In the Shadow of Revenge

by Patricia Hale

  I went back into the kitchen and noticed my legal pad on the table. On it was Dobbs’s address and the notes I’d made. Everything we knew about him so far, including the fact that he was my cousin. The cassette from his house had been lying on top. I popped open the recorder and saw it inside.

  “Fuck,” I yelled and threw the pad against the wall. I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.

  Hilary would be driving her beat-to-shit Nissan. My Lexus would shave minutes off the trip, but she had a good lead. Five o’clock rush hour in Portland can’t compare to other New England cities, but it was enough to make me sweat as I weaved through the locals on their way home, doing twenty miles over and checking my rearview mirror for a cruiser to crawl up my ass.

  I couldn’t imagine how Hilary must be feeling after listening to the tape, knowing now that her father had tried to save his own neck at her expense. She also knew that I knew and hadn’t told her. The word betrayed came to mind, but it probably didn’t come close. More like crazy, insane, fucked-up. At least those were the words that would describe me if I were in her place. I stepped harder on the accelerator.

  I took the off-ramp at sixty-five miles per hour and turned right onto Route 136 hoping to catch sight of the Nissan. No such luck. Another right onto Route 125 and I had a straight shot down the one-lane country road into Millers Falls. It was a grueling ten minutes to Pine Ridge Road. I took the left on two wheels and sighted Hilary’s Nissan in Dobbs’s driveway.

  “Shit,” I said to myself and pulled in behind it; then I did something I never thought I’d do. I reached into my bag and took out the pistol that Nick had given me. I tucked it into the back waistband of my pants where he wouldn’t see it, at least not right away.

  I could hear them yelling through the open window and I crept onto the front porch to assess the situation before barging in. Dobbs was a few feet into the living room like he’d just come from the kitchen. He was holding a gun loosely in one hand, aimed down toward the floor. Hilary was about five feet into the room from the front door.

  “I didn’t kill your fucking father,” Dobbs said. “He was dead when I got there.”

  “Then who did?”

  “How the fuck should I know, though I’ve got an idea.” He waved a cassette over his head. “You would too if you heard this.” He laughed.

  The one he took from Wainwright’s garage, I thought. What the hell was on that?

  Hilary took a step toward him and I saw the butcher knife she clutched in her right hand, a perfect match to the set on my kitchen counter.

  “Uh-uh,” Dobbs said waving the gun. “Not too close, though we have had our moments, haven’t we?”

  I heard a sob break from Hilary.

  “Not a bad lay for a little girl,” he said.

  Before I registered what was happening, she’d lunged at him waving the knife above her head. Two shots went off like fireworks on the Fourth of July and her feet left the ground. She sailed backward, her body airborne. She hit the wall and slid down beside the door. A hole gaped open in her chest.

  I grabbed the gun from the back of my pants and burst through the front door, holding it out in front of me and remembering that Nick had said just point and shoot. I did. Dobbs looked up, surprised when the first bullet penetrated his chest. When the second one ripped into his stomach, he went down on his knees, disbelief on his face. He fell forward onto the floor. The cassette slipped from his hand and skittered across the floor, landing at my feet.

  Hilary moaned and I knelt beside her. She looked up, the hint of a smile on her lips. “You got him,” she whispered. “After all this time, you did it.”

  “Hilary.” I lifted her into my arms and held her against my chest.

  “I knew you would.”

  Tears fell from my cheeks into her hair. “I owed you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” She shook her head. “We’ve been saving each other all our lives.”

  “Don’t talk.” I felt my pocket for my cell phone and realized I’d left it in the car.

  “Put the gun in my hand,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Do it,” she whispered.

  “But then you’ll...”

  She drew a quick breath and winced. “I’m not gonna be around.” Her breathing was labored.

  “Stop talking,” I said.

  “Cecily...” A trickle of blood spilled from the corner of her mouth and she went limp in my arms.

