Denise laughed.
My nose wrinkled as confusion took hold of me. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m well past the point of craziness.”
I shook my head. “I disagree. You don’t have to shoot me.”
She smirked. “Now you’re the one talking crazy. Don’t you see? I have no choice.”
It was ironic that she was saying those words to me. After all, she was the one who snuck up on me in the dark a few minutes ago. And she was the one who forced me to drive to this landfill at gunpoint. Not to mention, she was the one who held all the power in this situation. Yet she was trying to act like a victim.
I couldn’t believe it.
I had to cast my feelings aside, though. If I wanted to keep from being gunned down in this garbage dump, it was vital to make an attempt to reason with her.
“Denise, you always have a choice—”
She shook her head. “No. I had a choice. Until you came along. Right now, I’m fresh out of options.”
“You could always put the gun down.”
Denise snickered. “You’re dreaming.”
“Haven’t you done enough damage already? I mean, you already killed your husband—”
“That’s what you say.”
“Are you really going to keep denying that you’re guilty?” I asked. “I mean, if you’re innocent, then why did you follow me home tonight? Why did you force me to drive to the edge of town where we are far away from prying eyes? And why are you holding me at gunpoint?”
“You don’t know the whole story.”
“I’m all ears. Prove me wrong by putting the gun down and explaining yourself.”
“Don’t you see? Nothing good can come from me putting this gun down.”
“Really? Because I would argue that only bad things can come from you shooting me.”
“I’m not going to jail.”
“If you kill me, that’s exactly what will happen.”
“That’s where you have it all wrong.”
“How could you possibly think that you’d be able to get away with murdering two people?”
“To start, no one will ever discover your body. Not here, surrounded by piles of trash.”
“You’re wrong. The police would find my body eventually.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“You’re even nuttier than I thought if you believe that you can get away with killing me.”
“Why wouldn’t I be able to? The cops in this town aren’t exactly the smartest people in the world. They completely bought my bogus alibi. You’re the only one who suspects me of murder. Which is why I can’t let you live,” she said.
I disagreed with a number of her points, but I wasn’t about to get into a shouting match with someone who was holding a gun. Instead, I tried tackling things from another angle.
“You know, you keep telling me that I don’t know the entire story. But how am I supposed to believe you are an innocent woman? Especially when you tell me that you have no choice but to kill me?” I asked.
“Guess what? I don’t care what you believe,” Denise said.
She said that, but if she was really determined to shoot me, she would have already pulled the trigger. If ice was truly running through her veins, this conversation would have been over minutes ago. As a matter of fact, there wouldn’t even have been a discussion. Instead, she just would have put a bullet in me.
Since she hadn’t done that, I knew there was a struggle within her. I could see it when I looked into her blue eyes. The question became, how could I keep her talking?
“I think you do care,” I said. “I believe that you don’t really want to kill me.”
“This isn’t about what I want. It’s about what I have to do,” she said.
“Denise, like I said before, you have a choice. You can still put the gun down.”
She shook her head. “No, I can’t. Not anymore. Not after you backed me into a corner. Not after you forced my hand.”
Denise was losing control of her emotions. The more worked up she became, the better the chance that she would pull the trigger.
I replied with a soft tone in my voice, “Why don’t you calm down?”
“How am I supposed to do that? This is all your fault.”
My eyebrows knitted. “My fault?”
Denise nodded. “You were going to go to the police and detail all the suspicions that you have about me. I couldn’t let that happen. You should have just stayed out of this. But you just had to get involved. That’s why you only have yourself to blame.”
So much for calming her down. Instead, she was more unstable than ever. Things were spiraling dangerously out of control.
I had to find a way to keep her talking. To keep her distracted from firing that gun. Unfortunately, it was getting harder to do that.
Just because it was difficult, though, didn’t mean that it was impossible. I searched my brain for a solution. The problem was that fear was wreaking havoc on my thoughts.
As much as I wanted to hold out hope that I could find a way to survive this encounter, I knew the odds of that happening were becoming slim.
It was no surprise then when my life suddenly began flashing before my eyes. What a short life it was, too. I wasn’t even sixty-years-old. Normally, I would have said that I was too young to die, but Denise begged to differ.
Just as my emotions were reaching a new low point, an idea popped into my head. “You insist that I’m to blame. That I have things all wrong. So why don’t you set me straight?”
“I know you think I’m a murderer, but I’m not.”
“Don’t you think that’s a pretty odd statement, considering how you’re pointing a gun at me?”
“I know how this looks, but I never intended for things to work out this way. I’m not the woman you think I am.”
“Who are you then?”
“I’m just someone who got tangled up in a really bad situation that just seems to keep getting worse.”
“You think you’re in a bad spot? Try having a gun pointed at you.”
“Like I just said, I never wanted this to happen,” Denise said. “If you knew the entire story, you’d understand that.”
