The Bullet

by Mary Louise Kelly

  • • •

  BEFORE BED THAT night I did four things.

  The first was to write a check for $10,000 to Jessica Yeo. I’d teased her once that if my birth parents left me a million dollars, I’d split it with her. They hadn’t, but they’d left enough that I could afford to return a few favors. In the memo line, I wrote, For being relentless. I dropped the check into a hotel-stationery envelope and printed her name and the newspaper address on the front.

  Next I called Mom and told her that I would be tied up with projects for the next few days. I assured her that I was fine, eating well, and would check in soon.

  After Mom, I dialed Martin’s number and asked him to keep an eye on my house.

  “What’s this I hear about Mexico? Dad says you’re going to Cabo.”

  “I want to disappear for a while, get off the grid,” I replied, more truthfully than my brother could have realized.

  “You’ll be okay on your own? Tony said you were behaving a ­little . . . erratically the other day, when you two drove out to that gun range.”

  “Erratic? That was the word he used?”

  “Err, no. Full-on wack job was actually the way he put it.”

  “Can you blame me?” I sighed. “Mother Teresa herself would be behaving like a wack job if she’d been in my shoes these last few weeks.”

  “I know. I’m glad you’re getting away, Sis. It’ll do you good to unplug.”

  “I’m thinking of staying down in Mexico a couple of weeks, maybe a month or so. To rest and clear my head. Think Mom will go nuts if I’m not around for my birthday?”

  “Yep. She’ll go nuts, all right. I’ll do my best to remind her that the wine will keep and the steaks will freeze. Tony and I’ll distract her on Thanksgiving, too. Just promise me you’ll come home by Christmas? Otherwise I can’t be held responsible for her actions.”

  The last thing I did before sleeping was to slip on boots and a jacket, exit the side door of my hotel, and walk five blocks to a bar. From the pay phone by the bathrooms, I called Ethan Sinclare. He answered on the fourth ring. I kept it neutral and short. I was in Atlanta for a brief visit, I told him. An appointment tomorrow had been canceled, leaving me with an opening in my schedule.

  Might he have time to meet?

  Forty-nine

  * * *

  WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2013

  You couldn’t plan things this way, you really couldn’t, not if you tried. I could have needed the bullet removed in February. Or December. The pain could have slammed me on a breezy, warm day in May. It had happened when it happened, who could say exactly why?

  I had been keeping an eye on the date. As the clocks fell back and the nights grew longer, I had watched it creeping closer. But still it felt momentous, to roll over in the morning and to see it—WEDNESDAY, ­NOVEMBER 6—illuminated in bright digits on the home screen of my phone.

  November 6. The anniversary of Boone’s and Sadie Rawson’s murders. They had died on this date, in this city, exactly thirty-four years ago.

  Here’s another point to consider: Boone Smith was shot through the brain, his wife through the heart. Only the one bullet ever recovered, as you know. The one pulled from my neck. A .38 Special. And now here I was. Their only child, the only survivor of that day’s carnage, back in town with fifty rounds in my pocket and a newly purchased Smith & Wesson .38 Special revolver. You see?

  There was a lovely symmetry to it. Even, you might say, a certain ­inevitability.

  • • •

  BEAMER BEASLEY HAD talked about a volcano. The one that erupted, spewing rocks and ash, after lying dormant for more than a century. The metaphor had given me pause.

  But it was a different image that took root in my mind this morning. I thought of a bear. How a hibernating bear will sleep through long winter months, its chest rising and falling, dreaming sweet dreams of honey. But wake that same bear, provoke it, and it will attack with speed and savagery, biting and slashing with claws like knives. There is no way to know which bear you may encounter—placid or violent—when you stand at the mouth of the cave, peering into the dark.

  Standing on Ethan Sinclare’s front porch felt a little like that.

