Dust to Dust

by Beverly Connor

  There were times when Diane didn’t know if Marsha and Samuel Carruthers were actually hearing what Colton was telling them. Their eyes seemed out of focus. They looked dazed and confused.

  “Did Wendy know?” asked Marsha.

  Colton nodded. “She came home as they were moving the . . . as they were putting El into Everett’s SUV.”

  Colton had sneaked glances at the portrait as he told his story. He looked at it now as if it were Ellie Rose herself looking down on him.

  “Tyler said Wendy got hysterical there in the garage. His grandfather slapped her and she hit him back with a mop handle. Tyler said he had to get between them. He said his grandfather convinced Wendy that what they were doing was for the best.”

  “Best?” whispered Marsha. “Best?”

  “Look, Mrs. Carruthers, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I should have told you the truth years ago. But I was afraid. And then later, well, I couldn’t bring myself to relive the whole thing. I just tried to pretend it didn’t happen, until I had to come home. I only came forward now because of Stacy Dance. I’m really afraid that Tyler or his grandfather . . .”

  Colton stopped talking because Marsha was up and going to the phone. They all watched as she dialed and waited.

  “Wendy, I need you to come over.” She replaced the receiver.

  Diane didn’t imagine, given their relationship, that Wendy thought the request was strange, or, in fact, much different from other summons she probably received over the years of Marsha’s growing dependence on her.

  Marsha sat down again. No one said anything. The quiet made Diane uneasy. She was sure they all felt uneasy, but emotions were too quiet, too under the surface. It reminded Diane of a volcano waiting for just the right pressure to build up before it erupted.

  “Did you have anything to do with her death?” Marsha asked Colton after a moment. Her gaze bored into him with an intensity that seemed to literally nail him to his seat.

  “No ma’am, as God is my witness, on my father’s grave, I swear to you that I only found out after it happened, when Tyler came to my window and told me,” Colton said.

  While all their attention was on Colton and Marsha, Diane snaked her hand inside her jacket, took her gun from its shoulder holster, and put it in her jacket pocket. She wasn’t sure why she felt she needed to do this, other than she had experience with the inconvenience of having a gun zipped up inside a jacket when she needed it—or rather, Frank had.

  Her movement didn’t go unnoticed. Ross looked over at her and gave her a quick smile with a twitch of his lips. He had felt it too. It was as if emotions were becoming a miasma settling in the room that could be seen and breathed in. Diane shivered. It was cold. If she believed in ghosts, she would have been convinced that Ellie Rose’s spirit was in the room. She was glad she had worn the jacket.

  Diane heard the door open and close. Wendy had arrived. Diane unconsciously slid closer to the tall parlor palm.

  “Marsha, are you in the living room? Is something wrong? I saw those dreadful people’s cars parked across the street. . . . Oh, Colton, dear. I didn’t know you were home. How nice to see you.”

  Wendy had started talking before she entered the room and hadn’t stopped once she was there. She looked much as she had when Diane had last seen her. Nice hairstyle, but sans makeup. She didn’t come in her robe, but had slipped on emerald green slacks and a dark pumpkin sweater.

  “I thought those awful people were back—” She stopped talking when she spotted the awful, dreadful people standing next to the wall. “What are you doing here? Marsha, we can get a restraining order.”

  Marsha stood facing her. “It was Tyler all along, Wendy. It was Tyler, and you knew.” Marsha’s voice was quiet and came out in a rasp.

  “What? Marsha, are you all right?” said Wendy.

  “Tyler killed my baby girl and you knew, damn you. Damn you to hell.” Marsha’s voice was loud now and shaking with anger.

  Wendy looked as though Marsha had hit her in the stomach with a baseball bat. There it was, the knowledge she dreaded anyone ever knowing.

  “I don’t know what these people have been telling you,” began Wendy.

  “I told her,” said Colton. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Walters, but Tyler told me when it happened and I’ve been carrying it with me all these years. With what’s been happening, it has to come out. You know that.”

  “Why? Why did you cover it up?” said Samuel. “I thought we were friends.”

