She didn't respond, but my theory was coming together now. “Why the burlap?”
“So they’d go on a wild goose chase, thinking the Craig's List Ripper had come back. They didn’t take the bait.”
No, but I almost had. Not that I was going to admit that.
Keep her talking, Inner Bitch advised. She stops talking, she’s gonna shoot you. So just keep her talking.
I thought you wanted me to shut up.
“The world is a better place without those men,” Dr. Guthrie said.
I didn’t feel like I was going to die today. I kind of thought I would feel it if I was. I said, “You said it wasn't enough, killing them. So you had to punish them, torture them. Was that enough, Melissa?”
“I burned my father alive,” Gary said. “It wasn’t enough to make me better. And now my mom's hurting as much as I am. You did that."
Guthrie glanced his way, gave a crooked half smile. “No, it wasn't enough for me either. I couldn’t torture them enough before they died. And I guess I know now that it’s never going to be enough. Eternal hellfire wouldn’t be enough."
"Then why?"
"To end the pain!" she screamed. She pressed the heal of her hand to the side of her head, like it hurt right there.
"But it didn't work," I said. "So why keep doing it? Why kill Gloria and Ivy just so you could keep doing it, if it wasn't working?"
"Because I thought I could build something. My vision was so much bigger. Maybe I couldn't end my pain, but I could use it." She shook her head. "But now...it's over now. It'll never happen now."
“I’d like to hear more about that,” I said. “Your vision. What was it?”
Her jittery gaze had been jumping between the three of us, the window, and bedroom door, but it came to mine when I said that.
I shrugged, and said, “What the fuck else have you got to do? You’re not going anywhere.”
The bedside landline rang. We all jumped, and Ivy reached for the phone.
“Leave it!” Guthrie barked.
“It’s the cops calling,” I said. “They want to negotiate with you.”
It rang again. She pulled the trigger and the phone exploded. Ivy screamed.
A bullhorn-enhanced voice said, “What the hell is happening!”
Guthrie snapped an arm around my neck and dragged me to the window again. “I shot the phone. Leave me the hell alone!”
“Are the hostages all right?” Chief O’Mally asked.
“All three of us are fine,” I shouted before the insane doctor had the chance to reply, thus telling him it was not just Ivy and me in here. I didn’t see Mason yet. I was longing to see him with my whole being, but I didn’t see him yet. It wouldn’t be long. It hadn't been long. Minutes were like hours in this room.
“I swear to God if you say another word in the next ten minutes, I’ll kill one of them.”
Then she released me, ducking away from the window. I stayed on that side of the bed, so I could see out the window without standing right in front of it.
“What was your vision?” Ivy asked. “I want to know, too.”
There was a rocking chair near Melissa Guthrie. She sat down in it, and rested her gun hand across her thighs. Its barrel was pointed toward Ivy and me, for the moment. Gary was still on the opposite side of the bed. Guthrie’s hand remained on the grip, her finger on the trigger.
“I wanted you all to know about each other,” she said to Ivy. “I wanted us to be a team, to organize, maybe even expand. Form other groups, all over the entire country, dedicated to protecting children.”
I was stunned. “Dedicated to killing child abusers.”
“Pedophiles, yes. There’s no treatment, you know. No cure. You can castrate them, they’ll still be compelled to sexually assault children. As long as they’re alive, they are a threat to children. There’s no life sentence for their crimes. So there has to be a death penalty. And they’re mostly all men, so we can’t expect our male-dominated government to make better laws. We have to take action ourselves.” Raising her free hand, palm up, she said, “It’s them or the children, Rachel. Can’t you see that? It’s them or the children. It’s not wrong to kill them. How can it possibly be wrong? It’s a service to the world.”
I didn’t even disagree with her all that much.
What would your books say? Inner Bitch asked.
That if you kill one, ten more will pop up to take their place. That it’s only by changing from within that we can change the world around us. But I’m not fucking telling her that.
Vanessa Cantone’s car skidded to a dusty stop in front of the house. I could hear sirens too, so there was more backup coming. State, I figured.
