Final Scream

by Jackson, Lisa

  “No! Brig, you don’t understand. They’ve already nailed you to the cross. I was there; I heard him. Derrick’s told them about your fight with Jed, and they know you were there. The sheriff needs to hang this on someone…” Tears slid down her cheeks, his or hers she couldn’t tell, and she felt his long, smudged fingers tangle in her hair. “Please, do this. Save yourself. What good would it do to stick around for the rest of your life in jail?”

  “You don’t believe in justice?”

  “In Prosperity? When Rex Buchanan’s daughter and the Bakers’ son was killed? What do you think?”

  “I’ve never believed in the system.”

  “Then go.” She wrenched herself away. Her heart was pounding in dread, and she couldn’t lift the saddle over Remmington’s back. But Brig helped her, and within seconds she was handing Brig the wet reins. His fingers twined over hers for a heartbeat, and she fought a losing battle with hot tears.

  “Take me with you,” she whispered, and she felt him stiffen. “Just to the south edge of the property, then head east through the mountains. I—I’ll make it look like I fell there.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Brig, please—do this. For me.”

  His jaw clamped tight, but he helped her onto the horse and swung up behind her. In silence, through the sheeting rain, they rode through the fields where the air was still thick with the smell of smoke and dawn would appear within the hour. With each stride of the colt’s long legs, Cassidy knew she was closer to never seeing Brig again. She felt his arms around her and wished he’d never let go. Finally they had reached the far end of a field.

  “Stop here,” she said. Brig pulled Remmington to a halt. “This is it…Here,” she said, twisting in the saddle and slipping her chain over her head before placing it around Brig’s neck. “For luck.”

  He hesitated, then swept her into his arms one last time, his head bent to the crook of her neck, his hard body trembling. “This is wrong.”

  “It’s all we can do.” She kissed him, ignoring the painful tug on her heart. She slid to the ground to stare up at him astride the horse he’d tried to tame. Then she reached down, picked up a rock and flung it at Remmington’s rump. The colt squealed and took off at a dead run into the mist-shrouded hills.

  “I love you,” she whispered, realizing that she’d never see him again, never hear his laugh, never look into his eyes, but her words were drowned by the steady drip of the rain and the echo of fading hoofbeats.

  Nineteen

  Seated on the window ledge of her father’s den, Cassidy wanted to scream that Sheriff Dodds’s theory was lies—all lies, concocted by people who wanted to see someone, anyone, convicted of the crimes. Especially if his name was McKenzie. It had been only a few days since the fire, but Brig McKenzie, the missing town hellion, had been all but tried and convicted.

  Dodds filled an overstuffed chair, alternately studying Rex’s silent daughter and looking through the door to the gun room at the rifle cabinet with the smashed glass front. He smoothed his big hands over knees of pants that were already shiny.

  Her father sat listlessly behind his desk, a cigar burning forgotten in the ashtray.

  “The way I got it figured, McKenzie wouldn’t have run unless he was guilty as sin. Looks as though it’s just like your boy Derrick said. Jed Baker and McKenzie were at blows over Angie; they’d already had a knock-down, drag-out fight at the McKenzie trailer in front of Sunny. My guess is the Baker boy prob’ly whopped the tar out of McKenzie with his bat; that boy never did play fair. Anyway, he left McKenzie hurtin’, and once that boy got on his feet again, he tore out after Jed.”

  “Cassidy said Brig was here looking for Angie,” her father said without much interest. Nothing interested him much the past few days, and he’d been walking around as if in a fog, a haze of medication keeping him sane.

  “Maybe he did and maybe he didn’t.”

  “Cassidy doesn’t lie.” Her father cast her a quick glance as she sat at the window, staring outside to the sun-bleached hills that shimmered with the afternoon heat.

  “I know, but young girls, sometimes they take a notion, make things a little better than they were. The way I hear it, Cassidy might have been sweet on the McKenzie boy, too.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” But her father’s voice didn’t have any of his old fight in it.

  Cassidy sensed the sheriff’s suspicious gaze boring into her back.

  “They danced at the Caldwell barbecue.”

