by Jeff Abbott
You messed up. You got greedy, you got dumb, and you let it slip out of control. You let her run the show when you should have put a stop to it all. Aunt Claudette’s right. Fix this. Andy approached the side of the house away from the porch. No sign of her. The garage was shut, but she was likely here. He could hear the soft sounds of music: Frank Sinatra playing. She loved Sinatra.
He entered the house without knocking. The door was locked, but he’d gotten an impression of her key once; he had thought it would be useful. He stood in the silence of the foyer, listening. He would get what he needed from her and then deal with her. She would just have to understand the arrangement had come to an end. He didn’t want to spend his growing-old years with Julie looking over his shoulder.
He could hear the music, upstairs. Probably she was in the creepy room of hers, revisiting her life. Why do you have all this stuff up on the walls, he’d asked once, and she’d told him never to mention it again. He knew better.
He entered the room. Pictures of the people in his life, and people he didn’t know, all pinned to the walls. The music came from a laptop. He stepped toward it and bent to look at the screen because there was a picture of him and Julie and Julie’s little boy Grant and then he felt the needle slide into his neck. He whirled and that lunatic was behind him, smiling, and she’d pumped something into him and a wild panic clawed at him. He felt his muscles start to collapse, his strength, what kept him safe, fading. He wet his pants. He fell to his knees.
“What…what…” his lips felt thick, he could hardly move them.
She stepped back. “I thought you might turn on me. And I need you to do one more little thing for me, Andy. Right now I just need you to be still and keep breathing. For a while.”
“Uh…la…ess…Beth…” he tried to say.
“I’m not her anymore,” she said, and the blackness swarmed over him like a living thing, constricting, suffocating.
56
MARIAH DROVE EAST, letting Bill Gonzales stay a few cars ahead of her, going past Bastrop. In the moonlight as it broke through the clouds she could see the remains of the pine forests around the town that had been decimated in a fire years ago and were slowly growing back.
His car turned onto a side road. She had to follow him, but he’d likely notice her now. Fine. If he stopped, then she would stop him and force him to tell her where he was going.
She slowed onto the shoulder off the highway, waited for thirty seconds, then turned, letting him stay well ahead. But they were now the only two cars heading north. He slowed. She slowed. Then she had an idea, and she turned into the parking lot of a small café. He kept going.
She saw a text from Jake. Another address for Bill Gonzales, this one in Bastrop County. It saved her having to make the search she planned to make. She punched it into the maps app and drove off.
It didn’t matter if she kept Bill in sight now. She knew where he was going.
But she didn’t want to be too far behind. Just where he couldn’t spot her.
She drove deeper into the piney woods.
The maps app put her onto a farm-to-market road off the main highway, then another one. The pine forests began, and not all the roads were paved. Mariah drove into a dark overhang created by the density of trees, the car jostling as she got closer.
She turned at a sharp bend in the road, and down the hill, she could see a house, aglow from a porch light. She killed her headlights. Two stories, wooden, a stone chimney. The landscaping needed attention: shrubs overgrown, weeds sprouting in the flower beds, the grass a bit high. But it didn’t look abandoned.
Gonzales’s car was parked to one side, next to a car that looked like Reveal’s, which stunned her. Why was he here? What had he learned? There was a garage, but the door was closed.
She parked in the trees in the darkness. She opened the trunk, trying to shield the light with her body. She put a gun at the back of her waist, her telescoping police baton in her pocket, her knife in her boot. She gently shut the trunk. She cursed herself for not having thought to arm herself before she parked—they might have seen the trunk light. She could not make mistakes now. She walked toward the house, staying in the pines.
She risked moving down the long curve of driveway, in the open, and reached a shadowy corner out of the halo of porch light.
One lit window was close to the garage. She peered through. She could see Bill Gonzales alone in the kitchen, leaning against the refrigerator, rubbing his face, as if weary or sick. Then he walked out.
She heard the front door opening. She ducked around the edge of the house. He got into Reveal’s car, started it, and drove away.
Why is he taking Reveal’s car? she wondered. Fear was an icepick in her chest.
