by Sandra Balzo
Yeah, until you killed them. “So Christ Christian is part of all this?”
“Langdon Shepherd’s flock? They mean well, but they’re a bunch of fools toying at being subversives by evading taxes and playing in the woods.” We hit an area rug and Gary gave me a hard shove, succeeding only in getting my heels more tangled up in it.
I thought I had the picture now, for all the good it would do me. “But they provided perfect cover for you, didn’t they?”
He pulled me back away from the rug. “A lot of cash passes though that church, Maggy. More than you would think. It made laundering—”
As he leaned down to untangle the rug, I raised my knee sharply and caught him square in the nose. Then I stepped back and stomped my heel into the top of his instep, just like he’d taught me in self-defense.
When he let go, yowling in pain, I made for the door. Slipping off the chain lock, I yanked it open.
Behind it stood, not Pavlik this time, but Sarah.
And she had a gun.
“I told you never to trust anyone, Maggy,” she said as she raised it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sarah. Of course.
She was a member of Christ Christian.
Even had a collection of guns in her house.
“Don’t move,” she said, waving one of them.
“Listen, Sarah,” I said, raising my hands. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid?” Her face crinkled up in a grimace, leaving just her teeth hanging out. “I’m not supposed to do anything stupid? I told you, you can’t trust anyone but yourself.”
And sometimes not even that. My instincts obviously sucked bigtime. We were more Superman and Lex Luther than we were Pancho and Cisco, or Archie and Nero. “But I...”
“Don’t move!”
I glanced at each of my hands. Yup, still in the air. “Umm, I didn’t move.”
She waved the gun again. “I’m talking to him, you idiot.”
I turned to see Gary about three feet behind me, hands raised in the air, too, like he was my shadow. I was just in time to see his face change from the “Reassuring Gary,” he’d probably hoped to bluff Sarah with, to “Really Scary Gary,” and then back again. All in the blink of an eye. And I’d thought Pavlik was schizophrenic.
“You’re talking to him?” I asked Sarah, just to make sure.
She rolled her eyes. “Will you please snap out of it and call 911?”
Shades of Caron and me when we found Patricia’s body, except this time I was the one who was being dense. Maybe I
should have cut Caron more slack.
“Now!” Sarah demanded.
Yeah, I definitely should have cut her more slack.
Three weeks later on a Friday, I testified at the preliminary hearing. Gary sat at the defense table, wearing a tweed sports coat, white shirt and tie. I’m sure he looked perfectly normal to everyone else. I could feel his eyes on me the whole time, but I didn’t look at him. I couldn’t.
He reminded me of one of those figure/foreground optical illusions from Psych 101. The one that looks like two pretty ladies in feathers until, literally in the blink of the eye, you realize it’s a picture of an old hag.
And after you’ve seen the hag, it’s almost impossible to turn the picture back to what it was, to see the pretty ladies again. I didn’t know that I could ever look at Gary and see the man I used to see.
Sarah also had testified and we drove back to her house together afterwards. She, Sam and Courtney had moved back there when the bank started foreclosure on the Harpers’ house. There were legal issues to address, but for now it looked like the kids were going to be able to stay with Sarah.
I drove and she stared out the window. “Are Sam and Courtney okay?” I asked.
“I’m getting them that counseling you suggested,” she said absently. “They’ve been living a lie for so long.” She shook her head.
Sam and Courtney had known that David was their uncle, not their father, but had been told to keep it a secret or the government would take them away from Patricia. No wonder Eric had said Sam was quiet.
“And are you okay?” I asked next.
She didn’t answer right away and we both sat silently as we passed by Christ Christian. Since Gary’s arrest had hit the papers, the militia had either fallen apart or gone underground. We’d probably never know exactly who they all were and I really didn’t care. They had been duped by Gary, just like I had. And like Sarah had. And Patricia. And David.
I rolled down the window and stuck my arm out. We were passing Christ Christian’s cemetery. David had finally been buried there next to Patricia. When Eric was small, he swore if you didn’t hold your breath when you passed a graveyard, the spirits of the dead people could enter you. Ted would slow down in front of cemeteries just to tease him.
I sucked in the spring air and let it out. “I appreciate what you did, Sarah.” I glanced over. “Though I have to admit, I still don’t understand why you took a gun to brunch.”
She shrugged. “I was responsible for two kids whose parents both had been killed. I figured carrying a gun in my purse was only...”she hesitated, looking for the right word, “prudent.”
I sure wasn’t going to second-guess her instincts. I tried to imagine her scrabbling through the purse, pushing aside her cigarettes and lighter before finally coming up with the gun and circling around to the back door. “Did you suspect Gary from the beginning?” I asked.
