Dead Last

by James W. Hall

  “Then something violent happened. Something a long way beyond adolescent acting out. A judge was involved, the court system. As a part of the deal, the boys were legally bound to have a psychological evaluation.

  “They met with a therapist separately for several months. Then they had one session together. The therapist was a friend of a friend, so I thought he’d be sympathetic and feed me progress reports. But he refused to tell me anything at all, not even a hint. Just kept telling me that they were moving forward. It was frustrating as hell. I pestered him, and he kept putting me off.

  “After three months, he handed me this tape, a ten-minute film from their final session together. He decided I needed to know. Maybe it wasn’t professionally ethical. He could have gotten in trouble with the judge. I don’t know. And I’m not sure I should’ve watched it at all. It’s colored my view of things, changed how I feel about my own flesh and blood. I stashed it away and I’ve never shown it to anyone, not even Mother. But since you’re here, under these circumstances, and since the boys are suspects, I thought you should watch this.”

  Again Thorn measured the distance to the door and beyond. Thirty seconds and he’d be gone.

  “They’re not suspects,” he said.

  “Of course they are. Let’s don’t lie to each other, Thorn. Gus and Dee Dee and the boys, and even Jeff Matheson. They all had access to my files and to those scissors. I’m not stupid.”

  The TV set was flickering, stalled in a zone of static and gray light.

  “And what would their motive be?”

  “Those satellite trucks,” she said. “Newspapers and TV commentators mentioning Miami Ops. This whole horrible thing has put them on the map. Their ratings are going to be through the roof.”

  “You think one of them could have beaten another human being to death to improve their TV ratings?”

  April aimed the remote at the array of electronics.

  “You really don’t think one of your boys did this.”

  “Of course I don’t. I just want everything on the table.”

  She got the video running and stood up, watched a few moments, then a phone rang somewhere in the house. It rang several times, then from the maid’s room Garvey called that April was wanted.

  She turned and marched from the parlor. Thorn sat and watched.

  The therapist’s office was nothing special. Diplomas on the wall, the usual bookshelves, stocked in an orderly way. A desk as anonymous as the rest of the décor. The man sitting behind the desk was bearded and had a ponytail and wore a red-and-white checked shirt.

  The boys sat side by side, Flynn slouching in his chair, Sawyer erect, chin up. Sawyer in a pink button-down shirt, Flynn wearing a white one of the same type. Their hair parted neatly, their jeans pressed, their loafers shiny. If it weren’t for the difference in their eyes, no way Thorn could tell them apart. But what he’d noted when he first saw their photographs had been true even ten years earlier. Flynn’s eyes were tightened into a squint as though a blinding light were shining on his face, while Sawyer seemed so resolutely serene he might have been drowsing off.

  The therapist was holding a wooden pencil in his hand and was drumming the point against an ink blotter. The three of them seemed to be locked in a silent standoff. A question asked but not yet answered. A pause that seemed to grow more unbreakable as it grew in length. A minute of silence was followed by another minute just as silent. Neither of the boys fidgeted. The only thing moving in the room was the pencil.

  Finally Sawyer leaned forward in his chair as if stretching the muscles in his lower back. He hugged himself, then sat back and blew out a breath.

  “I did not know what was going on,” he said. “All right. I walked in and saw them, and didn’t understand what I was seeing. So I freaked. Nothing more complicated than that.”

  The therapist pressed his palms together and rolled the pencil between them. Covering the hint of eagerness in his face with this nonchalant act.

  “You didn’t know this about Flynn. So when you realized it, you reacted strongly.” The therapist continued to roll his pencil between his palms. He didn’t seem to be questioning Sawyer’s version of things, but to be restating his words for the record.

  “You didn’t just freak,” Flynn said quietly. “You tried to kill him.”

  Sawyer leaned back in his chair, rocked his head back, and studied the ceiling. His Adam’s apple bobbed.

