by D. L. Wood
“Give me your phone, Chris.”
She held out her hand, but instead of complying, he submissively rolled onto his side, facing away from her and exposing the bulge of the phone in his back pocket. Cautiously she edged forward, her nerves on alert, ready to pull the trigger if he so much as flinched.
But he didn’t. He just lay there, rolled into a ball.
The handsome detective—the clever, jovial man she had welcomed into her world, borne her heart to, even considered taking a risk on, was no more. The facade had been peeled away and this broken, withered shell was all that was left. With the gun trained on him, she extended her other hand, keeping as much distance as she could between them, and slipped his cell out of his pocket. Quickly backpedaling out of his reach, she dialed 9-1-1. After requesting assistance, she left the line open, slipped the cell into her pants pocket, and returned both hands to the weapon’s grip, aiming the muzzle squarely at the back of Chris’s head.
“Chris Newton, I’m placing you under arrest for the murders of Jennifer Cartwright and Thomas Beecher. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law…”
27
The next few days were a whirlwind of doctor’s visits—she had, in fact, sustained a concussion—police interviews and media calls, meeting with Jennifer’s parents, speaking to Dr. Beecher’s ex-wife and children, and packing. So, so much packing. But finally, the day before, on Wednesday afternoon, Estate Settlers had shown up and begun coordinating the disposal of the trash, the charity collection of the donation boxes, and the loading up of everything else to be hauled off to Birmingham to be sold online or at auction.
Now, it was Thursday morning, and the last Estate Settlers’ truck had finally pulled out of the driveway an hour ago. Dani sat on the front porch—it was the only place to sit now that the furniture was gone—with Peter and Sasha flanking her. Perched on the steps like they had done so often during their teen years, it almost felt like they were there again.
Almost.
They each cradled a cup of coffee, brought by Sasha from Green’s Drugs, since Dani’s father’s coffee and brewer had already been shipped to Boston in one of the “Me” boxes. At ten in the morning it was already too hot to be drinking coffee outside, but Dani kept sipping. She needed all the caffeine she could get to make it through this long travel day, even if it did mean sucking down the blistering liquid in ninety-degree weather.
Together they stared out at the poplar trees on opposite ends of the front yard, green and full, their shade covering most of the grass, keeping the fescue happy and green as well. The trio had been there for nearly half an hour, but Peter and Sasha hadn’t said much. What was there for someone to say in moments like that—when such a monumental shift occurs in your life, it’s as if the actual tectonic plates beneath you have realigned, but you’re the only one that feels it? Four lives—Dani’s included—had been wrapped up in that house. Tears and joys and disappointments and victories…and just like that, it was all gone. Wiped clean. Now someone else would make memories there. It would be the center of someone else’s universe.
“And you’re sure all your stuff’s been shipped? You don’t need me to send anything?” Sasha asked.
Dani shook her head. “Nope. You saw how cleaned out it was in there.”
“It’s bizarre,” Peter said. “Just doesn’t feel right without your parents’ things inside.”
“Don’t you need it staged with something?” Sasha asked. “I could bring a few things over—”
“Thanks, but no,” Dani said. “The agent’s handling it. She’s got a staging company coming in next week, but honestly, we may not even need it. She told me she’s had two serious inquiries since she posted the house online yesterday. She thinks it’ll sell in days.”
“Well, I hope so. For your sake,” Peter said, bumping shoulders with Dani. “It’s hard when these things drag on.”
“Yeah.” She looked at him and could feel the mutual understanding pass between them once again. In all the statements, interviews and questioning, she hadn’t mentioned anything about him being Jennifer’s mystery boyfriend. And she never would. Chris had confessed. There was no point in dragging Peter through the mud just for the sake of outing every inch of the truth.
He tossed her a meaningful smile, ripe with gratitude, and she nodded, just in case he needed the reassurance of her silence one last time.
