“It’s the right thing,” Hannah said. “We should have done it a long time ago.”
“No,” Doug said, and looked at me. “Turn that thing off, and I’ll tell you everything.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Imagine a Saturday in late November. The air is brisk and crisp. It smells of juniper and burning leaves. Hannah Eddington goes into her dead son’s room. Smells the stuffy air and wonders if there still might be some trace of him that she can savor, a breath of aftershave perhaps. Or even a sweaty gym sock. Thanksgiving has passed, one empty holiday over, hundreds left to sleepwalk through. All the Christmases, the Easters, the St. Patrick’s Days, all the July Fourth fireworks, all the Mother’s Days. Can she be a mother without a child? And if not, what does that make her?
This day is just one more day to get through. Time to let go of the past.
She begins by sorting through his clothes. Throw this away or give it to charity? Ah, this one has a hole in the knee, out it goes. His favorite shirt. Perhaps she’ll keep that just a little longer.
Then on to his other possessions. Most of it she gently packs into a box. She’ll have Doug take it to the Goodwill in the morning. But some things are too precious to give up. The pennant he won playing Little League. His drama award. A sketchbook full of comic book-style drawings and classical nudes of well-muscled young men.
Her husband can’t admit their son was gay, but Hannah knows better. She knew even before what she thinks of as The Terrible Thing. It doesn’t matter. He could be gay or straight or bi or non. All she wants is for him to be back.
In the back of his closet, she finds his high school yearbook. Picks it up. Strokes it lightly with her fingers. No way will she give this up. Who except herself would want it anyway? She opens it up, wanting to read the cryptic, silly messages his friends have scrawled inside.
Something flutters out from between the pages. A piece of unlined paper. She picks it up and reads it.
Dear Chase, it begins, I am sitting at my bedroom window, looking at the moon and wondering if it is the same moon you see . . .
As she reads, the blood roars in her ears. Her heart races. She can hardly breathe. This letter . . . She is holding her son’s death in her hands.
She looks again at the signature. The man is a monster. How could he have done such a thing? Was it a joke, perhaps? She could understand that, a joke gone horribly wrong. She picks up the phone, dials the first three digits of her husband’s work number.
Puts the receiver back in its cradle.
No. Doug will kill the man.
Instead, she calls her son’s therapist. A nice enough man, she’s always thought, though Doug has never trusted him. Now the questions simmer in her mind. Did Alan know? Could he have stopped it from happening?
Her conversation with Keating is unsatisfying. He seems horrified at what she has learned. But she still has to know what would drive someone to write such horrid things to her son. She needs to believe it was an accident. At least, that’s what she tells herself.
An open wound, she drives to Razor’s house and rings the bell. He answers in a black silk robe tied at the waist. As if from far away, she hears herself speak. “I’m Hannah Eddington. Chase’s mother.”
The weather is brisk, and she has pulled on driving gloves and a light jacket. He doesn’t offer to take her coat.
She holds the letter out for him to see. “Why?”
“Oh, that.” He laughs. “I just wanted to see if he would do it.”
Her face feels warm. Her throat is too tight. It hurts even to breathe.
“Let me get you a glass of water,” he says, but his voice is mocking.
She turns away to hide her face. Not a joke, then. Not an accident. In front of her is a shiny black curio, and on it she sees only one thing. A small curved dagger with a black handle. The edge looks very sharp.
She doesn’t plan to kill him, even then. It’s just a thought, dancing at the edge of her mind. Somehow, the dagger finds its way into her hand. It feels nice there. Safe. With it, she could . . .
No.
She feels his warmth behind her. He seems to radiate a kind of heat. Perhaps that was what first attracted Chase to him. That raw, primal heat. She has to get away from him before she is consumed by rage. Get away. Run away. Put down the knife and tell him she has things to do.
Then he says, “You know what I loved most about your son? He had such a nice tight little ass.”
She turns to face him and the knife comes up.
