Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  He took a deep breath, and clicked it open.

  Found it. Let’s talk.

  Sara was surprised by the damp warmth in the air as she walked to the rendezvous point—a cul-de-sac that the developer had cut out of the woods and paved the previous fall. Within a few months another group of big houses would rise up from the empty lots but for now the area felt a little spooky in the early dark.

  Madison Reidy was waiting for her in the Range Rover. She slipped out of the driver’s seat and left the door open as Sara approached. They spoke in near-whispers in the conversation that followed even though they were 200 yards away from anyone who might have heard them.

  The conversation ended with one final, anxious question—“Are you sure about this?”—from Madison.

  Sara nodded, feeling surprisingly touched by the girl’s genuine sense of worry for her safety, and impulsively stepped forward and gave her a hug.

  “I’m not scared,” she said, “and you shouldn’t be either.”

  She slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat, grasped her new phone, and got behind the wheel.

  “I’ll call you when I get there,” she said. “And again when I’m ready to come home.”

  Kieran stood next to the window in the front section of the house and held the curtain a few inches aside and watched Sara Porter step out of Madison Reidy’s Range Rover. She had told him about the turnabout in their “friendship” in one of the long, rambling voice mails she had left him. He was still confused about how it had happened, and the sight of Sara in the girl’s car felt like yet another aftershock to the events of the week and the terrors that surrounded Aidan’s death.

  Sara was talking on the phone, her expression impossible to read in the darkness of the overcast night. She had begged him to allow her to come see him—telling him through three calls and at least as many texts that she was “worried” about him. He had delayed his response as he tried to sort through his feelings, to see how things with Caruso evolved, and had waited a whole week before deciding what would happen next.

  He watched as she hung up the phone, and felt an anxious shortening of his breath as she stepped onto the front stoop of his house. Her long black hair hung loose and swayed back from her face in the light wind, stirring his memory of her hands against his heart, coaxing his body back to life and saving him from the nightmare of his death. The concussion had led to two days in the hospital and the sensation that his brain had somehow been reset with a new round of medications. The voices and the visions of Nurlene were gone, the memory of the accident like the scene of a bad dream.

  He wanted to believe it would be this way from now on; his mind clear and steady. But he knew the grief would stay with him, a leaden weight to carry forever.

  He opened the front door before she could knock. She anxiously met his eyes. He had no doubt about why she had insisted on seeing him, and he was prepared to do as she was about to ask.

  For a price.

  There was a determined set in her shoulders as she crossed the threshold, steeling herself, he thought, as she entered his house for the last time.

  Sara had envisioned the reunion often during the week since Kieran had saved her and it felt like a dream as it was happening, a shifting collection of images that would become forever ingrained in her mind.

  He was standing with the door open as she approached. He shut it quickly as she stepped inside. She thought she heard the thunk of the deadbolt being thrown but surmised that it had been her imagination as she turned to look at him in the dark entryway. He was barefoot, wearing faded jeans and a dark, loosely fitting sweatshirt. She tried not to stare at his half-shaven head with its criss-crossing stitches. After all that had happened she had expected to feel terrified and even repulsed by his presence.

  She had been wrong. Her heart felt like a hummingbird trapped in her chest as she stood on unsteady legs and thanked him for agreeing to see her.

  He said nothing, and the slight shrug of his shoulders made her feel as if he would have been fine leaving things the way they had been a week before, as if he had no curiosity or concern for how she or her family were faring.

  The thought worried her as he turned and led her back into the main room that Kieran had built. She gave it a quick glance—saw dishes scattered across the table and the couch pillows flattened and disarrayed, as if Kieran had been sleeping on them.

  And then she glanced toward the hallway that led to the bedroom and remembered the horrible moment she had looked at his computer and seen the links to stories about the killing of Ms. Jenkins, the death of her mother, and the other woman who had died on the same night.

  A misunderstanding. Her mind skipped through the simple explanation she had put together for all of it. Kieran had been thinking about her mother’s car accident and the murder on the mountain because they had happened within a couple miles of his house. And like everyone else at Langford he’d paid special attention to the death of Ms. Jenkins because she was a teacher he saw every day.

  She told herself once again that it all made sense, despite the phantom pain in her wrists; the memory of Kieran holding her against the floor; and the memory of the anger in his eyes, which had made her feel as if he truly wanted to hurt her.

  Your imagination, she thought.

  Your fears.

  She stood still as Kieran sat down on the coach, then sat on the upholstered chair across from him.

  She nervously felt the worn nubs of the fabric underneath her fingertips and crossed her legs at the ankles and thought of the words she had arranged and rearranged in her mind, telling him that she knew her father was about to be arrested and going as far as asking him if Detective Caruso had come to his house during the past week before the narrowing of his eyes and the rush of color in his face stopped her.

  “So that’s what this is about.”

