“And I listened to your story, saw the gun in his hand and got the history from Portland PD. We’ll process the evidence and follow up, but I have no reason to hold you or charge you with anything at this time. You’re free to go, Ms. Minos.”
I called Nick from the lobby. He was thirty minutes away. When he pulled up to the curb I opened the door, slid onto the front seat and into his arms.
“That was a stupid thing to do, alone.”
I nodded into his neck. “I had to.”
“He could have killed you.”
“He didn’t.”
His arms tightened around me and he kissed the top of my head. “Don’t do it again.”
“Don’t leave town,” I said.
Chapter Forty-One
Instead of turning around and driving another four hours back to Portland, we opted for the Marriott in Bangor and by the time we reached the room the numbness had worn off. Nick ran a bath while I alternated between fits of rage and debilitating heartbreak. Everything that had happened over the past month crashed over me and though I can’t say I was sad about Jarod, shoving a fireplace poker into someone’s gut and watching them soar off a three-story building carries some trauma no matter who it is. Losing Hilary had left me unable to breathe and well beyond my ability to cope.
An hour later, soothed from the tub and emotionally spent, I lay in the hotel’s queen-size bed and stared at the ceiling wondering how I could go home to mundane things like getting up every day, making coffee, going to work. Where would loyalty and love be without Hilary in the world? I don’t know if I’d slept or not, but when early morning shadows crept across the ceiling, Nick stirred beside me.
“You awake?” he asked.
I nodded and another tear hit the pillow beneath my head.
“Do you want me to call Michael and let him know you’re taking some time off?”
“I’m not taking time off.”
“Cecily, you can’t go into a courtroom right now.”
“That’s not what I mean. I’m not taking time off, because I’m not going back.” I turned my head on the pillow and looked at him.
He raised his eyebrows. “You’re leaving the DA’s office?”
“I knew it the moment Dobbs shot Hilary. Had I been smarter or had more resources from the start, I could have prevented that. I could have gotten him before he got her.”
“How would you have done that?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what I’m going to find out. I’m tired of being just another well-educated lawyer confronting crime from the safety of the courtroom, coming into people’s lives after the damage has been done. I want to change that. I want to prevent, not prosecute.”
Nick looked thoughtful and nodded. “But your idea of prevention is as a one-woman vigilante. If you’re going to prevent crime you have to play by the rules and work with the team.”
“What team?”
“I could use a partner,” he said.
I rolled into him and snuggled tight against his chest. “I thought I’d already been hired.”
* * *
After stopping for coffee, we drove back to Old Town and picked up my car on Kensington Street. I tried not to look at the blood stain left behind from Jarod’s head when it hit the hot top. The railing on the third floor that had dangled precariously yesterday had been completely removed. I told Nick I’d follow him back to Portland, but as we headed down Interstate 95, I had a change of heart and called his cell.
“I’m going to stop at the hospital,” I said.
“Want me to come?”
“No, I’ll do this myself.”
“Call me when you get back.”
I hung up from Nick and called the Old Town police department. Jarod had been taken to Eastern Maine Medical in Bangor. Ten minutes later I pulled off the highway at exit 185. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to go. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. No one had called me with an update on him last night and I hadn’t made any effort to find out.
At the desk in the lobby, I gave his name, half expecting them to tell me he’d been DOA. Instead they gave me a room number and directions to the intensive care unit. I followed the blue arrows marked ICU, realizing as I walked that I didn’t want to see him. I only wanted his status. I wanted to know first if he was dead, then if he was paralyzed and finally whether or not he was going to prison. Those were the criteria that had made me take the ramp off Interstate 95, not concern for his condition, but concern for my safety. I needed to see him out of commission.
As I neared the ICU, I saw a uniform seated outside one of the rooms. That told me that even if he recovered he wasn’t going anywhere. A nurse came through the electronic doors.
“Excuse me,” I said to her. “I’m Jarod Minos’s sister. How is he?”
She looked me up and down. I could see from her face that she knew the story behind my brother’s injuries and couldn’t decide whose side she was on. Since she was a nurse, I suppose her compassion had to fall to the patient. But as a woman, I wanted to tell her that she should be damn glad he wouldn’t be out on the street anytime soon.
“They’re doing some tests,” she said. “So far it looks like he’ll recover, but it’ll take a long time, probably years of physical therapy.”
“Is that his room, where the cop is?”
She nodded. “He’s under arrest. Straight to jail when he leaves here.”
“Is he talking?”
