Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted

by Arlene Hunt

  Jessie sat immobile with her hands on the steering wheel. She looked across the street to the neighbouring houses, wondering who had targeted this one. Did they blame the family? Did they ask themselves how they had not known what moved amongst them?

  What was she doing there?

  She wished she had an answer, but she did not.

  She got out and closed the car door. It sounded heavy in the still, warm air: a solid clunk of metal on metal. Jessie walked up the garden, knocked on the door of the house and waited. Nobody answered. She stood listening for a moment and released the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. She turned to leave, but as she did, a curtain in the window nearest the door was pulled back and a woman looked out. She was heavyset, with long, thick hair hanging to one side in a plait. Jessie recognised her from the newspapers: Ana Diaz, Hector’s mother.

  Jessie nodded and the curtain dropped back into place. She waited. Nothing. She began to feel foolish, then flustered. This had been a mistake. She had taken a half turn from the door when it was yanked open and a rangy young man wearing a bandana stepped out onto the porch.

  Jessie cleared her throat, startled. ‘Hi, I’m—’

  Without pausing to break his stride, he raised his two hands and shoved Jessie in the chest, hard. Jessie fell off the porch and landed on her back in the scrub yard. Before she could catch her breath he jumped down the steps and began swinging his fists. Jessie threw her hands over her head to protect her face as blows rained down.

  ‘Fuck you, bitch, you killed my brother.’ He punctuated every word with another blow.

  Jessie rolled onto her stomach and tried to crawl towards the street.

  ‘Oh now you wanna go? You wanna go, bitch?

  He grabbed her by the collar of her shirt and began to haul her across the dead grass towards the sidewalk. Jessie choked and gagged from the pressure on her neck. Buttons pinged as she scrambled to get her feet under her. She heard someone screaming.

  ‘Javier!’

  Her shirt ripped. Jessie pitched forward onto her knees, gasping and sucking air. She curled into a tight ball but he managed to deliver a vicious kick to her ribs. Jessie cried out in pain. She tried to cover her head and caught a glimpse of a young girl flying down the steps, with an older man on her heels. The older man threw his arms around the young man who had attacked her and the girl disentangled his hands from what was left of Jessie’s shirt.

  The older man was not large, but he was strong, and he hoisted her attacker into the air, away from Jessie towards the house. Jessie rolled onto her knees and managed to get to her feet. She staggered out to the car where she collapsed against the passenger side. She spat, wiped dirt from her mouth, and looked up. The older man was half pushing and half carrying the screaming Javier up the steps, where Hector’s mother now stood motionless. They passed her by and she leaned and closed the door behind them. After a moment, she walked down the garden to the fence. The younger girl fell into step behind her.

  People had come out of their homes. They stood on their porches, silent, watching. Jessie used the car to haul herself upright. She was badly shaken; she realised most of her upper body was exposed. She pulled the tatters of her shirt around her.

  ‘I— I am…’

  Jessie leaned against the side of her car, struggling to find words. She realised she had no idea how to begin, or how to articulate her thoughts. In the end, Ana Diaz spoke first.

  ‘You are the woman who shot Hector.’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I wanted … to see you, to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened.’

  The woman’s gaze did not waver, nor did her expression change in any way. She turned and began to walk towards the house.

  ‘Please, you must believe me. I am so sorry,’ Jessie cried. ‘He gave me no choice.’

  Ana Diaz stopped walking. She said something in Spanish to the younger girl, and then went inside.

  The girl retrieved the collar of Jessie shirt and carried it to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Jessie said.

  The girl dropped the collar into her hand, leaned back, and without warning spat in Jessie’s face.

  Jessie wiped the spittle away with the collar. She pushed her hair back from her forehead and limped around to the other side of her car. She got in and tried to start it. It took her a number of attempts before she managed to get it going. At the end of the street she slowed for a stop sign and sat there, shaking. Another car drove up behind her and blasted its horn. Panicked, Jessie stalled the engine. He honked again. Then he pulled around her and drove away, leaving a blue plume of impatience in his wake.