  The tone of his voice hit her like a warning. Her breath faltered. She shook her head and told him, “No.”

  “Then what do you want Sara? Why are you here?”

  He got up and stood over her. He was staring at her as if she had betrayed him—as if the attempt to protect her father had been the only reason for her need to see him again.

  She scrunched her shoulders close to her neck, a self-protective reflex.

  “I’m here because you saved me,” she said.

  She thought of the strangling force of his arm around her neck on the night of the accident; and the slickness of his blood on her face as she blew air into his lungs.

  “And because I saved you too.”

  The words hung in the air. After several seconds she saw a slight tensing in Kieran’s shoulders. His face seemed to narrow in front of her eyes, his cheekbones taking on sharper angles, his eyes glazing. He looked wounded—as if she was forcing him to relive what had happened. She dreaded the thought of leaving him there, alone in his dimly lit house; tried to imagine him calling someone who would comfort him. She had always known that he had no real friends; that his devotion to Aidan left no time for them, and that her own affection for his brother had been the lifeblood of the bond between them. A bond she desperately wanted to feel again as she stood up, feeling the magnetic force that drew her to him, even now. He stayed still when she stepped toward him, his legs slightly apart, looking as if he was daring her and willing her to come closer, until suddenly he was only inches away. She tilted her head upwards, the room blurring around her as she imagined him months into the future, his hair thick and flowing, hiding the scars, his face and body no longer weakened by his injuries.

  She placed her palm against his chest and felt the rapid beat of his heart for one long wonderful moment before he reached up and grabbed her wrist.

  His grip was tight and almost painful as he leaned down and kissed her, faintly at first, their lips just barely touching before she felt the tip of his tongue. She responded as s
he always had, overcome with desire as he held her, and allowed herself one long moment of imagining the two of them together before she opened her eyes and gently stepped back.

  “I…” Her breath faltered. “Need to go.”

  He moved her hands down to the backs of her thighs and pulled her against him. The walls of the room seemed to fall away, the desire nearly overpowering her before she broke away again.

  “I’m seventeen,” she said.

  A shadow crossed his face.

  “You could get into trouble.”

  It sounded like a threat, the opposite of what she had intended. His jawline hardened as she looked toward the front door, gauging how long it would take to get there. To turn and walk calmly away, as if she had nothing to fear.

  Instead she stayed where she was, and reached up and touched his cheek again, and told him:

  “I love you Kieran. I always will.”

  He drew slightly back, as if she had somehow managed to give him the same off-balance feeling he had always given her. The shift in power was subtle but certain and transpired in the span of a few seconds as she stepped away and moved toward the front of the house and methodically reached for her scarf and coat.

  She imagined herself using the power, asking him once again about the possibility of saying nothing about what he had seen on the night Aidan died. The words—please don’t let this happen to us—almost came to her as she turned around to find him standing next to the desk, a white envelope in his hand.

  He stepped forward before she could think of what to say, then pressed the envelope against her chest and held it there until she took it from him.

  The envelope was worn, as if it had been folded and unfolded, and discolored. The words john caruso were written on the front.

  “You’re right,” Kieran said. “You saved me.”

  His voice was hoarse, and weak.

  “This is what you get in return.”

  She looked at the envelope again. There was a hard triangular shape inside. Kieran had made it sound as if giving it to her was a sign of gratitude, but she saw a mix of pain and anger in his eyes.

  “I don’t understand,” she told him.

  “I had it in my coat pocket last Saturday. So it would be found…after.”

  His voice faded. He held her eyes as a resolute look came to his face.

  “Give it to your father. But read it first.”

  She turned the envelope over, looking for some additional clue as to what it contained. Despite the look in Kieran’s eyes she tried to imagine that this night wasn’t the end, that he could somehow see her as someone he could love.

  But how do you love someone you tried to kill?

  She slipped the envelope into her coat pocket and then wrapped her knit scarf around her neck and walked to the front door. Madison Reidy’s Range Rover was parked where the Jeep had been a week earlier, and covered with a fine mist that caught the glow from the light over the concrete stoop.

  She headed toward it, feeling certain that she had failed as she turned to see Kieran watching her from the front window, waiting for her to go.

  Stephen was in the kitchen and thinking about dinner when his cell phone rang. He pulled it from his shirt pocket, saw John Caruso on the caller ID, and reflexively put it back. He wondered if Caruso was calling to tell him that Frederick County deputies were on the way to arrest him, but he knew the time for gestures of consideration was over. The arrest, when it happened, would come without any warning.

  But please, not tonight, he thought. I’m not ready.

  He looked out at the family room, taking in the burning fire, the quilts atop the sectional couch, the picture of at-home serenity, and thought back to his ruminations in the study. A conviction and prison time for manslaughter would mean the loss of the house, because without an insurance settlement for Lori’s death he could only keep up the payments with savings for a matter of months. Sara and Kenneth would be uprooted once again, to guardianship by his brother’s family, in upstate New York.