  I had hesitated when he invited me here. His home, his territory, his terms. At least it would be private, I reasoned. On the phone last night he told me that he had been away, traveling. I was lucky to have caught him. He was driving up to his lake house tonight; his wife, Betsy, was already there. Today, though, he was in Atlanta, picking up fresh clothes and running errands. Why didn’t I drop by the house for lunch? Something casual, sandwiches and Cokes. He knew a deli that made an outstanding pastrami on rye. He would pick us up a couple, some chips and pickles, too.

  Sinclare gave me an address on Tuxedo Road, in the heart of Buckhead. I left the rental car parked at my hotel and took the bus. It dropped me three blocks away, and as I walked, I studied the houses. They were large and set deep in rolling lawns. This was old-money, establishment Atlanta. A van from a pool-cleaning service sat parked in the next-door driveway. From across the street came the whine of a leaf blower. Otherwise the only sign of life was two middle-aged women dressed head to toe in Lululemon, blond ponytails bobbing in unison as they power walked past.

  Sinclare opened the door while my finger was still pressing the buzzer. He must have been watching as I picked my way up the prettily curved stone path.

  “Caroline.” He extended his hand, took mine in a warm grip. “How good to see you.”

  He closed and locked the door behind us, then led the way past the front stairs, past the living room, into a large and sunny kitchen. A round table in the window was set for two. Bone china, linen napkins and place mats, stemmed crystal glasses. I raised my eyebrows.

  “I’m afraid you’re still stuck with pastrami and pickles.” He smiled. “Betsy would be furious, though, if I didn’t at least serve it to you on the good china. Southern ladies and their place settings! Don’t tell her I skipped the real silver. Too damn much trouble. You can’t throw it in the dishwasher when you’re done.”

  “I’m sorry to miss meeting her.”

  “She’ll be sorry, too, when she hears that she missed you. We keep a cabin on a lake, up in the northeast corner of the state. Lake Burton.”

  I know, I wanted to say. “That must be nice.”

  “Good fishing. And quiet, especially this time of year. Betsy spends more and more of her time up there. She tears through three or four books a week, mysteries and romance and that type thing. And of course the dog loves it. He keeps the squirrel population of Rabun County pretty much terrorized to the point of extinction.”

  “And you? Do you make it up often?” Were you there last month, like your wife says you were, that night when someone broke into my house?

  “Every chance I get. These gadgets make it easier, don’t they?” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and laid it on the counter. “Client has no idea where you are, whether you’re in the office or out tying fishing lines on your dock.” He smiled again. His face was tanned and cleanly shaven, if thinner than the last time I’d seen him. He was still a handsome, handsome man. You didn’t have to work hard to imagine how attractive Ethan Sinclare must have been in his prime.

  “But enough about the lake. What brings you to Atlanta? You look ravishing, if you don’t mind an old man saying so. I was glad to read your surgery went so smoothly.”

  “Thank you. I’m doing well. And I never had the chance to thank you for your generosity at the St. Regis. Picking up my hotel bill. That was incredibly kind.”

  He waved his hand in a think-nothing-of-it gesture. “Least I could do for the daughter of Boone Smith.”

  “It’s funny, though. At breakfast . . . when we had breakfast that morning, you never mentioned that you also know my family in Washington. The Cashions.”

  For a
fraction of a second, Ethan looked taken by surprise. Then he turned to the fridge and pulled out a pitcher of what looked like lemonade. “Here, set this on the table, would you please? Let’s get these sandwiches unwrapped.”

  I walked the pitcher to the table and filled two crystal goblets, then used a tea towel to wipe the condensation from the sides and handle. When I turned back around, he was at the counter, watching me with an expression I could not read. The atmosphere in the room had sharpened, as though we both sensed that the pleasantries were concluded, and from this moment forward it would be important to pick each word with care.

  “My mother—Frannie Cashion, I mean—recognized you in a ­photograph. She says you’ve known each other since I was a little girl.”

