“You showed up and you killed them when you thought they wouldn’t let you see your newborn son, is that it? Mark Benchley told you that you’d never see them, and you killed him? Natalie, too, when she tried to run?”
At these words, Jacob Morgan’s eyes studied Lance’s face. “How…?” he started. “How do you know he said that to me?”
Lance said nothing. Waited.
There were tears on Jacob’s cheeks now, carving hot lines down his face.
“How did you know to come over that night?” Lance asked. “I’ve told you my part, now tell me yours.”
Jacob Morgan closed his eyes, squeezing out tears. He wiped them away with the back of one hand and said, “I could never understand it. I never knew why she left. I know Mary was younger, and I know the age difference would have been a problem for a few years, but does that really matter? Can you look at me and tell me age matters with love?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Which is why I was so stunned when I came over here one Sunday evening to see if everything was okay, because Mary hadn’t shown up at church, and that’s when Mark told me she’d left for a boarding school.
“I begged him to tell me what the school was—you know, so I could send her letters, or care packages. But honestly I just wanted to know where I had to drive to go see her, to find out what happened between us. Because it had all been going so well, you know? And if she was going to break my heart, I wanted her to do it to my face. That might sound selfish, I know, but I wasn’t going to let her just disappear and pretend that what we had together would fade away.
“But Mark would never tell me. Neither would Natalie. They said Mary had been having a tough time in school, with bullying or some bullshit, and they didn’t want to risk the new school information getting out into the wrong hands. Man, I was so furious. But what could I do? I called every private school I could find in the state and got nowhere.”
Jacob sighed, shrugged his shoulders. The hunting rifle rose and fell with the motion. Lance kept his eyes on it. “So I gave up,” Jacob said. “I convinced myself that I was crazy to think somebody as young as Mary could have ever been serious about our relationship, and I tried to move on. And I did, Lance. I did move on. Or at least I thought I had. But then Natalie texted me that night, and everything changed.” He looked at Lance like a man trying very hard to make a difficult to understand point. A look that was almost sympathetic, as if he knew the person on the receiving end of the forthcoming information would never truly grasp the meaning. “That night was the worst night of my life, Lance. But, it was also the greatest night. It was the night I found out I had a son, and for the first time I finally understood what love felt like.”
There was a part of Lance that thought he understood what Jacob Morgan was saying. But the other part, the part that was still very much focused on the hunting rifle gripped in the man’s hands, was not letting go of the other major event the night Ethan had been born.
“You killed them,” Lance said. “Does that not bother you at all? Is that the sort of father you want to be for your son? You murdered his grandparents and burned his mother’s body on brush pile like she was a discarded shrub. Do you actually want me to sympathize with that? Feel sorry for you? Whatever happened that night, at the end of the story, you still come out a murderer.”
Jacob shook his head again and sighed, but when he spoke, Lance noticed that anger slipping its way back into the words. “You don’t understand! When I got here, Mark was crazed. I’m serious, it was like he was possessed. He wanted me dead, I could see that the moment I walked through the door. And Natalie? She was terrified. More for her own daughter’s life than anything else. She understood the severity of what had happened during the birth. That’s why she texted me. She managed to get Mark’s phone away from him long enough to send me a message. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be sitting at home reading and suddenly get a text that says the son you didn’t know you were having had just been born and that the mother’s life was in danger and you need to come right away?” Jacob shook his head. “I tried messaging her back but got nothing. So I took off up the hill. Natalie was waiting for me at the door, frantic, terrified, begging me to help get Mary to the hospital. Mark was waiting too, and he had a shotgun.”
This was the part of the story Lance had been waiting for. The bits of dialogue the house had played for him the past few days were of the moment in the story Jacob Morgan had arrived at just now. All he needed to hear was Jacob Morgan’s confession, and then he’d try and see if he’d get killed trying to escape the basement and get to the sheriff.
