Final Scream

by Jackson, Lisa

  “He’s not a freak, Mom. He’s—”

  “Creepy.” She fiddled with the strand of pearls at her throat. “Think about it. Living in the same house with him? I hate to say it, but it’s time I put my foot down. It’s my house, too, and the way I look at it, he goes or I go.”

  “Mom—”

  Dena’s cigarette quivered in her mouth. Ashes dropped to the floor, and she bent down quickly to brush them aside. “I—I don’t know what else to do,” she admitted, and when she straightened, tears shimmered in her eyes. “Your father has become so unreasonable lately.”

  “Calm down. It’s not so bad—”

  “It is, Cassidy,” she finally said, her voice breaking, her fingers dabbing at the corners of her eyes to catch her tears without streaking her mascara. “Being married to Rex Buchanan is a living hell. For the first time I’m beginning to understand why Lucretia took her own life.”

  Thirty-nine

  T. John cut the engine of his cruiser and kicked a clod of dirt from his boot. He’d spent parts of the last two weeks chasing down leads of Sunny McKenzie sightings. It was getting old. He was beginning to believe that he had as much chance of catching her as of running across the alien spaceship old man Pederson claimed landed in the middle of his field, scorching the grass and scaring the hell out of his herd of black-faced sheep. In T. John’s opinion, Pederson tugged a little too much at his own moonshine—some kind of beer he made himself—but moonshine just the same.

  His back muscles popped as he stretched and stepped over the curb in front of the 7-Eleven. Inside, a couple of kids played arcade games. Another boy was trying to eye the girlie magazines tucked beneath the counter, and a woman with a squawking baby was buying a package of disposable diapers.

  Same old. Same old.

  He smiled at the clerk, Dorie Reader, a fiftyish woman with a mean pair of legs, barrel body, and frizzy blond overpermed hair. As he slathered up a sausage dog, he asked about Dijon mustard.

  “I already told you, T. John, if you want somethin’ fancy and sophisticated, go across the street to Burley’s.” T. John snickered. It was their running gag because Burley’s, a local strip bar, had been shut down as many times as it had been open. Before working homicide, T. John had often as not done the closing.

  Two scoops of onions, some pickle relish, a glob of yellow mustard, and he had lunch. Since he couldn’t have a beer, he settled on a super-sized Coke and ordered a pack of Camels along with a roll of antacids.

  “Bon appetite,” Dorie said as he used his butt to open the door.

  “Same to ya.” Outside in the glare of midday sun he noticed a few teens loitering around the door of Burley’s and knew it was only a matter of time before the department would have to get another injunction against the place. Too bad. Burley was an okay guy, trying to pay off alimony and child support to three wives and providing Prosperity with a little honest entertainment. The girls got up on stage and danced, jiggling their tits and twitching their fannies, but the customers were kept at bay and the dancers used disguises and assumed names. Burley made sure no one was hurt or insulted and the girls were paid well for their trouble.

  But despite Burley’s honest intentions, there was always trouble. A lot of liquor, too much testosterone, naked girls and the invariable handgun; add to the mix, the overactive and judgmental sermons of the Reverend Spears, and Burley never seemed to get a break. If it wasn’t the customers acting up, it was the religious nuts. In T. John’s opinion, Burley should give it up, but the man seemed to think it was his God-given mission to provide T & A to the locals.

  Spears could spew his rage from the pulpit, march against the place and condemn its patrons all to hell, but T. John knew some of the reverend’s most devout members of the congregation were probably nursing hangovers on Sunday morning from downing a few and watching the near-naked dancers bump and grind on Saturday night.

  He eyed the surroundings through his aviator sunglasses and chewed on his sausage dog slowly. Today his trouble wasn’t Burley’s. Nope. Today he was tied in knots, as he had been for nearly two months, over the damned Buchanan sawmill fire. Floyd Dodds was on his case, wanting a solution, hoping that T. John could scare him up a culprit or at the very least a scapegoat, and as yet, T. John hadn’t turned up a damned thing.