  Cassidy didn’t say anything, afraid that if she began to speak, her lies would quickly unravel. If the truth ever came out, the law might find Brig and convict him. The gossip spreading like wildfire was that Brig was guilty of arson and double murder. As to the father of Angie’s baby, everyone seemed to have their own suspicions but Brig McKenzie was at the top of the list.

  Rex sighed. “I danced with Geraldine Caldwell. That doesn’t make me—how did you phrase its—sweet on her.”

  Cassidy cast a look over her shoulder.

  The sheriff had the decency to blush. “You’re not a teenage girl all full of romantic notions now, are ya?” He motioned with his hands, as if frantically pushing all of Rex’s arguments aside. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Whether McKenzie stopped by here or not, he ended up in town lookin’ for Angie or Jed or both of ’em. He probably found Jed’s Corvette and tracked him to the mill, where Jed had planned to meet Angie. We all know how crazy he was about her. McKenzie must’ve jumped Baker, broke a couple of his ribs then knocked him out before setting fire to the building.”

  “He wouldn’t have killed Angie,” Rex said dully. “And Sunny said the fight took place at her house—that Jed had a baseball bat and used it.”

  Dodds nodded. “Well maybe, but the way I figure it, McKenzie probably didn’t know she was there. Or”—the sheriff’s eyes slitted—“maybe he did know. Maybe he heard some discussion about the baby. He’d been seen with Angie himself and the thought that she was sleeping around on him—”

  Rex’s fist thumped against the arm of his chair. “She did not sleep around!” His voice was strained with the same quiet authority few dared to cross. “Whoever’s baby she was carrying, she loved him very much!”

  “Coulda been McKenzie’s.”

  From the corner of her eye, Cassidy watched her father’s face contort in rage. Blind, dark rage. “Watch your step,” he warned. “We’re talking about my daughter.”

  “Who happened to be pregnant.”

  Cassidy’s stomach cramped painfully. The baby. Angie’s baby. Brig’s baby. Her hands began to shake, and she laced her fingers together. She wanted to run from the room, away from the discussion, but she couldn’t—she had to find out anything she could about Brig.

  Dodds backed off a little. “Okay, okay. Anyway, let’s just say McKenzie didn’t even mean to do it. He smokes and could have carelessly dropped a match and that old mill—criminey, it had to have been a hundred years old—”

  “A hundred and twenty.”

  “Yeah, well, it was a damned tinderbox and caught fire quick as a spark to gasoline. But the fire department has found a device and it looks like gas or kerosene was used. We’re still figuring it out. Maybe McKenzie planned to torch the place. Didn’t know Angie would show up.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Well, Rex, he didn’t much like you, did he? Didn’t you nearly fire him here a few weeks ago?”

  Picking up his cigar, Rex admitted, “He’d been fighting with Derrick.”

  “There ya go. Probably didn’t mind that he was burning down a historic sight, because he had a bone to pick with you.”

  “I think maybe the fight was Derrick’s fault.”

  “But you can’t fire your own son now, can you? And come on, Rex, be truthful, you didn’t like the way McKenzie was hangin’ around your daughter.”

  Her father just drew on his cigar, blew smoke to the ceiling and watched the ash turn white.

  “My guess is that he
took off on foot or stole that horse of yours—the one that’s missing—to avoid the roadblocks.”

  “It’s my daughter’s horse,” Rex said, lifting his eyes to Cassidy. Blushing slightly, she turned away from him to stare out the window again. It was hot outside—the storm drying up the day after the fire. Flies collected in the windows and all the puddles from the cloudburst had disappeared, leaving hornets to hover over the drying mud.

  Angie and Jed, after autopsies, had been buried in separate ceremonies for different faiths. In Angie’s case, St. John’s had been packed, people flowing down the steps, citizens lining up to show their sympathy and offer their condolences. The house was still filled with flowers despite Rex’s plea that money be given in Angie’s name to St. Therese’s Girls’ School in Portland. Fragrant floral arrangements filled every nook and corner of the big house. People continued to show up each day bringing food and cards and teary eyes. Everyone in town was welcomed into the grieving Buchanan home.