“Mark wanted to kill me,” Jacob said. “I think it’s obvious he never knew I was the father until right before I’d arrived. Natalie and Mary must have managed to keep that much a secret from him, probably because they knew how he’d react. I don’t know if they did it so much to protect me, or to protect Mark. Trying to keep him from committing murder.” Jacob shrugged. “I guess it was both.
“Anyway, things got heated. Mark was threatening to shoot me and I was trying to stay calm, trying to diffuse things. Really all I wanted was to see Mary, and my baby boy. I could hear her pleading from the basement door, wanting somebody to let her out. And I could hear Ethan crying. I was trying to get to them, but Mark kept shoving that damn gun in my face. I was paralyzed, Lance. Didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet, but when I heard my son crying out, something inside me broke. I would have died to save him, but the only way to do that was to stay alive a bit longer. And that … well, that’s where I lost it.”
Lance took a step closer, crossing his arms and trying to look nonthreatening. Added another half step. “How so?”
“I tried to get past Mark, and that’s when he got physical. We pushed each other around a bit, and Mark reared back with the gun to swing it at me, and the butt of it sucker-punched Natalie in the gut. She cried out, and that’s when she panicked. She jumped into the mix with us and kneed Mark in the balls. He dropped the gun and doubled over, and she pushed him over and got his keys from his pocket and sprinted down the hall toward the front door. She yelled back to us that she was going to get help, and I called out for her to wait, but I didn’t move. I didn’t try to stop her or go with her, and when I saw Mark Benchley push himself off the floor and pick up the shotgun, I froze. My whole world slowed down. Sound muffled. All I could seem to hear was my own breathing.
“And Mark shot her. I watched and did nothing while he ran toward the door and stood on the porch and fired the gun into his wife’s back.”
Lance couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“And that’s when everything changed,” Jacob said. “It was as if Mark fell out of whatever trance he’d been in. He dropped the gun and turned around and looked at me, and his face was pure terror. He said, ‘What have I done?’ and before I could answer, we heard two thuds from the basement stairs and then a baby started to cry at the top of its lungs. A heart-piercing wail. Mark and I looked at each other, and all the anger and the rage melted and we both sprinted toward the kitchen. I got there first, and I threw open the bolt and yanked open the door, and…”
Jacob stopped. Took a breath that wavered with tears. “They were at the bottom of the stairs, sprawled out on the basement floor. Mary must have … she must have died right there on the stairs. She must not have been very high up—maybe she knew something was going to happen before it did, and she’d started to make her way down—but she didn’t make it all the way. Those two thuds… I’ll hear those two thuds in my head until the day I die.
“I ran down to her, but as soon as I got close, I knew I was too late. Her eyes were open—she had such beautiful eyes. Ethan was tangled in her arms, his head miraculously resting on her chest. He was crying at the top of his lungs, wrapped in some sort of baby blanket. I don’t know how long I sat there, staring into Mary’s eyes and listening to that little guy wailing, but finally I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked up to find Mark, sta
nding there with tears and snot pouring down his face.” Jacob shook his head again, as if trying to clear out the memories, or maybe finding himself disgusted all over again as they came to light. “He kept saying it over and over. ‘What have I done? What have I done?’”
Jacob sighed again and looked Lance in the eyes. “I killed him, Lance. I killed Mark Benchley because of what he’d done. He killed his wife. He killed his daughter—the mother of my son—and he could have killed my son, too.
“He was gone, Lance. Mentally, it was like he’d checked out after he came down and saw Mary. But that didn’t make me hesitate. I’d never felt anger like I felt that night, Lance. I’ve never felt that primal urge to end somebody’s life like I did. I coaxed Mark upstairs and sat him in that chair and then went and got the shotgun.” Jacob paused then, a small smirk coming across his face. “I think he knew. He knew what was going to happen, but he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t fight. Didn’t say a word. I wrapped his hands around the barrel and shoved it under his chin and then I blew his fucking head off.”
Both men were quiet then. Staring at each other, both unsure what was next.