  Couldn’t even locate a crazy old woman. That bothered him. Hell, even the dogs had been fooled. They had taken a pair of hounds out into the woods where the kids had sworn they’d seen the “witch woman,” let the dogs get a good whiff of an old nightgown of Sunny’s from that fancy “home” where Chase had committed her, then let the dogs run free. They’d started baying immediately, running around in confused circles, howling up a storm. But they never left the clearing, couldn’t be prodded into the woods. It was as if Sunny had just disappeared. Like the witch she was rumored to be. Maybe one of old man Pederson’s aliens had dropped down and scooped her up before hightailing her to the other side of the universe.

  Or maybe she wasn’t crazy after all. Just a whole lot smarter than anyone trying to find her.

  And so the sawmill arson and murder was still unsolved.

  No alibis had cracked. The older Buchanans had been in California, Derrick and Felicity at home with each other and the kids, Sunny had been locked up in a mental hospital, and Willie had been in town drinking. Lots of people had seen him before he went out snooping in the ashes. Only Cassidy had been alone at home, working on the computer, or so she claimed.

  But she seemed an unlikely suspect. T. John told himself it wasn’t because she was so pretty with those gold eyes and all that loose hair; she just wasn’t the type to torch her old man’s property.

  “You’re losing your touch, Wilson,” he muttered, finishing his dog. Wiping his mouth with a napkin, he tossed the greasy paper tray into an overflowing garbage can and slid into the warm interior of his county-owned car. Things were clicking along, but slowly, too slowly for Dodds. Too slowly for T. John.

  Every week he got a little more info from Alaska about Marshall Baldwin, and he was watching all of the Buchanans and McKenzies, hoping they’d trip up. But the tails he’d placed on the family had turned up nothing, and all of his talking hadn’t produced one lie that he could prove. His men were scouring all the local hospitals and clinics looking for some kind of injury that would have scarred Brig McKenzie’s body while he was growing up—a kid like that had to have broken some bones or cut himself and been stitched up a time or two. When T. John found the old records, he’d compare the injuries to Baldwin’s autopsy report. So far, no one had found any records to help him out. Other than a nose broken once or twice and a couple of lacerations, Brig didn’t seem to have much medical history at all.

  “Damn it all anyway.” At one point in his life he’d envied the wealthy. As the son of a farmer always in jeopardy of losing his few dusty acres and a wife who worked from sunup to sunset to scratch out a living, T. John, the oldest of six, had always thought money would solve most of his personal problems. Now he wasn’t so sure. The closer he got to the Buchanans and their money, the more he was certain that he’d never met a sorrier, unhappier lot of people in his life.

  He took a big gulp of Coke, downed two antacids and opened his pack of Camel straights. He’d had a feeling this case would drive him right back to his nicotine habit, and he didn’t feel one bit guilty as he lit up and sucked in a deep lungful of smoke and settled behind the wheel. He’d gained five pounds since he’d last quit, and he knew that he’d lose the weight and think more clearly if he smoked. Once the case was solved, he’d quit again. Give his lungs a rest.

  Cigarette clamped firmly in the corner of his mouth, he twisted on the ignition and backed out of his parking space. Gonzales had called with more information on Marshall Baldwin. Maybe they’d finally catch a break.

  Cassidy walked into the house. It was quiet except for the sound of running water coming from the guest room. Chase’s room. She imagined him trying to clean off with limited
use of his healing arm and leg. As often as she’d offered to help him, he’d refused, never so much as letting her have a glimpse of his bare torso or hips or buttocks, as if he were afraid that allowing themselves to be too intimate again was an irretrievable mistake.

  She dropped her purse and keys on the kitchen counter and started down the hall. She was his wife, damn it. She had a right to stare at him and touch his body as much as she wanted. She was tired of the silly games they were playing, the feeling that she was always taking the chance of violating his privacy.

  She didn’t even bother knocking, just turned the knob of his door and smiled inwardly when it wasn’t locked. She didn’t stop for a second. The window was open, letting in a hot summer breeze. The door to the bathroom was cracked, and through it she saw steam clinging to the mirror over the sink. There were noises coming from the shower: the continuous spray of water, the soft thud of a bar of soap being dropped and quiet cursing as he attempted to retrieve it.