  “Hilary, Hilary,” I yelled into her face. But her eyes were empty, staring upward. They looked the way they had that day in the railcar when I’d hoped that she was seeing her mother. I laid my cheek against hers and cradled her in my arms and hoped for the same thing now. I kissed her forehead then lowered her onto my lap and began wiping the gun with the corner of my shirt. Purging my guilt from the barrel and grip, I rubbed until the metal gleamed, then I picked up her still warm hand and wrapped it around the handle, placing her finger against the trigger. I sat there holding her on my lap and looking at the pistol in her hand, knowing that she was right, and that she’d saved me for the last time. At some point I heard footsteps outside and then a hand touched my shoulder.

  “Miss, you all right? Jesus, what the hell happened here?”

  It was a uniform from Edgewater. I looked up at him, but couldn’t make words come out of my mouth. He knelt beside Dobbs, checked the pulse in his neck then looked at me and shook his head. His eyes fell to Hilary half in my lap and then to the gun in her outstretched hand.

  “Don’t touch that,” I said. “I’m with the DA’s office. Call Sergeant DeLonge at the Portland PD.”

  “You need to come outside.” He reached for my arm.

  “I’ll move when DeLonge gets here.”

  He hesitated and then walked onto the front porch. I could hear him talking to DeLonge. “Somebody out walking their dog,” he said. “Thought they heard shots fired.”

  I stopped listening. I knew the rest. I rocked Hilary’s body for what seemed like a long time, but not long enough. It could never be long enough.

  “I was too late,” I said when DeLonge knelt in front of me. “I heard shots when I pulled into the driveway and then two more as I ran up the steps. They were both down when I came through the door.” I dropped my eyes when I finished. I’m not a great liar and I thought if he looked closely enough he might see that, but he didn’t say anything, just stood and walked outside. I could hear more cars arriving. But I didn’t want to move. I wasn’t ready to let her go.

  “Get in there and bag that gun,” I heard DeLonge say. A uniform came in. He lifted the pistol with a pencil and dropped it into an evidence bag.

  I felt Nick before I saw him. He knelt beside me, but didn’t speak. When I looked at him his eyes were on the gun that the cop had just removed from Hilary’s hand. He turned his head slowly and looked at me. I could see the question in his eyes and I looked away.

  “Hold her hand,” he whispered in my ear.

  “What?” I looked at him.

  “Take her right hand in yours, now,” he said.

  And then I realized what he wanted. Hilary had to have gun residue on her hand if it was to look like she’d pulled the trigger. I took her hand in mine and held it tightly against my chest. I pressed our palms together and laced our fingers one through the other, transferring powdery particles from my skin to hers. But when I looked at our hands entwined, I didn’t see the gesture as one that would save me now. I saw what had saved me a million times already.

  “Ms. Minos,” DeLonge said coming back inside. “I have to ask you to step away from the body.”

  “I’ve got her,” Nick said.

  I slid my fingers from Hilary’s and laid her hand on her stomach. Then as gently as possible, Nick lifted her from my lap and rested her on the floor. As he did, I sa
w the cassette that Dobbs had been holding when he fell. I put my hand over it, cupped it into my palm, then stood and slipped it into my pocket.

  My legs weren’t cooperating and Nick more or less carried me onto the porch.

  DeLonge followed us out. “I’m going to need a full statement.”

  “Looks pretty cut and dry,” Nick said.

  DeLonge looked at him. “You know how it works.”

  “That I do,” he said. “Okay if she gets a clean shirt first? I’ll bring her straight to the station.”

  DeLonge looked at the front of my blouse, wet with Hilary’s blood, and nodded.

  Nick backed out of Dobbs’s driveway and turned the car toward the highway. I laid my head against the seat and closed my eyes, numb. When he pulled onto the interstate he reached over and took my hand.

  “You want to tell me how the gun I gave you ended up in Hilary’s hand?”

  “I put it there.”