“Have you forgotten that you have a captive audience here? I’m all ears.”
“That’s what you say, but you don’t care about what really happened. You just want to blame me for Joe’s death.”
I shook my head. “No. What I want is justice to be served. Now, are you going to honestly tell me that you didn’t kill your husband?”
She groaned. “It doesn’t matter now.”
I nodded. “Sure it does.”
She gritted her teeth. “Don’t pretend like you’re interested in the truth.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m genuinely interested in hearing the facts.”
Denise took a deep breath before responding. “All right. I did kill Joe—”
“That’s what I thought—”
Denise held her pointer finger up and continued, “In self-defense.”
My nose crinkled. “What?”
“Joe attacked me,” she said. “So I defended myself. The truth is, I didn’t mean to kill him. I was just trying to save my own life.”
My eyes widened. “Wait a minute. Are you serious?”
“Of course I am.”
“I’m confused, though,” I said. “Why did he attack you in the first place?”
“It’s a long story.”
“It turns out that I have time. I’m not exactly going anywhere.”
“True.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened then?”
“The short version is that I found out he was cheating on me. When I confronted him about it, he begged for forgiveness.”
“And did you forgive him?”
She shook her head. “No. I was way too angry and heartbroken to accept his apology. I mean, he betrayed our love. I don’t know why he thought that one apology c
ould repair the amount of damage that he caused. In my mind, our marriage was over.”
“When you told him that, what was his reply?”
“He kept begging me not to leave him. He said that he would do anything to get a second chance. But the thought of him being with another woman was too much for me to get over. There was no way I was going to take him back.”
“I don’t suppose he took that news well.”
“No,” Denise said. “He started yelling at me. That was when I decided that I had heard enough. I didn’t want to listen to excuses. I just wanted to leave. So, I turned around and headed for the front door. That was when he grabbed my arm.”
“Then what happened?”
“I mustered all the strength I could in order to break free of his grip. It wasn’t enough, though. He just got angrier at me and began yelling even louder. He told me that he wasn’t going to let things end this way. That I wasn’t allowed to leave until he was done saying his piece,” Denise said. “But I kept struggling until I finally broke free of his grip. From there, I bolted toward the front door. Unfortunately, he took off after me.”
“Did you end up reaching the door?”
She nodded. “I did, but as I grabbed the doorknob, he caught up with me. From there, he grabbed my arm again and began pulling me back toward him. As I turned to him, there was this crazy look in his eyes. It was like he had lost his mind. At that moment, I began fearing for my life.”
“I can imagine,” I said.
“It was only a matter of time before he overpowered me, so I knew that I needed to find some other way to break free from his grip. I quickly looked around the room for an object to hit him with. That was when I spotted his bronze lion sculpture on the mantle a few feet away. I reached for it and barely managed to grab it. Once it was in my grasp, I whirled around and hit him in the head with it.”
“So that’s where the bloody gash on his head came from.”
Denise nodded. “When I hit Joe with the sculpture, he immediately fell to the ground. Once his body hit the floor, it didn’t move an inch. I bent over to check up on him, but he wasn’t breathing. Just like that, he was dead.”
“You must have hit him really hard.”
“You have to remember, that sculpture wasn’t exactly light. It packed a serious punch.”
“I can’t argue with that,” I said. “What did you do then?”
“I panicked,” she said. “I bolted for the door, booked it out to the driveway, hopped into my car, and drove over to my sister’s house.”
My forehead wrinkled. “I don’t understand why you didn’t call the police.”
“It was such a traumatic situation that I wasn’t thinking straight. My first instinct was to flee the scene. Besides, I was afraid of calling the cops.”
I shrugged. “Why?”
“Because I was worried that they wouldn’t believe my story. I was terrified that they’d think I killed Joe on purpose.”
“If you’re telling the truth then you should have never fled the scene.”
“If I’m telling the truth?” Denise said. “And yet you wonder why I didn’t call the police. This is exactly why. It seems like I had every reason to believe that they wouldn’t buy my story. After all, you sure don’t.”
I held my hand up. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
“Tell me I’m wrong then,” she said. “You’re not going to, though, are you? Because you don’t buy my story, do you?”
“I’d really like to believe you—” I started saying.
“But you don’t. All I have to do is look into your eyes to see that. And that expression of disbelief is the exact reason that I didn’t come forward.”
“Hold on a second. Don’t go casting judgment on me—”
“Why not? I’m just being honest. And I can truthfully say that if all this had happened to someone else, I wouldn’t buy their story either. Unfortunately, it happened to me.”
I grimaced. “I still can’t believe you didn’t call the police.”
“It’s too late now,” she said.
I shook my head. “That’s where you’re wrong. You could put the gun down. Then you could call the police and tell them everything that you just told me.”