  He’d probably read her the riot act when he found her. Fine. She didn’t give a damn. Heart racing, she sat on a corner of the bed. His bed. The one he refused to share with her. For a second she considered taking off her clothes and slipping between the sheets, waiting for him to hobble from the bathroom and find her lying naked on his turf, ready to give herself to him, but she controlled herself. No telling how he’d react.

  The drizzle stopped suddenly. She barely dared breathe, her eyes trained on the door. When it opened abruptly, she felt instant regret. Chase, a towel slung around his waist, stopped in the doorway. His hair was black and curling over his ears, his skin stretched tight over smooth, sleek muscles of a hard abdomen, dark hair swirling around his flat nipples.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked, when she stared in amazement at his body.

  “What’s it look like?” she fired right back, her voice a little too breathless for her taste. “Waiting for you.”

  “I thought we had an agreement. This room is off-limits—”

  “I’m your wife, Chase,” she said, impatience coloring her words. “There are no locks and prison doors in this house. No gates and keys. No lines on the floor separating yours from mine. We live here together.”

  “An arrangement you weren’t too thrilled with recently.”

  “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.” Her heart was drumming wildly, beating a frantic cadence, and she felt that she had to make this stand, to fight him. Or lose him. And for the first time in years she couldn’t bear the thought.

  “Maybe I haven’t changed mine. This isn’t a good idea.”

  But she remembered his lovemaking by the lake. He was lying. She walked toward him. “I’ve never had to pursue you,” she said, gaze holding his steadily. “Never. You were the persistent one. When we were first married, you couldn’t get enough of me.”

  His lips tightened. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Don’t you remember?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Not that long,” she reminded him, throwing out a hip with her challenge.

  He sucked in his breath. “A lot has changed.”

  “No, Chase, we changed. You and me. You got involved with your work and I—I let it happen. I’m as much to blame as you are for the…apathy of our marriage, but I’m willing to change that.”

  “Right here? Now?”

  “Yes.” Angling her head upward, she defied him, her eyes daring him, her body only an arm’s length from his. “I think it’s time.”

  “I’m a cripple,” he reminded her, and a darkness crossed his eyes. “And even if you don’t remember, your brother does.”

  “You’re not a cripple. You’re my husband.” Boldly she stepped up to him, so close she could smell the soap still clinging to his skin. “Chase—” Closing her eyes, she touched his bare arm.

  He didn’t draw away.

  “Just hold me,” she whispered, leaning into him. His muscles flexed as if he were fighting the impulses racing through his body.

  “I can’t,” he whispered, his voice raw.

  “Please.”

  “Oh, God, Cassidy.” His arms surrounded her, strong and comforting. “This is so wrong.”

  “No.” She pressed a kiss to his neck and he groaned. A tremor passed from his body to hers. The corded muscles surrounding her flexed and he lowered his head with unerring precision, catching her lips with his, kissing her with an intensity that stole the breath from her lungs. Yearning, long denied, uncoiled within her belly, reaching out, flowing through her blood and limbs. Her arms wound around his neck and she kissed him with all the pent-up emotion that had been gnawing at her for days.

  “Cass, think—”

  “No, Chase, don’t think. Just feel.” She caught his lips with hers, and her mouth parted in open invitation. His tongue slipped between her teeth, and his hands moved slowly upward, scaling her ribs through the silk of her blouse, the fabric rustling as he surrounded her breasts.

  Nipples erect, she rubbed against him, moaning as he kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her neck, aware that her blouse was being unbuttoned and tossed from her body, that the strap of her slip was being lowered, that her breasts, encased in sheer lace, were suddenly free and he was touching them, tracing the sculpted edge of the lace with his rough fingers, picking her up and holding her, his back braced against the wall as his tongue circled the delicate bones at the base of her throat.

  “Cassidy, Cassidy.”

  She kissed him harder, sensing his resistance. “Just love me.”

  With a groan, he dropped her onto the bed—his bed. Dark emotions shadowed his eyes. “I can’t. Not yet.”

