by Sarah Graves
“We don’t know that. Look, why are you fighting me on this? Just tell me—”
“And you won’t tell anyone else? Before, you promised that you wouldn’t tell—”
Lizzie shook her head. She’d had a chance to think some more about the deal she’d offered. “No. I should never have said that.”
Peg slumped in defeat.
“What difference does it make?” She seemed to be asking it of herself. “Without Tara, I don’t care about anything, anyway.”
She straightened, steeling herself. “Okay. Like I said, we were cousins, Henry and me. And he drugged me. He put something in a wine cooler, and then…”
A terrible little laugh escaped her. “And then he raped me.” She forced the word out.
“And you got pregnant.”
Peg nodded. “Yes. But I was too afraid to tell anyone how I got that way. He told me if I ever said what happened…”
She turned miserably. “See, he’d give us money. Our family, we were penniless. I can’t even express it, how poor. But Henry had dropped out of school and he was working steady. He even had his own place, a foreclosed house he’d bought near his mom’s.”
Peg sucked in a shaky breath. “He said if I told anyone, he wouldn’t help us out anymore.”
Lizzie watched a raccoon waddle into the gas station ruins. “Did you know about the girls? In his cellar, did you know about them?”
Peg shook her head emphatically. “No! Of course not, I…he was always after me. Then all of a sudden he quit bothering me. I didn’t care why, I was just glad. I didn’t know it was because he had someone else to torture. I only found out about all that stuff when everyone else did, last summer when he got caught.”
Lizzie thought about this. Something was still not quite right about it, but what? “Okay. And you didn’t want Tara to know who her dad was. That’s why you changed your eye color, right?”
Peg looked taken aback. “What? Oh, no, it wasn’t like that at all, it didn’t have anything to do with that. It was about me.”
Her face grew thoughtful. “I’m not even sure how to say this. But see, even after I got away from him, every time I looked in the mirror I saw the girl he’d made a victim out of.”
She shook her head again, remembering. “I changed my hair, cut it, colored it, dressed different ways, wore makeup or not. But still there she was every time in the mirror, his…thing. His filthy toy. Only then one day I tried on the blue contact lenses.”
“But why didn’t you tell me about them?”
Peg blew a breath out. “I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t believe it mattered. Or I didn’t want to believe it.”
Lizzie started the Blazer again and put it in gear. “So there was never any husband, either?”
“No. Mitch was a friend. I never even dated him. Like I told you, I just said it because I didn’t know what else to say.”
The Blazer bumped down the ruined road. “Okay. That’s good, Peg. That’s helpful. But here’s the problem I’ve still got.”
Overhead, thunder rumbled ominously. “See, I get that you didn’t want Gemerle to stop helping your family. And you didn’t want Tara to know her father was a monster, either, even if your eye-color change wasn’t part of that.”
Peg nodded again. “The kind of monster,” Lizzie went on, “that you’d still have to hide from, even after you got away.”
The kind of monster who kept a list: whom he’d victimized, where they were now. “But why’d you testify against him then? If you were still so scared?”
And with good reason, apparently. Peg stared straight ahead out the dark windshield.
“Henry always said that if he ever got in trouble, he’d play crazy. That he’d never get sent to jail if he was nuts enough, so he would fake it.”
“So when his competency hearings started down in New Haven,” Lizzie said, “you decided to do something about that?”
“Uh-huh.” Softly, Peg took up her story again. “I remembered what Henry had said about it. And I knew that if he got sent to a mental hospital he might get out someday, but if he got tried and they convicted him then maybe he wouldn’t.”
“And then you wouldn’t have to be terrified of him anymore. You’d be free of him, and so would Tara.”
“It was my chance. So I called the police in New Haven. They set me up with the district attorney and I went there last week. On Friday. I told them he was faking being crazy, and I told them how I knew.”
Outside, more rumbles of thunder rolled through the night. When Lizzie put down the window the air felt full of violence.
