“BEVERLY, WHAT ARE you doing here? Oh God, and Gregory too?”
A few moments earlier, Julia had thought she’d never felt such terror in her life. Now fate had just presented Wayne with two more victims.
“This man’s message. That nonsense about you needing sleep and him bringing Calvin home. It didn’t ring true.”
Beverly’s nose crinkled as though the odor of bullshit hung nearly visible in the air.
Julia had always prized her mother-in-law’s ability to cut through crap. Oh, Beverly, she thought now. Why couldn’t you have been more gullible?
Beverly looked at Wayne and Calvin and read the situation immediately.
“Let go of that child this minute.”
She’d once been a teacher, skills she’d refreshed in her time with Calvin, and the command she issued had such authority that Wayne flinched before locking his elbow tighter around Calvin’s neck. His other arm hung limp by his side, blood darkening his sleeve and dripping onto the floor. He moved it experimentally, and his face contorted. “Sonofabitch!”
Marie lifted her gun again.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Gregory looked from Marie to Julia, who also held a gun, though it dangled from her hand as though she were terrified of it, which she was. His own hands flew up, though neither weapon was pointed his way.
“You heard her. Let him go.”
“Or what, Ree?” Wayne’s previous cockiness had vanished. “You’ll shoot me? And hit the boy too?”
“Mommy?”
Calvin’s voice, small and trembling, broke Julia’s heart.
She tried to channel Beverly’s authoritative tone. “Don’t worry. No one’s going to hurt you. We won’t let that happen.”
Wayne’s forearm flexed. Calvin cried out.
“How are you going to keep that from happening?” Wayne cocked his head toward Marie. “She can’t shoot. She doesn’t dare.”
He looked at Julia. “And you won’t. You probably don’t even know how.”
He turned his gaze on Beverly and Gregory. “And these two old people? What are they going to do? Beat me up? I’ll break this boy’s neck if any of you so much as takes a step toward me.”
Calvin’s eyes overflowed, his sobs all the more frightening because of their silence.
Julia took a breath.
Ray’s was the first homicide case she’d handled and possibly the last. She might never defend a homicide suspect at trial, might never have a closing argument with life and death at stake.
But if she did, she’d approach it unafraid. Because no argument she’d ever put to a jury would carry the significance of the one she launched now.
She locked eyes with Wayne and lay the gun on the table with an audible thunk.
“Marie might as well put her gun down now too. In fact, go ahead, Marie.” She didn’t dare look at Marie, holding her breath until she heard an echoing thud.
“It doesn’t matter whether either of us can shoot you or not. Because Marie’s phone is still uploading every minute of this. Right, Marie?”
“Afraid so.” Marie sounded entirely too chipper.
“And even if it weren’t, what are you doing to do? Kill all of us? A kid, a mom, an intern, and two old, frail people?”
“Hardly frail.” Beverly’s interjection was astringent as a sucked lemon.
“Add to the body count you’ve already racked up? Billy and Miss Mae and Craig? And …” She paused as it came to her. “Maybe Leslie Harper too?”
She spoke slowly, sussing it out.
“She formed a committee to come up with a bill to root out corruption in law enforcement. And you said there was a complaint about your department. You told me Cheryl Hayes was involved. But the complaint wasn’t about her, was it?”
All of her interactions with Hayes came back to her, this time in a new light. Angie’s defense of the woman: She’s about the only friend we’ve got out here.
Hayes had tried to tell her what was going on: Ray was fighting. He was FIGHTING.
The way Hayes, her eyes rimmed red, had sat apart from the other deputies at Harper’s funeral. She’d probably thought then that her best hope of stopping Wayne’s scheme was gone and, worse yet, that her efforts had put her own life in danger.
She could have quit, left Duck Creek entirely, found a department several states removed. And yet she’d stayed, still trying in her own way to let someone—in this case, Julia—know what was going on. And, until this very moment, Julia had failed her.
“Jesus, Wayne. Did you shoot Harper up too? Bash her head against the kitchen counter? Where was this all going to end?”
Wayne clung to his plan like a drowning man hanging on to a two-by-four in the face of a tsunami.
“With Ray pleading guilty and her”—he jerked his head toward Angie—“taken care of.”
“Taken care of,” Julia echoed. “Ray’s not going to plead guilty now. The only one who’s looking at any sort of a plea is you.”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Yes.” Beverly again.
She strode to him, ignoring Julia’s gasp—“Beverly, wait!”—and held out her arms to Calvin.
“Gamma!” The next minute, he was in her embrace.
“Calvin!” Julia rushed forward, but Marie stopped her. “I need you to hold this.”
She put her gun in Julia’s hand. “Keep it on his gut. You won’t be able to miss it. Be careful. It doesn’t have a safety. But if he makes a break for it, shoot.”
The gun jumped and bobbled in Julia’s hand.
“For God’s sake, hold it in both hands and keep it steady. I don’t want to end up full of holes.”
“She won’t shoot.” A last-ditch burst of bravado from Wayne.
Julia thought of her son in Wayne’s grip. Of Ray, bruised and bloodied, in his jail cell. Of Craig bobbing in the creek, Miss Mae stripped naked as a final insult, Billy bludgeoned on the bank. And Leslie Harper, a ghostly presence in this very kitchen.
“Oh yes I would. With pleasure.” The gun stilled in her hand. Her eyes fastened on Wayne’s midriff. Right there. Between the third and fourth buttons on his shirt. She angled it a lower. Her finger caressed the trigger.
“Easy there,” Marie said.
She removed the handcuffs from Wayne’s duty belt. “You know the drill.” When he didn’t move, she wrenched an arm behind his back, fastened one cuff on his wrist, then repeated the move with his second arm, the metallic click loud in the silence.