  “He’s alive, isn’t he?” Sawyer said, still staring upward. “I hit him, yeah. I hit him because I thought he was hurting you. It was disgusting. I pulled him off and I hit the fuck out of him.”

  “You hit him,” the therapist said.

  “You punched him and kept punching him. You broke his teeth, you broke his nose and his jaw. You would’ve killed him if I hadn’t stopped you.”

  “We have different memories of the event.”

  “You were trying to kill him. That’s not a memory. That’s a fact.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Was it Jeff Matheson you were mad at, Sawyer?”

  Sawyer looked at his nails.

  “I wasn’t mad at anyone. I was reacting to something that was wrong. I thought I was doing a good thing, I was rescuing my brother. Defending him against an attacker.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “You thought Flynn was in mortal danger?”

  “Flynn was screaming like he was in pain, like he was being hurt.”

  “You’re such a liar,” Flynn said. “Such a fucking liar.”

  Sawyer turned his head slowly and examined his brother for a minute.

  “You knew I was gay,” Flynn said. “You knew it for years.”

  “No,” Sawyer said. “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did. You damn well knew.”

  “Did you ever tell me you were gay? Did you ever tell anybody?”

  “I didn’t have to. You’re my goddamn twin, you knew.”

  “You should’ve told me. We were always truthful with each other.”

  The therapist scratched some words on his yellow legal pad. He tugged on his graying mustache and said nothing. The ball was rolling. The long months of pushing it up the hill were over; now all he had to do was stand back and watch gravity take its course.

  “Did you ever say the words? ‘I am a homosexual. I love men.’ Did you ever say those words, Flynn? One time, even once, out loud?”

  “You knew. You damn well knew.”

  “And of all people. Matheson, that creep. Jesus Christ, Flynn. Jeff Matheson? I should have gone ahead and beaten him to death. That weasel. That shithead. Always hanging around, the way he looks at you.”

  Flynn stood up. He looked calmly at the therapist.

  “Have you got enough? Will that make the judge happy?”

  “We have more time in the hour.”

  “I’m done,” Flynn said. “I’ve said all I’m going to say. Ever. If he goes to jail, he goes to jail. I’ll bake him cookies.”

  He walked out, shut the door. A light step, the easy stride of an athlete.

  Sawyer was washing his hands together, looking toward the window.

  “I should’ve killed the asshole.”

  “If you had done that, your brother would still be who he is,” the therapist said. “Nothing you can do will change him into someone else. There’s nothing wrong with him. He doesn’t have a sickness. His sexual orientation isn’t wrong or immoral or any of that.”

  “He betrayed me,” Sawyer said.

  “I’m sorry,” the therapist said. “How did he betray you?”

  “We had a bond, a connection. He violated that. He deserted me.”

  “Every individual needs privacy at times,” the therapist says. “Flynn had a secret. I’m sure he would have told you in due time. Your love for him and his love for you is very solid. It’ll survive this strain.”

  “I don’t care if it survives. He deserted me.”

  “Those are only words, Sawyer. He didn’t desert you. He
’s changed. He’s discovered a new part of himself. Now you need to adjust as well. All relationships grow and alter over time. It’s natural and healthy. It’s not always easy, but we must find a way to stay flexible and maintain the love and trust and faithfulness that underlie the bond.”

  “Enough of this shit,” Sawyer said. “If Judge Parker wants anything else, then just tell him to fuck himself, lock me up, toss the key in the ocean. I’m not doing this anymore, not another minute. I’m out of here.”

  He walked from the room with the same light and certain step as his brother and shut the door crisply.

  The therapist sat for a moment twiddling his pencil, then let go of a long sigh and looked up at the video camera. The screen went dark.

  ACT FOUR

  AT SEA

  TWENTY-ONE

  THORN SAT FOR A WHILE in the crushed velvet chair before the bright gray static, staring down at his own hands, still swollen from clubbing the baseball bat into the light pole. Another in a long string of similar episodes, Thorn going psycho, erupting in a volcanic fury. Like building that bonfire two days ago, Thorn in zombie mode, setting ablaze everything he owned, everything he cherished, everything he’d worked so hard to create.

