“What happened, Tucker?” Roy asked.
“I went there to talk to her, and Coe was there. I saw them through the window in her bedroom. She’d been with him before, but she swore, after he beat her up, it was over.”
“You never told us,” Emily said.
“Because you thought she was wrecking my life.”
“Your mother and I wanted you to be happy, Tuck. We wanted to keep you safe.” Roy’s voice was ragged. “We were wrong—about so many things.”
Emily sat next to Tucker. “I know about Miranda’s assault. I know you went with her to the police station, that you took pictures of her injuries.”
“She said she would press charges. She promised me she wanted him out of her life.”
“She lied to you,” Emily said gently.
Tucker met her gaze; his eyes were dark pools of anguish. “After I caught them, I waited for Coe to leave and then I—I only wanted to talk, Momma, but Miranda wouldn’t listen. She kept pushing me and yelling at me. I put my hands around her neck. I just wanted her to stop yelling. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I swear.”
“What about Jessica Sweet, son?” Roy asked.
“I don’t know. She kept on me about Miranda, for months afterward, asking who did I think killed her. She was so heartbroken. I kept trying to comfort her, you know? It made me feel so bad.” Tucker addressed his dad, looking up at him. “Then when we were in Galveston, she went off on me. She said she knew I killed Miranda, and she was going to the cops. I was so damned scared, Pop. I couldn’t let her.”
Roy put his hand on Tucker’s shoulder.
“I thought if I put them in the woods, in the same place where the other bodies were left—” Tucker paused, wiped a hand down his face. “I didn’t figure the cops would single me out like they have, or the news reporters—they act like they hate me. Everyone does. I don’t know why.”
There was real bewilderment in his eyes, and longing, Emily thought, the same longing everyone has to belong to someone, to be loved, and it occurred to her in that moment that somehow, no matter how much attention they gave Tucker, how much they cared for him and about him, for whatever reason, he couldn’t feel it where it counted, in his heart and soul. She had loved him from the moment he was conceived, in the only way she knew, with her whole being, but the connection, the means of receiving that love inside him, was broken. How or why, who could say?
Her throat ached with her sorrow when she moved to take him in her arms, but he shifted to the floor, and before she could register what was happening, he stood up holding the Colt, Roy’s old service revolver.
He put the muzzle to his head.
“Tucker, no!” Emily half rose, wondering how he’d known it was there, lamenting anew her oversight in not moving it.
“Give it to me, son,” Roy said quietly.
Tucker lowered the gun. “Ha, ha, almost had you,” he said, but his eyes were flat now, devoid of expression. Cold. “If you give me some cash, I’ll get out of town. I’ll disappear. You won’t ever have to hear from me or see me again. It’ll be like I’m dead. I wish I was, anyway.”
“The cops will only come after you,” Roy said. “You can’t outrun this.”
He sounded so calm, Emily thought. It was as if he was simply stating the plain facts, which she supposed was true. For all of them. If they were to go to the earth’s end, the knowledge of what Tucker had done, the roles she and Roy had played in it, would be waiting there, hulking and dark.
“I can’t go to jail, Pop. You know that, and you know why.”
“Give me the gun,” Roy repeated. “We’ll find some other way.”
Tucker stared at him. He raised the barrel to his head again.
The moment spun out.
Emily felt time slowing, the air thickening. She thought of the day Tucker was born, remembering the nights she’d walked the floor with him bundled in her arms. She could feel the crown of his head, its downy softness, where it was tucked just under her chin. Another memory came, an image of Tucker and Lissa when they were young, kneeling at the coffee table downstairs in the living room, heads close together. Lissa was teaching Tucker to write his name. Oh, the concentration in their small faces, Emily thought. The two of them had been so delightful as children; they had been the light of her heart. She was half smiling when she stood up now, and as if in a dream, she shot out her arm, and closing her fingers around the gun barrel, she jerked the Colt from Tucker’s grip.
