by Jason Pinter
Soon enough, the car made a right, and the smooth road gave way to the rocky dirt path leading into Woodbarren. With nothing to brace herself, Rachel bounced around the trunk. She kept her teeth clenched to prevent accidentally biting and possibly severing her tongue.
She memorized each turn the car took, estimated the speed, and calculated the distance between each turn. But deep down, she knew it probably wouldn’t matter.
Finally, after about half an hour of driving, the car slowed and pulled to a stop. Rachel tried to twist her body in the direction of what she thought was the trunk opening. She heard the front door open and then slam shut. Then the crunching sound of boots on snow. Then another door opened and quickly closed. And then . . . nothing.
Rachel waited. The air supply in the trunk was thinning.
She prayed her children had gotten into the house and called Serrano. She regretted her brief, ill-advised vendetta against the detective and prayed that no matter what happened, he would know what to do to take care of them. It ripped her heart open to think she was on the verge of leaving her children orphaned.
After what seemed like an eternity, Rachel heard the same crunching sound as George returned from wherever he’d been. She heard a key inserted into the trunk lock, and then the trunk itself opened.
Rachel still couldn’t see anything. She felt arms wrap around the bag, and Lieutenant George hoisted her up like she was nothing. He then tossed her to the ground like a side of beef.
The drop knocked the breath from her body. Rachel gasped for air. With her mouth covered by tape, she began to choke. Then the zipper came undone, and light seared her eyes. The frigid air bit into her skin. She could do nothing to warm herself.
Lt. Daryl George was staring at her. He appeared to her upside down. He wore large latex gloves that were duct-taped over his mittens and covered in dirt. His breathing was labored, his face bright red from the cold and exertion.
He’d just dug her grave.
“Hello, Ms. Marin,” the lieutenant said. Rachel tried to curse at him but ended up swallowing her own spit. She lay on her back, staring up at the darkening sky. Bare oak and hickory trees loomed above her, the oak branches gnarled and twisted, the hickory tall and grand. There was a terrible, frosted beauty to the cold, wintry forest.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” George said. He drew a large gleaming knife from his coat. She could see a bulge by his ankle, the outline of a gun. But gunfire would alert anyone who happened to be in the woods and possibly draw law enforcement. A knife was quieter. “You’re going to walk where I say you’re going to walk. If you don’t, I’m going to go back to your home and open up your children. And then I will bury all three of you in these woods. Do you understand me?”
Rachel nodded.
“You see those footprints to your left? You’re going to follow those as far as they take you. Got it?”
Rachel nodded again. George walked over to her and cut the plastic tie between her ankles.
“Now stand up.”
She did.
“We both know how this is going to end,” George said. “The absolute best thing you can do is make it easy and quick. If you do as I say, the worst thing that’ll happen to your kids is they’ll need therapy. And who doesn’t these days, am I right? But if you don’t do exactly as I say, I will bury their bodies on top of yours. Get me?”
Rachel nodded.
“Let’s go, Ms. Marin.”
Rachel began to walk. She was shivering uncontrollably. Her hands were tied in front of her. She stumbled among the drifts and fell forward, unable to brace herself, and came up coughing into the duct tape, her face covered in snow and dirt. She could feel a warm trickle seep down her cheek. Blood.
The snow was coming down harder now. By this time tomorrow, their tracks would be gone.
“Move,” George said.
She pushed forward, following his footsteps. They were heading deep into the wooded glen. The sky was growing dark. A flashlight popped on behind her, illuminating the snowy trail ahead.
After ten minutes of walking, Rachel’s feet were growing numb. Her hands were losing circulation. If they didn’t arrive soon, and she fell, she would be unable to pick herself up.
Then, up ahead, Rachel saw the final destination. A hole about six feet long, two feet wide, and four feet deep. A shovel lay beside the hole. She would be buried with it. At the foot of the hole were several bags of chlorinated lime, as she’d suspected. With this snowfall, by tomorrow her grave would be nothing but a part of the landscape.
Then, as Rachel stood at the lip of her own grave, she began to laugh. Lightly at first, then hysterically. She coughed and gagged but continued to laugh.
Lieutenant George walked up to Rachel and placed the knife against her throat, point first. She stared at him and continued to laugh. Then, through the tape, she said two words.
“Scuse me?” George said.
She repeated the words. And laughed.
“You scream, I make your children scream.”
He ripped the duct tape from her mouth. Behind it, Rachel was smiling. And she repeated the two words. Slowly.
“You’re fucked,” she said.
This time, George smiled. “That right?” he said. “Seems to me you’re the one in a bit of a bind here. You know, I was debating getting rid of you the moment I heard that you went to the Wickersham kid’s office. But I figured you were just a rubbernecker. Bark worse than your bite. But when you fingered John as a suspect? Well, I knew you might just be crazy enough to go to the media, create a big damn mess for me. And I couldn’t have people digging into the department. Not with so much at stake.”
“Because they’d eventually find out you were the father of Constance Wright’s child and that you killed her and Christopher Robles,” she said.
George looked down. Tapped the knife with his finger.