  Now his blood was circulating in Sawyer and Flynn. His volatile nature transmitted through the tangled web of genes and inherited traits.

  What started in those innocent bedroom hours a quarter century before, a morning bathed in the quiet springtime sunlight, April Moss and Thorn tangled on the cotton sheets, their sweaty bodies cooled by breezes from Blackwater Sound; those few hours together had set in motion a long chain of events. Rusty’s death nudging April to write an elegy of compassion for a woman she didn’t know, an act that some unbalanced maniac used as a road map to murder a woman in Oklahoma, which propelled Buddha Hilton out of her quiet town and onto a jet plane, into a rental car, a journey that ended with her curled up in a cold bathtub in Miami, naked, suffering a gruesome end.

  He stared at the gray fuzz on the screen. Opening and closing his swollen hands. He traced and retraced the chain, link by link, the long inevitable sequence. The moonlit night at the Islamorada bar, the pretty high school kid flirting, the giddy tequila shots, the drive back to his place, and on and on and on until it became this day in this room, a day haunted by the deaths of many and by the foretelling of more to come.

  There was only one way to tell the story. Foolhardy, reckless Thorn had set this whole damn thing in motion, tipped the first domino, and a quarter of a century later they were still falling one by one by one.

  He was still staring at the static on the screen when someone entered the room behind him, walked to his side, and reached around the edge of the chair to pry the remote from his hand. He aimed it at the television and switched the channel to the cable news.

  April Moss was being interviewed once again outside the coral house.

  Thorn turned his head and looked up at Flynn Moss holding the remote, studying the televised interview that was taking place just yards beyond the parlor window.

  The blond CNN woman was asking April questions, and April was answering them quietly and with tense restraint.

  “Ben Silver called Mom a few minutes ago, ordered her to get outside and face the cameras. She looks good on-screen, don’t you think? Fleshes her out nicely. Direct sun pops the highlights in her hair, erases some of her pallor. Shows off the beautiful angles working in her face. But then you probably already noticed that.”

  Flynn walked over to a nearby chair and sat. He glanced at Thorn, shook his head, and grimaced or smiled. It was hard to tell. Then he turned back to the television. Flynn had on a simple white T-shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals. An outfit almost identical to the one Thorn had worn every day for most of his life.

  The reporter asked April if she planned to write more obituaries. The question seemed to take her by surprise. She blinked and stuttered the beginning of a response and stopped.

  “Ms. Moss,” the reporter said. “Apparently your work is fueling these horrific murders. But the publisher of The Miami Herald tells us he has no intention of pulling you off your normal assignment. Will you go along with that? Will you write more obituaries even if by doing so you put more innocent people at risk?”

  April stared straight ahead.

  “It’s my job,” she said. “Unless they fire me, I’ll keep writing.”

  “The killer called again. Did you know that?”

  “I heard.”

  “He claims responsibility for five victims. On July third an elderly gentleman in Hialeah was his first. Then he’s killed at one-week intervals afterward, cut the throat of a male nurse in Atlanta, shot a teenage boy in Fort Lauderdale, stabbed a female lawyer in Oklahoma, and the brutal beating of the sheriff last night. Do you have any comment on this string of horrors?”

  April said she was sorry. Sorry for the families, for the victims. Very, very sorry.

  “Do you know how the killer is selecting his targets?”

  April said no, she had no idea.

  “But he’s using your obituaries as his road map. You have no clue what he’s basing his actions on?”

  “No idea.”

  “Have the police been exploring these avenues?”

  “I wouldn’t know what avenues they’ve explored.”

  Three other reporters had hustled over from their trucks to join the impromptu news conference and were half circled around her. The chunky guy elbowed to the front, jabbed his mike at April.