“I just can’t believe I was so wrong about him,” Sasha spouted out of nowhere. It had been like this ever since Chris’s arrest. They would be talking about something else altogether, or quietly working, and out of the blue Sasha would pipe up, apologizing for trying to set Dani up with him and for being what she called, “such a shoddy judge of character.” She would wring her hands and shake her head, berating herself. “I don’t know how I missed it. He was just so—”
“Sasha, seriously. Stop it,” Dani said, putting a hand on Sasha’s knee to halt the tirade. “It wasn’t just you. He had everyone fooled. Including the Chief. Including me,” Dani said, patting her chest. “I want this to be the last time you apologize, got it?”
“But I gave you something to hope for, Dani. I could see how he looked at you—”
“It was never going to work out with me and Chris, Sash.”
Sasha’s brow wrinkled, exposing a single line between her eyebrows. “What?”
“I mean, yeah, he was really handsome and we had the detective thing in common, and he was funny and interesting, but…there was just something that didn’t quite fit. I could never really put my finger on it, but I just had a feeling. My spidey-senses, you know? There were times when something about him, I don’t know, just…bothered me. Times he was oddly protective—too soon, too concerned, even a little bossy about it—I shrugged it off, chalking it up to just normal friendly concern, and maybe his detective mindset, but now it makes sense. I never reached a point where I was ready to pursue anything with him. So you pushing us together didn’t scar me.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” Dani answered, prompting Sasha to throw her arm around her and hug her tightly. “But I want you to take this as a sign and stop trying to set people up. You absolutely stink at it.”
“Yeah, you really do,” Peter chimed in, an amused twist to his lips.
Genuine disbelief saturated Sasha’s countenance. “What? I put you and Amy together—”
“No,” Peter corrected, “You set me up with Amy’s sister, remember?”
Sasha’s eyes narrowed, then relaxed. “Oh, right.”
“So, let me find my own dates, please,” Dani said, leaning into her friend playfully.
“But you won’t,” Sasha whined. “You’ll go back to Boston and back to your job and it’ll be the same old grind again—”
“Shows what you know,” Dani remarked, injecting a sizable dose of mystery into her tone.
Interest curled Sasha’s lip as she leaned back and appraised Dani. “What are you talking about?”
“Bailey King,” Dani said, and despite her attempts to hide it, she was sure the satisfaction of surprising Sasha with this little tidbit was showing on her face.
Sasha’s gaze shot to Peter. “Did you know about this?”
Peter held his hands up, laughing. “Uh, no. Not me. First I’m hearing.”
“So,” Sasha exclaimed impatiently, elbowing Dani, “spill it!”
Dani held her tongue for a minute, allowing the suspense to build. The look on Sasha’s face was priceless. Finally she relented. “I’ve got a date with him, in Boston a week from tonight.”
“Nooooooo,” Sasha drawled. “How—”
“He came here yesterday, after you left. Said he’d heard about everything with Chris and Jennifer’s case and all—how could he not, with it all over the news—but he wanted to wait until the frenzy died down just a bit, to reach out and make sure I was okay.”
“Nooooooo,” Sasha repeated.
&nbs
p; Dani nodded. “He asked if I would consider dinner in Boston when I got back. I told him I would.”
Sasha clapped her hands together, while Peter cocked his head. “You sure, Dani?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Why?”
He pursed his lips before answering. “I don’t know. It’s just…it’s not like you to move so fast. I mean, I know you said you already knew Chris wasn’t your Prince Charming, but you were still sort of, I don’t know, interested in him and you’ve just been through so much in the past week—”
“I’m done living in the past.” She meant it as a response to his comment, but she also meant it as a resolution in general. “I’ve let my past in this place and its tragedies—Jennifer’s and Dr. Beecher’s—define me for far too long. But,” she sucked in a breath and straightened her shoulders, feeling a surprising sense of strength in actually saying it out loud, “the ghosts have been put to rest, and I think it’s time for me to move on too. I’m not taking any of it back with me, including Chris Newton. I want a fresh start. I want to define myself, my purpose, by something more hopeful.”
