by Lee Goldberg, Scott Nicholson, J A Konrath, J Carson Black,
Carlita stood, her breasts swaying beneath her shirt, her ripeness in defiance of time and truth. Jacob licked his lips. He wondered how much she had changed, if she was still as moist and frantic as she had been that long-ago night of the trade. She’d lived hard in the meantime, and Jacob planned to let her live harder. Much harder.
“How you going to do her?” Joshua asked him.
“By accident, the way we always do it. I figure the river. It was dark, she slipped, hit her head on the rocks.”
“Too bad you can’t burn her up, huh?” Joshua’s stained grin was like that of an opossum’s in a chicken house.
“Don’t want to push my luck,” Jacob said.
“You’ll get all kinds of sympathy for your loss. If you get away with it.”
“I don’t like this,” Carlita said to Josh. “I thought we take the money and go home.”
“Jake and me, we made a new deal.” Joshua took a long swallow from the bottle in his lap. “I get the house and money, the fancy stuff. I get his good life, and he gets mine. I finally get to be a Wells, and he gets... well, he gets what he wants.”
“He gets your life?” Carlita shook her head. “You have no life.”
Jacob was aroused by the memory of her writhing under him, panting and urgent then pushing him over to climb on top, then accepting him from behind, from the side, demanding, hungry, a wild thing that Renee could never be. Opening up parts of himself that he didn’t know existed. She had made him feel alive. She had made him want to kill.
Jacob smiled and took her by the wrist. “Get in the car.”
“The gas mileage sucks,” Joshua said. “And don’t drive drunk because the tag’s expired. You ain’t got enough money to bail yourself out of jail.”
“We’ll manage,” Jacob said. “We’ll get by on love, right, Carlita?”
“You’re both loco,” she said.
He pulled her to the doorway. Carlita slapped at his arm, eyes imploring Joshua to help her. She spat at Jacob, a wad of her saliva sticking to his pink cheek before beginning a slow crawl down his face. “Let me go, pig.”
“Just head on along,” Joshua said. “After a month or two, you won’t even know the difference. Jacob will never do it as good as me, but hey, you never noticed before.”
“Before?”
Jacob grinned. “Didn’t you wonder about that night?”
“Which night?”
Joshua hoisted his tall boy of Budweiser and showed the bobbing knot of his neck as he swallowed. “Ten years ago. When we first made the trade.”
Jacob dragged Carlita to the door, but her legs collapsed and she became dead weight. The mobile home shook with their struggle, teetering on its cinder block pillars. Renee’s voice came from outside, calling Jacob.
“Now for my part of the deal,” Joshua said. He rose from the couch, staggering, eyes bright and red. He tossed his Budweiser can into the corner of the living room, stirring a cockroach. His belch tainted the air as he pushed past Jacob and Carlita. “Here I am, honey,” he called.
Jacob wrapped his arms around Carlita and hauled her outside. She grabbed the door jamb, kicking her feet, but Jacob could hardly feel the blows against his shin. Her fingernails skreeched against the metalworks of the door, then he yanked her free.
Renee had reached the Chevy and leaned against it, catching her breath. Her hair was tangled, the knees of her pants torn and the bare skin stitched with blood and briars.
“Come on inside, honey,” Joshua said to her. “We got a lot to talk about.”
“Jacob?” She twisted her head in confusion.
“What?” Joshua said.
Jacob still loved her, in a strange way, and he almost regretted what he’d have to do. But she’d wanted to be a Wells, she’d signed up for the company plan, and she was worth two million dollars dead.
Sometimes that’s just the way it went. Sometimes you were worth more dead than alive.
Just ask Mattie.
Jacob dragged Carlita to the Chevy. She elbowed him in the side, and he fought an urge to slap her. That’s what Joshua would do, slap her silly and throw her down on the ground. He wasn’t Joshua. Not yet.
Renee grabbed him, trying to pull him away from Carlita. “Leave her alone.”