Then Mason’s black Monte Carlo left rubber and he got out, gun drawn, eyes on the house.
I’m okay, baby. I’m all right. Don’t freak out.
To Melissa Guthrie I said, “I think it’s a crime against nature to take a life. But I think it’s a crime against nature to hurt a child, too, so–”
“It doesn’t matter. I can’t get relief. No matter how many of them I kill. No matter how much I hurt them. I killed all those bastards and it still hurts. It still hurts so bad.” Her voice broke on that line. Then she said, "I just need this to be done."
She raised the gun, pointed it right at me.
“No!” Gary made a sudden move, hurling a lamp at her, and she swung his way and fired before it hit her.
Ivy screamed. Gary dropped the lamp with a crash, staggered backwards, hit the wall, one hand on his belly where blood was gushing. Ivy scrambled out of the bed onto the floor with him. She dragged a blanket behind her, and wadded it up and pressed it to his bloody shirt.
I spun to Guthrie, who still had hold of her damn gun. She lifted it, I held my hands flat in front of me, like they could stop a bullet. "What did you do? What did you fucking do?" I shouted. I wanted to go to Gary, but when I moved, she shook the gun at me to stay still. "You keep telling yourself you're not like them, but you are. You just proved it. Gary's an innocent child in every way that matters. Just like you were."
"Shut up shut up shut UP!" She cried. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to."
"You meant to. You meant to kill Gloria. And if Ivy hadn't puked, she'd be dead, too."
And if Reggie hadn't collapsed, Ivy wouldn't have seen that news clip and vomited, Inner Bitch pointed out. Funny how things work out.
"End this now, Melissa Guthrie. Put the fucking gun down and end this now."
Her breaths were coming short and rapid, her eyes darting. She was freaking out. "Bring me Ivy's phone," she ordered. "Do it!"
I took the phone from the nightstand, brushed a few bits of my late phone from its face.
"Unlock it."
I looked at Ivy, still kneeling beside Gary, weeping, trying to help him, holding a blood-soaked blanket to his belly. "Ivy?"
"I d-don't know what to do for him," she stammered.
"Tell her your pass code," Guthrie snapped.
"Ten thirty-one."
Halloween, I thought. Reggie's favorite holiday.
Then Guthrie said, "Lay him down. Elevate his feet. Put a blanket over him," and then to me, "Key it in."
I did. It was an old phone, four-digit passcode, not six. "Open the camera app to video. Point it at me. Hurry up, they're coming in."
My hands were shaking, but I managed to do it.
"Is it running?"
"Yeah. Yeah, it's recording."
Guthrie said, "I am the Riverside Strangler. The men I killed were pedophiles and even those I tortured deserved far worse than they got. I hurt innocents, too, directly and indirectly; Gloria Orr, Ivy Newman, Reginald D'Voe, Jeremy Brown." She looked over at the two on the floor and tears brimmed. "Gary Conklin. No one else was involved in any of this. It was all me.“ Then she said, "Turn it off."
I tapped the stop button. Guthrie looked at Ivy. Ivy looked back. She was weeping, holding the blanket so hard her arm was trembling. Gary was limp, but co
nscious, his head tipped over onto his shoulder.
Guthrie said, "My vision could still work with the right person guiding it. You're the best of all of us, Ivy. I'm sorry I hurt you."
Then, in a split second, she pressed the gun barrel up under her chin and pulled the trigger. I lunged toward her and then I kind of skidded and fell on my knees as a spray of blood, brain and bone exploded from the back of her head. The chair rocked backward so hard it went over as the gun thudded to the floor. There was shouting from below, thundering feet, doors crashing open.
I scrambled upright and around the bed to kneel beside Gary. He lay against the wall, head limp, eyes open. His breaths were coming short and quick. I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. Ivy was still beside him, still holding pressure, but her eyes were wide and staring at the flipped rocker, or the body, or the spatter on the wall behind it. Something in that general vicinity.
“Gary.” I pressed my hand to his cheek, tears pouring down my face. It was like Tommy all over again. “Gary, everything’s okay. You don't need to be scared. I promise you, everything is really okay."
