JULIA STOOD IN her kitchen in the evening gloaming, everything beyond the window black, the light within warm and soft and welcoming.
The plates sat on the table, waiting to be taken to the sink and rinsed and placed in the dishwasher. Julia moved automatically to the broken plate on the floor, picking up the three pieces, placing them in the trash, dampening a paper towel and running it across the floor to pick up any lurking shards that might endanger Jake’s soft paws or her son’s bare pudgy feet.
The bottle of wine sat beside the whiskey on the counter. Calvin’s artwork, stick figures in bright primary colors, graced the refrigerator. The pot of sauce still bubbled cheerily on the stove. She’d heated far more than two, or even three, people could eat. She switched off the flame beneath it, the click echoing in the room’s absolute silence.
She twisted the faucet, let the water run hot, and picked up the wineglass to rinse it, intent upon performing mundane, everyday tasks until she awoke from this nightmare.
“Don’t touch that.” Wayne’s bark locked her into the nightmare and gleefully tossed away the key.
“I want everything here just the way it is now, wine and whiskey already out on the counter, glass half-full. Shame you drink so much.”
Just a little earlier, Julia had been able to control her voice, had marveled at the calm she projected. Now she was surprised she could speak at all.
“What do you mean?” Her words climbed an octave.
“Must be something about this house,” he continued in a musing voice. “Women who live here plumb drink themselves to death.”
“No,” she said. “No.”
What was he going to do, hold a gun to her head and force her to drink? She might get really, really drunk, epic-barfing-and-a-hangover-of-monumental-proportions drunk, but she was pretty sure there wasn’t enough booze in the house for her to drink herself to death.
Besides, it would take forever, and Beverly and Gregory would be back soon.
“That’s crazy.” Her voice still sounded like a cross between a toddler’s uncertain pitch and an elderly woman’s quaver, but at least she’d regained some focus, enough to hit him with logic.
“How are you going to explain two more people dead in this house? And anyway, Beverly and Gregory—”
He cut her off. “As if those two old farts could help you. And besides.”
She wanted to see his preternaturally calm smile as that of a psychopath. But he wasn’t, she thought. He was just someone trying to protect what he saw as rightfully his, with the casual assurance of someone who believed he deserved it, no matter what it took.
“Besides?” she prompted.
“There won’t be two bodies here. Angie will end up along the creek, like Billy and Miss Mae and that other guy. It’s starting to look more and more like a serial killer, maybe somebody just like them, riding the rails. Watch the local paper for editorials about how Duck Creek needs to do more to protect”—he wiggled air quotes—“its most unfortunate citizens. Oh, wait. I forgot. You won’t be around to watch.”
Julia’s mouth went dry.
“You can’t. My son. My son.”
“Shoulda thought of that before you started poking around. Just say your prayers that he stays in the basement. That way, the worst that’ll happen is he finds his mom dead on the floor and grows up thinking she was a drunk, which is a whole lot better than what’ll happen if he were to come upstairs in the next few minutes.”
“Are you insane? Who’s going to believe that? In the same house where Leslie Harper was found dead? You told me a long time ago that coincidences are like unicorns. Even with law enforcement on your side, the public won’t believe it. You’ll never get away with it.”
He leaned back still farther, the chair tilting precariously on two legs, and began ticking off reasons on his fingers. Julia realized he was enjoying this. Her internal temperature dropped further still.
“Well, let’s see. Your career is in the shitter because you just had a big case taken away from you. And your love life is even worse. Your boyfriend dumped you because his daughter caught the two of you having sex in the same bed where he used to sleep with her mother—yeah, I know about that. Susan Parrish couldn’t keep that tasty morsel to herself. You’ll be named in the custody case. You’re sitting around, drinking wine or whiskey or maybe both, feeling sorry for yourself. You overdid it. It happens.”