Jacob shrugged away from her grip and flung the driver’s-side door open. Held by only one arm, Carlita squirmed free and spun, spittle flying from her mouth, fists raised in front of her. Jacob closed on her, cornered her between the mobile home and the toolshed. He backed her toward the shed. She dodged to the left, but he tackled her and they wrestled on the ground.
“You stinking bastard,” Carlita said, her blows raining on his back with the sound like that of a dull drum.
“Jacob!” Renee called, but Joshua held her now. She writhed against him, much like she probably had when Joshua was planting the seed that became Mattie.
Enraged by the memory, Jacob picked up Carlita and shoved her into the toolshed, then slammed the door and snapped the hasp.
“Jake!” Renee screamed. “Help me.”
“Right here, babe,” Joshua said, laughing as he pinned her against the Chevy, obviously enjoying the contact as she squirmed beneath him.
“You’re crazy,” she said to him. “What have you done to Jacob?”
“I let him be himself,” Joshua said. “That’s something you never did.”
“How the hell do you know what I did or didn’t do?”
Joshua reached into his back pocket and pulled out a handheld tape recorder. He pressed a button and thumbed up the volume. The hiss of the tape drowned out the roar of the river below then came Jacob’s voice, compressed and flattened, but recognizable, eerily similar to the voice of the Rock Star Barbie.
“It’s the only way, honey,” Jacob said on the tape. “The fire will start downstairs. When the alarm goes off, I’ll get Mattie and we’ll meet you outside. That way no one will suspect anything.”
Jacob approached the Chevy and smiled as Renee’s voice came on the tape: “I’m worried, Jake.”
He mouthed the words that he’d said next, in sync with the tape. “A million dollars, honey.”
Joshua clicked the tape recorder off as Renee slumped in surrender. Carlita must have found something blunt and wooden, because she was hammering on the shed door, causing slivers of wood to fall from the planks. The wind had risen, and the air had gone cool with the dying of the day. The sun now touched the ridge, an obscene orange ball whose light smeared the clouds into stained rags and sent fingers of hellish flame across the homestead.
“You taped it,” Renee said to Jacob.
“You know how I feel about insurance.”
“Goddamn you, you taped it.”
“If we got caught, I wasn’t going to go down alone.”
Joshua slid the tape recorder into his shirt pocket. Though Renee had stopped struggling, he kept her pinned against the car’s fender. Or maybe he just enjoyed the heat of her body. “A Wells never fails.”
“And two Wells are better than one,” Jacob said.
“You’re insane,” Renee said between sobs. “Both of you.”
“Shit,” Joshua said. “I ain’t the one that killed my own kid for money.”
“Yes, you are,” Jacob said. “I never would have done that. But you would.”
“Hell, I started the fire, but you’re the one that fucked up. You were supposed to get her out of there.”
Jacob grinned, and the expression felt like a live snake across his face. “I tried. But maybe I didn’t try as hard as I could.”
Renee stared at him, then past him, eyes wide and blank. “Jakie. Oh, Jakie.”
“I couldn’t let her live,” Jacob said to Renee. “You can see that, can’t you?”
“Oh, Jesus, Jacob.”
Joshua spat. “What the hell, it was another million, right?”
“It’s all Christine’s fault. She died natural and it paid good. Mattie was just too healthy.”
R
enee sagged and Joshua released her. She fell to her knees, sobs wracking her shoulders. She tried to speak, but the words became gasps. The sunset threw the migrant camp into a golden light, the color of Jacob’s memories. Of watching Carlita and Joshua through the window, of fantasizing that he was his younger brother, that he could trade his life for Joshua’s.
Only he couldn’t trade fifty-fifty. He was too deeply in debt.
“Two million for two kids,” Joshua said to Renee. “And two million for you. But I’m taking a down payment first. I got a feeling you ain’t had a real man in years.”
“What about the autopsy?” Jacob said.
“Shit. Semen got DNA, don’t it?”
“Well, we got the same DNA, so go for it.”
Renee looked at Jacob, wondering about the next breath and how it could possibly force itself from the sky and into her constricted, brick-hard lungs. She’d pushed him to this. She was the one that put value in material things. She wanted the Wells world, the power, the land, the respect. She’d wanted to be a Wells more than Jacob ever had.