  “After you shot him?”

  I nodded. “She told me to.” I started to cry again.

  “Where did this fit in?” He held up the knife Hilary had taken from my kitchen counter.

  “Shit,” I said. “I forgot about that.”

  “It was under her legs when I lifted her off your lap. Thought I recognized it. Two weapons would have raised a red flag for DeLonge.”

  “You could go to jail for that.”

  “Add it to the list,” he said.

  I turned my head away from him and looked out the window, trying to hold onto the feel of her body against mine. I smiled through a flood of tears at the jumble of images in my head, jumping from the railroad transom, stealing cupcakes from Mrs. Adelson’s porch and the three of us huddled together over the Ouija board, Hilary’s eyes on me, brimming with faith. She’d always said we weren’t so different and I’d fought it, desperate to be something more than I was. But we’d both been underdogs, raised by people who didn’t know how to parent and because of that we’d been physically desecrated and emotionally hobbled. But by some miracle we’d found each other, and with her brawn and my brains we’d become a whole person. I couldn’t fathom my life without her.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I called Amelia on the way back to Portland and she was waiting, red-eyed and disbelieving outside my apartment. When we went in, Hilary’s bag was next to the couch. Just a few hours ago, she’d been at my door ready to get on with her life. I went into the bathroom and peeled off my blood-soaked clothes. I started to throw them into the laundry basket and stopped. The blood would never come out, but I couldn’t throw them in the trash either; it was all I had left of her. I sat on the edge of the bathtub and held the clothes to my chest, crying into them. At some point Nick came in, took them from me and put me in the shower. When I came out the clothes were gone.

  Nick had told me on the way home from Dobbs’s house to stick with Hilary’s version of what happened and not to waver from it for anyone. But while he fixed us all a drink, I told Amelia the truth. I wanted her to know that Hilary had not killed Dobbs and that by instructing me to put the gun in her hand she’d once again saved me. I sipped on the Jack Daniels Nick handed me and thought about all the times over the years that she’d had my back. I hoped I’d made it up to her and was glad she’d lived long enough to see Dobbs pay.

  Amelia came with us to the police station, so I could give them a statement. Neither of us could bear being alone. DeLonge kept looking at me while Nick played him the tape. I’d brought him the one that Hilary listened to in my kitchen, the one that had sent her after Dobbs. Nick assured me it was the right thing to do and since I couldn’t put together a cohesive thought, I trusted him. He was pretty sure it would clear me regarding Wainwright’s murder or at least be enough to raise a reasonable doubt. DeLonge would have to drop the charges against me even if I remained a suspect.

  “Where’d this come from?” DeLonge asked when the cassette finished.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Hilary had it. She and Duane lived together. She must have found it and didn’t tell anyone.”

  “Why would she have brought it to your house and left it there?”

  “Maybe to let me know that she knew who’d done it.”

  “But you already suspected him. You didn’t tell her?”

  “She’d been in rehab for the past month. I didn’t think the timing was right. And like a fool, I originally came to you with the information because I thought you might do something.”

  “You gave me a guy based on his ass. It wasn’t enough and you know it.” DeLonge scratched his head and then looked at me. “This lets you off the hook regarding Wainwright. Looks like someone set you up with that video, probably Dobbs.” He tossed the cassette he’d been holding onto the table. “Look, I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you when you first came to me.”

  “She’d be alive if you had.”

  “You don’t think that’s crossed my mind, Counselor?” He looked down and took a deep breath.

  “We done here, DeLonge?” Nick stood up.

  The sergeant nodded, but didn’t move to escort us out.

  Outside Nick put an arm around each of us, guiding us back to his SUV. It was late. We were all exhausted, and when we got back to my apartment, Amelia and I reluctantly headed for bed, though I knew sleep would not come easily. I tossed and turned, going over the day in my head. Could I have gotten to Dobbs’s house any faster? Why didn’t I hide the cassette? Had she told me she was getting out today and I’d forgotten? Finally, I dozed off and in my dreams I was tied to the apple tree in the backyard, Jarod in front of me laughing.