“Okay,” Lizzie said. “But I still don’t get it.” The Blazer’s high beams picked out fence posts crowned with bittersweet, the NO HUNTING signs on them peppered with rusty bullet holes.
“And what I can’t get past is this,” she added. “When Tara went missing and stayed that way, you refused help.”
So there was something else; had to be. A crossroads appeared and Lizzie turned left. In the distance, fires burned jubilantly.
“And I don’t care how you try to justify it, it just doesn’t compute,” she went on.
“See, I’ve met mothers of missing children before, and every one of them would’ve teamed up with the devil himself if she thought it would find her kid one damn minute sooner.”
Up ahead, the swirly-cone shape of the Dairy Dream ice cream stand materialized. SEE YOU IN SPRING! the sign said.
“It doesn’t matter, all right?” Peg burst out. “It can’t be important, it doesn’t have anything to do with…”
Lizzie’s cell phone thweeped. EEKTARIMD, the display read; she swung into a U-turn.
“Where are we going?” Peg demanded, gripping the armrests.
“Hospital. Friend of mine.” The surge of power from the big V-8 was instantaneous; acceleration-wise, the heavy Blazer was not at all like the nimble vehicles she’d driven back in the city.
Once it got going, though, the Blazer could move.
ELEVEN
THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE! said the sign posted just inside the Maine state line.
It was not yet dawn on Tuesday morning, the sky to the east a pale, pearly gray and the stars dimming, winking out one by one. Beginning to feel tired after the long drive from New Haven, I pulled off the interstate into a rest area, took another couple of Cam’s stimulant pills, then texted Finny Brill.
After that I went into the welcome center, which even at this early hour was being visited by a few bleary travelers, wrinkled and yawning. When I came out again Finny’s reply was there.
He and Gemerle had left the night before, too, as soon as Gemerle got back to the forensic hospital and Finny could put his plan into motion. Now they were about two hours ahead of me, on their way to northern Maine. In his text message Finny gave the address they were headed for, suggesting that I meet them there.
But I wanted Gemerle to come to me; for my plan to work the way I intended it to, I would have to lure him to where I wanted him, then catch him by surprise.
An emailed photograph of the girl should do it, I thought. Cam’s daughter…that’s who he was here for; it had to be, or he wouldn’t have come here to Maine. It’s who he was obsessed with, for reasons I didn’t yet understand.
But what I cared about now was that Cam had meant to join them here. Without me, even after all I’d done for her…she was the same vengeful girl I had known when we were children together. She had never forgiven me, and I’d have had to silence her sooner or later, I realized.
Now all I had to do was finish Gemerle off, too, and I’d be free. I could start a new life where no one knew what I’d done or what was done to me, because everyone who’d known was dead.
A few hours later I was forty miles north of Houlton, at a convenience store where I got a map. Next, bypassing two modern-looking motels on the main drag, I chose instead an old family-run place a few miles off the highway.
I just thought it would be better if my car wasn’t v
isible from a well-traveled road. After I checked in I stowed my things in my room and washed down more pills with vending-machine coffee. Then I drove twenty more miles to the small town of Bearkill.
By then it was ten o’clock on Tuesday morning. It seemed like years since I’d left Cam’s body in our apartment, but it wasn’t even twelve hours. Already it all felt as if it had happened to someone else.
In town, I parked outside the red-brick public library, meaning to wait there until it opened at eleven. But instead, a stroke of good luck happened almost at once.
From where I sat I could see all the way down Main Street, past a double row of wooden storefront buildings and a Food King supermarket. What I needed was a way to identify Cam’s child, so I could snatch her and use her to coax Gemerle into a trap.
It might not be easy, but I thought if I paged through high school yearbooks in the library I might spot a girl who resembled Cam. Then I’d have to find the girl herself, which of course would be another whole project. But one thing at a time, I told myself, and just as I was about to go into the library, to my amazement the woman I’d seen in the courtroom appeared. Blunt-cut blond hair, sturdy figure…
It was her, all right, getting out of a beat-up old Honda sedan in the Food King parking lot. She was even wearing the same blue sweatshirt.