“We had a good thing, Connie and I. I cared about her. Truly did. But there was no way I could let that child be born. Of course, she was set on having it. She called it her second chance. And, well, if you knew Constance, there was no convincing her otherwise.”
“And nobody gets elected mayor having a love child with the disgraced former holder of that very same office,” Rachel said.
“Most folks don’t care about a man’s personal life if he can cut their taxes. Keep shooters out of their schools. But she wanted to go after Drummond and the Wickersham kid. Get back the money they swindled from her. And, well, between that and the kid, that’s just too much of a scandal for even me to clean up.”
“And yet here you are,” Rachel said. “Digging graves in the woods. What about Christopher Robles? Why did he have to die?”
“He was at the bridge that night,” George said solemnly. “I nearly had a heart attack when I saw his face on the news that morning. My guess is after the phone calls from Constance, he figured Drummond was stepping out on Isabelle. So I think he followed Constance, figured he’d catch her with Nicholas. I can’t say for sure that he saw what happened that night, but I couldn’t take that chance. And once he was in police custody, an opportunity presented itself.”
“And nobody questions an embolism in someone with a history of intravenous drug abuse,” Rachel said. “At the press conference, he was terrified. I think he knew you killed her.”
“Well, it’s just bad luck for Chris that you had to go and shoot him. You don’t shoot him, he’s not in the hospital, and who knows what happens. Funny, isn’t it?”
“What’s really funny,” Rachel said, “is that everything you did in my house today was recorded.”
George’s smile disappeared.
“Bullshit.”
“Look in my eyes, Lieutenant. Am I lying?”
George hesitated. He brought the knife back a millimeter.
“No way,” he said. “Only a crazy person videotapes their house.”
“Well, guess what?” Rachel said. “I’m damn near certifiable.”
“All right, enough. Time to go, Ms. Marin.”
George held the knife sideways across her throat, the steel colder than the air.
“Harwood Greene,” Rachel whispered.
George paused.
“What did you say?”
“I said Harwood Greene.”
George hesitated. “Harwood Greene. The Connecticut Carver. I’ve heard of him. What in the hell does he have to do with anything?”
“Harwood Greene killed my husband, Bradley Powell. My name is Olivia Powell.”
“You’re a sick woman, Rachel Marin. Or whoever you are.”
“Harwood Greene cut my husband into pieces,” she said. “Left his remains in a sack on our front porch. My son found it. I can still hear my boy screaming.”
George listened, the knife quivering in his hand, unsure what to believe.
“Harwood Greene was a home security installation technician,” Rachel said. “While installing a system for a Darien PD deputy named Jimmy Plotkin, Greene found a kilo of heroin under a kitchen floorboard. So Greene gave Plotkin a quid pro quo. Greene would keep quiet about the drugs, and Plotkin would use the police database to put together a list of homes that had recently been burglarized. Plotkin figured it was for Greene’s business, so he could sell them home security systems. But what it really did was tell Greene which houses weren’t monitored. He used it to case his victims. Find the blind spots in their homes. Our house was on that list. My husband, Bradley, was Greene’s seventh and final victim.”
Rachel could tell that George knew she was telling the truth.
“The cops found Greene by accident a few months after he killed Brad. He got pulled over for a busted taillight, and the officer decided to search Greene’s trunk. Didn’t like the cut of his jib, or something. Greene was smart. He knew the cop had no probable cause for the search. The traffic cop’s body cam clearly shows Greene reciting the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure. The cop found a spot of blood on the tire jack. It matched one of Greene’s victims. They got a warrant for Greene’s home, found blood and fibers from the other victims and dozens of horrific photographs. Including one of my son and I the moment we found my husband’s remains on our doorstep. He took photographs of the moments the victim’s families discovered what he’d done. But since everything they found on Greene was predicated on that traffic stop, there was a mistrial.”
“I remember that,” George said. “But they would have retried Greene.”
“They would have retried him,” Rachel said. “But some of Greene’s sick followers found out where three corrections officers lived and threatened their families. And so Greene disappeared somewhere between superior court and the Bridgeport Correctional Center. And so the monster was loose. We couldn’t stay in Darien. Not with him still out there. We moved to another town in Connecticut, but we needed to cut our ties to everything we used to know. I came here to keep my children away from that monster. I changed our names. Our lives. Now, tell me, Lieutenant George, am I lying?”
George eyed her for what seemed like minutes but was only seconds. He was breathing faster. Rachel could hear the knife loosening in his gloved hand.
“No,” he said. “You’re not.”
“And as it turned out, the department knew Plotkin had given that list to Greene. But they kept it quiet to save face. When department emails were subpoenaed and released to the public, I sued the city and the Darien Police Department. So ask yourself: Would a woman with two young children, whose husband was brutally murdered by a man who vanished into the wind, a woman who had already been betrayed by law enforcement, lie to you about keeping her own home secure? She would want every inch of her life guarded. Because of people like Harwood Greene. Because of people like you. So no matter what happens here tonight, somebody will find that video and see what you’ve done. So, like I said, Lieutenant. You’re fucked.”
The calm on George’s face turned to confusion, then turned to rage.
