Secrets She Knew: A Secrets and Lies Suspense Novel

by D. L. Wood

  “So, Mom made Aunt Marla promise to keep my visit quiet, because I was ‘troubled,’” he punctuated the words with air-quotes, “and didn’t want me agitated with a lot of questions. They told Dr. Beecher and anybody else that might have caught sight of me that I was some ‘migrant worker’ they were helping out, and that was that. Plus, I think they were afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of me. Of letting me around other people. I think Mom must have told Aunt Marla about Kayla at some point. Aunt Marla insisted that I keep to myself, and that was fine with me. I didn’t want anybody anyway. Kayla was the only one for me. Until I saw her.” He looked transported again.

  “Jennifer?” Dani asked.

  “Jennifer.” He sighed, his shoulders rising and falling contentedly. “She was an angel, walking down by the river with that blond hair—the same as Kayla—coming down over her shoulders.” He ran his hands over his head, smoothing imaginary locks of hair. “It gleamed like gold when the sun hit it just right in the afternoon. Just like gold.” He seemed to realize Dani was watching him, and his mood sobered. “After that first time, I brought binoculars with me to the field when I was working so I could see her without her seeing me. I got as close as I could, hiding behind trees and bushes…day after day she played with those kids, walking down to the river and back. For weeks, I just watched.”

  “And then what?” Her words were barely a whisper, afraid anything more might shut him down.

  “I studied her. I sensed her. And finally I realized that Kayla—Kayla had just been an image of what was supposed to be and that Jennifer was the real one. The one. And then—” without warning, a savage hatred corrupted his handsome features with such ferocity that Dani pressed harder into the wall just to get farther away from him, “—and then I saw her, meeting him, in that shed,” he growled.

  “Who?” Dani asked, though she thought she knew who he meant.

  Jennifer’s mystery boyfriend, Peter.

  “I never knew. I didn’t get a good look at his face. But I could see hers and I could tell she loved him and, oh,” he actually choked back a sob, “it broke me again. The same way Kayla had broken me. And I knew I had to do something. Something before I lost her. It took a while to work up my nerve, but then, that day—she must have just gotten off work because it was later in the afternoon—I was in the field and saw her go to the shed. Alone. I was so excited, because I knew it was my chance. I followed her inside and when she turned around to see me, she was so happy, smiling so wide…”

  His own mouth split in a grin as his eyes closed again, likely resurrecting more memories of Jennifer. Then the grin vanished, replaced by sheer contempt as his eyes shot open, his gaze hard as steel. “Until she realized it was me, not him. She yelled at me, asking who I was and why was I there and what did I want—I tried to calm her down, I told her that I was there because we belonged together.” Urgent desperation drove his words now, as he ran his hands through his hair, pacing back and forth. “I said I wanted her to know me and love me, because I loved her—and she got quiet at that, but I could see she was terrified. I told her she didn’t have to be afraid of me, but she shoved me out of the way and ran, yelling, ‘Get away from me! Get away!’”

  Suddenly he stopped moving, grew eerily statue-still, and twisted his head slightly as if tuning in to the distant memory. “I caught her then, grabbed her arm right before she reached the honeysuckle bush. I yanked her back, and when she turned I could see the disgust in her eyes. It was the same way Kayla had looked at me, right before she laughed. But I wasn’t going to let Jennifer laugh. Because I wasn’t going to let her ruin it. Because she was the one, my forever one, and if she laughed, that would have ruined it. So I made it so she couldn’t laugh.” He expelled a breath in relief. “I made it forever perfect.”

  “You killed her.”

  His face hardened. “I preserved her. I saved her from making the biggest mistake of her life. And now she has been loved perfectly for thirteen years.”

  “What about the diary, the bracelet—”

  “Her things. Her precious things. I took them from her—she had them all with her that day. The bracelet, the ring, the diary tucked in her waistband—she must’ve been planning on showing him. I wasn’t happy that I had to give up the bracelet to misdirect the police.”