  “How can you ask that?” said Wendy. “It was an accident. Ellie was dead and nothing could bring her back. I didn’t want Tyler’s life to be ruined too.”

  “What? You didn’t want your son’s life to be ruined? What kind of self-centered,” began Marsha. “I see it all now. You here all the time keeping me drunk so I would never suspect.”

  “Now, wait a minute. I did everything in my power to help you get over it,” said Wendy. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Get over it? Get over it? You thought this was something we could just get over? You insufferable bitch!” Marsha stepped toward her. “You even have the gall to call it an accident? He raped her. Your son raped my daughter and choked her to death.”

  “He was just fourteen. She was fifteen,” said Wendy.

  Samuel Carruthers stood up and faced Wendy, balling his fists. “Are you saying this was our daughter’s fault?”

  Wendy backed up several steps. “No, really, I just, it’s just that Tyler was so young. He didn’t know what he was doing,” she said.

  “Didn’t know what he was doing? God, apparently you are as clueless as I’ve been these past years,” said Marsha. “You didn’t know that your father-in-law took Tyler to a brothel for his thirteenth birthday? He knew what he was doing, all right. He knew plenty what he was doing.”

  “What? What?” said Wendy.

  “It’s true, Mrs. Walters,” said Colton. “Tyler told me about it.”

  Wendy put her hands to her face and screamed. For a moment Diane thought she was going to claw her own eyes out, the way she dragged her hands down her face, but she bent over and heaved.

  Diane stepped forward. “There’s something. . . .”

  She didn’t get to finish. She looked up and saw Tyler Walters standing in the doorway.

  “Colton, I protected you from Everett all these years,” said Tyler.

  Tyler wasn’t tall, but he did look in shape. Diane thought of the way Colton said that Tyler’s grandfather made him work out. He had black hair like his mother and the strange dark blue-flecked eyes like his great-aunt. He could have been handsome, were it not for the curl of his full lips, and eyes that were a little too far apart. But perhaps he was considered handsome to young women nowadays. Diane didn’t know. She found him creepy.

  “I know, buddy, and that’s why I texted you what I was doing. I thought you deserved a heads-up on what was coming down,” said Colton.

  Colton told Tyler what he was doing. Diane wanted to smack him. Colton was still fourteen where his friend was concerned. He still thought it was some kind of mistake. Well, hell.

  “I left Athens as soon as I got your text message. I guess you’ve already told them everything,” said Tyler.

  “Look, Tyler, you’ll have to admit, a lot of shit’s been going down. This Stacy Dance thing, and Mrs. Carruthers has been treating my mother pretty bad. I had to do something.”

  Marsha cast a glance at Kathy Nicholson. Diane thought she saw a little regret.

  “Tyler, I’m calling the police,” Marsha said.

  “No, Marsha, you’re not.” Tyler pulled a gun from behind him and pointed it at her. “I want everybody just to sit down and think things through.”

  Chapter 59

  “Tyler,” said Wendy, “what are you doing? Where did you get that?”

  “Mother, will you stop talking to me like I’m twelve?” he said. “Now, everybody just sit down.”

  He looked over at Diane and Kingsley where they stood leaning against th
e wall. He stared at them like nemeses he’d longed to see in person.

  “You, come over here and sit down on the couch with Colton and Kathy.”

  “Tyler, there’s something you need to know,” said Diane.

  “Shut up. That’s the last time I’m going to tell you. Talk again and I’ll shoot you.” He waved the gun at her.

  Diane and Kingsley walked to the couch and sat down, Kingsley by Colton, Diane between Kingsley and the arm of the sofa. Diane tracked Tyler as he walked back and forth between her and Samuel Carruthers. Were it not for Samuel in the line of fire, Diane would shoot him, or at least shoot his leg. It was against what she had been taught—go for the midsection. Psychologically, Diane had a hard time with killing someone. But she could. She had.

  “Marsha, sit down,” he said, pointing the gun at Mrs. Carruthers, who shot daggers at him with her gaze as she took a seat.

  “Mother, get that chair over there and sit in it. I’ll just stand over here. Now, I need to figure this out.” He wiped his hand over his forehead.