Seeing her, it struck me: There had to be a reason she’d gone to the New Haven hearing at all, didn’t there? A reason she cared? And now suddenly I had a hunch about what the reason might be.
After all, he must have given that baby of Cam’s to someone. And meanwhile, I needed supplies for what I had planned. So when the blond woman had come out again and had driven away, I went in and bought coffee and snack food plus two stout wooden-handled mops, a small hacksaw, a barbecue lighter, and rolls of wire and silver duct tape. Then I told the clerk at the register that I thought I’d recognized the woman I’d just seen.
“Who, Peg Wylie?” answered the clerk.
And there it was, her name, just like that. They had a phone book in the library so getting her address was easy, too. And just as I had hoped, the library also had a high school yearbook with a picture in it: Tara Wylie.
Which meant I’d done it. I’d found her and now everything was in place, with Gemerle already settling in at a remote cottage nearby, where he thought Cam was coming to meet him. But instead I would get him to come to me, and then I would kill him.
I even had the tools now: the wire, the stout mop handles. I only wanted another look at him in person to be sure I could do it all the way I intended: that the wire would be long enough, for instance, and the mop handles strong enough.
So first I copied the yearbook picture, so I’d be sure to know the girl when I saw her in real life; I didn’t think I would forget her face, but my mind had begun playing some funny tricks on me in the past couple of hours.
From those pills of Cam’s, I supposed. Shimmery little halos kept forming around things I wanted to look at, and once I mistook the car’s brake for the gas pedal, briefly but frighteningly. But after I’d eaten some packaged cookies—my mouth was so dry that I had to sop them in the coffee to swallow them—I felt better, and in the library I consulted Google Maps on the computer to find the cottage Finny had texted me about.
Finally I got back in my car and went looking for the place, feeling optimistic about finding it quickly. By now they’d have been there for a few hours; with any luck I could sneak up on them, get a closer look at Gemerle, and fine-tune my plan, if need be.
I hadn’t decided what to do about Finny yet, but something would come to me. Popping another of Cam’s pep pills, I drove out of town toward the cottage that he and Gemerle had rented.
And then everything went to hell.
—
There was one narrow road leading in to the lake area where the cottage was located, and the last thing I wanted was to meet Finny and Gemerle driving out. So I pulled into a gravel turnout and parked behind a bramble thicket.
The walk in was pleasant, a quarter mile or so on a packed-earth road between tall, fragrant evergreens. The air was warm, smelling of wood smoke and lake water; I kept my ears open for the sound of a car approaching in case I needed to duck out of sight.
But no car came. Soon I was at a cut in the undergrowth just wide enough to show the lake sparkling. I slipped down a woodsy path to where a gray van sat outside a shingled cabin with a stone chimney, a wisp of smoke curling from it.
The shades were drawn. No sound came from the cabin. I eased around to the lake side to try peeking in there. Then from behind me I heard the sound of a car moving slowly.
I stepped back into the greenery. It was a rental car, and as it went by I saw clearly who was driving. Impossible…
But it was Cam. Not dead as I’d thought, but only pale and tired appearing, with a gauze bandage wrapped around a dressing on her head. At the cottage she parked and got out, gazing around in the piney stillness. Then she went inside.
Stunned, I rushed up to her car and peered in. On the seat lay a rental agreement for the vehicle and two boarding passes, one for the airport in New Haven and one from Portland, Maine.
So she’d been faking it all. She’d let me think she was dead—or as good as—gurgling and gagging realistically enough to win an Academy Award. Then she’d cleaned herself up and rushed out to the airport as soon as I was gone, the traitorous little bitch.
At the rear of the cottage a small deck overlooked a wooden dock with a canoe pulled up to it. I tiptoed up onto the deck and crouched below one of the windows, which was open a crack.