“Like what?” Sasha asked, but the spark in her eye told Dani that she too remembered their conversation at the sink on Sunday.
“I’ve got some ideas,” Dani replied, gracing her friend with a warm smile.
“You’re not exactly leaving the past behind, really, though, are you?” Peter said with a smirk. “Not when your first step into this brave new world involves dating the first boyfriend you ever had.”
“I’m not leaving it all behind. Just the weight I was never meant to carry. The rest of it—the good stuff,” she said, linking her arms through theirs, “that, I’m never letting go.”
28
“I’m so sorry, Dani.” There was an edge to the Chief’s words as he spoke, a cutting regret to match the weary remorse lining his scruffy features as Dani listened from the chair in front of his desk. He leaned forward on the desk blotter, his arms crossed, almost as if he needed the support to keep steady. She had never seen him this shaken.
“It’s all right. Really—”
“No. All this time, all these years, you kept saying—you were the only one who kept saying—that we’d gotten it wrong. Not a soul bought into it, but you held on just the same. And I’m just so sorry that I wasn’t there for you. That I didn’t believe it.”
“I get it, Chief. It was just a feeling, of a fifteen-year-old girl, no less—”
“You didn’t stay fifteen.”
“No, but I never had anything real for you to go on. Not until now. I’m just glad it’s finally over.” Dani shifted in her chair, trying to ignore the lingering, dull headache that had plagued her since Sunday night. She checked her watch. Her next Tylenol dose was overdue. “So where do things stand?” she asked.
Since Monday she had been getting short updates from the Chief, but he had been adamant that he couldn’t share much until they were further into the investigation. Now that a few days had passed, and the department had apparently gotten their ducks in a row, he had invited her in for a quick briefing before she headed to Birmingham for her flight back to Boston.
“Well, it’s about what you’d expect. Chris blabbed on and on until his lawyer showed up and then he shut down. Hasn’t spoken a word to us since, but we’ve pretty much put the picture together at this point. Jennifer…well, you know about Jennifer, he told you that.”
“Yeah.” In the shed, Chris had made it very clear exactly what had happened to Jennifer Cartwright.
“That was her ring you found in his album. There were a couple of strands of loose hair there too—we’re having them tested—but we suspect he kept Jennifer’s lock of hair on that same page before planting it at Rheardon’s place with all of Rheardon’s other trophies.” The Chief’s face curdled, and his shoulders sank. “That was a complete disaster too.” He snorted. “Right out of a screenplay. Cop on the scene, first to the evidence, has the perfect opportunity to plant something. Contaminates the whole investigation.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Well, fortunately Rheardon’s already owned up to his inappropriate actions with all those teens, so we really don’t need the trophies to make a case. If we did, he could claim that the evidence was tainted. We’d have a hard time nailing him then.”
Concern wriggled in Dani’s gut. “But you’re good? You’ve got him on those charges?”
“Oh, yeah. He wanted a deal. The D.A.’s working it out now. By the way, we asked Rheardon about Jennifer confronting him and he admitted to that too. We also got an explanation for why Jennifer wrote in the diary that she was afraid no one would believe her if she told someone about Rheardon. Turns out she had a C- average in his class. Would have given her a reason to make up stories about him.” He paused. “Speaking of stories, there’s an interesting one about the shed.”
“Which is?”
“As part of initially securing the warrant to search the shed after you found the diary, we tracked down the property’s current owner. Seems that after Dr. Beecher sold the property to the Pitts, and then they both died, it was auctioned off to a holding company in Delaware. That was good enough for the warrant. We didn’t need to look any further at that point, so we didn’t. But now, with everything that’s happened, we thought we should. Guess who owns the holding company.”
“Not Chris.”
“Right in one,” the Chief remarked.
“So that’s how he made sure the shed would remain undisturbed and accessible. He bought it.”
“Exactly.”