She could scarcely believe she’d gotten possession of it, but she saw it, very clearly, in her hand; she felt its weight, but then it was gone as Roy grabbed it, and at the same time Tucker lunged for it, too, and she jumped away as they fell to the floor. Looking wildly around the room, she found her cell phone, and she was dialing 9-1-1 when she heard a woman’s voice, one she recognized.
“Don’t move,” the voice said.
Emily turned. “Revel?”
27
THEY FOUND THE company van parked in the alley behind Lissa’s parents’ house, pulled in close to the back gate, driver’s-side door hanging open. Lissa and Evan exchanged a glance. They looked into the van as they walked past it, but there was no sign of Tucker. Still, every nerve, every fiber of Lissa’s being, was alive and tingling with a horrible sense of doom. She knew something awful was happening, but not what it was or how to prepare herself for it.
With Evan in her wake, she climbed the back stairs, but suddenly she couldn’t face it, couldn’t take another step, and she stopped so abruptly Evan collided with her. In the distance, she caught the rising wail of a siren. Was it coming here?
“I can’t go inside,” she whispered.
“I’m right here, babe,” Evan said. “Do you want me to go in first?”
She shook her head and, taking a breath, walked into the kitchen, and she was immediately struck by the pervasive quiet, the air of desertion. There were no signs anyone had been downstairs yet. The curtains over the sink were still closed; the countertops were immaculate. A hand towel printed with chickens was precisely folded over the oven door handle the way her mother always left it. Above it, the teakettle sat on a burner. The tick of the grandfather clock on the landing was audible and steady, the beating heart of the house, as it had always been in Lissa’s memory. She turned to look at Evan, who was a little behind her, and that’s when she caught sight of someone on the back porch, outside the door. Evan saw, too, and he moved in front of Lissa, shielding her, and the sharp intake of his breath matched Lissa’s own when Detective Sergeant Garza stepped into the kitchen with Revel Wiley on her heels.
Sergeant Garza brought her fingertip to her lips.
“What are you doing here?” Evan asked.
Lissa stepped out from behind him. “What is she doing here?” Lissa was looking at Revel, who looked nothing like she had the last time Lissa saw her. She was dressed now in a black turtleneck, black denim jacket and jeans.
“We think your brother is here. Have you seen him?” Garza asked.
“No,” Lissa said. “How do you know he’s here? What’s going on?” She struggled against a fresh wave of panic.
“We were following him and lost him near the interstate.” Garza kept Lissa’s gaze. “But then we saw you in the underpass and figured you weren’t out driving this early for no reason, that you must have heard something from him or your folks. Where are they?”
“I don’t know. Upstairs, I guess. What are you doing here? Why is Revel here?”
“I’m a cop,” Revel said, “a detective. When we met I was undercover. My real name is Devon Stowe.” She pulled her jacket aside to reveal her badge that was pinned to her belt. Lissa caught sight of her holster, too, and the butt of her gun.
Other movement out on the porch drew Lissa’s eye. More officers were gathering there, at least four tha
t Lissa could see, all dressed in uniforms.
“What the hell is going on, Sergeant?” Evan demanded.
But a sound now, something like a crash overhead, had them looking upward.
The detectives pulled their weapons.
“Stay here,” Stowe said. “Let us handle this.” She motioned for two of the uniformed officers to come inside, and along with Garza, the four, with guns drawn, moved into the hall.
Lissa watched them, ears ringing, her head hollow with disbelief. She felt Evan’s arm around her.
The seconds ticked, punching the thick silence, and then Lissa heard Detective Stowe talking, asking Tucker to put down the gun. “Nice and easy,” she said. “You don’t want anyone to get hurt, right?” Lissa heard her ask.
“Do what she says, Tucker, okay?”
At the sound of her mother’s voice, Lissa broke from Evan’s grasp. “Momma?” She flew up the stairs, pushing by the uniformed officers who tried to stop her, halting only when she reached her parents’ bedroom doorway. Sergeant Garza grabbed Lissa’s arm, but she shook free, stepping over the threshold, her breath uneven, her heart beating hard in her chest.
