Don't Say a Word (Strangers Series)

by Jennifer Jaynes

  She shivered against the brutal cold, but at least she knew if she were outside, she’d be able to stay awake.

  Well, maybe.

  Bitty appeared with two steaming cups of coffee and sat down beside her. She still looked awful.

  “You should be in bed,” Allie said.

  “There’ll be time for that later.” Bitty squeezed Allie’s hand and offered her a weak smile. Allie held the woman’s hand tightly and watched the police work.

  They sat outside for several minutes before the frigid weather forced them back indoors. While Bitty was putting on a fresh pot of coffee, there was a knock at the front door. Allie lumbered across the living room, as though wading through mud, and looked through the peephole.

  Detective Lambert stared back from the other side. She opened the door and let him in. His cheeks and nose were red from the chilly air.

  His blue eyes held hers, and she could tell from the expression on his face, he had bad news.

  Her blood ran cold.

  Deep voices chattered from his radio, and on the radios of a few of the other officers who were standing on the side of the house. “I’m afraid I don’t have good news.”

  Bitty joined them in the doorway just as a siren sounded in the distance.

  Sammy came running. “I hear ambwance!” he shouted, excitedly.

  Detective Lambert looked down at Sammy and his eyes softened. “Hi, buddy.”

  “Hi.”

  Detective Lambert’s eyes were on Allie’s again. “Do you have someplace where we can talk in private?”

  Her breath left her with a jolt. “Yeah.”

  She turned and saw Zoe standing against one of the foyer’s walls. “Zoe, can you play with Sammy for a few more minutes?”

  “No, I want to see the ambwance!” Sammy whined.

  Allie went to Zoe and whispered in her ear, “Please help distract him a little longer, okay?”

  Zoe frowned. “Yeah, sure. But why’s there an ambulance here? What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Allie said. “But please . . . bring him to my room and close the door. Take his basket of minifigures. Please take Carrie in there, too.”

  “Okay.”

  As detective Lambert, Allie, and Bitty walked into the living room, a cacophony of sirens sounded outside as police, fire, and medical vehicles arrived.

  Bitty took a seat on the couch, but Allie remained standing.

  “You might want to sit, too,” Detective Lambert said to Allie.

  Allie didn’t want to sit. “What’s going on?” she asked, pretty sure she didn’t want to know.

  He stared at her for a moment, his lips pressed into a line. “We’d usually first notify the next of kin in a matter like this, but given your situation, and the fact that Mr. Thompson’s truck is parked right outside . . .”

  Allie couldn’t breathe.

  “I regret to have to tell you this, but we just found Mr. Thompson’s body in the woods.”

  Allie’s arms broke out in gooseflesh.

  “What? What in God’s name happened?” Bitty asked.

  Adrenaline exploded through Allie’s veins, and she suddenly felt more awake than she had for hours. “Body? What? Are you trying to say Johnny’s dead?”

  “I’m sorry. It appears he suffered multiple gunshot wounds.”

  White noise roared through Allie’s ears. Now she needed to sit down. She felt Detective Lambert’s hands on her shoulder as he helped her to sit.

  Her mind went to Johnny’s face the last time she’d seen him. His big smile. His offer for her and Sammy to move in with them. Her pulse pounded in her ears. Oh my God. How . . . how am I going to tell Sammy?

  “And you’re sure it’s Johnny?” Bitty asked.

  “His wallet was in his back pocket. His identification’s in it.”

  Allie swallowed back the bile that had slid up her throat.

  “Where? Where did you find him?” Bitty asked.

  “In the woods. Just a few yards from your property, I’m afraid.”

  “Was it Gary?” Bitty asked.

  “It’s too soon to know.”

  Thoughts flooded Allie’s mind. Had Johnny shown up, waiting for her and Sammy to be back home, and seen Gary? So Gary shot him?

  And if so, how did no one hear?