  * * *

  Two days later, beneath a perfect blue sky and a September sun, we buried Hilary beside Duane. I remembered the picture I’d found of her stuffed beneath his mattress in the back of the garage and hoped that now they’d have time to develop the bond that had escaped them in life. Amelia and I poured in the first shovel of dirt on the top of the casket and listened to it hit the mahogany lid. I couldn’t bear to think of her lying inside that box and so I kept my brain moving from image to image, every memory I had of her. I played them over and over in my mind, keeping her vibrant and alive. The way she was, the way she still should be.

  Afterward, Nick said he’d be gone overnight to finish up a case, but I figured it was more about giving Amelia and me time to be alone together. We went to the beach and took off our shoes, wading in the frigid Maine water, hardly noticing the cold.

  “What now?” Amelia asked. “What do we do without her?”

  I shook my head, unable to answer. Hilary had been the glue for our threesome. She’d been the one with the ideas, the one most alive, the one that kept bringing us together even if it was to visit her in rehab.

  “Life’s gonna be too normal,” Amelia said.

  I laughed in spite of the tears on my cheeks and it felt good. After walking from one end of the beach to the other, we got in Amelia’s car and drove to my apartment. She pulled up to the curb out front.

  “Do you want to come in?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “We’ll have to be alone at some point. Now’s as good a time as any.”

  I hugged her and got out of the car, then leaned back in. “Call me later?”

  She smiled and nodded and pulled back out onto the road.

  I watched her drive away and then went inside to my bedroom and took the cassette that I’d snuck from Dobbs’s house, the one that had originally been in Wainwright’s garage, out of my dresser drawer. It had been in the back of my mind for the past few days, but taking the time to listen to it would have required a focus and strength that eluded me while I made the preparations to bury Hilary. With her settled now and hopefully at peace, I poured myself a large glass of wine, put the tape into the recorder and pressed Play.

  �
�Welcome home, old man, hope you had a nice stay at the Thomaston Inn.” A chuckle. “Just thought I’d bring you up to date and I hope you’re not too sloshed to understand what I’m telling you. The money is mine, always has been. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Another chuckle. “So if you want to keep your pathetic little life intact, I strongly suggest that you hand over the cash to its rightful owner. If you don’t, consider yourself a dead man.”

  I pressed the stop button and realized I was holding my breath. There was no mistaking that voice. As I’d suspected, it was Jarod. I leaned back in my chair and forced myself to breathe. My mother must have known too, and that’s why she’d kept her mouth shut about Dobbs raping Hilary. If she’d gone to the police about Dobbs it may have led them to Jarod. It was also possible that Dobbs’s alibi had been the truth. He hadn’t killed Wainwright, Jarod had, and then sent the video of me to the police as payback for my refusing to vouch for him in court.

  I slipped the cassette in my pocket and drove to the police station.

  “DeLonge here?” I asked the cop at the desk.

  “No, but he’s due back later.”

  “I’ve got something for him.”

  He handed me an envelope and I placed the cassette inside along with Jarod’s address.

  “When will he be back?”

  The cop shrugged. “Six-ish?”

  I looked at the wall clock. It was two-fifteen. I’d be in Old Town just as DeLonge was listening to the tape. Hopefully he’d know enough to call the locals.

  Chapter Forty

  I went through the tollbooth and entered the Maine Turnpike heading north. The voice in my head nagged that I shouldn’t be doing this alone, but I’d been relying on other people to rescue me from Jarod all my life. It was time I faced him on my own. I was almost sure that he’d killed Wainwright and that would buy him twenty-five to life. The neighborhood cats could breathe a collective sigh of relief. Although based on his girlfriend’s restraining order and Wainwright’s throat, he’d moved on to larger victims.