  “It’s a small, small world, isn’t it? That’s right. It’s been years since we saw them. Thomas and Frannie. Used to bump into them every now and again at legal conferences.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew them?”

  “Never crossed my mind. Didn’t make the connection until later.”

  I frowned. “At breakfast we talked about how my father and brother are lawyers in Washington. Cashion is an unusual name. You send my family a Christmas card every year. How could you not—”

  “Just didn’t. Guess I’m getting old. I was caught up in the fact that I was sitting there sipping coffee across from Boone’s daughter, all these years later. Didn’t give any thought to the name of the family that adopted you. I mean, what are the chances I’d know them, too?”

  “Exactly. What are the chances?”

  “Small world.”

  I started closing in. “You called our house last month. You talked to Mom—”

  “That’s right. I called as soon as I figured out the connection.”

  “But you didn’t mention it. You didn’t tell her that you and I had met. You didn’t tell her we’d just had breakfast together in Atlanta. You acted like it was just a casual phone call to say hello—”

  “Caroline.” His voice had an unmistakable edge. “You’ve had a hell of a month. I’m sure it’s been hard on you. Shall we get these sandwiches out on plates? Or do you maybe want to wrap yours up to take with you?”

  “I went to Nantucket,” I whispered. “As I think you know, since you called my hotel twice, looking for me. I talked to Verlin Snow. He wasn’t with you the day that Boone and Sadie Rawson died.”

  “I beg your pardon? What are you talking about?”

  “Not the whole day, anyway. You made him lie to the police for you.”

  Ethan stared at me. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you needed an alibi.”

  “Now listen here. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, what all this nonsense is.” As his mouth shaped the words, before I understood what was happening, he was around the counter and on me. With one hand he pinned both my arms behind me, and with the other he pressed down on the stitches on my neck, hard.

  I cried out in pain.

  “Are you wearing a wire?” he hissed in my ear. His hand moved down my neck to my back, searching under my arms, around the ­underwire of my bra, around the waist of my skirt, down the backs of my thighs. At last he released me and stepped back.

  “Why did you come here?” he panted. “What is it you want?”

  I had so many questions. What had happened that day on Eulalia Road, I mean what exactly? Why hadn’t he killed me, too, finished me off when he’d had the chance? And last month, in my home in Georgetown—what had he planned to do, if my bedroom door hadn’t held? If I hadn’t leapt from the window and run? Would he have killed me first, or would he have dug the bullet from my neck while I was still alive?

  What I heard myself ask was this: “Did you love her?”

  His eyes had gone cold. “Sadie Rawson Smith was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You don’t hold a candle to her, if you want to know the truth.”

  If that had been all he said—if he had stopped, if he had left it there—I might still have turned and walked away. Walked out the front door, dropped the revolver in the bushes, kept right on going. Perhaps it was enough to know the truth. Perhaps that’s all people mean by closure. To understand what happened, to understand you can’t undo it, to find the strength to walk away.

  Ethan didn’t stop there, though. He didn’t leave it. “Be careful, Caroline.” His voice was so low I had to strain to hear. “Be very careful. I’d hate for anything ever to happen to Frannie.”

  “You bastard! You wouldn’t.”

  But, yes, he might. Ethan Sinclare stood there, his eyes like dull coal and his lips stretched in a dangerous smile. At my hotel this morning, when I had lain in bed imagining this conversation, it had uncoiled in grainy black and white. It had been like my Ingrid Bergman nightmares: a long buildup, tension ratcheting scene by scene. But I never made it all the way to the end, to this precise moment. His face had kept dissolving. The picture kept fading to black. Before my finger wrapped around the trigger. Before I had to make a choice.

  Ethan and I looked at each other and I thought I saw him twitch right.

  Now it was my turn to move and I reached for my bag and he reached for me and his hands were on my neck and my finger was on the trigger and I pulled.

  It is amazing how steady you shoot when you can hold the gun with both your hands.

  • • •

  I SHOT HIM twice.

  Two times.