She listened. She didn’t hear voices.
Had he locked the door behind him?
She gently tested the lock. It was open.
A trill of absolute terror ran up her spine. The truth was here. The not knowing…for so long…she took a silent breath and opened the door. A dim light came from the kitchen, left on by Bill Gonzales. She stepped inside and left the door open in case she had to run. She killed the porch light. If she had to run, she wanted the night to hide her.
She stood in a small foyer. A mirror hung by the door, an umbrella stand, a piece of art on a stairway leading to the second floor. The air smelled a bit stale, and a bit coppery. Like blood. She told herself that was her imagination.
She walked from the foyer into a den, simply decorated with a leather couch, a basic coffee table. Some framed art hung on the walls—but they were all a child’s paintings. Paper yellowing with age, the name JENNIFER carefully written in crayon in the corner of each one. A picture of a home, with a mom and a dad stick figures, with two smaller stick figures next to them: two girls with dresses and curly hair. Stick figures at the circus, with elephants and lions and clowns. At the ocean, on a mountain.
There was a single photo framed. Two girls. One of the girls was the same as the photo she’d found at Sharon’s inside one of Hal Blevins’s books. Same coppery hair, green eyes alight with joy. Penny? She held a baby, with a pink ribbon in her hair.
The final drawings, each a portrait, had labels: Mommy, Daddy, Penny, Jenny. Rhyming names.
Mariah walked deeper into the house, past the entrance to the kitchen, past the staircase. She reached a larger room, a bedroom but with no bed, and she stepped inside. It was dark, the windows shuttered and curtained, and in the pale glow of a weak lamp she saw Reveal, bound to a chair, head lolling toward his chest.
Mariah rushed toward him. He was breathing, but he’d been beaten nearly unconscious. She turned as she sensed someone behind her, someone who had been in the corner in the shadows.
The light switch flicked on.
“Hello,” the woman said. “Again.”
Mariah blinked at her.
Not Bethany.
It was the woman who had been reading the book, sitting on the patio at the Tex-Mex restaurant. Mariah had broken the jerk’s finger who wouldn’t leave her alone, the night she met to compare notes with Reveal.
What…what…had she been spying on us, listening to us talk about the case…
“Thanks again for standing up for me,” the woman said.
“Are you Lizbeth?”
“Yes,” she said, and then Mariah saw the gun in her hand.
57
THE CALL CAME into the Lakehaven police late, past midnight—a loud crashing noise reported from a house under construction on Canyon Grove Avenue. The responding unit investigated, then sent out for Dennis Broussard, because he had asked to be summoned any time there was a suspicious death. Lakehaven had a very low crime rate, and he was determined to keep it that way.
The house was one of those teardown-and-buildups that Broussard, as a longtime Lakehaven resident, hated. The walls were up, but the house was still unfinished. The sign out front read Platinum Homes—he’d seen others of their signs around. The officer led
him into the partially finished house. The man’s body lay at the foot of a long staircase, neck broken, a broken flashlight by him.
“We got an ID?” Broussard knelt by the body. The corpse was male, in his late forties, well groomed, broken eyeglasses.
“Yes, sir, the driver’s license says Jeffrey Marshall. He lives next door.”
“So he was trespassing?”
“Well, there’s some business cards in his wallet, too, and he owns the company that’s building this house. Same name on the card as the sign out front. I’m guessing he came over here to check something, and he fell down the stairs. His neck’s broke.”
“Why would he come over here in the middle of the night?”
“Must’ve heard a noise?” the officer suggested. “Maybe a thief? They’ll steal copper out of these houses.”
Broussard leaned down farther. He could see a watchband on the man’s wrist, with a distinctive pattern. Like the silver diamond pattern on the video, on the wrist of the person who tried to kill Craig Dunning.
He took a deep breath. “Anyone at Marshall’s house?”
“No, sir, no one responding. It was another neighbor that heard the crash and called, and then the unit was here in three minutes.”
“Did they see anyone leaving the scene?”
“No, sir.”