  18

  Billy McCann’s ‘office’ was a small rough-and-tumble bar on the outskirts of town called The Rookery. Darla pulled into the parking lot shortly after six. She made sure there was nothing of value visible in her car, locked the doors and set the alarm. She had learned this particular lesson the hard way from previous visits.

  Billy McCann was of Protestant Scottish stock. He was notoriously hot tempered and a monumental drinker. He had been a good lawyer once, way back in the days before he decided he preferred the company of loose women and hooch. Not that Darla could really remember – he had been disbarred long before she left high school – but he and her father had been tight. So, when Teddy Levine needed someone he could rely on to garner information on his third wife, the much-hated Stacy, it was to Billy that he turned. When Teddy died three years ago Darla had inherited Billy, along with the family home.

  She found him now, seated with his back to the wall in his usual alcove inside the main door of the bar. As she approached, he lifted his head and she was not entirely surprised to see that he had not one, but two black eyes.

  ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘Marital dispute.’

  ‘Dallas did that?’

  Billy grinned. ‘Nah, you know I ain’t gonna let no eighty-pound nut job get the drop on me. This here is a present from Ginny’s new beau.’

  Darla thought for a second and then started to laugh. ‘Your first wife’s new husband?’

  ‘Yeah. Though how much longer they’re gonna stay hitched I can’t say.’

  ‘You didn’t!’

  ‘Well, a man would be a fool to turn down what’s freely offered.’

  Darla shook her head as she sat down. How Billy McCann was like catnip to so many of the women of Rockville was something of a mystery to her. She looked him over: Billy was six foot four in his socks, he had pale, freckled skin and sparse reddish hair, turning grey, she noticed. He was still a big man, but what had once been rock-hard muscle was now soft and running to fat, yet he never seemed to lack female company.

  Billy drank a third of his beer in one mouthful and sighed with satisfaction.

  ‘So, what’s the job?’

  ‘Jessie Conway.’

  ‘That the school teacher?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, what about her?’

  ‘That’s just it. I don’t know what; I just know there’s something not right about her.’

  Billy rested his massive scarred hands on the table. ‘Feelings are running high about that woman, Darla. If you’re planning on bringing down the hatchet you want to make sure you have a clean swing at the neck.’

  ‘I don’t think that neck’s as clean as people think.’

  ‘What has you figured on that?’

  ‘A hunch.’

  ‘That it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re getting more like your old man every time I see you.’ Billy thought it over, then shrugged. ‘Okay, I’ll do some digging.’

  Darla opened her bag and passed him a sheet of paper. Billy lifted the page and squinted at it through his swollen eyes.

  ‘This it?’

  ‘This is all anyone’s been able to get so far.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘She’s married to Mike Conway. He owns the auto repa
ir shop over on Teal. She’s only lived in Rockville eight years. I spoke to Alice Carmichael, the Principal at the school and she told me Jessie used to teach in Blowing Rock, which I have managed to get confirmed. Thing is, when I contacted them they said Jessie had been recommended to them from some employment agency over in Tennessee. That agency is now closed down and I haven’t been able to find the last place she worked before that.’

  ‘Did you ask her?’

  ‘She won’t talk to the press. Hell, she hates the sight of me.’

  ‘Maybe she was overseas or something.’

  ‘I don’t think so. And that’s not all. Jessie Conway says her maiden name was Dalton and that her parents were killed in a car crash twelve years ago.’

  ‘Sucks.’

  ‘I spoke to an old colleague and asked him to do some checking. It’s true that an Anthony and Rebecca Dalton were killed twelve years ago coming back from a friend’s house and that they lived in Lake City, Tennessee. Only thing is, he couldn’t find any mention of them having a daughter. Only a son.’

  Billy looked a little more interested. ‘You spoken to him?’