“And what? Let them arrest me for murder? Because that’s exactly what will happen. Maybe if I had proof that Joe attacked me, things would be different. But all I have is my story.”
“That’s a lot more than you’ll have if you end up killing me. You can claim that Joe’s death was in self-defense, but if you shoot me, you’re nothing more than a cold-blooded murderer. And when the police track you down, they’ll throw you in jail for the rest of your life.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. The police won’t be able to trace this back to me. I’ll make sure of it,” Denise said. “Why else do you think I had you drive all the way out here?”
“Listen to me. If you’re really not a killer then now is your chance to prove it. This is the moment of truth. There’s no going back. Now drop the pistol before you do something that you’ll regret for the rest of your life,” I said.
Her voice cracked as she responded, “Don’t tell me what to do. I’m the one in charge here.”
Denise tried to say the words with authority, but her own voice betrayed her. All I had to do was take one glance at her to see that her grip on the situation was slipping. It had taken a while, but my words of caution seemed to finally be getting through to her. Suddenly, the gravity of the situation was weighing heavy on her shoulders.
The look in her eyes changed as well. She seemed to be having some serious doubts about going through with her original plan. The longer I peered into her eyes, the less she looked like a crazy killer. Instead, fear was getting the better of her. As a matter of fact, I was starting to believe that she was incapable of committing murder. That brought up a very important point.
“You know, earlier in this conversation, you said that the look in my eyes was very telling,” I remarked.
“Yeah. So?”
“It turns out there’s a very interesting look in your eyes right now as well.”
“What’s your point?”
“That I believe your story—”
She gave me a wary look. “Don’t just say that to placate me—”
“Denise, look into my eyes. See for yourself. I’m being honest with you. After listening to everything you’ve told me, I really do believe that you killed Joe in self-defense.”
Her nose scrunched. “What changed your mind?”
“The terrified look in your eyes. A cold-blooded killer wouldn’t look so afraid when holding someone at gunpoint. Nor would a murderer hesitate so much in pulling the trigger. If you were truly a killer, you would have shot me already. Instead, your hand is wobbly and your face is filled with doubt,” I said. “So yes, I absolutely believe your story.”
“I have to admit, it’s refreshing to hear that.”
“I’ll bet. Do you know what would be even more refreshing, though?” I asked. “You putting the gun down.”
She shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“Sure it is. Just lower the pistol. We both know you aren’t a killer. So, stop acting like one.”
“You don’t understand. As nice as it is that you believe my story, it doesn’t mean that the police will.”
“I’m afraid it’s just a chance that you’ll need to take. We both know you’re innocent. Now prove it by dropping the gun.”
Instead of immediately arguing with me, she took my words to heart. First, she stared down at the pistol. Then she looked up at me. From there, she took a deep breath and put the pistol on the ground.
At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Against all odds, I managed to talk her out of shooting me. Although, deep down I knew that this was about much more than the words I had uttered. In truth, Denise never really wanted to kill me. She just felt like she had been backed into a corner. Thankfully, I showed her a way out.
While I was busy counting my blessings, Denise threw out her arms.
“What now?” she asked.
“We take a drive to the police station. From there, tell Detective Campbell everything you just told me,” I said.
Denise grimaced. “I’m scared.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s why it’s important for you to remember something.”
“What?”
I looked deep into her eyes and replied, “That the truth will set you free.”
She bit the corner of her lip. “I hope you’re right.”
Chapter Seven
A few minutes later, we arrived at the police station. From there, Denise spoke with Detective Max Campbell. After she told the detective her story, Max detained her for further questioning.
Ultimately, the district attorney would make a determination about whether to charge Denise with Joe’s murder, or to set her free. In the meantime, she would be held at the police station.
Once Detective Campbell got done speaking with Denise, he came out of the interrogation room to have a few words with me.
“Talk about a crazy twist,” he said.
“I know, right?” I said.
He wiped his forehead. “I still can’t believe you got Denise to lower her gun.”
“It turns out there’s a lot that I can’t believe about tonight,” I said.
“I’m right there with you. What a wild end to a case.”
“That’s one way of describing it.”
“I know you have more colorful ways of describing it.”
“I sure do. Try terrifying. Or emotionally scarring. Or traumatizing. I could go on, but you get my point.”
“I sure do,” he said. “I’m so sorry about everything she put you through. I don’t know how you held yourself together.”
“It certainly wasn’t easy. I definitely felt like I was going to have a breakdown a couple of times.”
“How did you manage to keep from losing it?”
“Honestly, my survival instincts just kicked in.”
“Even so, it’s amazing that you’re alive right now.”
“I know what you mean. I was pretty sure that I was going to die back there,” I said. “I’ve never been happier about being wrong in my entire life.”
Sabrina Carlson Cozy Mystery Anthology Page 11