Cam’s voice came triumphantly from inside. “…but she forgot I’ve got that metal plate in my head. It bled a lot, but—”
But she’d survived. Or so she thought. We’ll just see about that, I told myself. We’ll just see.
I suppose I should’ve felt something. Remorse, maybe. Or a wish to be back with Cam. But seeing her with him showed me just how impossible that was. And anyway, when I’d killed the reporter something changed in me. It was as if a switch in my head had been on its way to flipping for a very long time, and finally it had.
And it wasn’t going to go back. Then came Gemerle’s voice, as low and gravelly as I recalled it. “…knew I could depend on you…”
Sure, like she’d done anything useful. I was the one who’d done it all, gotten him out of that loony bin he’d been stuck in and arranged for him to be here. Speaking of which, where was Finny Brill, anyway?
Cam again: “…together. The three of us…where is she?”
Of course she wanted to know about the baby. But it wasn’t a baby anymore, was it? Tara Wylie was a teenager now.
“…time for that foolishness,” he responded harshly. Then the sound of a slap rang out suddenly in the still air, the smack of flesh striking flesh.
I raised up cautiously to peek in through the window. Cam looked shocked, holding her face, fighting back tears.
What did you expect? I thought angrily at her, what did you think was going to happen? But I guessed I knew. She’d spent years under his control. Now life felt strange without it, I imagined.
It didn’t help how I felt, though, knowing she would rather get beaten up by him than be cared for by me. Knowing that all along she’d been despising me and hating me, and planning to leave.
Silence from inside; I peeked in cautiously once more. The cabin’s interior was a single large room, all wood-paneled, with gas lamps hanging from wooden overhead beams. The furniture looked old but comfortable, bentwood rockers and upholstered settees in a half circle around a woodstove.
“Where is she?” he demanded, advancing threateningly on Cam. His back was to me. “Your little friend, where is she?”
Me, he meant. Finny must have said more than we’d agreed on. Or Gemerle had made him tell.
“I don’t know!” Cam cried. “I thought you said we would be together, be a family again, I don’t know!”
He spun her and shoved her down h
ard into a chair. “Oh, you thought, did you?” he snarled. “Let me tell you what I think.”
Then he turned, and I saw him close up for the first time in fifteen years. His face, lightly freckled and nastily amused at Cam’s misery, was not much changed. His wavy blond hair was only a little receded from his forehead.
And his eyes were the same, like dark blue stones, just as they’d been all those years ago when he told me to drink the juice or he would slit my throat for me.
“I got rid of the orderly,” he told her. “I’ll get rid of the stupid bitch who testified against me, and then I’ll take care of that little fool nursemaid of yours.”
He bent over her. “And if you don’t do what I tell you I’ll get rid of you, too. Got it?”
She dragged a hand across her bleeding lip. “All right,” she whimpered. Then:
“I can help you find Jane, you know. I know what car she’s driving and there aren’t many motels around here, are there?”
Suddenly my ears rang, nausea rising insistently in me as wave after wave of dizziness hit me; those pills, I thought, and sank to the deck, wanting only to die there.
But his next words pricked my ears up again: “All right. When it’s done, we’ll go to Canada.”
He was humoring her. But she couldn’t hear it. “The baby, too?” she quavered.
“Yeah,” Gemerle said after a moment. From his tone I could tell he was thinking the same as I was, that she wasn’t right in the head.
That he could tell her anything, and she would believe it. Suddenly I wasn’t so sure anymore that I hadn’t killed her after all, back there in our apartment. Maybe her dying was just taking a while.
Or maybe on the inside she was already dead, and had been dead for a long time. “Sure, the baby,” he said carelessly. “Whatever.”
Just being near him made my skin crawl so hard, it nearly crept off my body. Or maybe that was from the pills, too. When I forced myself to peek in a final time, I spotted a gun sticking from his jeans pocket.
“But like I said, first we have to eliminate our problems,” he told Cam.
