The Payback Man

by Carolyn McSparren

  “None of this gets to the nitty-gritty. You’re a killer. You’ve got to pay for that.”

  Neil sounded tired. “Okay, I’m a killer. Just how did I do it when I was home in bed with Posey?”

  “You weren’t. And I can prove it.”

  For the first time, Neil sat up and gave Steve his full attention. “Prove it, how?”

  “In good time. I’ll tell you before I kill you.”

  “That’s what this is all about? Killing me? You’ll never get away with it.”

  “That’s what I would have said about you. We were both wrong. So how’d you get the drug into my wine at the restaurant? What was it? Some of Posey’s sleeping pills?”

  “Who says I did?”

  “I say. And into Posey’s, as well. You may have made love to her when you got home, Neil, but then she went off to lala-land, while you walked through your backyard and into mine, opened the back door with Posey’s key, killed Chelsea, took her jewelry and broke the window. Two minutes, tops. You knew I’d call you the minute I found her. You were there before the police—through our yards again. Any trace of forensic evidence they might have found could be explained by that second trip. Of course Posey said you were in bed with her. What was she going to say? She was blotto and never heard you leave? Then all you had to do was sit tight and make certain the jury convicted me. Would you have let me take a lethal injection?”

  “No!” Neil bolted out of his chair. Steve stopped him with the gun. “No, I’d never have let you die. I did everything I could to get you off on a lesser charge. When they sentenced you to six to twelve, I knew you’d be out in three or four years. What’s three or four years? You’re still a young man.”

  “You have no idea how long three or four years can be. So you admit it. You killed her.”

  “I don’t admit it. And you can’t prove it, no matter what you say.”

  “Yes, I can. Amazing that evidence still exists. You’re not the only one who knows I’m innocent. Ever hear of a cold case investigation, Neil? That’s what my lawyer has been running. You made a mistake that would send you to prison if I was to let you live.”

  “For God’s sake, man, what?”

  “The knife that you used to stab Chelsea. It supposedly came from the drawer beside the stove in my kitchen. You identified it. Just like the one you had.”

  “Yes, I identified it.”

  “Wrong. Chelsea wasn’t much of a cook, and definitely not as neat as Posey the perfect homemaker. That night you couldn’t take a chance on Chelsea’s hearing you open the kitchen drawer and coming to investigate. You took the knife from your set in your kitchen to stab her with. Then after she was dead, you took the knife from our kitchen and put it in the drawer in your house to replace yours.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s say I did that. They were identical. You’re not giving me some nonsense about fingerprints, surely, after all this time?”

  “Not fingerprints. You didn’t know that Chelsea had used that knife to pry open a stuck window in the kitchen. She’d chipped a tiny piece out of the blade, and she’d gotten a couple of flakes of that special white paint lodged between the end of the blade and the hilt.”

  Neil’s face was a picture. He’d aged a dozen years in five minutes. He no longer paid attention to the gun in Steve’s hand. “I don’t believe you,” he whispered.

  “I never saw the pictures of the weapon until a few days ago. I knew then it wasn’t my knife. You had a telephone repairman yesterday, didn’t you? Did Posey bother to tell you?”

  “What?”

  “He’s a private detective hired by my lawyer and my sister. He found the knife in your kitchen. It’s not there now. It’s in a laboratory under a microscope. The microscopic bits are still there, so is the nick in the blade. The people who own my house now haven’t repainted and let us take a sample of paint from that window. Remember how we laughed when Chelsea spent so much time having the paint mixed? White is white. But it’s not, Neil. It’s one of a kind. And so is the paint on that knife. And only you had access to it.”

  “That’s not enough. Any good lawyer could find a judge who’d rule that inadmissible because of the way you got it.”

  “Vickers says he’ll have no trouble getting it admitted into evidence. Why didn’t you dump the jewelry you stole into the river, Neil? It was stupid to keep it all these years.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Neil had gone from confused to frightened. His hands no longer lay on the arms of his chair, but twisted in his lap convulsively.