He frowned a little, but then his entire face relaxed. The pain left his eyes and his brows rose in gentle arcs. He whispered, “It really is. Wow.” He covered my hand with his. I felt a rush of unfathomable relief, and the sensation that I was made of light. And then that sense whooshed away, and his hand fell to his lap, and his eyes closed, and he was gone.
The bedroom door burst open and Mason charged in with the most horrified expression. He spotted me still on the floor, and then he was on his knees and catching me up in his arms all at the same time. He pulled me up and away from Gary.
Vince O’Mally was right behind him, going to Ivy who was also on the floor. He checked Gary’s pulse, shook his head sadly, and pulled a clean corner of the blanket up to cover his face. Then he helped Ivy to her feet. As soon as he touched her, she burst into tears, and then he hugged her to his chest. “It’s okay, little sis. Holly’s on her way. We headed back as soon as we heard. God, Ivy, why didn’t you tell us Reggie was alive this whole time?”
“What difference does it make?” she asked softly. "What difference does anything make?"
Vanessa came in behind them. I saw her over Mason’s shoulder. She kind of blocked the flow of inward traffic there in the doorway, the only one thinking about proper procedure.
“It wasn’t Reggie,” Ivy said, not just to Vince, but to everyone in the room. She said it loudly and firmly as she pulled free of her brother-in-law, and climbed over the bed to take her phone from the floor where I'd dropped it. “It was Dr. Guthrie. She confessed to the murders. She said she killed all of them.” She looked right at me when she said it. Because she knew that I knew she had killed Dwayne Clark. But I couldn't prove it.
She handed the phone to Chief O’Mally. He tapped it, and I heard Guthrie’s voice again. "I am the Riverside Strangler. The men I killed were pedophiles and even those I tortured deserved far worse than they got. I hurt innocents, too, directly and indirectly; Gloria Orr, Ivy Newman, Reginald D'Voe, Jeremy Brown. Gary Conklin. No one else was involved in any of this. It was all me. Turn it off."
“We need to get everyone out of here so we can process the room,” Chief Cantone said. “If no one’s injured–”
“I’m fine,” Ivy said. She sounded remarkably okay.
I said, “Guthrie gave her some kind of sedative. Never said what. She vomited and I think it might’ve saved her life. But she should get checked out.”
Mason’s arm remained locked around my shoulders as we made our way out of the bedroom into the hallway.
“Will Reggie be released now?” Ivy asked, coming out behind us, Chief O’Mally at her side. “He thought you suspected me, so he confessed to protect me.”
The chief squeezed her shoulder. “Ivy, he collapsed after the arraignment.”
“I know,” she said. “I need to see him. I need that so much.”
“I’ll take you.”
Tears welled up, but she didn’t break down. She said, “I’d like to get cleaned up first. Is that all right, Vince?”
He nodded. “I’ll make it all right. We’ll have to bag the clothes you're wearing and–”
“Ivy!” Holly came pounding up the stairs, crashing past Vanessa and almost knocking her over to get to her sister. She wrapped Ivy in her arms, sobbing. "Are you okay? Oh my God, are you okay?"
"I'm okay." Ivy endured a powerful hug, then unwrapped herself, and walked into the hallway and toward her bedroom. Holly sent her husband a questioning look, and he shrugged, then nodded at her to go with her sister.
“Let’s go outside,” Mason said, his arms still around me. “There’s too much going on in here.”
Not to mention two dead people, neither of whom were talking to me, thank God. But I knew Gary was okay. I’d felt him let it all go. I’d felt the pain just fall away. I wondered if Melissa Guthrie had the same experience.
“This was dangerous, and I shouldn't have come here alone,” I said, before Mason could say it for me.
He held me a little tighter to his side. “You must really be traumatized. You’d never admit that in your right mind.”
I leaned my head on his shoulder as we walked down the stairs together, through the foyer and out the front door. Police were swarming, and there was an ambulance waiting. But we went straight to Mason’s car. He opened the passenger door and put me inside. Then he went around it and got behind the wheel.