  Upsetting but not terrible, he thought. Frank and his wife and kids had always adored Kenneth and Sara, and he had no doubt his kids would manage to find the emotional equilibrium they needed to survive if he was indeed sentenced to prison.

  Unfortunately that certainty did nothing to stop the stinging sensation in his eyes and the tightness in his chest as he thought of being separated from them, in a cell hundreds of miles away.

  The phone stopped ringing but he continued staring at it for nearly a minute before he heard the beep indicating he had a voice mail.

  He paced across the kitchen as he listened to the message. Caruso’s voice was matter-of-fact but without the official edge. He had “new information about Lori” that he considered “extremely important.” He wanted to pay a visit within the next half hour.

  He put the phone down on the counter, telling himself to think it through. Caruso wanted to charge him in the death of Aidan O’Shea and by now he would have gathered all of the physical and circumstantial evidence he needed. But none of that had anything to do with Lori. As of a week ago Caruso had still refused to believe she had killed herself and from the beginning he had been intent on proving it.

  He picked the phone back up, opened it to the dial pad. Electronic music pulsed from Kenneth’s room upstairs. Within the hour he and his sister would be sitting across from him at the counter, eating dinner and making conversation, talking about anything but Lori’s death. He was still wary of facing Caruso and getting more questions, but if there truly was important news about their mother they deserved to hear it.

  He took a long, deep breath, willing himself to stay calm as he called him back. Caruso answered on the first ring and Stephen heard the sound of traffic in the background, as if he was already on his way.

  The conversation was awkward from the beginning, with terse hellos and uncomfortable eye contact as he led Caruso into the den off the foyer and quietly closed the door. He thought of offering coffee but held back as he considered the stiffness of Caruso’s posture and the probability that he would be even more uncomfortable with the pretense that it was a social visit.

  The right decision, he guessed, as Caruso told him:

  “I’m not going to talk about Aidan O’Shea, Stephen. It wouldn’t be appropriate without your lawyer present at this stage in the process.”

  Caruso’s tone brought a sinking feeling to his chest. “All right,” he said, and sat down on the edge of the couch.

  Caruso took a chair and sat slightly forward, his hands clasped together, forearms on his knees.

  “You’ve watched the news this week, so you already know a lot of what we know about Joseph Niles.”

  He nodded. The coverage had been voluminous and had gone into great detail about the shooting death of April Devon and Niles’ attempt to kill Sara and Kenneth.

  “On the phone you said you wanted to talk about what happened to Lori.”

  “Yes,” Caruso said.

  He sat very still. “Then…I’m all ears.”

  “You know about the woman was killed at the side of the road the night Lori died.”

  He nodded.

  “I’ve always believed Lori either saw it happen or drove past right afterward. I thought the killer knew she could identify him. I think he chased her and that she was trying to get away from him when she came to the curve. She wouldn’t have had a lot of time to react if she hadn’t been expecting it.”

  He stared back at Caruso, remembering the high bluff and the gorge below, imagining the sight of headlights in Lori’s rearview mirror as she pressed the gas pedal to the floor.

  “So you’re saying it wasn’t suicide. And that all along you thought she was chased.”

  “That’s been my theory.”

  He felt strangely alienated. Regardless of everything else that had hap
pened he had always believed that Caruso would have kept him informed about every aspect of his investigation into Lori’s death; facts and theories alike.

  “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t really know how,” Caruso said. “It was a terrible thing for you to have to imagine. But you’ve known all along that I didn’t believe she killed herself, Stephen. And now we have proof.”

  He felt a sudden shortness of breath. “What kind of proof?”

  “Five years ago Joseph Niles murdered his wife. But because there wasn’t any physical evidence tying him to the crime he was never charged. We didn’t know about this when he was hired here in Frederick County last year, but April Devon did.”

  Caruso paused and held his eyes, watching him carefully.

  “How?”

  “April was his wife’s sister. She knew his job would be in jeopardy if we became aware of his past. I believe she blackmailed him—forcing him to stake her in the business she opened. I can’t prove it, but there are financial transactions that make me pretty sure I’m right.”

  “Okay.” He looked past Caruso, toward the window and the darkness outside, thinking of the few times Lori had mentioned April, usually in the context of the decorating but at least once in a conversation about her kindness toward Kenneth.

  “I never met April,” he said. “But I know Lori liked her. So I’m guessing there’s more to this story.”

  Caruso nodded. “At first I assumed April’s motives were financial—she had something on Niles and used it to her advantage. But shortly before she was killed she told me she had more personal reasons for being here. She wanted to keep an eye on him, to make sure he knew she was watching him. And she felt a lot of anxiety over what was going to happen to his son, Marco. She knew that he was already a seriously messed up kid because of things that happened to him as he grew up.”