Lance pieced the story together, thought about Ethan in the hidden room to his left. Understood. “You burned Mary’s body because you didn’t want anybody to know she’d just had a baby. You’d just committed murder, nobody knew about Mary’s pregnancy except you and three corpses, so you got rid of the evidence. Only you remembered Mary’s journal later, and you were afraid she’d written that you were the father of her baby in there somewhere. Only you could never find it, could you? That’s why you’ve been paying Rich Bellows to let you know when anybody gets near the house. Because you’re afraid they’ll find it before you do. You’re paranoid they’ll find the journal … or maybe anything else that could implicate you. So you’ve been lurking around, scaring people away—or, I don’t know, threatening them. You were here my first night, too, weren’t you? Checking out the new tenant?”
Jacob Morgan didn’t deny anything. He nodded and said, “They would have taken him away from me. They would have taken my son away, and I would have never seen him again. But don’t you get it? I was trying to protect him, too. I didn’t want my son’s life to be marred by the story of what happened the night he was born. That his grandpa was a lunatic who kept his mother a prisoner. That his grandma was murdered and his mother died after childbirth. That story would follow him around the rest of his life. He’d never escape it. He’d be looked at like a freak. It would have ruined him.”
Lance shook his head. “You don’t know that. People are a lot stronger than we think.” Then he pushed the final few puzzle pieces into place in his mind. “So you hid Ethan away, made up the story of finding the bodies the next morning, and then skipped town with your son until you felt you would be able to come back and sell the story of him being your sister’s kid. Did you even have a half-sister?”
Jacob shook his head. His voice came out raspy. “No. After what happened, I drove all night to a buddy of mine’s house a few towns over—somebody I’d trust with my life—and gave him Ethan. Then I came back and dealt with the aftermath here. Afterwards, I left and took Ethan and spent a year and an insane amount of money getting things in order. Both medically—God, I had no fucking idea what to do with a newborn—and in terms of documentation. I made up the story of the half-sister so I could give Jacob my last name. People around town didn’t ask a lot of questions. If it doesn’t directly pertain to the people here, they don’t much care about it. My made-up half-sister was an outsider. Unimportant. But people love Ethan.” Jacob grinned. “They’ve loved him from day one.”
The amount of lies and deceit and tragedy that Lance had seen and heard in the last few minutes was astounding, enough to make you question why human beings are even allowed to exist. We do terrible things.
With the awful truth finally exposed, Lance knew it was time to make his move. He took a small step closer and said, “Doesn’t it upset you? Not being able to tell your son that you’re his father? Doesn’t it piss you off to see him grow up and learn new things and do new things and not be able to say to people that you’re a proud father, instead of a proud half-uncle?”
Darkness fell over Jacob Morgan’s face, his eyes hardening again and his posture straightening, stretching the man to his full height. An imposing, intimidating gesture. He raised the hunting rifle and aimed it squarely at Lance’s chest. “Okay,” he said, “I told my story. Tell me where my son is.” He added, “After everything I’ve done to protect him, do you really think I’m going to hesitate in killing you? Especially now that you know the truth?”
Lance shrugged. “I’d hoped you would consider it.”
This time, it was Jacob who stepped closer. There was now maybe three feet between the men. “Hope again,” Jacob said. “Where is he?”
Lance held up his hands and nodded his head. “Okay, okay. He’s in there.” He pointed to his left and nodded his head toward the wall—the door to the hidden room—and when Jacob Morgan’s eyes glanced that direction and his head turned slightly along with them, Lance ducked down and used his legs and speed to drive himself forward, pistoning up and under the barrel of the rifle and throwing all his weight into Jacob Morgan’s torso.
There was a sound like thunder, only intensified by a million, as the rifle went off and then went clattering to the floor as Lance drove Jacob Morgan into the ground. The man cried out and cursed, and Lance got back to his feet and kicked him in the face, Jacob’s head snapping hard with the blow.
Then Lance was moving. Bolting up the stairs two at a time without looking back, all the while trying hard to convince himself that Ethan would be safe behind the basement wall, and despite the fact that Jacob Morgan was a murderer, if he did manage to coax Ethan into opening the wall, Lance knew the man would protect the boy.