“Goddamn it!” he shouted. He looked back at the grave, and Rachel saw her one chance to get out alive.
In the split second that he took his eyes off her, Rachel swung around behind the lieutenant and draped her bound hands around his throat. And then she pulled, as hard as she possibly could.
The cop made an urk sound as the plastic bit into the soft of his neck. They both toppled backward into the hole. Rachel landed on her side. Her head bounced off a rock, and her world went fuzzy. But she held on. She dug her knees into George’s back to get better leverage and pulled.
George bucked violently on top of her. His free hand clawed at the plastic. He beat his fist against her arm. It hurt like hell, but she held on. She could feel the breath leaving him. His kicks were losing strength. But then she saw a glint of metal as he raised the hand holding the knife, and the next thing she felt was a searing pain in her thigh as he plunged the blade into her flesh.
Rachel cried out. She could see the knife handle protruding from her leg. But she held on. George ripped the blade from her thigh. Rachel swung her legs around his body, trapping his arms against his chest. She squeezed with every bit of might she had. Slowly, he managed to slide the knife upward. Toward his neck. Toward the plastic cuffs.
Then, with one stroke, George slid the blade between the plastic ties and severed the bond. Rachel’s hands fell away. The lieutenant was free.
She scrambled out of the grave and saw the knife plunge into the hard earth where her hand had just been. She could hear George wheezing. She didn’t look back. Just ran, her leg throbbing. She could feel the blood pouring down her leg, pooling in her shoe.
Then a crack filled the air, and a tree branch next to her head exploded. He was firing at her.
Rachel slid behind a large oak tree and looked back. Another shot rang out, this one whistling wide of the mark.
George was stumbling toward her, swaying, struggling to breathe. She might have crushed his windpipe. But he had enough to go on. Enough to finish her off.
“Rachel!” George shouted. His voice was raspy, like he’d chain-smoked four packs of cigarettes. “Come out, or I swear to God I’ll flay your children from head to toe.”
Another shot. The bark shattered above her, raining wood on Rachel’s head.
She leaned against the tree, trying to catch her breath. She could feel blood pumping down her leg. By the sound of it, George was firing a Ruger LCR. It had a five-round capacity.
He had two shots left.
Rachel looked around her. She saw a palm-size stone on the ground and picked it up. Rachel felt the cold in her bones. Her hands were shaking. She took one breath, poked her head to the side of the trunk to get a sliver of a view, and sidearmed the rock at Lieutenant George.
The rock missed him by six inches, but he flinched, and that caused him to fire. The shot was nowhere near Rachel.
One round left.
“Olivia,” George said. “Only one of us is leaving here alive. You’re either going to bleed or freeze to death. Your choice.”
She threw another rock at George. He ducked but kept his stride. She could hear his footsteps. He was just ten feet away. She tried to even out her breathing.
“All right,” Rachel shouted. “Swear that you’ll leave my kids alone.”
“I give you my word,” he said.
Like you gave it to Constance.
She thought about Eric and Megan, when they were younger. Back when they were still Sean and Chloe Powell. When they were a young, full family with lifetimes of happiness ahead. Brad would come home and wrestle with his young son, Rachel’s heart melting as he kissed his infant daughter gently on the head. She remembered the way he’d taken care of her during and after each pregnancy, bringing her water, massaging her feet, rubbing her sore hips. Telling her she was beautiful even when she felt anything but and knowing that he’d meant it.
But Brad was gone. It was her duty to take care of their children now.
She was not dying h
ere tonight.
“As long as I have your word,” Rachel said, “I’m coming out.”
She stepped out from the left side of the tree, but the instant she saw George raise the gun, she spun around back behind the tree and ran at him from the right side.
The gun went off, the bullet piercing the air where her head had been a millisecond before. The final bullet. George was empty.
He reached into his pocket to reload, but before he could, Rachel was on him. She threw a punch at his injured throat, which George barely managed to deflect, but it caught him hard enough to make him stagger. Then she kicked at the side of his left knee and heard a crunch as she dislocated his kneecap.
George screamed in pain and went down. Rachel jabbed an elbow into the side of his head. She threw another elbow, but this time George caught her arm and punched her square in the stomach.
Rachel doubled over, unable to breathe. She fell to her knees, wheezing. George stumbled to his feet, dragging his injured leg. He kicked her in the side, and she felt a rib snap. He kicked again, but this time she caught his foot and thrust her palm into his bad knee. George screamed again and fell over.
Without hesitating, Rachel slid behind the lieutenant and wrapped her right forearm around his neck. She pulled her right wrist toward her body with her left hand to tighten the choke hold. He beat madly at her arm. She then wrapped her legs around his torso, pinning his arms to his sides. He kicked and spit, but Rachel squeezed his throat and held on for dear life.
George’s breathing began to slow. His kicks had little strength behind them. The gun fell from George’s grasp, and Rachel kicked it away. His breaths came out as choked gasps. She could feel the pulse in his neck slowing. He was dying.
She thought about what Myra had said. About the night she’d gone to Stanford Royce’s house. She’d done exactly what she’d gone there to do. And it had haunted her ever since.