  Everyone but Sunny McKenzie. Dressed in some kind of Native American garb and speaking incoherently, she had been turned away at the door and told politely but firmly that her company wasn’t wanted. Ever. Cassidy had seen her from an upstairs window and had raced outside only to watch the wide rear end of her Cadillac roll away.

  Heartsick, Cassidy had walked back into the house and tried not to notice that in the foyer of the great house, between the sprays of roses, carnations, lilies and chrysanthemums, was a long polished table, topped with nearly a hundred votive candles, their flames burning bright beneath a huge picture of Angie, her smile in place, her eyes gleaming innocently. A basket for cards and donations to St. Therese’s had been placed discreetly near the shrine.

  Father James visited daily, as did Dr. Williams; one dispensed blessings and God’s knowledge, offering comfort to the soul, while the other prescribed pills and rest, relief for a weary body, all of which was supposed to help Rex scale the mountain of his grief.

  “Cassidy said she rode the horse that night,” Rex said, still obstinately defending Brig to the sheriff.

  “I did,” she replied, holding up her arm with the cast around her wrist and forearm. “Got this to prove it.”

  “She was thrown off the colt again,” her father said, his eyes seeming suddenly ancient. He tapped the ash from his cigar. “That useless colt—”

  “But McKenzie, he could have found the horse and taken off on him, or…” His suspicious eyes regarded Cassidy in a new light.

  “Or what?” Rex asked.

  “Or he could’ve gotten himself some help.”

  Cassidy’s heart nearly stopped. Her throat constricted and sweat trickled down her scalp. Sheriff Dodds was smarter than he looked.

  “Who would have helped him? Cassidy?” Rex snorted in disgust.

  Dodds pushed himself to his feet. “We’ll find out. I’ve got the best men and dogs in the state taking off over them hills. We’ll find him.” He came up to stand behind Cassidy and stare at the eastern mountains. “He won’t get far.”

  “It’s been almost a week,” Rex reminded him.

  “But he don’t have much money and only his two feet—the horse can only go so far if he’s got it. We’ll get him,” he said, hitching his pants over the roll that was his belly. “It’ll just take a little time.”

  Shivering, Cassidy attempted to appear calm though her stomach revolted each time she thought about what would happen to Brig if they caught him.

  “You still can’t be certain it’s McKenzie.”

  “Maybe not yet, but we found someone who seems to be an eye witness.”

  “What?” Rex was suddenly interested. “Who?”

  Cassidy’s breath was instantly trapped in her lungs.

  Rolling proudly on the soles of his worn shoes, Dodds kept his eyes on Cassidy. “Willie Ventura. Found him down by the river, just staring into the water. Seems he was at the gristmill that night. Got himself a pair of singed eyebrows to prove it.”

  “Sweet Jesus,” Rex whispered. “Willie?”

  Oh, God, no. Please, no—But she remembered seeing Willie skulking through the red and gold shadows of the fire, in the alley.

  “You think he could be involved?”

  “Interrogated him every way up from sideways. His story doesn’t change. He saw Brig and Angie and Jed there that night and he keeps sayin’ the same thing over and over again. ‘She burned! She burned!’” The sheriff’s big nose wrinkled in disgust. “He carries on somethin’ awful.”

  “Why wasn’t I told?” Rex demanded, his eyes brightening with interest. “He lives here, you know. Over the stable. Works for me.”

  “I told you now. We just found him this afternoon, for crying out loud. The way I see it, Willie was lucky he didn’t die, too. Prob’ly got the piss scared out of him and hid in the woods. The dogs found him while we were lookin’ for McKenzie.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Down at the county office, gettin’ cleaned up and feedin’ his face. He’s…well, I was gonna say he’s all right, but he’s always been a little off.”

  “Oh, God,” Rex whispered and buried his face in his hands.

  “So Willie, half-wit that he is, saw Brig at the scene.” Dodds seemed to figure Willie’s testimony was the final nail in Brig’s coffin.

  “Willie tells stories,” Cassidy said, unable to stand the deceit any longer. Though she suspected that the sheriff was trying to get a rise out of her, in his own way questioning her, she couldn’t help but come to Brig’s defense. “I like Willie and all, but I don’t think you can take his word as testimony.”

  “Why not?”