She fell back on practicalities. “Am I going to hit my head too? Isn’t that a coincidence too far?” She nodded toward the service weapon on his belt. “And you can’t shoot me. That’ll make a big mess. You and I both know that nobody, nobody, ever succeeds in cleaning up every little drop of blood and brain matter.” Something Amanda Pinkham had told her early on that she’d never forgotten. “Besides, no matter how much you make me drink, I’ll still be alive when Beverly and Gregory come back.”
“About that. What’s your mother-in-law’s phone number?”
Julia folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.
His demeanor, so easygoing seconds before, changed in a flash. His eyes narrowed. He spat words through thinned lips. “What’s the number? Make me ask again and I’ll get your little boy up from the basement and make him watch what happens next.”
Julia bent double, gagging, gasping out the number between dry heaves.
“That’s better.” Wayne left-handed his phone. “Miz Sullivan? Deputy Peterson here. We just met over at your daughter-in-law’s house. She’s had a rough day. I told her to go on to bed and that I’ll bring her little boy back to your house. That way she can rest without people traipsing in and out. You all right with that? You sure? We won’t be long.”
He rang off, all pleasantness again. “It’s good to be a trusted member of law enforcement. But I told her I’d be quick. Let’s get this show on the road.”
“Wait.” Julia tried a Hail Mary. “The security cameras. They’ll show you coming and going.”
“Oh. That. Let me show you something.” He tapped at his phone, then held it up so she could see the screen. It showed her own front door, the image revolving among views of the side of the house, the rear, the backyard, then returning to the front walk.
“Speaking of shared custody, you and I share custody of this account.”
“What? How?” But she remembered the oh-so-helpful locksmith standing beside her, making her run through the system’s functions on her app, watching as she punched in her passcode. The same locksmith who was the FOW—friend of Wayne.
“The guy who set it up,” she said through lips gone stiff.
“He owes me a favor or three. If it wasn’t for me, his ass would be in jail.”
He’d been able to log in with her password and watch all of her comings and goings, along with Dom’s.
“Does that mean you’re my stalker? Let me guess. You’ve got a Duck Creek High sweatshirt or three in your closet.”
“Guilty as charged.” He grinned. “By the time they find you, that footage will be deleted back to before Angie’s arrival. It’ll be like neither of us was ever here.”
Julia reached for the back of a chair for support. “What happens now?”
“This.”
He laid his phone on the table and shoved up Angie’s sleeve. “This didn’t work last night. You fought me like an alley cat. Probably got only about half the dose. You gonna fight me now?”
Angie had gone nearly catatonic, eyes blank, lips partly open. She lifted her arm like an obedient child.
“Why bother?” she murmured. “Why be the last one left alive?”
Wayne fumbled at a pouch on his belt. “First smart thing you ever said in your life.”
He withdrew a length of rubber tubing, tying off Angie’s arm with the speed and dexterity of long practice. A large hypodermic flashed in his hand, jabbing deep into the soft flesh of her inner arm even as, despite her words, she screamed and tried unsuccessfully to twist from Wayne’s implacable grip.
“Mom?” Calvin’s voice floated up the stairs.
“Oh, no,” Julia moaned.
“Keep him down there,” Wayne hissed.
Julia ran to the top of the stairs, glanced over her shoulder, and ventured a few steps down, out of sight. “Honey,” she called, loud enough for Wayne to hear, “I just dropped something. It scared me. But it’s all right. Are you and Jake doing okay? You’re not getting into any trouble down there?” She forced a laugh.
Even as she spoke, she slid her phone from her pocket, punching feverishly. Calvin stood at the bottom of the stairs, looking uncertainly upward, the dog standing stiffly beside him, absent his usual bouncing enthusiasm.
A heavy step sounded. She thumbed the phone’s ringer off and jammed the phone back into her pocket.
She turned. Wayne loomed in the doorway. “Good job. Come on back up.”
“But Mom?”