  Bang. Bang.

  There would have been a nice symbolism to shooting him once more—one bullet each for me, for Boone, and for Sadie Rawson. But he was already facedown on the kitchen floor, lying on his stomach, black blood spreading like tar across the tiles. I forced myself to count to ten. He did not move.

  My hands were trembling and my ears roared and only one thought cut through the noise: Get out of here. I grabbed his cell phone and dropped it into my purse. With a napkin I swiped shaky circles along the top and side edges of the counter. I had been keeping track of everything I touched, had been careful to clean my prints from the lemonade pitcher before I’d placed it on the table. I would need to wipe down the front doorbell on my way out. What else?

  I glanced down and realized dark droplets were sprayed across my white blouse. His blood. With unsteady fingers I began undoing buttons. One of them was slick and wet and I thought I might be sick. I would have to wear my wool overcoat with nothing underneath until I could retrieve my overnight bag and a fresh shirt. I would wad this soiled one in a plastic sack and carry it with me until I could shove it deep into a Dumpster somewhere. I was still fumbling with the buttons when I heard something. From behind me, from the far corner of the kitchen, came a whimper.

  I spun around. Standing in a low doorway, such as might lead to a laundry room, or to the back stairs, stood a woman. A petite, blond, older woman wearing a tennis skirt and white sneakers. Her eyes wide with shock.

  Impossible.

  “What have you done?” she moaned.

  I had a five-shot revolver. I had three bullets left.

  I raised my arm and trained my gun on Betsy Sinclare.

  Fifty

  * * *

  How long have you been standing there?”

  Her lips flapped like a fish but made no sound.

  “How long have you been standing there?” I bellowed again.

  Even as I asked, I knew it did not matter. It didn’t matter what fragments of conversation she might have heard. She would never fess up to the police about how Ethan had threatened Frannie, or how he had squeezed his strong hands around my neck. No. What she would tell them, what she would be able to describe with gorgeous precision, was this scene before her now: her husband, unarmed and shot twice through the gut; me, leaning over him in a half-buttoned, blood-­spattered blouse, the gun still hot in my hand.

  She suddenly bent over double, gr
ipped her bare, freckled knees with her hands, and vomited. When she had finished, she wiped her mouth on the hem of her tennis skirt and tucked her hair behind her ears. Then—ignoring me, ignoring the gun in my hand—she staggered to her husband and sank to her knees. “Ethan? Ethan? Please, no, please, no, no, no.” Her hands roamed over him, seeking to stanch the blood. At last she cupped the back of his head, watching him carefully, just as I had done moments before, waiting for confirmation that he was truly gone.

  After some minutes she rocked back on her heels and raised her face to me. I was bracing myself to find grief and terror there. Instead her mouth was twisted with hatred.

  “Betsy?” I breathed. “Mrs. Sinclare?”

  “Don’t speak to me. Don’t you dare speak my name.” This was said with such raw anger that I felt each word as a brick, smashing against my temples. I was the one holding a gun, but I wasn’t about to shoot a defenseless old lady, and she looked as if she knew it.

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I know you. I knew your whore of a mother.” Sweet Betsy Sinclare hoisted herself to her feet, hawked, and spat in my face.

  Unexpected.

  I reared back. Dried my cheek with the napkin and tucked it into my bag. “I gather you know that your husband and Sadie Rawson were lovers. You know that he killed her? And killed my father, too?”

  “What I know,” Betsy snarled, “is that there was an accident. A mistake. A terrible mistake, that my family has been paying for, for more than thirty years. And it was over and no one knows and now you show up. And do this!” Her voice rose to a shriek.

  I wanted to explain. Wanted to make her understand. But the drumbeat was back in my ears, cutting across her words, booming, Get out of here.

  “Betsy, where do you keep rope?”

  She gaped at me as if I were even crazier than she’d imagined.

  “Or string? Ribbon?”

  “What are you talking about? I’m calling the police.”