Broussard stood, feeling very tired. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Craig’s number, half wondering if he’d hear a ring in the nearby darkness, hiding. But there was nothing, and no answer from Craig.
Did you find the man who was after you, Craig? Did you find him before I did?
Broussard put the authority back into his voice. “OK, let’s get this processed. I want this place gone over carefully. Find me any evidence that suggests this wasn’t an accident.”
58
LIZBETH?” MARIAH SAID AGAIN.
“Yes. Very slowly, turn around. Put your hands on your head.”
Mariah did. Lizbeth relieved her of the baton and the gun tucked in the back of her jeans. But she didn’t see the knife hidden in Mariah’s boot. Mariah wasn’t sure how quickly she could draw it before Lizbeth could shoot her.
“OK, turn back around,” Lizbeth said.
Mariah obeyed. The gun held on her remained steady. They were both silent for a moment. Mariah couldn’t stand the quiet, so she spoke, trying to fit the pieces together.
“Bill Gonzales isn’t your father. He’s your stepfather.”
“Yes.”
“Jennifer Elizabeth. Jenny and Penny. Penny Gladney was your sister. You were the baby crying in the background of the video.”
The gun didn’t waver. “Yes. Penny was my older sister.”
“Your grudge is against the Blevins family.”
“Grudge is such an inadequate word for all I’ve done.” Her voice was very calm.
“Why is Reveal here? He hasn’t hurt you.”
“Lots of loose ends. Reveal, Andy, you. Fortunately we have a crime to discuss. A reason why Bethany and your mother got into trouble. Reveal’s going to write an explanation on his blog. And I think he’s more likely to do it with you here.”
“Where is Bethany?” Her voice sounded small.
“Not far,” Lizbeth said, her voice quiet and even.
I want her to suffer.
“You were behind derailing Bethany’s life. Pretending to be her friend. Ruining her. The drugging her when she was drunk, the planting of the pills her mom found in her car, the pranks, the credit card abuse.”
Lizbeth gave a tiny nod.
“Because Hal killed your sister. But Bethany was innocent of that. Why would you come after her?”
“None of them are innocent. Hal, Sharon, Bethany…your mom.”
“My mother is here?” Mariah’s voice rose. Nausea waved over her.
“She’s not far from here,” Lizbeth said, her voice still calm. Echoing what she’d said before about Bethany.
What did that mean? A cold fear knifed through Mariah. “Hal’s already dead. What point is there?”
“Reveal?” Lizbeth called.
Reveal opened his swollen eyes. He focused on Mariah and mouthed the words: I’m sorry.
“Do you want me to tell you the story?” Lizbeth said to Reveal. “I’ve wanted to tell it for a while, and you have your pitch to finish.”
Reveal nodded, very slowly. His mouth was gagged with cloth, his lips bloodied.
Mariah wanted to say, Chad, there is no pitch. She’s not letting us leave. She could see Lizbeth forcing him to write a solution for his blog on the mystery of the Beths, then tragically killed…by Mariah. And Lizbeth, or Jenny, would melt into the shadows, vanish again, emerge elsewhere with a new name.
“Let’s start with Hal,” Lizbeth said.
“He killed himself out of guilt,” Mariah said.
“Oh, there was guilt,” she said. “He bought a ticket to Houston because he wanted to come see me.”
“You?”
“Well, my mother had just killed herself a week before. He felt just a smidgen of guilt about that,” Lizbeth said. “Penny’s death destroyed my family. Her death was a never-ending ripple. Absence as presence.” She swallowed. “My dad got cancer two years later, and he didn’t want to fight it. He didn’t have the will to live. Wouldn’t even do chemo. Just let himself die.”
“I saw the video. Your dad was on it.”
Lizbeth’s teeth touched her bottom lip. “You found the DVD.”
“Yes.”
“I began to believe Bethany had destroyed it after she stole it from me. She had every reason to. Where is it?”
“The police have it now.”
Lizbeth let the silence fill the room for a moment. “My dad’s not the man on the video. That was Hal Blevins.”