“It’s okay, buddy,” Wayne said. He put a finger to his lips, miming an exaggerated Shhhhh, and spoke in a stage whisper. “Your mom is working on a surprise for you up here. But if you come up too soon, you’ll spoil it. So stay down there until I call you, all right?”
Calvin nodded, brightening.
“You promise? Cross your heart?”
Calvin drew his finger across his chest and then down.
Wayne stepped aside and waited for Julia to pass, then closed the door behind him and wedged a chair under the knob. Calvin wouldn’t be able to get out unless someone let him out.
Julia choked back a sob. She hadn’t even been able to tell her son she loved him.
Back in the kitchen, Angie slumped in a chair, eyes glassy.
Anger, blessedly reviving, flared within Julia.
“What did you do to her? Whatever you shot her up with, it’s going to show up in the autopsy. Amanda Pinkham is going to own your ass.”
With the brief threat posed by Calvin resolved, Wayne was relaxed and expansive.
“I could have shot her up with strychnine and it wouldn’t matter. These people down by the river, they use every substance known to man. But this is better yet. Pure alcohol. By the time they find her body, it’ll be out of her system. They’ll think she drowned in the river, just like that last guy. Happens this time of year, what with the creek rising the way it does.”
He frowned. “It doesn’t help that you cleaned her up. I’m gonna have to drag her through some dirt, get her looking the way she used to look. And I’ll probably undress her again, the way I did Miss Mae, so people will think some pervert’s on the loose. At least this time I won’t freeze my ass off while I’m doing it.”
He withdrew another hypodermic from his pouch and waggled it toward her. “All that paramedic training came in handy. Get on over here. Make it easy on yourself.”
In the few murder cases she’d followed, Julia had wondered when the victim finally gave up and accepted his or her fate, stopped struggling against the hands around the throat, let the deflecting arms fall away from the descending knife, turned away so as not to see the gun go off.
She wasn’t there yet.
At least if she struggled, she thought, there’d be bruises. She’d rake her hands down Wayne’s face, get a good scrape of his skin beneath her fingernails, give Pinkham something to work with. She closed her eyes and steeled herself.
She opened them and looked into the barrel of a gun.
“Don’t even think about it. You can be the unfortunate victim of a break-in with the added tragedy of your son finding you with your head blasted to bits. Because the last thing I’m going to do before I leave this house is put that chair back where it belongs.”
She grasped at a final, forlorn straw. “But my mother-in-law and Gregory. They saw you here.”
“They saw me checking on you after a disturbing series of events. You can’t imagine how sorry I’ll be that I wasn’t able to prevent a terrible tragedy. Now get over here.”
Julia stayed rooted. “Ray never killed anyone, did he?”
Again he beckoned.
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me,” she whispered. So much mattered.
It mattered, so very much, that she’d wasted her last seconds with Calvin on a Hail Mary that wouldn’t work rather than telling him she loved him more than anything in the world.
That he’d spend the rest of his life without a father or a mother.
That Beverly, just as she was beginning a new life, would have to incorporate full-time care of a new grandson—and a dog—into her routine.
That she’d never told Dom she loved him, refusing to take that last step into a new life of her own after Michael’s death.
Even, for Christ’s sake, that on the long, long lists of things she wished she’d done, she’d never apologized for her behavior to Marie.
Who now strolled into the kitchen as though she were just stopping by for coffee.
“Hey, Julia. Hey, Wayne. Hey, Angie—although you don’t look like you’re in any condition to say hey back. What’s going on here?”
Julia, who thought she’d been beyond emotions other than sheer terrorized panic and sorrowful regret, experience a twinge of spiteful glee at the look on Wayne’s face as he slid his gun hand behind his back and dropped the hypodermic on the table, covering it with his other hand.
“What the hell are you doing here? How’d you get in?”
She held her hand high, Julia’s spare key dangling from her fingers.
She was, Julia thought, the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen. Julia’s last-ditch ploy—texting 911 to Marie’s number as she stood briefly out of Wayne’s sight on the basement steps—had worked. Except for one thing: Marie was alone.