  She tried to process the fact that Johnny was gone. Dead. She just couldn’t wrap her head around it.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks as she remembered being unkind to him the last time she’d seen him. Taking his key. What if she hadn’t taken it—and he’d been able to come inside the house?

  Would he still be alive?

  As though she knew what Allie was thinking, Bitty squeezed her hand. “Don’t blame yourself . . . for anything. You hear me? This isn’t your fault.”

  Bitty gave Allie a Valium, and almost instantly, Allie felt like a zombie. She lay in bed with the lights off, floating in and out of consciousness.

  Sammy came into the bedroom at one point. She wondered if he knew something bad had happened . . . surely he did . . . but he didn’t ask any questions, or request to see the ambulance again, or the police officers, who she could still hear crawling around their property.

  Bitty and Zoe appeared every once in a while, to make sure she had everything she needed. At one point, just as it was getting dark outside, Zoe whispered in her ear: “I’m not mad anymore.”

  The last thing Allie remembered before fading away for good was a ruckus coming from the back of the house. Police officers yelling excitedly to one another.

  She tried to stay awake for a little longer, to figure out what was going on.

  But her eyes slammed shut.

  CHAPTER 31

  SAMMY SAT CROSS-LEGGED in the family room, playing a Marvel memory game with Zoe.

  He was having a hard time concentrating. He couldn’t stop thinking of his daddy. He didn’t understand why his truck had been parked in their driveway but he wasn’t there. Why the policemen had come. The ambulance. Why his mommy and Grammy had cried. He knew something bad had happened. Something very bad.

  And now his daddy’s truck wasn’t there anymore.

  The policemen had towed it away.

  He had lain in bed with Mommy for a long time, wanting to ask her what was going on, but he decided not to because he was afraid. So he’d gotten up and went to talk with Grammy, but she was still talking to the policemen, so now here he was, playing with Zoe again.

  He had a yucky feeling in his stomach. Like maybe he was going to throw up.

  “It’s your turn,” Zoe said.

  He looked up. “Oh, sorry.”

  He stared down at the cards, but couldn’t remember what any of them were. He sat looking hard at them, thinking that maybe if he stared hard enough, he would be able to see the pictures on the other side.

  “You move so slow I can feel my hair grow,” Zoe complained.

  He looked up at her. She had the same too-white skin and dark shadows beneath her eyes his mommy and Grammy had. He didn’t like everybody being sick and tired—and not knowing where his daddy was.

  “Come on,” she said. “Seriously. I think I just got my first gray hair.”

  Zoe had been acting different since he’d found Carrie’s stuffed bear. He didn’t understand why it had made her so mad at him, but it did. Her moods seemed to change a lot, too. She was nice one minute, mean the next. It was really weird. “That not very nice,” he said.

  “That not very nice,” she mocked, making a face and using a baby-sounding voice. She squinted her eyes. “News flash: Not everyone is nice, Sammy. Some people just fucking suck.”

  His jaw dropped. “That a bad word, Zoe,” he said, his eyes wide. “A really bad word.”

  Zoe laughed, but it sounded mean. “God . . . you’re such a retard,” she said.

  “A what?” he asked, suspicious. He didn’t know what that word meant, but it sure didn’t sound good.

  “Um, I think you just proved my point.
”

  Zoe was making his stomach feel even worse. He gathered his cards, trying to get them away from her.

  He didn’t like her anymore.

  And this time he wasn’t going to change his mind. He was going to not like her forever. That would show her. “I play all by myself.”

  “Whatever. Go nuts, dude.”

  Zoe stood up and looked out the window.

  “Go nuts”? What that mean? Sammy wondered. She was saying all kinds of stuff he’d never heard of before. It was making him feel like a baby. And frustrated.

  He crossed his arms and was about to tell Zoe that he was going to tell his mommy the things she was saying, and the bad word, too, when he noticed something crawling on the hard wood floor. He bent over and saw it was an ant.