  “Our Susquehanna overnight poll was just released. In our survey sixty-three percent of Americans believe you should be fired from your job.”

  “What?”

  “Two-thirds of respondents said you should be let go.”

  April studied the man but said nothing.

  “Do you think you should resign?”

  “Why would I?”

  “Because your writing has caused such gruesome results.”

  April inhaled through her nose, marshalling her restraint.

  “I write obituaries. I celebrate the stories of people’s lives. I believe I perform a service to the families of the deceased, and their friends, and to the public who otherwise might never have known these unique individuals.”

  “But you understand, don’t you, why the families of the five victims look at this very differently. Whether you intended it or not, your writing has caused five deaths, innocent men and women. People consider you something of an accomplice.”

  “An accomplice?”

  “That’s what we’re hearing.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” April said quietly. “And when you’ve finished that, fuck your poll.”

  “Wow, she snuck that one by,” Flynn said. “Good going, Mom. That should seal the deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “Hey, we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Flynn Moss, your son.”

  He extended his hand.

  Was this a smart-ass trick? Draw his hand away and wipe it through his hair? What the hell. Thorn reached out and the kid’s hand was still there. Flynn with a powerful grip. Maybe squeezing harder and longer than would be considered polite.

  When Flynn released his hand, Thorn said, “Seal what deal?”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  “Not if I can avoid it.”

  “Well, it’s the Saturday dead zone for the media jocks, but they’re still going strong about the Zentai Killer, so that part’s good. Only now it’s exclusively about Mom and her obituaries. Miami Ops is out of their script.”

  Thorn shook his head, not getting the point.

  “News people have trouble telling a story with more than one plotline. Either they’re too dumb, or they think their audience is too dumb. But this story has two threads. This maniac is copying our show. And he’s using Mom’s obituaries to do it. How complicated is that? But no, that’s not the story anymore. Now the simpletons have shrunk it down so it’s only about the real-life obituarie
s. Make it stupid and easy, that’s the motto.

  “Looked for a minute like they were losing interest in the whole thing, backing away, then the killer calls, gives them names and dates, a little pep talk, and bing, they’re pumped up again. The frenzy resumes, except it’s all about whether Mom should quit. Her role in the thing. They made a choice: Where’s the juiciest narrative, the rawest nerve?

  “Surprise, surprise, they all arrived at the same answer. Doesn’t matter if the killer is copycatting our show. Tell the obituary writer’s story, go after her, drop the other thread. So that seals the deal. Whatever bump we were going to get in the ratings, it’ll be gone by Thursday. The show’s dead. It’s over. Time to update the resume.”

  The front door opened and April stepped inside and settled her back against it. She was breathing deeply. Her eyes roved the foyer for a moment, then drifted to the parlor and settled on Thorn and Flynn.

  “Come on in, Mom. Join the hootenanny.”

  “Not just now.”

  She pushed herself upright and headed for the stairway. She stopped and came to the room and looked at Thorn.

  “Sawyer’s not coming after all. He’ll drop by later.”

  “Where’d he go?” Flynn asked.

  “On the boat with Dee Dee and Gus. Said he wanted to take a deep breath. Which sounds like a good idea for all of us.”

  “Nice fuck-yous, Mom. Snuck in two of them. Good job.”

  April turned away and walked upstairs.

  Flynn snapped off the TV and scooted his chair a half foot closer to Thorn. Leaned in and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

  “So it’s just us boys.”

  “The code,” Thorn said. “The one the TV killer’s using to pick his victims. How does it work in the show? What’s his system?”

  “Oh, yeah, yeah. I heard you were some kind of undercover dick or something.”

  Thorn let that slide.

  “What’s the key to the code?”

  “So what’s your story? You’re what, like Tarzan? Live the jungle life in Key Largo, like hide up in the palm fronds and all that cool shit. Swing down on your vine and solve a caper every once in a while, then swing back up to your tree house. That how it is?”