“Oh, Lissa, no, you shouldn’t be here.”
She looked across the room when her mother spoke. “Momma? What is happening?”
“Your brother— Tucker murdered Miranda and Jessica. We— Daddy and I found proof.”
“Proof?” Lissa frowned. “No, you must be mistaken.”
“Go back downstairs, honey,” her dad said gently from where he stood near the foot of the bed.
“Do what he says, Mrs. DiCapua.”
Lissa looked from her dad to Sergeant Stowe when she spoke, her glance falling quickly from the sergeant’s face to her hand that she held cupped over the butt of her holstered weapon.
“Get out of here, Liss,” Tucker said. He was standing several feet beyond Devon Stowe, between the side of the bed and the bathroom doorway, holding their dad’s old Colt service revolver to his temple.
“What are you doing?” Lissa asked him in a voice not much above a whisper.
“Get out of here,” he repeated.
“I will,” she answered, “when you put the gun down.”
“You don’t want to do this, Tucker,” Sergeant Stowe said. “Life is never as bad as you think.”
He jerked the revolver in her direction. “Lady, you don’t know shit about my life.”
“I do, Tucker.” When their dad spoke, Tucker whipped the Colt in his direction.
But their dad didn’t flinch. He went on quietly, keeping Tucker’s gaze. “I know how bad it is, the way I know what you did isn’t your fault. It’s mine. As a dad I really fucked up with you. I failed you on so many levels, and I’m sorry. If I could go back, if I could do it over, I would give anything—” His voice broke.
Lissa tented her fingertips over her mouth. She felt the other police officers and Evan close behind her, but they would be as afraid as she was of taking any action, of setting into motion something that couldn’t be undone.
“Tucker, please,” their mother begged.
He wheeled on her, his eyes wild, unfocused, the Colt raised to her face, and even though the movement was small, Lissa registered it when his finger bore down on the trigger. She was aware of Devon Stowe to her left, holding her weapon in a two-handed grasp, and in the second before the sergeant shot at Tucker, Lissa was aware of her father, coming at her from the right, shoving her from harm’s way, pushing past her and into the path of the bullet Stowe fired, stopping it from hitting Tucker, saving his son in the only way he knew how.
Did she scream? Lissa would never know. The blast from Sergeant Stowe’s gun was so loud that it deafened her. She watched, horrified, as her father fell, and then time spun out and nothing moved, as if this room, life, the earth, the universe itself, had lost its power.
The spell broke when Tucker fell to his knees. “Momma?” he said, and his voice was high with confusion and fear.
The other policemen rushed through the door, tackling him, pushing him down until he was prone on his belly on the floor.
Evan pulled Lissa against him, steadying her. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes, but Momma and Daddy—?” She turned in Evan’s embrace, and her heart paused when she caught sight of her father. He lay on his back, unmoving, near the foot of the bed. A bright swath of red bloomed high on the left side of his chest. He was pale, as pale as ash. Her mother and Devon Stowe knelt beside him. The sergeant was shouting into her cell phone for an ambulance.
“I’m sorry, Momma.” Tucker cried the words.
Lissa shot a glance at him, and she didn’t know him. The man in handcuffs who was being led from the room was a stranger, a monster, a murderer, and all this time, she had seen him with someone else’s face. The truth took her breath; it chilled her to her bones.
“He’s not dead, is he?” Tucker made his escort stop before he walked out of Lissa’s sight. He searched her gaze. “Jesus Christ, did you see what he did? Crazy bastard. Why did he do that? Why didn’t he let them shoot me?”
Lissa didn’t answer him.
Neither did their mother. She was bent over their father. Lissa went to kneel beside her. “Are you all right? Did Tucker shoot you?”
“No, something happened. I don’t think the Colt fired.”