Then there is only blood.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
My cell phone, on vibrate, buzzed against my hip. I closed my hand over it to further mute the faint sound and tugged aside the curtain to wave at the police van down the block.
“He was a monster,” Doug said. “Hannah did the world a favor.”
“Maybe.”
“And if you repeat any of this, we’ll both deny it.”
“It doesn’t matter what you deny,” I said. “We have Keating. You think he’ll go to prison for you?”
“A good lawyer—” he started, and Hannah laid a hand on his forearm.
“I killed a man,” she said. “And it was wrong. We can’t let Alan take the blame.”
Doug gave his head a heavy shake. Directed his next words to me. “I won’t let her go to prison, McKean. You know what it will do to her.”
The phone buzzed again, and I tugged it off my belt and flipped it open to see the caller ID. No surprises there. It was Frank.
“I better take this,” I said. “If I don’t, he’ll think I’ve been taken hostage and storm the battlements.”
They nodded in unison, his arm around her shoulders, her hand clamped to his wrist.
I pressed the talk button and said, “McKean here.”
Frank’s dry rasp came across the handset. “Glad you’re not dead yet. You got what we need?”
“Almost.”
“Get it on tape, McKean. And get out here. Fast.”
“What’s happening, Frank?”
“Just do it,” he said, and broke the connection.
I turned back to the Eddingtons and said, “It’s time.”
Doug’s hand tightened on Hannah’s shoulder. “You aren’t listening. You charge her, and I’ll twist up your case so bad the D. A. will wind up in a straitjacket. You know the evidence is iffy. No one will do a day of time if you charge her.”
“A man was murdered. We can’t just let that go.”
“Turn on the recorder. I’ll say I did it. I’ll give a detailed confession. Case closed, everybody’s happy.”
I nodded toward his wife, who clung to his arm as if she might topple. The color had leeched from her face. “Hannah doesn’t look that happy.”
“Prison will kill her,” he said. “I was a POW in ’Nam. I know how to do time. Let me do this, McKean.”
“First tell me about Keating. How’d he get mixed up in this?”
“Hannah called me. I called him. It wasn’t complicated.”
“You hate Alan Keating.”
He shrugged. “She’d already called him. I thought there was a better chance he’d keep it under his jacket if he had something to lose too. Besides, he owed us.”
Keating must have thought so too.
“Tell me the rest,” I said.
When the rage had spent itself, she was horrified by what she’d done and terrified of the consequences. And so she did what she had always done. She called the man who had always been there when she needed him.
Don’t move, he said. I’ll be right there.
He took the time to shop. A hunting knife, garbage bags, baby wipes, handheld vacuum cleaner, shower cap, rubber gloves. A pair of coveralls for Hannah and one for himself. He knew he was forgetting something, but he had no idea what. He was new to this business of murder.
Once he’d bundled Hannah into her new coveralls and sent her home to shower, he allowed himself to feel the panic. He had no idea where to start.
The body, he supposed. And he had to do something about the footprints. And the blood. What else?
Alan Keating.
Doug wasn’t a man who would casually ask for help, but the crime scene was beyond him. Keating was a smart guy. He’d know what to do. Besides, if Doug could get Keating involved, he could cover his bases and ensure that the psychologist wouldn’t betray Hannah. He called Keating, and Keating, overwhelmed by guilt and by the knowledge of what his friend had done, agreed to help.
Between them, they staged the scene. Vacuumed the living room. Smeared Hannah’s bloody footprints. While Doug carved his grief on Razor’s body, Keating searched the house for copies of the letter, which would provide the police with a motive for Razor’s death. Instead, he found the journals.
When they’d done all they could think of to do, Doug took the garbage bags with the vacuum cleaner bags, the cleaning rags, and the rest of the evidence and burned it to ash. What wouldn’t burn, including the knife, went into a landfill.
The journals went home with Keating. A little piece of Razor’s soul? A reminder of his fall from grace? Or maybe Keating really couldn’t bear to see his friend exposed as a monster. Maybe, after all Razor’s talk about the deceptive nature of love,Alan Keating had wanted to prove him wrong.
