

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “Did you tell her? The note, the passport—she figured something out.”

  “Early on in our marriage, I got drunk one night, and we had a big fight. I hinted I knew that Lauren’s ex was a total douche from personal experience. My passport went missing right after that. She figured it out. She is so smart.”