I drove to Charles’ house, wondering if Daniel was right that my life was a lie and wondering how much it mattered if it was. Living a lie or not, I would do what I needed to do. The electronic gate was open at the end of Charles’ driveway but a green light showed that the closed-circuit camera was on. I got out of my car, picked a branch out of a ditch by the mailbox and smashed the camera. I drove up the driveway, the headlights reflecting off the trunks of old trees and the palmetto undergrowth. Spanish moss hung in gray webs from the branches.
It was time.
To kill and heal.
If that’s what it took.
Charles’ house was dark. The spot where he usually parked his Dodge Charger was empty. I got out and walked toward the place in the woods where we’d buried Aggie. In the deep darkness a narrow trail in the dead leaves traced our steps but no loose soil or evidence of a grave remained.
It was time.
I climbed the front steps and knocked on the door.
No one answered.
When I tried the knob the door swung open and Charles’ calico cat sprang into the night as if something were chasing it and disappeared into the brush at the side of the driveway.
A switch inside the door lit up the living room. Charles had set up a long wooden worktable and laid out a series of photographs. They were before-and-after shots. Tonya Richmond before Charles had put his hands on her and after. Ashley Littleton before and after. Belinda before and after. Ashley Littleton’s roommate before and after. There was a photo, taken through a windshield, of David Fowler leaving City Hall and another of the SUV hood, dented and streaked with blood. There was a picture of Aggie lying unconscious in the Luego Motel room and another of her after Charles had dug her up from his yard, bathed her and stuffed her into a plastic lawn bag. A little Canon digital camera stood at the end of the table. I threw it across the room into the fireplace and the pieces splintered on to the floor. I looked again at the before picture of Belinda. It showed a woman in her early forties with a tight, graying afro. She was smiling, one side of her mouth turned upward. Charles had gotten her to smile before he’d killed her. Something of the seventeen-year-old girl I’d loved remained in her eyes but I realized that I didn’t know the woman.
I gathered the pictures. Charles had left them for me, I felt sure. He’d taken them for me.
In the bedroom, Charles’ bed was made and the dresser top was clean. But he’d left scraps of clothesline on the bathroom floor and a sheet of twist ties on the back of the toilet. He’d scrubbed the bathtub and left an empty bleach bottle by the garbage can. In the medicine cabinet a toothbrush lay next to a tube of Colgate. A half-dozen white shirts hung on the rod in the closet next to a half-dozen pairs of faded blue pants. Charles hadn’t left town. Not yet.
I went into the kitchen. Plates and glasses were neatly stacked in the cabinets. The sink and counters were wiped clean. A half-gallon carton of milk stood on the top shelf of the refrigerator above a long, plastic-wrapped slab of pork loin. On the bottom shelf a rotting cantaloupe smelled like death.
I went to the garage and flipped on the light. A green Mercedes SUV stood in the parking spot, its hood crushed by the impact with the dumpster outside the grocery store. The metal still radiated warmth and the engine clicked as it cooled. Inside the driver-side door, a spot of blood and phlegm stained the dashboard and a gleaming white front tooth lay on the carpet. I picked it up. It weighed in my hand like a pearl or a gemstone. I put it in my pocket.
Damn Charles. Where was he? I called his cell number though I guessed he wouldn’t answer.
He picked up on the third ring.
‘Where are you?’ I asked.
‘I’m gone.’ He sounded cheerful. ‘Long gone.’
‘Your clothes are still in your closet.’
‘Ah, good. You made it to my house.’
‘Your toothbrush is still in the medicine cabinet,’ I said.
‘Can always buy a toothbrush and clothes.’
‘I found your tooth,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘That was a sweet move you made behind the store.’
‘You’re out of control,’ I said.
‘You know better than that, BB. I assume you found the photographs too.’
‘Yeah, I found them.’
‘That’s one of the sets. I’ll place the others carefully. The police’ll think you shot the pictures. Did you see the camera too?’
‘I threw it in your fireplace,’ I said.
‘I didn’t think you’d be able to keep your hands off it. The memory card’s inside. They’ll match the prints on the camera to you.’
‘You’re a bastard.’
‘I know.’
‘Why did you do this to me?’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You were perfect. I turned down the job when I found out that your old girlfriend was at Melchiori’s party. But then Godrell Graham told me how much he’d pay and I thought, hell, I’m not getting any younger. At that point picking you was logical and also a practical necessity. I knew that you’d never rest until you caught Belinda’s killer and I knew that when she died you would be an obvious suspect to Daniel Turner.’