I wondered about Razor. The last few minutes of his life. When he’d seen Hannah holding the knife, had he decided to try one last experiment? See if he could turn an all-American soccer mom into a murderess? She was a better prize than Byron, who was, after all, slightly tarnished.
As the blood leaked out of him, did Razor actually think he’d won?
My cell phone buzzed again, and I said, “I gotta go. Let’s get this over with.” I turned the wire back on and said to Doug, “Tell me what you just said about Sebastian Parker’s murder.”
He leaned toward the wire beneath my shirt and said, “I did it. I killed him. I took that funky little knife off the shelf and almost sliced his fucking little head off.”
The front door banged open, and Frank stomped in, trailed by a couple of detectives I recognized from the surveillance van.
“’Bout damn time,” he said. He turned to Doug. “These fellas here are going to read you your rights. Then you and they are gonna take a little ride.” To me, he said, “Elgin Mayers offed his guard and left the hospital in a stolen BMW. Belonged to some surgeon, I guess. No one noticed he was missing until the relief guard came on.”
My entrails turned to water. “How long?”
“Too long,” he said. “Come on. I’ll drive, and you get Randall on the phone.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
We left the Silverado in the driveway. Frank nosed the Vic onto the street while I tried Randall’s cell. Voice mail. I punched in his home phone. Answering machine. Shit.
At Josh’s school, a nasal voice on the answering machine said they were closed for the winter holidays.
Shit, shit, shit.
“No use worrying yet,” Frank said. “He may not go for Josh at all. He wasn’t part of Judith Hewitt’s rape.”
I could have told him about Josh then, but the words stuck in my throat. There was no way to make it sound good. He was there, but he didn’t hurt anybody. It was right up there with, I smoked pot, but I didn’t inhale. It may have been true, but it didn’t change anything. The fact remained that Josh had watched a woman being terrorized and done nothing. Not then, and not later. I hated myself for being ashamed of that.
Frank said, “Mayers’ll probably try for Barnabus first. Unfinished business, and all that.”
I said, “I put four bullets in him. He’s going to go for Josh.”
“Two bullets,” he said. “The vest stopped two.”
My phone shrilled, Randall’s ring. I snapped it open and said, “Where are you?”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Are you in the house?”
“Jared—”
“Is anybody in the fucking house?”
“Wendy and the girls are Christmas shopping. I dropped Josh off at your place a couple hours ago.”
I groaned. Elgin knew where I lived.
Alarm in his voice, Randall said, “He wanted to watch Christmas movies on the big screen. What’s going on?”
Frank switched lanes so fast I had to grab the dashboard with one hand. “Listen,” I said. “I need you to go get Wendy and the girls. Take them to a hotel. Someplace safe. Do it now. I’m going after Josh.”
“You said you got the guy. So why are we running again?”
“We got him. And then he slipped his leash. Go find the girls. Don’t let them go home. He won’t go after them, but he won’t blink if they get in his way.” I hung up and said to Frank, “Josh is at my place.”
Frank swung the Crown Vic onto Briley and merged into traffic.
“There’s no reason for him to think Josh would be at your place,” Frank said.
“He doesn’t find Josh at home, where do you think he’s gonna look?”
My palms drummed on the dashboard, a rhythmless machine-gun tattoo. Frank reached across with his free hand and blocked mine. “Stop,” he said. “It will be all right.”
A gap opened in the line of cars beside us. Frank punched the accelerator and wrenched the wheel. The Crown Vic hesitated, wheezed, and shot into the gap. A horn blared. Frank swore softly. A few icy droplets splatted onto the windshield. We swooped around the cloverleaf that looped onto I-40 East, merged onto the Interstate, and barreled—as much as the Crown Vic could barrel—toward the Mt. Juliet exit, where we fishtailed onto the ramp, skidded on a thin patch of ice, and shot past the Providence outdoor mall.