Mattie, that was an accident. But Christine. . .
As if he could read her thoughts, Jacob said, “I didn’t kill Mattie for the money.”
He sat on the Chevy’s hood and lit a cigarette, then blew smoke into Joshua’s face. “I killed her because she was yours.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Renee’s muscles were damp rags. Her tongue was swollen in her mouth, her throat tight. The ringing in her ears was so intense she might have misheard Jacob.
Mattie was Joshua’s?
The revelation made the horizon blur on the edge of her vision and the sky was an obscene and smothering ocean above her. Her head throbbed, her eyeballs ached, her jaws clenched. Her intestines felt as if they had been yanked from her gut and knotted around her larynx. But beneath the sick pressure in her rib cage was a small and sick glow of joy—she bore no blame for Mattie’s death.
It was all Jacob’s fault.
But what was Joshua saying about Christine?
She couldn’t understand, didn’t want to. The pounding on the shed door was like the beat of a bruised wooden heart, and Carlita’s Spanish curses and screams came in muffled arrhythmia behind it. The sun cast doomsday lava over the land. Renee closed her eyes and put her hands over her ears, but it was too late. The knowledge had entered and could never be purged.
Jacob had killed their children.
“Get up,” Joshua shouted at her in his rough, smoky voice. She opened her eyes to the scarred tips of his boots. She lifted her head, though gravity was an unforgiving enemy.
“Hear what he just said?” Joshua said.
She couldn’t speak. Words had become gravel in her lungs.
“He torched our kid,” Joshua said. “Ain’t that just like a Wells?”
She shook her head and an impossible smile came to her lips. The sunset was warm on her face, the air pine-sweet, the river churning and cold below. This was the far end of the world, this land that had created the Wells twins. The gates of hell must surely be somewhere nearby, waiting for them all to enter.
“Our kid.” Joshua snorted with derision. “Reckon my seed took where his wouldn’t.”
She tried to arrange his words into a sensible structure. Language had become an elusive snake burrowing into a moist hole in the riverbank. All she knew was the song of the river, its sibilant rush, its bright splashing against stones, slithering toward a place far away.
That August night when Jacob had taken her by force, had spent his passion into her again and again, when she’d fully opened herself to him and let him reach and join in that most sacred sanctuary. It hadn’t been Jacob after all. It had been Joshua.
Even in that drunken darkness, she should have known. Maybe she had known but deceived herself. Maybe she’d craved that side of Jacob he would never let slip from his control. And the wanting had brought Joshua to her.
Wish me, cooed the mad voice in her head. Wish me that two Wells are better than one.
“Come on,” Joshua said, reaching down and grabbing her arm. He pulled Renee to her feet and put an arm around her. His sweat drowned out the wet smell of the river. She leaned against him, a rag doll with a hot wire girding its spine.
“Well, Jake, let’s get ‘er done,” Joshua said. “Sounds like Carlita’s getting a mite restless.”
“Wait a second,” Jacob said. “Don’t you get it? I killed your goddamned kid.”
“Big whoop-dee-shit.”
“I won, see? I fucked you over harder than you ever fucked me. I’m more of a Wells than you are.”
“Oh, I get it now. That blame thing. It’s all my fault you killed Momma, right?” Joshua slipped a cigarette between his lips and lit it. When he exhaled, the smoke strangled Renee. “You won nothing,” he said to Jacob.
“Carlita,” Jacob replied.
“You could have had her for a few thousand, dumbass. My first time, it only cost twenty bucks. But four million ain’t bad.”
Jacob nodded at Renee. “Paid in full, brother.”
Renee’s legs trembled. Her mind was crushed by the wild clouds above, the fog of God’s breath, the rising twilight that darkened the eastern horizon. Joshua eased her toward the Chevy.
Two million.
Her line on Jacob’s M & W insurance policy.
Jacob was getting rid of her, too. Cashing her in, just as he had done their children.
Means to an end.
And Jacob’s end was to become his brother.
“I figure the bridge,” Joshua said.