“Not really, he’s in and out. I think he spoke to your mother. She’s here somewhere.”
I thanked her and turned back down the hallway away from Jarod and ICU. Now I needed to get out and quick. My mother was the last person I wanted to see. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she’d be here, but of course she would be. Stupid me. I pressed the arrow down for the fourth time. “C’mon,” I said, watching the numbers tick off above the elevator. The bell dinged and the doors parted and my mother stood in front of me, coffee in one hand, Bible in the other.
We just stood there staring at one another. Neither of us moved until the doors started to close again and she stepped between them. They shuddered open. I had no idea what to say and so I said nothing.
“You have some nerve being here.” She stepped toward me out of the elevator.
“Mom, he was going to kill me. He had a gun. He killed Hilary’s father.”
“So they say.”
“So they say? He admitted it to me.”
She rolled her eyes as though his confession meant nothing.
“He has to pay for that.”
She looked at me and shook her head. “Don’t explain yourself to me. It’s Him you need to do your explaining to.” She waved the Bible in my face.
“He saw the whole thing,” I said. “So He probably already knows.”
“Well then, aren’t you the lucky one.” She shook her head. “Your brother is lying half-dead in a hospital bed, the result of your two hands, and you’re being a smart-ass.”
“Mom, it’s called justice. We have to be held accountable for the things we do.”
She took a good long look at me and said, “So I guess you got yours comin’, don’t you?” Then she turned and walked away. The electronic doors of ICU parted before her like the Red Sea.
On the way back to Portland I thought about what she’d said. I didn’t expect any legal repercussions regarding Jarod. After all, like Detective H
ood had said, it was self-defense, but also payback for years of being bullied. I didn’t feel remorse. Not for what I’d done to Jarod or for my mother’s pain. It hadn’t occurred to her that I might have been killed. I’d always been an afterthought. Maybe Jarod gave her more of a sense of purpose than I ever had. He’d needed parenting more than I had, although she’d fallen far short. He’d have her at his bedside now and then behind the glass at Thomaston.
When I finally reached my apartment, I called Nick.
“I’m going to see DeLonge,” he said. “You ready?”
“Think you can stall him for me?”
“Better things to do?”
“I can think of about a million. But the first things on my docket are a shower and sleep. Can I meet you later?”
“I’ll tell him you’ll be in this afternoon.”
“Thanks.”
I flopped onto the couch and called Amelia.
“Jesus, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.”
“I shut my phone off last night.”
“So, what’s up?”
I told her where I’d been, about Jarod, Detective Hood and finished with my mother at the hospital.
“Shit, Cecily, why didn’t you tell me you were going? I would have gone with you.”
“I know, but I had to take care of Jarod myself.”
“You want some company now?”
“First, I want sleep.”
“Okay. Call me tonight. Maybe we should do something fun.”
“Fun sounds good. Hey, Amelia?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, honey.”
“It’s just the two of us now.”
“We’ll be all right,” she said.
“Let’s make her proud.”
“I think you already have, Cecily.”
I’d never heard sweeter words. I clicked off the phone, went directly to my room and collapsed onto the bed. Before I had time to acknowledge the tears running down my cheeks, I was slipping toward sleep. My dreams had been frightening and violent for weeks and as this new one began I thought, finally something peaceful. Hilary was ahead of me smiling and waving for me to follow. We were both little girls again, laughing and running down the path to the railcar. “Hurry up,” she said. Usually Amelia was with us, but in my dream it was only Hilary and me. When we got to the car she jumped inside, then turned and reached a hand down to pull me up. I saw the Ouija board laid out, candles burning.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“You have to.”
“I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“This will be the last time.” As she spoke she transformed back to the way she’d looked when she’d stood at my apartment door and told me that she was out of the hospital less than a week ago.
I started to cry. I was beginning to wake up and could feel the dream slipping away. I didn’t want her to go. I wanted to stay together. I wanted the dream to go on forever. I couldn’t bear to lose her again.
“I’ll do it,” I said and felt my body struggling to climb into the railcar. “Hilary, stay with me. I’ll do it.” I pulled myself inside the car, but she was gone.