  “That detective is good. He knew what he was looking for and the way most people think when they hide something. The police never even tried to search this place, did they?”

  “Why should they?”

  “To find Chelsea’s jewelry—the things that were taken off her body that night. Granted they were beautiful pieces—that ring her mother left her, the pearls I gave her for our anniversary, the diamond bracelet. But to keep them—stupid, Neil. Truly stupid.”

  He sounded stupefied. “They found them?”

  “Did you think you’d picked such a great hiding place? Wrapped in a piece of oilskin in the back corner of the swimming-pool pump filter? Come on, Neil, what if the pump had broken? The pool man would have been fifty thousand dollars richer.”

  “I didn’t hide them.”

  “Oilskin takes fingerprints, old friend. The prints are still readable even after all this time. I don’t doubt they’ll be your prints. Why keep denying what you did?”

  “Because he didn’t do it.”

  Steve whirled, gun raised. Posey stood in the doorway in an old chenille robe and bare feet. The gun in her hand was small, but no less deadly than Steve’s.

  He didn’t think he’d have recognized her. She’d put on at least fifty pounds. Her face sagged. With no makeup, her skin was mottled, the cheeks flushed as though she had a fever.

  “Posey, go back to bed,” Neil snapped. “I’ve got this under control.”

  Posey giggled. “See, Steve, you had it backward. I drugged you and Neil, not the other way around. Neil always thinks he has everything under control. Neil, darling, you don’t have anything under control and never did. Put your gun down, Steve, before I shoot it out of your hand. I can do that, you know. I’m a very good shot. One of the few things I could do better than Chelsea. Although I’d really prefer to put a bullet through your damned heart.”

  “Posey, don’t.” Neil slid in front of Steve. “Come on, sweetheart. Steve’s an old friend.”

  “Friend? He came here to kill you, Neil. To our home! To destroy my family! Get out of the way. He’s an escaped killer, he broke in, he had a gun, I woke up, came downstairs and killed the man who killed my sister. Simple.”

  “No more killing, Posey!” Neil’s cry was anguished.

  Steve stood dumbfounded.

  “We’ll say Steve came over here after he killed Chelsea, changed the knives and hid her jewelry in our pool filter to incriminate you.”

  “And the fingerprints?” Steve asked.

  Posey shrugged. “I’ll think of something. I should have noticed the knives were different. That was stupid. But keeping the jewelry wasn’t stupid. I certainly wasn’t going to throw away Mother’s heirloom diamond ring. It’s six carats.”

  “Why did you kill her?” Steve asked. “She was your sister.”

  “My sister. My beautiful sister, Daddy’s girl who inherited the money when little Posey wasn’t smart enough to keep it out of the hands of fortune hunters. The sister my husband still loved even after he settled for me. The sister who was going to back her dear husband in a brand-new venture so he could walk out on me and Neil and leave us holding the bag. The sister who spent her life trying to advise me on my diet, my clothes, my hair, my makeup, my house, my husband and my life. That sister. Right.”

  “And you framed me. Why?”

  Posey tossed her head. “Who else was there? I certainly didn’t owe you
any loyalty. Besides, if you were in jail, I got all Chelsea’s money. Finally. I should have had it all along. Neil, get out of the way. It’s time to end this.”

  Without taking his eyes off her, he said, “I won’t let you. Steve, get out while you can. Run. I promise I won’t call the police. Just go.”

  “You covered up for her?” Steve asked incredulously.

  “Of course I covered up for her! Whose fault do you think it was that she hated Chelsea so much? Steve, I’m begging you.”

  “And the evidence?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Just go, for God’s sake.”

  “Not necessary, Mr. Waters.” The new voice spoke from the darkness of the hall behind Posey.

  She screamed.

  Steve saw the spit of fire from the barrel of her pistol as the man knocked her arm upward.

  Neil grabbed his left shoulder and fell back against Steve. “Damn,” he whispered.

  “Neil!” Posey screamed, and tried to run from the strong hands that held her. “Oh, God, I shot him!”

  A moment later she was on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her. She kept screaming for Neil.