  “Damn it, Colton, this would have been a lot easier if you had kept our bargain,” he said, turning the gun on his friend.

  Colton held his hands in front of him. “Look, man, this is wrong. This isn’t you, Tyler.”

  “It’s me, Colton. It’s me.” Tyler beat his chest with his free hand. “Get that through your thick head. This is me.”

  “Tyler, honey,” said his mother, “stop this. You were so young at the time it all happened. This isn’t you.”

  “Mother, will you please? What is it I have to say to get you to shut the fuck up, huh?”

  His mother whimpered and covered her face with her hands. Diane wondered what the hell he was so intent on thinking through. Just how had he planned to get out of this?

  Diane’s cell phone binged the tones telling her she had a text message. Tyler looked over at her.

  “Gimme that,” he said.

  As Diane removed the cell from her pocket she flipped it open and glanced at the message: ug srchd bts Cqns shrd n clst.

  Tyler looked at the message. “What’s this?” he said. “What does this say?”

  “Gotcha,” said Diane.

  Diane saw it in his eyes before he raised his hand, the flare of anger, the emotional call to violent action. Her hand was still in her other pocket, on her gun. She aimed as accurately as she could under the circumstances, and shot through the jacket, hitting Tyler in the shin, shattering his tibia. Lucky shot. But then again, he was close. She was up and grabbed his gun as the others were still gasping. Tyler fell to the floor and held on to his leg, moaning.

  “Tyler!” screamed his mother. “What did you do to him?”

  “She shot him, you stupid bitch,” said Samuel Carruthers, jumping from his chair. He grabbed Tyler by his shirt and hit him across the face. “You piece of crap. You piece of waste.”

  “Stop,” cried Wendy. She jumped up and grabbed Samuel around the waist. “Stop it. You’re a doctor; help him.”

  Diane gave Tyler’s gun to Kingsley, took her phone, and started to dial the police.

  “Stop right there. Just stop right there and put down that phone and those guns.”

  They all jerked their heads up at the sound of the different voice. A man in his seventies stood in the doorway to the living room, well dressed in brown slacks and matching sport coat, and holding a Glock 9mm. Diane guessed this was Everett Walters. Well, great.

  Everett Walters may have been in his seventies, but he apparently took his own advice about keeping in shape. He was well built and tanned. He appeared strong and his gun hand never wavered.

  “You, Samuel, get off my boy and wrap up his leg. Ty, wipe the blood and snot off your face and stop whining.”

  He looked at Diane. She expected his eyes to be the color of his sister’s, but they weren’t. They were a lighter blue, piercing, cold. She didn’t look away.

  “You,” he said, gesturing his gun at Diane, “put your gun down on the table over there. You do the same,” he told Kingsley.

  The two of them laid down their weapons beside Diane’s phone.

  “Boy, didn’t you check them for guns?” he said.

  Tyler said something that Diane didn’t understand. He was the kind of guy who was all bluster when he had the gun, but reverted back to being a child when someone took it away from him.

  “Everett,” said Wendy, “they know.”

  “Shut up, girl. They know nothing. It looks to me like the two of you came in and shot my boy here. That’s what I see. What this Nicholson boy said means nothing. Hell, he might have been in on it with Ryan Dance. They can’t prove anything. Everybody just keep your mouths shut and we’ll all get out of this. These two are a couple of thugs. That’s what we’ll tell the police. Who’s to say different?”

  “Me,” said Marsha. “Your boy, as you call him, raped and killed my daughter.”

  “Stupid woman, you’re not going to believe what Nicholson said? Sit down and listen. I’ll tell you how this is going to go down.”

  Apparently he had been listening at the door, thought Diane. Tyler must have called him.

  “Now, listen here,” said Samuel Carruthers. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here like this after what you’ve done?”

  “I’m the guy with the gun. And I’ll always be the guy with the gun. Listen here. What they’ve said is a lie.”

  “He admitted it,” said Samuel.

  “Did not,” said Tyler.

  “If you’ve finished tying up his leg, sit down,” said Everett Walters. “Everybody sit down or I start shooting, and fuck the consequences.”