She shook her head against the irony of it all. “How utterly convenient for Chris that the Pitts died off, giving him eternal access to that place.”
The Chief eyed her warily.
“Oh, he didn’t,” she said, taking his morbid meaning.
“Well, definitely not the uncle. The boating accident that killed him happened when another local—drunk out of his mind—collided with him. Not something Chris could have been involved in. But the aunt?” He patted a stack of papers to his right. “We’re having her body exhumed. She died suddenly of a heart attack seven years ago. At the time, her doctor thought it was odd—she was healthy as a horse—but there was no family and no reason to suspect foul play. Looking at it now, though, given what she knew about Chris’s past and the timing of her death in relation to Chris’s move here, and his obsessive use of the shed…” He let his sentence hang, the import of the facts obvious.
“Yeah, um, the shed…something I was thinking about—how is it that your crime scene investigator didn’t find Chris’s prints there if he’s been visiting it for years?” Dani asked.
“We asked Chris the same question.” The Chief wiggled his fingers. “Said he wore gloves every single time. He might be disturbed, but he isn’t stupid. It’s also why we didn’t find his prints on Jennifer or her bike in 1995. He managed to grab a pair of work gloves from the shed along with a tool of some sort before going after her.”
“And Dr. Beecher? How did Chris get to him?”
The Chief’s face turned pink and he swallowed hard. If Dani didn’t know better, she would have thought he was about to cry. “We’re still pinning all that down. But it looks like Chris reached out to someone who had contacts inside the prison to arrange the hit. I can’t say any more than that now. The identity of the middleman looks like something Chris might be willing to trade on, and if we get that name, well, that could open up a whole new can of worms.” The Chief looked down at his folded hands, keeping his focus there as he rolled his thumbs over each other. “I feel the worst about him—Dr. Beecher. Rotting away in prison, innocent, no one believing him. And then…if he’d just lived one more week.”
She knew how he felt—what it was like to have to ask a “what if” question. If she hadn’t given the diary to Dr. Beecher, it was possible that Chris might not have felt the need to get rid of him. But she wasn’t going to carry that burden and he shouldn’t either. Dani reache
d a hand out across the desk, covering the Chief’s interlaced fingers. “Don’t do that. Don’t do that to yourself. You did the best you could—and you’re not the one who killed him. The only person responsible for that is Chris Newton. Don’t strap that baggage on. You hear me?”
A weak smile emerged on the Chief’s lips. “Yeah. I hear you, Officer Lake.”
“Detective,” Dani reminded him, returning his smile and wresting a meager, but warm chuckle from her friend.
29
Dani steered the grey rental sedan out of her parents’ neighborhood, turning left at the light.
This is the last time I’ll ever pull out of here after staying in that house, because I’ll never stay in that house again.
The notion pummeled her heart afresh, even though she had been telling herself things like that all day.
This is the last time you’ll wake up here.
This is the last time you’ll eat here.
But somehow, with the stone subdivision sign disappearing in the rearview mirror, pulling away from the intersection made it so much more real in a way nothing else had. She sucked in a breath, fighting back sentimental tears.
Her parents didn’t live there anymore. Her familial connection to the town was gone. Yes, she would visit. She would come see Sasha and Peter and watch their families grow, and eat cheeseburgers at the counter at Green’s…but it wouldn’t be the same. A chapter had closed in her personal journey and there would be no reopening it.
The wheels thu-thunked as she crossed the metal threshold onto the Claythorne River bridge, and then again as she left it. The sound was like a hammer driving nails into the coffin of her former life.
To the west, increasingly dark bands painted the horizon, warning of the strong storms the news had promised would hit in about twenty minutes. Dani would be turning east once she reached the highway, and should have no trouble staying ahead of the deluge, but the storm would be chasing her all the way to Birmingham. In confirmation, lightning struck somewhere far in the distance, lighting up the sky in shades of yellowish-green. The thunder, crashing nearly twenty-five seconds later by her count, assured her that the tempest was still far off enough that she would beat it.