  Disappointment and humiliation burned through her. “Are we on some kind of timetable that I don’t know about?” she demanded, her voice shaking. “For God’s sake Chase, don’t shut me out—”

  But he’d already turned away from her, giving her a brief glimpse of his back before ramming angry hands through the sleeves of a shirt. The towel dropped and he stepped quickly into a pair of boxer shorts, allowing her a small view of his bare buttocks for a second before he clumsily found his jeans, growled as he nearly fell over stepping into them and balanced against the wall. “Hell,” he ground out, trying to force his bad leg to bend.

  “You don’t have to get dressed.”

  “Can’t walk around the place naked, can I?”

  He snapped his fly and drilled her with an unforgiving stare. “I’ve got something for you.”

  “What?” she asked warily.

  “Protection.”

  “What kind of protection?”

  “Serious protection. From your family.”

  “My family? Oh, come on—”

  Chase yanked a belt through the loops of his jeans and buckled it quickly. He seemed angry at her, angry at himself, angry at the whole damned world. “I guess you haven’t heard the latest.”

  “Which is?”

  He made a noise of disgust and, if possible, he seemed to blush while he forced his feet into running shoes. “I thought the way Felicity spreads rumors she would have called you the minute she heard. Maybe she hasn’t talked to Derrick yet. Your brother and I got into it yesterday. At the office. To make a long story short, he threatened you and me.”

  “Derrick? He wouldn’t—”

  “He would, Cassidy, and he has. I made the mistake of calling him into my office yesterday. Intended to browbeat him into confessing that he was involved in the fire.”

  “Derrick? But he was with Felicity that night—”

  “Maybe for part of it. But he was at the mill, Cassidy. I saw him about a half hour before the fire.”

  Her mind reeled ahead. “Did you tell Wilson?”

  “Not yet. It’s something I didn’t remember—I don’t know why, but the doctor said I might have trouble sorting everything out. Maybe I didn’t think it was significant enough to recall.”

  “Your memory seems fine to me,” she said suspiciously.

&nbs
p; “I thought so, too. Until yesterday. I can’t go to Wilson yet, because, so far, it’s just my word against Derrick’s, even if I can finally prove that he’s been embezzling.”

  Cassidy could hardly believe her ears.

  “You’ve got to call the police.”

  “I will,” he said, his eyes holding hers. “When the timing’s right.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t worry, Cass. I’ll deal with it,” he promised.

  “What did Derrick say?” She couldn’t believe he was capable of burning the sawmill or killing a man or…Why not? He’s always had a cruel streak and thought the world owed him a living—a good living—and Felicity would do anything for him. Even lie to cover up the fact that he was a murderer. She shivered at the thought.

  “Derrick turned things around. Did all the beating himself, for now. Mistook my face for a spittoon.”

  She let out a gasp of protest.

  “And there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.”

  “And now you think he might…what? Attack us here?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m not going down without a fight. Come on, I’ll show you what we’ve got.” He threw her one of his sweatshirts and she scrambled into it. Then she followed him out to his truck. He opened the door and a sleek black German shepherd bounded to the ground.

  “Stay!” Chase commanded and the dog froze. “Cassidy, meet Ruskin.”

  She laughed at the sight of the animal, sitting and staring at her with clear gold eyes.

  “You two are going to get to know each other real well, and Ruskin will make sure that no one comes sneaking around here without thinking about it twice.”

  Forty

  Checking her watch and silently cursing her husband, Felicity pushed open the door of her daughter’s room. Angela was there, sleeping like a baby, her breathing deep and regular. But the bedroom window was open, blinds rustling in the breeze. Something wasn’t quite right, she decided, and though she felt like a traitor, she tiptoed across the carpet and lifted the coverlet to find her firstborn completely clothed in skintight jeans, black sleeveless T-shirt and sneakers. “I know you’re awake,” she said, though Angela didn’t respond, still feigning sleep. “And I know you plan to sneak out of this house and meet that Cutler boy.” She settled into the chair by the window. “Go ahead and pretend, but I’ll sit here all night to make sure you stay in this house.”