“My God, Momma. I can’t believe he even aimed it at you.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
When her dad spoke, Lissa dropped her gaze to his.
He was looking at her mother. “I unloaded it.”
“The Colt?” her mother said.
“After what I almost did to you the other night—” He couldn’t finish. His breathing was labored.
Lissa watched his chest work as he took air in shallow sips. “Daddy, don’t talk. An ambulance is coming.”
Beside her, her mother was shaking badly, and thinking she was going into shock, Lissa whipped off her jacket and draped it over her mother’s shoulders. She found her dad’s hand and held it. His eyes were still open, but already the light was fading from them.
Evan knelt beside her. He touched her dad’s shoulder. “Hang in there, big guy. Help is coming.”
Her dad’s smile was more grimace.
Her mother touched his brow; she smoothed the hair at his temple. Her tears speckled his cheeks. “Don’t go,” she whispered.
He smiled at her and then at Lissa, making another effort to speak. She would always think if only it had been quiet she might have heard his last words, but they were swallowed in the sound of approaching sirens. Lissa felt the final pressure of his fingertips, and then his hand went loose in hers.
28
THERE WAS A police investigation into Lissa’s father’s shooting, but ultimately Detective Sergeant Devon Stowe was cleared of wrongdoing. She had only been trying to wing Tucker, to stop him from shooting anyone, including himself. Public opinion was overwhelmingly in her favor. She was doing her job, people said, protecting the public from a killer. Lissa heard one man being interviewed on the car radio who said it was a shame the detective’s bullet hadn’t found its mark, that a bullet was a hell of a lot cheaper than what it cost to house a murderer. There were other publicly aired comments, too: What kind of parents don’t know what their own son is up to? Couldn’t they tell there was something wrong with the boy? Why didn’t they get help for him? Why didn’t they get the guns out of the house? They should have taken better care, taken control. They should have stopped him....
It infuriated her. She wanted to defend her parents and herself, but how could she, given the proof of what Tucker had done?
A couple of days after her father died, she was alone in her kitchen when Sonny Cade called to convey his condolences. “I’m shock
ed,” he said, “but I know I can’t be more shocked than you must be.”
“I can’t make sense of it,” she admitted. She felt she would spend years trying to. Even her emotions were a forest of sensations from anger to grief to utter despair, a landscape that heaved and sank, that was different every day.
“I thought I knew Tucker,” Sonny said, and then he made a sound, something rueful. He said he was sorry, but not for what.
He might not even know, Lissa thought. “It’s hard,” she said.
“Have you seen him?”
She walked outside onto the patio, looking down the path toward her art studio. Evan was there, finishing the floor. She would go help him, she thought, when she was finished talking to Sonny. “I don’t know what I would say to him,” she said. “Neither does Mom. He’s asked us not to come, anyway, through his attorney.” Mickey had said Tucker was too ashamed and so broken with guilt and grief over his dad’s death that he’d been put on suicide watch. She wanted to hate him, but somehow her heart ached for him. “At least there won’t be a trial.”
“I heard he pled guilty.”
“Mickey said he wanted to spare us. I’m grateful to him for that.” She bent her head back, blinking into the sky, which was overcast, netted in scallops of white and gray. Before sentencing, Tucker had written to the court, asking to be given the death penalty, but the judge had denied his request, sentencing him instead to life without parole. A fate that for Tucker would be worse than death. Hadn’t he said he couldn’t take it, being closed up? Lissa stood up abruptly. She couldn’t go there, couldn’t allow images of where he was now into her brain. She would lose it, if she did.
As if sensing her distress, Sonny changed direction, saying how fooled he’d been by Revel Wiley.
“I’m surprised you didn’t know she was working undercover,” Lissa said, remembering the curious look Sonny had given her the day of their meeting when she’d mentioned meeting Revel.
“You mean because I’m an ex-cop. We don’t always recognize each other, and her disguise was damn good.”
Safe Keeping Page 25