  Samuel had torn a piece off Tyler’s shirt and tied it around his leg. He tightened it so that Tyler yelped and he sat back down in the chair beside his wife. Diane didn’t think he really did much in the way of tending to the wound.

  “We might just have a home invasion. Those are going around.” Everett grinned at Diane with nicotine-stained teeth.

  “Apparently,” Diane said. “Sometimes, though, it doesn’t play out the way you expect. You’ve made some assumptions that aren’t supported by the facts. Now, you can tell me to shut up, like Tyler did. But I’m the one with the knowledge of all the crimes and what the police actually have. That’s why you sent the assassin to my house, isn’t it? To kill the person who could make the connection.”

  Diane heard someone suck in a breath.

  “Everett,” said Wendy, “this has gone too far. Look what you’ve done to my son. Don’t you have any conscience?”

  “Shut up, woman.” He didn’t even look at her when he spoke, but stared at Diane.

  “She got a text message on her phone,” said Tyler. His face was streaked with blood and tears, even though he made an effort to wipe it with his sleeve.

  “Text message? Is that something we should be concerned about?” said Everett.

  “There is so much you don’t know,” said Diane. “Yes, it is something you should be concerned about. But first, you need to tell Tyler how you played him. Tell him the truth . . . that he didn’t kill Ellie Rose.”

  Chapter 60

  Diane attracted all their attention, including Kingsley’s. It was Marsha who recovered first.

  “What? You mean Ryan Dance is guilty after all? After all this! Just what are you playing at?”

  “Ryan is not guilty,” said Diane. “What Colton said is true, to a point. I tried to explain, but Tyler threatened to shoot me if I spoke. Mr. Walters, you need to tell Tyler the truth.”

  Diane had a plan in mind. It wasn’t a particularly good one, but it seemed like very few of her plans were, in this kind of situation. Rushing either one of them was out of the question, so she would try the old divide et impera approach. It had worked for the Romans.

  “What?” said Tyler. He rocked back and forth, still holding his leg, trying not to cry.

  “Tyler raped Ellie Rose,” continued Diane. “He choked her to unconsciousness and she
was badly hurt. She hit her head in a fall, I suspect, while Tyler was fighting with her. But then Tyler called his grandfather for help, and Everett Walters came, prepared with a hatchet, just in case he got the chance. And he did. When Ellie was trying to get up, he struck her down.”

  “Oh,” whimpered Marsha. “Oh God.” She put a hand over her mouth and rocked forward. Her husband reached out to her.

  “When he got rid of her body,” said Diane, “he struck her head against a rock to disfigure the wound—using blunt-force trauma in an attempt to hide the evidence of the sharp weapon that killed her.”

  Diane stared Everett in the eyes. “You tried to make it look as if her head were injured when Dance threw her body down the embankment. And fortunately for you, Gainesville had a brand-new medical examiner with a track record of making wrong calls. But another medical examiner recently analyzed the photos of the autopsy and saw the sharp cuts in the skull that you tried to obscure.”

  “You bastard,” said Wendy. “You freaking bastard—all this time . . .”

  “Just your ME’s word against ours, seems like to me,” Everett said. “Don’t listen to her.”

  “Tyler needs to listen. He can redeem himself,” said Diane. “It’s not too late.”

  “You got nothing,” Everett said. He pulled a straight-back chair from its place near the wall beside the fireplace, sat down, crossed his legs, and looked very smug.

  “You saying I didn’t kill El?” groaned Tyler.

  “That’s what I’m saying,” said Diane.

  “Don’t listen to her, boy. She’d say anything,” said Everett. “She’s desperate.” He grinned at Diane.

  She could see her plan had little chance. Tyler was in too much pain, he was only half listening, and his grandfather had a big hold over him.

  “What was the text message?” said Tyler. “What does it mean? Someone please get me some painkillers?”

  “Please,” said Wendy. “Samuel, you must have something. Give him something.”

  “He can take the pain for a little while,” said Everett. “Just until we figure this thing out. Everybody stays in the room so I can see them.”