  “You planted it in Dr. Beecher’s nightstand.”

  “See, Boston, that’s how I knew it was meant to be because…it just all fit together so easily.”

  The throbbing in Dani’s head was like a hammer pounding her brain, and she uttered her question through a tight grimace. “What fit together?”

  “Earlier in the day, I’d come up the riverbank toward the house, trying to get a look at her inside with the kids. I did that sometimes. I was careful, stayed hidden behind the brush and used the binoculars…but all of the sudden she barreled out of the house, crying, and ran down the gravel road, headed for the riverbank. She was so upset and nearly fell, but Dr. Beecher had followed her, and managed to grab her and keep her from falling when she slipped. So, afterwards, I remembered that and thought—make him the scapegoat. It was easy. No one was home—they’d all gone out. I popped in, put the bracelet in the drawer and popped out.

  “I went home and Aunt Marla caught me washing her blood out of my shirt. I said it was mine, but she wasn’t stupid. I didn’t have any cuts and somehow she just knew something had gone wrong. I think it was because Uncle Rodney had caught me watching Jennifer a week earlier and warned me off. Aunt Marla didn’t know what had happened, but she knew it was something bad. Uncle Rodney drove me to Birmingham that night and put me on a bus back to St. Louis. You found Jennifer the next day.”

  “And no one knew you had ever been here.”

  He shook his head. “The migrant worker just disappeared.”

  “How convenient,” Dani muttered.

  “I know, right? It was proof that it was meant to be. Just like you were meant to be.” There was a disturbing shift in his aspect as he laser-focused on her.

  “Me?”

  “You’re not being a very good detective, Boston.” He bent his head toward her. “And I need you to understand. It’s important that you understand.”

  “Fine. You want me to play detective? Then tell me why you came back here, Chris? You’d gotten away with it. You were in the clear. Why move back to Skye?”

  Disappointment creased his face. Apparently he still felt like she wasn’t getting it. “Jennifer was the one. So as soon as I could, as soon as a position opened up, I came back to be close to her.” He stepped a few feet nearer Dani, spreading his arms wide. She could see that his weapon wasn’t in either hand, nor did she see a holster, meaning it was probably tucked into his waistband behind his back.

  “This is the place I spoke to her. Professed my love to her. This is my special sanctuary.” He squatted down and patted the place where Dani had found the diary. The original floorboard was gone, but the crime scene investigator had left a loose, larger board over the space, presumably to avoid creating a safety hazard. “And here, here is where I kept the heart of her—her diary—in my sanctuary, the place I’d known with her.” He sat back on his haunches and looked up at Dani. “I’ve sat here and read it a million times. Nearly memorized it. Every word. Every sweet word.”

  He closed his eyes and Dani wondered if he was seeing Jennifer’s flowery scrawl across the pages of her private recollections and dreams.

  “What did you mean a minute ago, when you said, ‘just like I was meant to be’?” she asked. The question seemed to register slowly with him, until a smile broke out on his face, and he rose to his full height, opening his eyes to take her in again.

  “For the last six years I’ve been coming here, walking through that deserted property, down that gravel road to this dilapidated shed to unearth Jennifer’s heart and pour over it, to profess my love for her again and again. Six years, living out a shadow of the love that could have been. And
then, last week—just a plain old, ordinary week like any other—everything changed. Because of you.” His voice rose in pitch. “I walked into Green’s Drugs and there you were, impossibly sitting at the counter with Sasha and Peter, with your blond hair and your blue eyes, looking like her.” He grabbed his chest. “I thought my heart was going to stop. I thought I would fall out right there on the floor.”

  Dani remembered that day. That moment. She had seen him come in, looking so handsome, and she had—

  “You smiled,” he said, and adoration beamed from him. “You smiled. At me. And I knew. You were her. The her she had never become. I thought to myself, this is it. She is the one. But then,” his expression darkened, “when I left, I doubted everything. I was so confused. I wasn’t even sure I had really seen you. I was so overwhelmed, I needed to be here. To come sit here, and think and talk to Jennifer. So I came, even though it wasn’t my regular night.”