  Steve dropped to his knees and supported Neil’s head.

  “It’s just a flesh wound, Neil. You’ll be okay.”

  Neil’s eyelids fluttered. “Poor Posey. Poor old Posey….” Then he passed out.

  The room was suddenly full of big men. Steve handed over his pistol, pulled his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans and, with a grimace, ripped off the small microphone taped to his belly. “Did you get it all?”

  “Every word,” Schockley said. “Should be enough to get you off and put them both away for a long time.”

  “Then it’s over?”

  “Not quite, but I’d say you’re on the downhill swing. Hang in there, Chadwick, just a little longer.” He glanced at his watch. “You’ve been gone over an hour. Time we got you back to the farm. I’ll have one of my guys drive you. We’ll alert the warden on the way.”

  Steve dropped his head back the moment he sank into the front seat of the unmarked cruiser. He was exhausted, but for once it was a good kind of tired. He could finally tell Eleanor everything tomorrow. He could come to her clean, not a killer. A man who would soon be free.

  And tomorrow he’d take care of Sweet Daddy once and for all. Somehow he’d get him sent back to Big Mountain.

  The driver spoke to the prison, then looked at Steve strangely.

  “You got a situation at the farm, Chadwick. The cow barn’s on fire. They think there may be people inside.”

  Steve came instantly alert. “People? Now?”

  “Yeah.”

  Eleanor. She’d found out somehow he was gone and had gone looking for him. She could have run into Sweet Daddy or one of the COs. Like Mike Newman. God, he should have warned her!

  “Drive, please! I’ve got to get there.”

  The car tore away from the curb.

  SWEET DADDY CARRIED an open gasoline can marked “motor pool” in each hand. He dropped them in the aisle in front of the barn office. Some of the liquid splashed onto the concrete. The smell of gasoline rose from the puddle.

  “I said he’s gone! Bastard run off and left me!”

  Eleanor said, “He hasn’t run anywhere.” She tried to sound certain, but her heart was pounding. Was this why he hadn’t spoken to her in days? So that he wouldn’t lose his damned focus?

  “Ain’t in the compound, ain’t in the mess hall, ain’t down here. Damn! I told the man what I’d do he didn’t take me with him.”

  Sweet Daddy stamped his skinny foot in impotent fury.

  Eleanor edged backward toward her truck. She’d lost. Sweet Daddy was right. This time she felt in her bones that Steve was not down in the pasture with a cow. She clenched her stomach muscles to keep the fluttering in her insides down.

  Why couldn’t Steve have hung on? Had her first assessment been right? Had she always been simply a means to an end, to giving him the leeway to escape, to kill Neil and disappear?

  She ought to alert the COs immediately so they could go after him, put out an APB or whatever they called it.

  She also ought to alert Neil Waters to the danger he was in.

  But Steve could be killed if she did. She had to find him and stop him before he committed the final act that would separate him forever from the rest of mankind.

  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, woman,” Sweet Daddy snarled. “I told Steve. I warned him. I’m not going back. He’s out. Now I’m leaving on my own.”

  “Go on back to the compound before the COs find you’re gone.”

  He moved toward her. She’d never realized how like a snake he was. She kept backing up, waiting for the moment to break and run.

  “You think you can outrun Sweet Daddy? Ain’t no female stop Sweet Daddy.” He kept moving forward. His body language became cockier with each step. She hated his smile and the glint of that gold tooth.

  Suddenly she bumped into one of the concrete pillars.

  In an instant he was on her, twisting her wrist behind her so that she gasped with pain. His cheek was close to hers, his breath in her ear. She smelled the acrid scent of his body.

  She ignored the pain and tore at his face with her free hand.

  “Ow!” His grip loosened. He put his hand to his cheek. “Bitch! I’m bleeding.”

  She grabbed the corner of the column and used it as a lever to pull herself around.

  Run! She was four inches taller than he was. She ought to be able to outrun him.

  She felt his hand twist in her hair.