  She had to think fast, keep her lies straight even as she wove them into the truth. “Because Brig wouldn’t have hurt Angie, ever, and he was looking for her that night. He came here; he told me he’d had a fight with Jed and hit him with his own bat, probably broke some of his bones.” Frantic, she faced her father. “You have to believe that Brig wouldn’t have killed her.”

  “Why not?” Dodds asked, running his tongue around his teeth.

  “Because…because I think he loved her,” Cassidy said, the admission tearing her apart. “I think he was going to marry her.” Her voice was ragged, the words torn from her throat. “The baby—it was probably his.”

  “No!” Rex was on his feet. “I won’t believe it—”

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” The sheriff stared at her and rubbed his jaw. “Why didn’t you say this all earlier?”

  “No one asked and it’s…it’s only what I think.”

  “Well, if you think right, then he’d better come back and turn himself in and tell us exactly what happened. Otherwise we’ve got no recourse but to believe Willie and the corroborating evidence.”

  “Brig McKenzie is not the baby’s father!” Rex shook his head as if in denying the truth, it would change.

  “Dad—”

  “She wasn’t interested in him, not really.”

  “Oh, God, what does it matter now? Angie’s dead,” Cassidy cried. The walls of the room seemed to close in on her. Running as fast as her legs would carry her, she made her way out of the den, raced past the hundreds of flickering candles and slipped upstairs to Angie’s room. The door was closed, but she pushed it open and nearly stepped back at the rush of perfume—Angie’s scent—that wafted over the threshold. The huge portrait of Angie as a baby with her mother glared down at her and the dolls—Barbies, Kens, Chatty Cathy, and all the rest stood in perfect attention in their cases.

  Grief tore at Cassidy’s soul, and she shut the door quickly.

  Leaning against the upper hallway wall, she fought tears and her knees gave way. Where was he—she wondered as she slid to the floor. Where? She buried her face in her hands but not before she saw Sheriff Dodds, eyes narrowed, reaching into his back pocket for his can of chew, looking up past Angie’s shrine and the railing to the place in the hallway where Cassidy had crumpled.

  Cassidy glanced at the calendar. Over a wee
k had passed since the fire, and the house was still in a state of mourning.

  Deciding to escape her room, she stopped midway down the stairs as two of her mother’s best friends, Geraldine Caldwell and Ada Alonzo, were waiting in the foyer, believing themselves to be alone. “Losing Angie will kill Rex,” Geraldine predicted in a hushed whisper. From the looks of the open boxes they were carrying, they’d dropped by with homemade casseroles and a whole sliced ham, enough to feed the entire Third World, though no one in the house had any appetite. “He doted on that girl.”

  “Don’t I know?” Ada, Bobby’s mother, made a swift sign of the cross and bowed her head, giving Cassidy a bird’s-eye view of the gray roots she tried so vainly to conceal with hair dye. If only all the do-gooders would just go away and quit circling like vultures, showing up at any hour day or night, offering condolences and advice, wearing grief-weary faces, patting Cassidy’s shoulder whenever she was near. As far as she was concerned, they were all fakes. Even Earlene Spears, wife of the minister. Though Rex Buchanan had been a devout Catholic all his life, Earlene seemed to consider it her duty to represent her husband’s church and express her condolences. She’d come by, yesterday, stiff as starch, her lips drawn into a permanent frown as she noticed the flickering candles in the foyer.

  “A shame…such a shame,” she’d said, her eyes pitying, her bony hands fingering the cross suspended from a chain around her neck. “Such a lovely girl. I just hope they find that McKenzie boy. He’s nothing but trouble—always has been even from the time he was a baby. I should know, I tried to take care of his older brothers when he was born…oh, my, I’m rattling on and I just wanted to extend my most sincere condolences from myself and the reverend as well as the congregation…”

  Cassidy hadn’t been able to breathe while she was in the house and now, with Ada and Geraldine whispering in the foyer, she retreated from the banister and moved back into the shadows of the hallway toward her room, where she’d taken refuge ever since the fire. A few of her friends had stopped by, but they’d each beaten a hasty retreat once they’d said they were sorry about Angie and discovered that Cassidy was still shell-shocked and wasn’t good company.