  His shoulders dropped. “You cannot know the joy I felt when I walked up that riverbank and saw you entering my shed. It was a sign. I watched from the bushes, waited to see—and then you ran out, carrying Jennifer’s diary, carrying her very heart and I just knew.”

  He is completely insane. The neurons of Dani’s brain were firing at full speed, wildly searching for a way out of the situation that didn’t end with her dead.

  “I needed to get close to you—to know you better. And I could feel you, there in your house. Touching your things. Imagining you holding them. I left you hints, just so you would know.”

  She worked to keep her voice even. “Why did you take the diary and the file?”

  “Well, you took my diary first, and then you gave it to the police.” It was an accusation, not an explanation. “I had to do something, because I’d never made a copy—a copy just wouldn’t have been the same and I also didn’t want to risk someone seeing me with it. Since trying to get the original or Dr. Beecher’s copy back from the police would’ve been too risky, I had to settle for your copy. And I took the file because it would seem odd for an intruder interested in Jennifer’s diary to leave her murder file behind. Unless he already had access to the file, and I definitely didn’t want anyone to start thinking like that.”

  Dr. Beecher’s copy. Her heart lurched at the thought of Dr. Beecher taking the fall for Chris. “He was innocent, Chris. An innocent man. And you let him go to prison and die because of your lies.” Fire burned in her belly, and though she knew she shouldn’t antagonize him—that she should be sympathizing and empathizing and establishing rapport—she just didn’t care.

  “No, Boston,” he corrected slyly, “you’re the one that let him die. I warned you. We all warned you—the Chief, your friends—to leave well enough alone. But you didn’t. You passed the diary on to Beecher and that couldn’t be allowed.”

  Sick realization made her suck in a quivering breath. “You had him killed?”

  “You left me no choice.”

  “But you knew there wasn’t anything in the diary that he could use against you. You said yourself that you read it a million times—”

  “There was nothing that pointed to me directly. Nothing within my scope of knowledge that seemed dangerous to me, but I had no idea what Beecher would see in it, what knowledge he would bring to it that might help him prove his case. Would it jog his memory? Unearth a conflicting story he hadn’t known about before? Would it provide him with anything, anything at all, that would make the authorities take a second look at his case? Because I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t allow that. Because if people started digging, they just might uncover me. But if Beecher was dead, not only would he be unable to provide insight on the diary passages, there would be no reason to pursue a review of his case. Problem solved.”

  He’s going to kill me. And time was running out. She could see it in his eyes.

  Chris Newton was completely out of touch with reality, and had already killed two—no, three people—she corrected herself, thinking of Kayla in St. Louis. If she stayed in this shed with him, she was going to end up dead. Because now she knew the truth, and no matter what she promised, or how she plied him with hopes of some kind of twisted “love” between them, he wouldn’t be able to risk her leaving there and telling someone. She knew it and he knew it.

  He started talking about Jennifer again, about how much Dani looked like her now, with her new, fully-blond hair, and how much she reminded him of her. His words faded in her ears as she worked to come up with a plan, a way out. She forced down the panic, the fear, the guilt that was crushing her, and let her training take control. Holding her head still so as not to arouse his suspicion, she cast around in search of some kind of weapon. But there was nothing. The place had been wiped clean when the crime scene investigator came through, taking everything—

  The crime scene investigator. Her eyes fell on the diary’s former resting place as she dialed back into what Chris was muttering.

  “…like her. And so now here I am, with another problem that didn’t have to be.” He paused expectantly, then spoke for her when she offered nothing. “You. You’re that problem. Oh, Boston,” he moaned, taking another step back and running his hands wretchedly over his head. “Why? Why couldn’t you just have left it? I was there for you. Why wasn’t I enough?”