  He yanked her head back, and when she screamed and tried to pull his hands away, he wrapped his free arm across her throat.

  She couldn’t breathe. She struggled, tried to pull his arm away from her throat, tried to stomp his feet, kick back against his knee, twist around to kick his groin—all the things that were supposed to work against attackers.

  But Sweet Daddy was used to battling women. He knew the tricks.

  He twisted her away from the front of the barn and threw her facedown against the stacked bales of hay just past the office.

  “You through giving orders, bitch. You ain’t ever dissin’ Sweet Daddy again.”

  She rolled over on her back. “Touch me and they’ll hunt you down and kill you. And if they don’t, Steve will.”

  “Steve’s gone, and he couldn’t kill squat. Time they dig this place out and find what’s left of you, I’ll be so far under with my ladies, ain’t nobody gonna find me.”

  Eleanor froze in horror. His gold tooth flashed in the sudden flicker from the lighted wooden match in his hand. He unbuckled his belt. When he saw her face, he began to laugh.

  “Sweet Daddy could teach you some tricks all right, if I had the time, but I gotta get my ass out of here in your truck while they all trying to keep this damn place from burning to the ground. This’ll do to tie you up till the fire gets going good.”

  “Please, you can’t. The animals won’t be able to get out.”

  “Neither will you, bitch. Get up.”

  “Go to hell.”

  “You first.”

  She realized the thing he pulled from behind his back had once been a long steel blade used to scrape the sweat off horses. Nobody’d noticed it was missing. Now light glinted off the sharpened side, the pointed end. He must have spent hours carefully honing it into a knife.

  Sweet Daddy knew how to use a knife.

  Eleanor felt her gorge rise. She remembered those pictures of the woman he’d assaulted—the woman who’d testified against him. Sweet Daddy knew how to use a knife, all right.

  “You think I won’t cut you? You do what I say. Get up.”

  She struggled to her feet. Screaming would do no good, for no one would hear. She couldn’t reach her truck or her cell phone, or even the panic button on her pager that sat so handily in the front seat of the truck.

  He grabbed her hair again and tossed her away fro
m the hay. She stumbled once, recovered, then faked another stumble. If she could somehow get into Marcus’s pen, she’d be safe. Sweet Daddy wouldn’t dare follow her in there.

  She could tell Marcus knew something was wrong. He stamped and snorted nervously as close to the electric wire as he could get without touching it. She could hear the horses at the far end of the barn nervously stamping and kicking in their stalls, too. They sensed danger—maybe smelled Eleanor’s fear. She thanked God the cow and her new calf were safely back in the pasture.

  “You ain’t goin’ nowhere,” Sweet Daddy snarled.

  In her haste to get to Marcus’s pen, she tripped over one of the jerry cans and fell on her hands and knees on the concrete. She heard the can tip and the glug-glug of the gasoline as it ran out.

  She couldn’t let Sweet Daddy flick another match now. Even if she could get out, the horses and Marcus couldn’t. She needed a weapon, something that would keep that knife from slicing into her.

  A towel, a horse blanket, anything that she could wrap around her forearm would help. She looked around and saw nothing that would do. There wasn’t even anything to throw at him.

  Sweet Daddy grinned at her and kicked over the other can of gasoline. It, too, began to flow out onto the concrete, down the aisle and under the hay.

  She was close to Marcus’s stall now. If she touched that electric wire, she’d get a jolt, but not nearly so bad as a knife in her throat. She reached behind her, and Sweet Daddy realized what she planned to do.

  “No!” He lunged at her.

  And slipped in the stream of gasoline.

  She felt the pain as the blade sliced through her jacket and across her forearm. Another lunge and he’d have her. She grabbed the fence, took the jolt, realized she couldn’t possibly open the gate in time and didn’t have the strength to vault a five-foot fence. She was trapped.

  “You gone plumb crazy?” Big loomed up out of the darkness behind Sweet Daddy.

  Sweet Daddy whirled, making circles in front of him with his knife. “Ain’t your business, fool.”

  “Who spilled gas? That’s right dangerous.”