I unclamped my teeth and said, “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“Hold your potatoes,” Frank said. “Let’s get there in one piece.”
As we rounded the last curve, the mailbox at the end of the driveway came into view. A patrol car from the Wilson County Sheriff’s office squatted across the entrance, blue lights flashing. A uniformed officer leaned against the passenger door, talking into his radio.
“Tell me you called them,” I said to Frank. “They’re here because you called?”
Frank didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. His grim expression said everything.
I unstrapped my seat belt, opened the door while the car was still rolling. The officer pushed away from the patrol car and thrust out a hand to stop me. Frank, wrestling the Crown Vic into park, waved his badge out the window and said, “Let him through.”
I darted around the patrol car, bulldozed through a stand of brittle thigh-high weeds, hit the gravel running, and sprinted toward the house. Frank puffed behind.
Through a gap in the trees, I caught a glimpse of flashing lights and ran harder. My boot came down in a water-filled rut crusted with ice, and some distant part of my mind registered the crack of the ice, the splash of freezing water, the sharp pain in my calf that was eclipsed by fear.
Jesus God Jesus God Jesus God.
The place was swarming. Two ambulances, a jumble of patrol cars, a couple of unmarked sedans. Uniforms everywhere. Too much activity. Too many people. Too late. I stumbled toward the house, lungs burning, a cold knot in my heart.
A man carrying a memo pad and wearing a Sheriff’s Department uniform stepped into my path. Blankenship, said the nameplate. “You can’t go in there, sir.”
I couldn’t breathe. Nodded toward the house. “In there. Are they . . .?”
“I’m sorry, sir. If you could just wait over there.”
I pressed forward, but Frank dug his fingers into my shoulder. “Hold your potatoes, Cowboy,” he said again.
The front door smacked open and a knot of paramedics eased a stretcher through. The wheels left a smeared trail of blood across the porch slats. The paramedics were covered with it. My stomach clenched, and I started forward again, straining against the hands that were suddenly barring my way.
Too many people. I couldn’t see the patient’s face. But so much blood. An IV bag
swayed, and someone grabbed it before it fell. Snatches of doc-talk cut through the buzz outside. “Stat . . . BP . . . pressure falling . . . shock . . .”
A second stretcher followed the first, pushed by a pair of EMTs in blood-splashed uniforms. My stomach sank at their lack of urgency even before I saw the crisp white sheet draped over the body. Red stains were beginning to seep through.
A sound tore from my throat, and all the fight drained out of me. The hands fell away, all but one. Frank’s hand, heavy on my shoulder.
Too late. Too late for one of them.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask which one. Knew which I would choose and felt a wave of guilt and shame, because to hope for one was to betray the other.
There were noises around me—shouting voices, running footsteps, the metallic bang of ambulance doors, the scream of a siren. They all seemed very far away.
“Sir, you can’t go in there,” Blankenship said again, but not to me.
I shrugged off Frank’s hand and willed my feet to move toward the sheet-draped gurney. My boots were almost too heavy to lift.
One wheel of the stretcher caught on the porch step. As the EMTs jostled it free, a bloodied hand slipped out from beneath the sheet.
Around the thin wrist was a frayed gauze bandage.
Behind me, someone moaned. I turned around as my brother, still breathless from the sprint up the long driveway, sank to his knees.
“My son,” he said, voice breaking. “My son.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Sometimes, in His infinite cruelty, God allows us to believe we can protect the things we love. I held my brother as grief shuddered through him and knew that was a lie.
We can protect nothing.
The EMTs were kind. Tried to keep Randall from the broken boy that had been Josh, and when that didn’t work, held him at arm’s length while they rolled back the sheet. Preserving evidence. Not that there would be any.
Josh’s eyes were closed. More likely, someone had closed them. His skin looked almost translucent in the dimming light. There was a smear of blood on his chin, and I wanted to wipe it away. It made him seem even younger than he was.
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