  ‘No, there’s no line on him either. But I made some discreet inquiries; Jessie Conway has never mentioned having a brother to anyone, as far as I know. Certainly no family appeared around the time of the shooting, other than her husband’s family.’

  ‘So what do you need from me?’

  ‘The Conways have complained about me twice now and old Mrs Conway has the ear of a few businesses around town, businesses that are now threatening to pull their advertising revenue over a piece I ran,’ Darla said, feeling heat rise to her face. ‘Popeye won’t give me any more rope and I can’t be seen to be digging, but there’s a hole in that woman’s history. I want you to get me whatever I need to fill it in.’

  Billy put down the page and thought about it. After a moment, he raised the fingers of his left hand and touched the swollen skin around his eyes. ‘Can’t hurt to take a break from Dodge for a while.’

  19

  Caleb dabbed iodine on his cuts, then carefully applied plasters to them, smiling as he did so. Even mortally wounded, Marcie had fought him like a tiger, drawing blood and forcing him to finish the job far quicker than he would have liked. Afterwards he had been on a high for hours, recalling every moment, every furious gasp of her mangled body. She had invigorated him.

  But now, back at the apartment, his high was fading fast and he was bored and restless. He hated the city: the cloying heat, the traffic, the noise, the sense of being walled in. His dreams, when he managed to get some sleep at all, were vivid and epic: he saw himself in the woods, carrying his bow, running strong and free.

  And now, he discovered to his annoyance, a new problem had surfaced: his funds were running low. This would have to be rectified before he gave any more thought to hunting.

  To do this he decided to concentrate on a twenty-two-year-old student named Barbara Cross. Barbara was a Category B, pure and simple; a moving target like Arthur S Weils, just waiting to be picked off. She had called the Voice of Hope helpline two months earlier, weeping over some boy and threatening suicide. Her threats hadn’t rung true to Caleb, but it had been a dull night so he’d let her ramble on. She’d called a number of times since then to complain about myriad things, usually drunk. During one call she claimed she had been date-raped by a fellow student and that it had left her withdrawn and frightened. She claimed that was why she drank the way she did.

  On her last call, she told the profoundly bored Caleb that she had phoned her rapist and demanded an apology, but he had laughed at her accusations. She said she was lonely and depressed. She had terrible taste in men, she said. She wept as she explained why she believed them when they told her bad things about herself. She said she guessed she knew why a previous boyfriend had cheated on her with a close friend and dumped her so heartlessly. She told Caleb she felt utterly betrayed and close to some kind of breaking point. She threatened suicide again. This time, Caleb decided, if she didn’t kill herself he might take the matter into his own hands,

  ‘You know, after the last time we talked I told my father about the rape. Do you know what he said to me when I told him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He said it was my own fault. He said if I hadn’t wanted to have sexual relations I had no business inviting a man up to my bedroom. Can you believe that? My own father!’

  ‘He said that?’ Caleb stared at the ceiling, thinking her father was right.

  ‘Dad’s such an asshole. Just ’cause he’s paying for college he thinks he owns me. I didn’t even want to come here anyway, that was all his idea. I wanted to do an art degree in New York. I mean how could he say that?’ she sobbed down the line. ‘I’m his little girl, he’s supposed to look out for me, he’s supposed to believe me. I just … I just want to die.’

  Caleb let her cry, figuring – correctly – that she enjoyed the theatrics.

  ‘What you’re feeling sounds normal to me,’ Caleb said, when she finally dribbled to a halt. ‘I’d be angry if someone let me down like that.’

  ‘I know, right?’

  ‘That is a harsh view he’s taken.’

  ‘That’s so true,’ she wailed. ‘It totally is.’

  ‘This boyfriend—’

  ‘Chris.’

  ‘—sounds like a real piece of work, no wonder you’re upset.’

  ‘Right, right,’ she said, her voice becoming steady again, her tears being replaced by indignation. ‘Totally. I mean like, I knew he liked Sylvia and shit, but she was my friend, right? Your boyfriend is supposed to like your friends, right?’