But then, who would she have called? The police? The sheriff’s office?
According to Angie, now drooling and listing dangerously in her chair, they were in on Wayne’s scheme, maybe not the killings but the fight club for sure, and they’d probably believe any explanation he offered, no matter how unlikely, over anything she might say.
Marie walked past the table to the counter, set her purse on it, and turned to face Wayne with her hands shoved deep in the wide pockets of her oversize blazer.
“So? Anybody care to enlighten me?”
Julia took a chance. Marie and Wayne went way back. Marie liked him, at least as much as and maybe more than she had herself until, oh, about an hour ago. Who would Marie believe? Yet she had to try. After all, she had nothing to lose.
“Angie said Wayne and Mack Coates have been running some sort of fight club at the jail, something the cops and deputies would bet on. Billy was their stooge. Ray was going to tell. That’s why they killed Billy, and the others, and pinned it on Ray—to shut him up.”
Wayne’s laugh, so free and easy before, sounded forced this time.
“What’s going on is that I stopped by to check on Julia because I was worried about her, and found Angie here, drunk and spewing all sorts of crap, which for reasons that escape me, your boss seems inclined to believe.”
Julia tried to read Marie’s expression, but the woman had a poker face that would serve her well when it came time to try a case in court.
“Huh. What’s with the gun? For sure that’s not your service weapon. Would I be wrong if I guessed the serial number’s gone?”
Julia jumped. She hadn’t even noticed that Wayne’s service weapon remained securely holstered.
Another brittle laugh.
“Angie got a little rammy. Took it out to calm her down. That usually does the trick.”
Marie slid a quick glance toward Angie without moving her head. “I’d say you calmed her down, all right. She looks damn near unconscious.”
Julia jumped in again.
“That’s because he just shot her full of alcohol, enough to kill her. It’s what he did to Billy and Miss Mae and”—the realization came to her—“probably Ray, too, the night Billy died. For all I know, Ray was supposed to die too, but it didn’t kill him, so they pinned that homicide charge on him. Am I right, Wayne?”
“Whatever.” He waved the gun toward the wine and whiskey on the counter. “Looks like Julia and Angie made quite a bit of headway on those before I got here. Maybe that’s why she’s spinning all those wild tales.”
“Wild tales, huh? Wayne, what’s under your hand?”
They locked eyes. Julia held her breath. The hand holding the gun twitched.
“Put the gun down now, Wayne. Mine’s right on you”—she moved a hand within her pocket, and the outline of the gun within became clear—“and if you move your hand one more millimeter, you’re done.”
Wayne froze.
Julia breathed a prayer.
But Wayne recovered his equilibrium far more quickly than she would have imagined possible.
“And you’ll be a cop killer. Trust me, nothing Julia says about what happened here will matter stacked up against that. No one will believe either of you. They’ll think the two of you cooked up some cockamamy story.”
The poker face vanished, replaced by a smile that Julia found more terrifying than anything Wayne had said or done.
Marie lifted her free hand from the blazer and felt behind her for her purse. Her hand emerged with her phone.
“Except I’ve got one of those apps that uploads video—well, audio in this case—in real time to the ACLU. They developed it for all those cases where cops kill Black guys. Black women too—well, anyone—but we all know it’s usually Black guys. Works for this too. You can kill all three of us here, but it’s too late. This is you on this recording, with your own voice and your own words, admitting to what you’ve been up to.”
“You fucking …” Wayne snarled, coming halfway out of his chair.
“Mom? Mom!” Calvin’s voice sounded, closer than Julia would have thought possible. He had to be nearly to the top of the stairs. “Is my surprise ready yet?”
Wayne and Julia both lunged for the basement door.
Wayne got there first, kicking the chair away.
Marie shot. The gun spun from Wayne’s hand.
“Julia, get it!”
Julia dove. Got to it just as Wayne got to Calvin and Beverly’s voice sounded from the open front door.
“Julia?”