  An ant! He loved ants. He didn’t think they came out in winter, but maybe they did. Because one was right there! He lay on his tummy so he could see the ant better. “Oh, hello, ant! Hi, friend!” he said.

  The ant was carrying a little speck of something white. Probably something for his home. He wondered what it was. A piece of bread? No . . . it looked too round. A tiny bead? He bet Zoe didn’t know that this ant could carry things fifty times his weight. And she certainly didn’t know that ants were alive when dinosaurs were.

  See, he wasn’t a baby. He knew things.

  He used his hand to block the ant, so it couldn’t get closer to the wall and disappear. He wanted to watch it a while longer. When it reached his hand, it stopped, then changed directions. He blocked its path again with his other hand. The ant changed directions again. He smiled. The ant was fun.

  All of a sudden, Zoe’s bare foot shot out. She stepped on the ant and ground the ball of her foot into the floor, hard, side to side.

  “No!” Sammy screamed. He looked up in disbelief and saw a nasty look on Zoe’s face.

  Tears stinging his eyes, he peered down at the ant’s little broken body. It was now in pieces. About a million of them. “You killed it!”

  Zoe stared down at him. “So what? Ants are bad.”

  “No they not,” he said, his cheeks wet with tears.

  “Yes, they are. They sting you.”

  Sammy stared at the squished ant on the floor again. “But he no sting you, Zoe.”

  “Well, how do you know it wasn’t planning on stinging me tomorrow? Or maybe in five minutes?”

  Sammy didn’t have an answer for that.

  “God, you’re so cheesy,” Zoe said, rolling her eyes and leading Sammy to believe it wasn’t good to be called that either.

  He stared at her.

  “What? I’m playing! C’mon, it was a joke.” She reached out to ruffle his hair.

  But he shrank away from her.

  CHAPTER 32

  ALLIE WOKE UP at five the next morning, still very groggy. She thought of Johnny and instantly felt sick and confused. It just seemed so surreal that he was dead.

  Trying not to disturb a sleeping Sammy, she slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom to take her meds, doubling her dosage again.

  She trudged to the living room. The sun was rising, painting the sky in shades of gold and pink. She blinked as she noticed yellow police tape cordoning off the area where the backyard met the woods.

  “Good morning,” Bitty said softly from the kitchen table.

  Allie went to the table and sat down. Bitty still looked terrible. Her eyes were watery and framed by heavy bags. The tip of her nose was red and chapped. Her hands hugged a mug of tea.

  “You look awful,” Allie said.

  “Why, thanks.” Bitty smiled. She reached for a tissue and sneezed into it three times. “I haven’t been this sick in over ten years. I’m having a tough time kicking it.” She studied Allie, her watery eyes filled with concern. “How are you doing this morning, honey?”

  “Better . . . I think,” Allie said, not wanting to worry the woman. The truth was that she was still wading through a fog, and she couldn’t think clearly about Johnny or anything, really. “Did Sammy ask any questions last night?” she asked.

  “No. But he knows something’s happened. I think he’s just afraid to ask.”

  “I’ll tell him today. I just . . . I still can’t believe it.”

  “Me, either, honey,” Bitty said. “And Allie. Something else has happened.”

  Allie vaguely recalled the ruckus she’d heard the prior afternoon. The din of men talking. Of more emergency vehicles outside the house.

  “They found another body last night.”

  Allie drew a sharp breath of surprise. “What? Who?”

  “They’re trying to figure it out. But they think it’s Gary.”

  Gary? But how? And what does she mean by “figure it out”?

  Bitty scanned their surroundings to make sure they weren’t being overheard. She lowered her voice. “The body was hanging from a tree. An apparent suicide, they say . . . but it appears as though it’s been there for at least a couple of weeks.” Bitty’s face looked pained. “Enough time for buzzards to have eaten away any facial features.”