  As if the strength had finally been drained from her, she slid down the corner, all the way to the floor. He watched her, the pain in his eyes nearly palpable. If she had to guess, she would say that he truly did not want to have to end her. Not that that would stop him. Stretching out so she was on all fours, she crawled toward him, her knees dragging across the wooden planks, tiny splinters catching in the fabric of her pants, scratching her skin.

  It wasn’t far. A few feet at most until she reached him. She grabbed his ankles, right above his leather topsiders, and bowed her forehead against his feet. “I’m so sorry, Chris,” she said, sniffling, her voice catching between words. “I didn’t realize. I didn’t want to ruin anything.”

  “Then why?” he asked, and she felt his fingers brush gently across the crown of her head, her face still bent toward the floor. “Why didn’t you just let it go?”

  “Because I didn’t understand. I didn’t see.” Dani dragged one hand from his shoe, and dropped it to the floor, pushing herself up on one arm, still looking down as she heaved a sob. “I get it now. I do.”

  “But—” he said, and she felt something drop onto her head, then trickle down.

  He was crying.

  “—it’s too late, Boston. I don’t know what else to do. You’ve spoiled it. And now I have to preserve you the way I preserved her. Keep you perfect until—”

  Wham! In one fluid motion Dani grabbed and sliced upward with the temporary board the crime scene investigator had left behind, contacting violently with the underside of Chris’s chin. His head whipped back and he stumbled in reverse as she followed through, jamming the end of the plank into his gut like a battering-ram so that he doubled over. She plowed her body into him, driving him against the wall, but he shoved back, roaring like a wild animal and charging her. Barely still holding on to the plank with one hand, she awkwardly slung it upward with all the strength she could muster, cracking him on the side of the head and dropping him to the floor.

  Then she ran.

  26

  Dani bobbled unsteadily as she ran from the shed, her own feet nearly tripping her more than once as she sprinted over the uneven earth. Behind her, the shed door crashed open, and she turned to see it bang into the exterior wall so hard that it broke a hinge, leaving it sagging as Chris stumbled out. He swiveled frantically, searching…then froze as their gazes connected. His head dipped slightly, as if locking in a target, then he moved, his rough, staggered paces taking a direct route toward her.

  Dani stepped backward, one quick stride after another, but he kept coming, his heavy, pounding footfalls bringing him nearer, nearer, until she knew that delaying any longer would close the distance between them.

  So sh
e halted, facing him, and though still yards away, he stopped abruptly, confusion gilding his stare. Blood dripped down his forehead, a dark stain running into one eyebrow.

  “You stopped.”

  She shrugged. “I can’t outrun you.”

  He shook his head. “No. You can’t.” A faint smile curved his mouth. “Look where we are.”

  They were standing somewhere along the spread of the honeysuckle bush, the night turning its leafy mounds a deep blackish-green and its flowers into faint glimmers in the moonlight. “We’re back where it all started. Do you see now?” he asked in earnest. “Do you see how this was meant to be? You found her here, and now you’ll be found here and together we will share that always.” He stepped toward her.

  “Don’t,” Dani said. Her voice was forceful. All traces of the weak, pleading woman in distress had vanished. “Don’t come any closer.”

  A flicker of adoration stole across his face. “You’re stronger than the others, Boston. You’re more like me. We would have made such a pair,” he said, and reached behind his back, his hand grasping—then shock rolled over his visage as Dani planted her feet in a shooting stance, leveling his gun at his center mass.

  “I mean it, Chris. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will.” She measured each word, carving them out so that they were steady and sure, leaving no room for him to question her resolve, even though her head was on fire, her legs were starting to shake and the edges of her vision were beginning to dim.

  His face drained, stark white against the night. “I didn’t even feel you take it off me.”

  “You were dazed.”

  And that was it. He sank slowly, crumpling down onto the dry earth. He pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, rocking like a child attempting to self-soothe. “It was going to be so perfect,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “Finally.”