I sat up in my bed and looked around the empty room. My eyes came to rest on the trunk and I got up, knowing what I had to do. I set the board on the floor beside my bed and stared at it for a moment. I’d been doing this a long time, and knew that as Hilary had said, this would be my last. The board had been like a religion to us when we were little. On that count my mother had been right. But it had meant something else to Hilary than it had to me. For her, it was something she trusted when she’d had nothing else and as we got older that trust had extended beyond the board to me. But the board had never been about trust for me. At first, I’d been afraid of it and its hold on me, but the more my mother had forbidden it, the more intrigued I’d become. The board had filled the void my mother’s indifference created and had connected me to a grandmother I hadn’t known. Maybe it had been her all along reaching out to me through the Ouija from whatever world she resided in now. By providing me with a secret, which in childhood translates to power, she’d allowed me to develop confidence in a family where I’d been powerless.
“This is for you,” I whispered to Hilary and reached for the planchette.
My arms burned as heat seared through them and a burst of light exploded in my head. I could see Wainwright’s garage draped with yellow police tape. In the parking lot beside it, Hilary sat on the hood of the Bronco, laughing. The moment I saw her the vision was gone.
My body was covered in sweat, but my hands were ice cold when I opened my eyes. I put the board and planchette inside their box. “Never again,” I whispered, not sure to whom I was speaking. I stepped into a steaming shower and as the water rolled over me, I felt a sense of calm and a surety of what came next.
When I got out of the shower I wrapped the board in an old velvet blanket then I took the candles and the straight razor from the closet and put them in too. I got dressed, carried the blanket to my car and drove to Duane Wainwright’s garage. The police tape looked just as it had in my vision of it. I looked to the Bronco with the tiniest bit of hope. She wasn’t sitting on the hood and I felt foolish at my disappointment. I walked toward the old vehicle and slipped onto the passenger seat, losing myself for a moment in memories.
When I opened my eyes I reached up and played with a loose thread hanging from the upholstery on the Bronco’s roof. As I pulled it, the edge of the vinyl came free from the metal frame. The pointed corner of an envelope was visible. I slid it free. Hilary was written on the outside and I opened it.
Dear Hilary,
I make it a point not to regret nothin’ I done. Waste of time, I say. Just live with it. But it’s one thing to screw up your own life, ain’t nobody got the right to screw up their kid. And that’s what I done. I don’t give a crap about what I done to Big Jim. But what I done to you was wrong. I weren’t no kind a father. Maybe what I got hid here will help you have a better life than the one I gived ya.
Dad
I pulled the thread harder and most of the ceiling let go. Stacks of bound hundreds and fifties fell into my lap. “Son of a bitch,” I whispered and I could have sworn I heard Hilary laugh. “No wonder Duane never got rid of this rusted-out piece of shit,” I said, laughing along with her. Wainwright had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but to his credit he’d kept Hilary safe by keeping his mouth shut, and in the end used his misfortune to try and make things right with her. Not that money could ever excuse his inaction, but the crusty old bastard had had some heart after all. I sat there for a long time wondering what I should do with the money. Big Jim was somewhere in New Hampshire with his brother. It was rightfully his. I stuffed it back into the roof. I’d have Nick track him down.
There was one more place to go. I took a right out of Wainwright’s lot and drove ten minutes on Route 125, then turned onto the dirt road where I could pick up the path to the railcar. I had no idea if it was still there. Eighteen years had passed since I’d ventured down the dirt trail. I pulled off into the trees and walked to the trailhead. It was overgrown, but used, which made me wonder if the car had served as a clubhouse for other kids. I hoped it had been kinder to them than it had been to us. With the velvet blanket tucked under my arm I pushed branches out of my way until I stepped into the clearing.
It was s
till there, more weather beaten and rusted and definitely no longer safe to crawl inside. My heart pounded against my chest as I neared it and all that it represented flooded into me. The best and worst times of my life had been spent inside this rusted-out metal frame and I felt as much love for it as I did hatred. I set the velvet blanket that held the board, the two purple candles and the razor on what was left of the floor, feeling a sense of calm as I returned them to their rightful place. Then I looked up into the brilliant October sky and smiled at her, knowing she was watching and I hoped, approving. When I reached the trailhead that would take me out to the road I hesitated and turned back, sure that somewhere behind me over near the railcar, I’d heard the laughter of three little girls.
* * * * *
About the Author
Patricia Hale is a graduate of the MFA program at Goddard College in Vermont. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, New Hampshire Writers’ Project and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Her essays and articles have appeared in New England literary magazines and the My Heart’s First Steps anthology. In the Shadow of Revenge is her first novel. When not writing, she enjoys hiking with her dogs and kayaking on the lakes near her home. Patricia lives in New Hampshire with her husband.
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ISBN: 978-14268-9584-5
Copyright © 2013 by Patricia Hale
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