She didn’t look at me. “I had no idea he was involved until we saw you driving toward his house on our way to brunch. You should have seen the look on his face. It was as if his mask had slipped.”
Like my optical illusion. Neither Sarah nor I would ever see the “old Gary” again. “Listen,” I said, “I know you were starting to care about—”
She laughed. “C’mon, Maggy. We both know he was sniffing around me in order to keep track of us and make sure the kids stayed in line. When I think of all the deceptions— even the little ones, like stealing the ballot to throw Pavlik off, and trying to pin Patricia’s murder on poor David with those papers he ‘found.’ ”
“Not to mention the big stuff,” I added, “like killing Patricia in the first place and luring David to Poplar Creek when he realized he might talk. Even Groschek,” I mused. “Gary took the loot from the robbery and then left him to plant a bomb that was set to go off a full minute earlier than Groschek thought it was.”
“What a bottom feeder.” Sarah shook her head. “I just thank God I didn’t sleep with the man.”
Sarah’s mind worked in mysterious ways. “Were you thinking of...”
“None of your goddamn business.” She lighted a cigarette. “So what about you? I know Gary was a good friend.”
I turned the corner. “Gary was a fraud.”
Sarah wisely left it at that. “I was thinking. Since Patricia wasn’t married to David, she and Roger weren’t really having an affair.”
I looked over. “You’re right. They were dating.”
She smiled, her big ol’ teeth hanging out. “So have you seen Pavlik outside the courtroom?”
I sighed. “I saw him at a meeting in his office. That’s it.”
“A goddamn shame.” She knocked an ash off on the side mirror of my van. “I thought you two had something going there.”
“Then you thought wrong.”
Pavlik had finally picked up my voice mails and shown up at Gary’s just after Sarah. He’d seemed more than a little irritated with me and, once I had agreed to testify, had turned me over to the assistant DA and washed his hands of me.
Sad? Yeah. Bitter? Maybe. Stupid? You bet.
I’d taken to running as a substitute for sex, which apparently was another thing Ted had gotten custody of. I was up to four miles a day and Frank was a lean, mean sheepdog machine.
I dropped Sarah off and was home a little after 5:00. After letting Frank out, I sat down at the kitchen table.
Gary would go to trial
on murder charges. I didn’t know if the DA could prove he’d killed David, but with my testimony and independent evidence—including the contents of both his computer and the tool shed behind his house—they certainly had him on Patricia’s murder, as well as Groschek’s.
For my part, I felt betrayed. And gullible. Why hadn’t I seen it coming?
I got up to turn on the kitchen lights and let Frank in the back door. There was a knock at the front. My heart thudded, as had been its habit the last three weeks. I moved the curtain and saw a big black Harley on the street. And there was Pavlik at my door.
I opened it. He had on jeans and his soft leather jacket. He grabbed my hand. “Come for a ride with me.”
You betcha. Then I hesitated, looking down at my long jacket and short skirt. “Let me change.”
He tugged on my hand again. “No, now.” His eyes seemed brilliant blue, the bluest I’d ever seen them.
I nodded, mesmerized.
He pulled the door closed and handed me a helmet.
“Do you think—” I started.
He stepped in close, his body almost touching mine, and put his finger on my lips. “Let’s just take a ride.”
He swung onto the bike. I got on behind him and wrapped my arms around his waist. Luckily, the long jacket covered the fact my skirt was practically around my waist. We were off, the roar of the Harley throbbing around us, obliterating everything else. I buried my face in the buttery leather of his jacket and just hung on.
Eventually we stopped. I lifted my head. We were on a hill outside town. To one side of us were the lightly sprinkled lights of little Brookhills, to the other, the dense lights of the city. We got off the bike and walked to the city side.
“Brookhills isn’t the only place to live, Maggy,” Pavlik said softly. “There are lots of wonderful places out there.”
He turned to face me. “Donovan is going to trial, and I know it’s not going to be easy on you.”
I shivered and Pavlik put his arm around me, drawing me in close to him.
I liked it.
My hair made whish-whish sounds on his jacket as I nodded. “I know. But, my friends are here. My business is here.” Or what was left of either of them.
He pulled me in tighter. “I don’t think you’re in any physical danger. It’s just going to be the talk, the media.”
I pushed back a little and smiled up at him. “I think I can handle Kate McNamara. Is that what you brought me up here to talk about, Sheriff?”
He laughed. “The name is Jake. And no, that’s not what I brought you up here for.”
Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.