“Not bad,” Jacob said. “She lost her footing in the dark, fell into the river, and smashed her head on the rocks. Blacked out and drowned. Another tragedy.”
“Them Wells sure do got bad luck.”
“The grieving husband and father. No one will blame me for marrying Carlita so soon after my loss.”
“And the money suits me. Carlita’s kind is a dime a dozen. I don’t know what it is about her that drove you so donkeyshit.”
“She was yours.”
Joshua opened the car door on the rear driver’s side. Renee tried to pull away, but he shoved her into the stinking seat amid the fast-food wrappers and empty beer cans. Jacob climbed in behind her and slammed the door while Joshua got behind the wheel. Renee sat up but Jacob put his weight on top of her.
His mouth pressed against her ear. “Sorry about the kids. But this is the only way.”
“You’re crazy,” she managed to say.
“No, Joshua’s crazy. Because this is the kind of thing I would never do unless I was him.”
Joshua started the car with a rumble of pipes. Music blasted from the speakers, Johnny Cash singing about the green, green grass of home. She crawled across the seat and lunged for the door, but the handle was missing. She tried to climb over the seat but Jacob grabbed her hair and yanked. The engine gunned and the car lurched forward, bouncing on sprung shocks as it crawled along the narrow dirt road.
Renee slumped against the rear of the seat, her head turned toward the dark window. Only the outlines of the trees were visible and the ridges were black humps against a violet sky. Johnny Cash hit the last verse of the ballad, awakening from a dream to find himself in prison facing a death sentence.
“Why, Jakie?” she said to the window. In the dashboard’s dim glow, she could see his reflection in the window. His twisted face, narrowed eyes, and bright scarred skin made him look like a demon.
“Because you wanted me to,” he said.
Joshua reached down to the floorboard and pulled out a can of beer. He steered with his elbow while he popped the tab. Foam sprayed across the windshield, lathering the twin troll heads that hung from the mirror. “No, she wanted me to,” Joshua said. “Ain’t that right, honey?”
“Shut up,” she said. “You made Jake do this.”
“It was his idea. All I did was nudge him along. See, I always wanted what was best for him. Not like you.”
“I gave him everything.” She turned to Jacob. “I gave you everything.”
The tears came and it was as if she was looking through greased glass. Jacob sneered at her and said, “You gave Joshua everything. You had Mattie for him.”
Her voice cracked like her mind was cracking. “I didn’t know.”
“I thought Christine would make up for it. But she wasn’t as perfect as Mattie. She wasn’t a Wells.”
“How could you?”
“Christine was easy. No whimpers with a plastic bag, no blood, no questions asked.”
Renee said nothing. She was next to die, but she didn’t care anymore. Perhaps in heaven she would have her children back. She could spend an eternity begging their forgiveness, and maybe one day on the far side of forever, they would love her again.
Johnny Cash went into a song about a highwayman, dying and coming back again and again. The vocal part was taken over by Willie Nelson, then by someone she couldn’t recognize. She lost herself in the slick guitars, a “Wish me” game of dissociation and despair.
Joshua finished his beer and tossed the can behind him. The car hit a rut and he bounced high enough that his head hit the roof. He cursed and slowed down a little. The night had become liquid and the Chevy moved through it like a bottom feeder.
“I mean, you’re sweet and all,” Joshua said to her. “But you ain’t as sweet as money.”
“You know what’s funny?” Jacob said to his brother.
“What?”
“You’re going to be richer than the old man.”
“Shit fire. That’s great. Maybe I’ll dig the old bastard up and prop his skeleton at the dinner table. Piss in his coffee cup.”
“He always did love you best.”
“Naw. That was Momma.”
“You would have killed her if I hadn’t gotten to it first.”
“Well, you beat me at one thing, I reckon.”
The Johnny Cash was winding down in a repetitive guitar riff. Joshua stopped the car and killed the engine. “Here we are.”
He opened his door and the dome light blinked on. Renee could hear the river churning below. She recalled her drive over the bridge and pictured the water thirty feet below. It wasn’t a far enough fall to kill her unless her head hit a rock. But bad luck followed the Wells family.