As Lance bounded into the kitchen, he heard Jacob Morgan call after him with some very unpleasant words, and then there came the sound of the man’s boots on the stairs. Not moving as quickly as Lance, but moving all the same. Lance moved to slide around the kitchen table, toward the back door. Planned on running blindly down the trail and hoping he could make it into town.
Lance stopped. It wasn’t long, maybe not even a unit of time measurable with any normal time-keeping device, but there was the tiniest moment of hesitation. Standing across the kitchen, directly in front of the back door, was the man from Lance’s dream. The reflection man in the bus’s window, the man he now knew to be Mark Benchley, with the blood-splattered white t-shirt and the missing face. He stood like a sentinel by the door, one arm, speckled with blood, pointing the opposite direction, down the hall toward the front of the house.
Lance didn’t stop to ask questions, and when he blinked, the man was gone.
The boots behind him were closer, and he turned and ran down the hall. The front door was open, and a strong gust of wind rocked it back against the house. Through the opened doorway there was a zap of lightning on the horizon and—
Are those blue lights?
Another noise like thunder erupted from inside the house, and a bit of the door frame exploded in a burst of splintered wood. Lance did not bother to look back. There was no point. Any moment of hesitation at this point would end with a bullet lodged somewhere in his body. He grunted and summoned all his strength and power he could from inside him and sprinted through the opened doorway and—
“Freeze!”
Lance heard the word shouted to him and was momentarily blinded by the flashing blue lights. But he didn’t stop moving. He ran across the porch and leapt through the air off the top step. As he was airborne, a feeling of weightlessness overtaking him and causing time to take on a slowed-down, dreamlike state, he was able to take in the scene in front of him. Found the black Crown Vic he’d seen his first night in Ripton’s Grove parked sideways in the drive, a blue flashing orb emitting the blinding light from atop the front dash. Headlights casting bright cones of whit
e light. Sheriff Ray Kruger was standing in front of the car. Legs spread. Pistol in hand and aimed at Lance.
In the distance, at the end of the driveway, Lance saw a new set of headlights approaching, the faint silhouette of a Jeep Wrangler turning into the drive.
The rain made things fuzzy, blurring everything with a sheer veil.
Lance’s eyes locked with the sheriff’s, and the man shouted something.
Something Lance couldn’t make out.
Then Sheriff Ray Kruger pulled the trigger. The gun fired.
The bullet found its target.
Lance landed hard on the ground, his legs crumpling beneath him. His body rolled once, twice, and then was still.
37
Lance sat in the passenger’s seat of Luke’s Jeep. It was seven o’clock in the morning, and Lance had been at the sheriff’s office for what felt like days, giving statement after statement after statement. Finessing the truth to bend and mold around the lies he was forced to tell in order to protect himself, until the facts blurred together with his nontruths so convincingly that the deputies, and more importantly, Ray Kruger, had finally been convinced that Lance was innocent of any wrongdoing.
But Ray Kruger wasn’t finished with questions.
Lance had landed on the wet grass and his sneakers had slipped out from under him and he’d gone down hard on his tailbone, clinking his teeth together and somehow managing to avoid severing his tongue. He’d rolled twice on the ground and then sat still, allowing himself a momentary rest before he’d spun around, twisting his body backward to crabwalk away from the house and toward Sheriff Kruger.
On the ground outside the farmhouse, half-sprawled on the porch steps, half-sprawled in the grass, Jacob Morgan was facedown and not moving. A perfect imitation of how the man had described finding Natalie Benchley. The hunting rifle was at his side, just out of reach of his splayed hand. Sheriff Ray Kruger moved in quickly, the pistol still locked in his hands and trained on Jacob Morgan’s body. Then the cuffs were out and ready, but the sheriff leaned in closer, stared at Jacob’s body for a moment before bending down further and placing his fingers to man’s neck. Then Ray Kruger stood, pulled his cell phone from his pocket, and placed a call.
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