His text pinged. He pulled out his phone. “Vanessa says to take you home. They know where to find you to get your statement. It can wait. She thinks we need some down time.”
“Damn straight we do.”
He turned toward me, put his hands on my shoulders, looked me square in the eyes. “I love you. You know that.”
“I was beginning to wonder.” I made a face. “That’s a lie. I never doubted it. You might piss me the hell off, but you’d never stop loving me.”
He smiled a little, maybe relieved, maybe amused. “I don’t like secrets between us, Rache."
I took a deep nasal breath, brought my hands up and put them on his shoulders. “I love you, too. You know that.”
He smiled a little. “Yes, I do. And like you, I never really doubted it.”
“Once,” I said, “not all that long ago, you had to make a choice, Mason. You had to choose between the legal thing to do and the right thing to do. Between following the law, and protecting your family. And you chose right, and it’s haunted you ever since. It damn near tore your heart out having to admit to Jeremy that you burned your brother's suicide note and concealed evidence. And it’ll do the same when you have to admit it to Josh someday. Not just that their father was a murderer, but that you, the man they respect most in the world, lied about it.”
“All that’s very true,” he said. "I couldn't have got through it without you."
“So how could I, the woman who loves you beyond reason, ever tell you something that would put you into that same position all over again? How could I ask you to make that choice again?”
He looked at me for a long time, his eyes searching mine.
“If you knew what I knew about Ivy, if you knew the truly evil things Dwayne Clark was doing to that little boy, and the horror she was feeling over it, and the nightmare she went through as a child–if you knew those things the way I do, you wouldn’t have wanted her prosecuted any more than I did. And then you’d have been faced with that choice again. I just wanted to find a way through this mess without you having to do that.”
“And now.…?” he asked.
“There’s not a scrap of physical evidence against Ivy. There’s nothing but my stuff, and my stuff is inadmissible. But I would die for you, Mason Brown. I would die for those boys. And if you ever doubt that again, I will kick your noble, upright ass.”
He sighed. "Nothing Ivy said when you were streaming the video to me was a confession," he said. "There's no physical evidence against her.
There are no eye witnesses. And we have a full confession from Guthrie."
"But I think–"
"Like you said, your stuff is inadmissible." He pushed my hair behind one ear, gazed into my eyes, his absolute love for me right there to see. "Everything's okay. We're okay. I'll try to never doubt you again."
"I'll try to never keep things from you again."
He kissed me slow. Then he started the car. It rumbled like a motorhead’s dream, vibrating beneath us. He backed it around, and picked his way among the official vehicles flashing all around and eventually through the now broken gate, and onto the road.
Epilogue
The campfire was warm and dancing against the night sky, sending sparks so high they vanished among the stars. We’d set our chairs all around it. I was lounging in the double Adirondack chair with my man beside me and my dog lying on my feet. Jeremy and Misty sat on a blanket on the ground, arm in arm, looking all sweet and sappy. Josh had Hugo on his lap. Sandra and Jim sat in side-by-side lawn chairs, their hands joined between them. Angela and Christy were toasting marshmallows on long sticks and giggling together. Mason's mother had become as much a grandmother to my nieces as she was to Jeremy and Josh. I thought my mom approved of that from the other side. Amy was in a folding chair, watching the way the sparks from the fire rose into the night sky.
Reggie D'Voe was back home with his beloved Ivy, living out his final days just the way he wanted to. I'd visited twice. I kind of loved the man and he loved me back. We talked about our "gift" in ways neither of us had ever talked about it with anyone else.
Ivy seemed good. Stronger, somehow, now that it was all over. I chose not to think about Dr. Guthrie's final words to her, the ones she'd spoken after the camera was off. But I'd told Mason about them. I'd decided from now on, I was telling him everything.
Mason sat up a little straighter and said, “So I have this thing I've been waiting to do."
Everyone looked at him, including me. He was so handsome, I thought. Especially so tonight, with the lake behind him all dark and majestic, and the fire in front of him, painting his face in light and shadows.
Girl Blue (A Brown and de Luca Novel Book 7) Page 20