  ‘He oughta respect your judgment, sure.’

  ‘Right! Like her, great, but not fuck her behind my back!’

  And off she went again, wailing.

  Caleb watched a cockroach walk across the tiles towards his boot; he kicked at it, but at the last moment it changed direction and scuttled the other way. Even the cockroach, he thought, had more presence of mind than Barbara.

  ‘Barbara?’

  He waited for her tears to subside once more. They were always so pathetic when they cried, so utterly pathetic. For a brief moment he considered hanging up.

  ‘Now, you need to get yourself a pen and a piece of paper.’

  ‘Oh, oh, okay.’

  ‘I want you to write out two notes. I want you to write one to your daddy and one to this Chris guy.’

  ‘But, I don’t know why—’

  ‘Barbara, I’m tryin’ to help you here.’

  ‘Oh … okay.’

  ‘This is what you do. Write two letters. You tell them how you feel Barbara. I mean really let ’em have it, both barrels. Can you do that, Barbara?’

  ‘Yeah, okay. I can do that.’

  ‘Everything you told me, Barbara, you put it down.’

  ‘Okay … um, do I send them?’

  ‘No, you write the letters and then you seal them in two envelopes.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’

  ‘Put their names on the front of each and leave those envelopes somewhere you can see them, like a side table or—’

  ‘I can put them on the mantle. I have a fireplace here.’

  Caleb made a note of that. Fireplace. Most likely she was in a house and not an apartment. He had already gleaned from their conversations that she lived directly across the road from Latta Park, and that the dry cleaners her boyfriend worked in was on East Worthington Avenue. It wouldn’t take much more information to pinpoint her exact location.

  By the time Caleb got off the phone with her twenty minutes later, he knew the street she lived on and the car she drove. It was that easy.

  20

  Darla Levine slid into one of the red vinyl booths at Ray’s Diner and ordered a black coffee. When the waitress brought it, she added three sugars and stirred it lethargically. She watched the ebb and flow of customers, her thoughts dark, but her humour darker still. Popeye was making her life a goddamned misery. She ha
d spent the entire morning at a cat sanctuary forty miles east of Rockville, interviewing some old hippy and her creepy husband about their various rescued fur balls. Her best pumps reeked of cat piss.

  She watched the door of the café. Her big chance had come and gone. Over. It was hard enough to get a hot story in a town like Rockville, but one that stretched across the country in such a profound way was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Everything now hinged on Billy, and that was surely a most depressing thought.

  She drank her coffee and waited. Shortly after twelve, the door opened and Billy McCann entered, looking every inch the sleazy genius she knew him to be. He wore gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses, crumpled cargo shorts to his knees, what might have once been white towelling socks, and moccasins; he topped this egregious combination with a loud, canary yellow dress shirt. He carried a small brown leather satchel under his arm. Without invitation, he plopped into the booth opposite her and grabbed a serviette to mop the sweat from his face. Various curious heads glanced his way.

  ‘Shit, hotter than Haiti out there.’

  ‘You’ve been to Haiti?’

  ‘Fuck no, why the hell would anyone want to go there?’

  He removed his sunglasses and laid them on the table. His eyes looked a little less swollen, although they were still pretty bruised.

  ‘Hey darlin’, can I get a cup of coffee here?’ he called to the waitress, who was serving people at a different table. She glanced at him in irritation. ‘Be right with you, sir.’

  ‘None of that fancy, foamy crap; I want a regular cup of regular Joe.’ He turned his attention to Darla. ‘Who pissed in your cornflakes?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘The face, what’s eating you?’

  ‘Work-related anxiety. What have you got?’

  He lifted the satchel onto the table and undid the buckles. He removed a slim manila folder and slid it across the surface to her. She reached for it, but he pressed down on it with his thumb.

  ‘This one is going to cost a little extra.’