  “Holy shit,” Allie said, a wave of nausea sweeping through her. “But why Gary? Why do they think it’s him?”

  “There are tattoos still visible on his left hand. They think they match Gary’s. Laura Willis is going in to try and identify the body this morning at the morgue in Tyler.”

  A few hours later, Allie sat at the dining room table, listening to Bitty announce that Laura had confirmed the body was Gary’s.

  Gary was dead.

  The worst was supposed to be over.

  But Allie didn’t feel any relief. She actually felt worse. Now there were new questions. The most important of which: If Gary had been dead for at least two weeks, who killed Johnny?

  If Allie had the energy, she knew she’d feel angry. Angry at not knowing what the hell was going on. Angry at still feeling withdrawal symptoms even though she had been doubling her antidepressant—something she knew she shouldn’t do without her doctor’s okay. Angry at being so damn exhausted. Angry at not being mentally strong enough to fight off depression.

  It was time she was honest with herself.

  As much as she didn’t want to face it, she was falling into a depressive episode.

  Dark thoughts were now rattling around in her brain, and she stank because the very thought of taking a shower was completely overwhelming.

  When Bitty told the girls the news about Gary, Zoe squeezed her eyes closed in an expression of relief. Carrie, on the other hand, burst out in tears.

  She must have been relieved.

  Or horrified.

  Probably both.

  Earlier, Allie had also discovered that the landline had been disconnected. It was one of the bills Bitty usually paid. Allie didn’t have money in her account for it, but she had an emergency credit card. She’d have to call the phone company and get it turned back on as soon as possible. But first she went into the kitchen to prepare some supplements. She needed to up her nutrition. To do everything she could to beat this depression . . . so she could think clearly again and could properly care for her little boy. She couldn’t let things spiral completely out of control—like they had for her mother and brother.

  But when she got to the kitchen, she remembered she’d forgotten to go to the health food store, and she was out of three of the supplements she needed. The most important ones. And it was Friday. She looked at the clock on the wall. Their local store was open only for three hours on Fridays.

  She’d have to go now.

  A wave of nausea slammed through Carrie’s body when she’d heard Gary was dead.

  In the bathroom, she blasted the faucet, then knelt down and hugged the toilet. She retched until there was nothing left in her stomach. When she was done, she rested her forehead on the toilet seat and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to gather her breath.

  When she opened her eyes again, she noticed something: a tiny white bead on the tile in front of her knee. She reached for it and rol
led it between her fingers.

  Her breath hitched.

  She’d seen beads like these before, back when they lived in the trailer. She and Zoe had had quite the education in drug paraphernalia over the years from watching their mother. She was pretty sure they could correctly identify most of the drugs—prescription and otherwise—making their rounds across the state of Texas. They also knew what most of the drugs did just by watching their effects on their mother.

  She lowered herself to her hands and knees, and found two more beads beneath the counter. She picked them up, beads so tiny, a hundred of them—maybe more—could probably fit in a teaspoon.

  A chill ran up her spine as memories flooded her mind. She knew exactly what the beads were.

  Oh no.

  She hurried to her bedroom and closed the door. Then she threw on her shoes and her coat, and removed the screen from the window. A minute later, she was outside and running toward the main road.

  It was time.

  She was going to do something horrible, something the old Carrie never in a million years would’ve done.

  Something completely unforgivable.

  Something she should’ve done weeks ago.

  Allie went to Bitty’s room to tell her she was heading to the health food store, but she found her curled up beneath her covers, sound asleep. Bitty had asked for an hour to rest, but of course, Allie would let her sleep all day. Whatever Bitty needed, she would get. Allie would just have to muscle through on her own for now.

  She went back to the living room and pulled on her shoes.

  “Mommy, where you going?” Sammy asked.

  “To the store real quick to get some medicine.”

  “I want to go.”

  “No, not this time. Stay here and help Zoe take care of Grammy. I’ll be right back.”