But that couldn’t be right, Mariah thought. Hal was driving the car that hit Penny. He was drunk behind a steering wheel, not inside the house. Mariah opened her mouth to speak, but Lizbeth went on.
“My dad couldn’t summon the will to live, to fight, even for me and my mom. After the cancer killed him, she remarried.”
“Bill Gonzales.”
“Yes, and Bill tried and tried, but Mom was never happy. Ever. She killed herself over it, finally. Pills and booze. I found her dead. I was fourteen.”
Mariah felt nausea climb up her throat. “I’m sorry…”
Lizbeth waved away her sympathy. “And I called Hal. Mother had found Hal and Sharon, a year before, but done nothing on it. She could prove nothing about their guilt, but she wrote out all her theories in her suicide note. I told Hal my mother and father were dead because of what he’d done.”
“How did you know?”
“Something my parents said.” She glanced over at Reveal. “Can you guess?”
Mariah said slowly, “Hal wasn’t drunkenly driving over there to pick up Bethany. He had another reason. He got fired for sleeping with a coworker as well as drinking. Was your mom the coworker?”
“My mom is not to blame. Be very careful of what you say.”
“I can’t guess,” Mariah said.
“Are you really scared of me? Because you’re not thinking straight,” Lizbeth said. “Hal wasn’t driving.”
Mariah’s chest tightened. “Sharon was.”
“Hal was already over there. He’d brought Bethany over for a playdate she didn’t want. But he was really there to see my mom. They went upstairs—talking, or worse—while Bethany and Penny were playing. I was a baby, asleep in my crib. Foolish, stupid of them, but people having affairs whose families know each other can use their kids as camouflage. Bethany didn’t keep Penny inside the house. Sharon raced over there in her car when she suspected where her daughter was, that her husband was using a playdate as a moment to be with my mother, and she hit Penny and just kept going. Like Penny was nothing. Maybe it was a revenge against my mother. Maybe it was an accident. None of it matters, because it’s still her fault. I never knew every detail until my mother’s suicide
note. She laid it all out—the affair, her suspicion that it was Sharon driving like a maniac over there to catch them, Penny being run down, that worthless family leaving Houston a couple of months later to go off and have a normal life. To have what the Gladney family could never have again. But my mother had no proof, and she didn’t want to go to the police. I kept her suicide note, and that way only I knew the truth of why everyone I loved was now dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mariah repeated, horrified. “Why didn’t your mother tell anyone?”
“She didn’t want to lose my dad. Or what was left of her life. Her job, her friends, her parents.” Lizbeth shook her head. “What do you think everyone would have thought of her, if her child was dead because she was distracted by her married boyfriend? Her family? Her church? Society loves to hate on a wayward mother.”
Mariah had no answer.
“So. Hal kept tabs on my mom through a friend back in Houston. He heard about her suicide. When I called him, he said he was going to come to Houston to see me—he’d bought a ticket. I guess to confess, like I already didn’t know. But I could hear in his voice he couldn’t face it. So I came on a bus to see him. I told him to stay home from work so we could talk, and I wouldn’t tell the police what he and his wife had done. I brought my father’s gun. I think that surprised him, but it showed him my maturity. My seriousness. We sat. We talked. And I think once he knew how our family was destroyed, totally destroyed, that he couldn’t face living with Sharon anymore. They’d kept a terrible secret, the two of them together, and three people were dead from it.” She glanced at Reveal. “Is that the right kind of tone for your podcast? Dramatic enough for you?”
“He killed himself,” Mariah said in a whisper.
“I gave him a choice. Suicide, or I could shoot him and shoot his family when they came home. It was his fault his wife was rushing over to our house. He agreed. I think the years of the lies had broken him. He did it while I watched. I gave him the leftover pills my father had been given for his pain. He sat and ate them and drank a bottle of liquor I’d brought from my house and made me promise I would leave his family alone if he did this. He wrote a couple of drafts of his suicide note, and I sat with him while he died. I even held his hand, once he was unconscious. I’m not a monster. I’m a better person than he ever was.”