‘But we’re friends.’
‘I’m not your friend, BB,’ he said. ‘I’ve been many things to you but never a friend.’
‘Did you kill Jerry Stilman?’
‘Of course. Graham paid me to. He found out that Stilman was working with the DEA. Later he found out that Melchiori and his friends had killed his daughter. He has enough money to buy the kind of justice that courts don’t understand.’
‘Your kind of justice.’
‘Yours too, BB. Don’t forget that.’
‘I’m not the same as you, Charles.’
‘The biggest problem with you is that you’ve always lied to yourself,’ he said. ‘You think you’re better than me. That makes you vulnerable. I once had high hopes for you.’
‘I’m not done yet, Charles.’
‘Actually you’re wrong. You were done before you even knew this had started.’ He hung up on me.
I went to the living room, kneeled on the hearth and picked up the metal, plastic and glass from the camera. I removed the memory card and broke it in half. There was a Bic lighter in a kitchen cabinet. I brought it to the fireplace and burned the photographs, then held the flame under the pieces of the memory card until the plastic dripped on the hearthstones. Charles said he had other copies of the pictures. Undoubtedly he knew how to plant them so that they would look like I’d taken them.
Do just enough to do the job. His motto. I hadn’t done enough. Probably never would do.
As I stood, Thomas’s cell phone rang.
The screen said the call came from my house.
I answered and Susan said, ‘BB?’ She sounded upset.
‘Yeah. Did Thomas come home?’
‘There’s someone outside.’
‘Thomas?’
‘No—’ Something slammed. ‘Jesus, BB—’
‘Who?’
The line went dead.
I had no doubt. Charles was inside my house.
I sped across town. The sun was rising and the sky hung thin and gray as if it hadn’t yet sorted itself out from the blackness beyond. Cars began to appear on the roads, driven by men and women in business suits, drinking coffee from travel mugs or wearing exercise clothes as they headed to the gym before work. I yelled and steered around them, shot into the oncoming lane and on to the shoulder. I leaned on the horn and punched the accelerator to the floor. The car lifted over the railroad tracks a half mile from my house. I slowed for a commercial strip, blew through a red light in front of a pickup truck and turned on to my street.
A car was parked in front of the house. A blue Honda Pilot. My heart slowed and I eased my foot from the gas. Daniel Turner’s wife had said that was one of their cars. Maybe Susan had heard Daniel outside, not Charles. But the illogic struck me at the same moment as the hope that Susan was safe. Daniel wouldn’t have broken in. The phone wouldn’t have gone dead.
I looked farther up the street. Another car was parked four houses away. Charles’ Dodge Charger.
Daniel was lying on the front porch with blood on his chest. Next to him lay a plastic-sheathed morning newspaper. He was alive. His belly heaved with each breath. His eyes were glassy and bloodshot. I reached toward him but he shook his head and muttered, ‘Inside.’
‘Charles?’
A bitter, gruesome smile formed on his lips. He clenched his teeth and closed his eyes.
I stepped over him, turned the doorknob and threw my shoulder into the door. It swung open into the dark, empty living room. I went inside and yelled, ‘Charles!’
‘Up here,’ he called.
I ran up the stairs. On the stairway walls he’d tacked copies of the pictures of the women he’d killed. On the landing he’d left more.
He sat on an armchair in my bedroom, a large pistol resting on his lap. Susan lay next to him on the bed, wrapped in a clear plastic bag, naked, her legs tucked over her head, her mouth gagged, her ankles lashed behind her neck with clothesline, her wrists bound beneath her. The bag heaved as she struggled to breathe.
‘Jesus, Charles, what are you doing?’
He shook his head. ‘Sometimes you say the dumbest things.’
I rushed toward him.
‘No,’ he said distractedly and he held the pistol to Susan’s head.
I froze.
The window shades were down and lamps burned on the two bedside tables.
Charles said, ‘The police will find you here beside your wife. Dead. Self-inflicted gunshot.’
‘I don’t like guns.’
‘Susan will be dead too,’ he said, ‘raped by you, a man who, as everyone in town knows, couldn’t get his wife to do him. With your background they’ll know what you did. They’ll know you’re the killer. They’ll find Daniel Turner dead on your porch where you killed him. Too bad Thomas isn’t here. I had ideas for him. But I’ll hunt him down later. Loose ends and all.’
‘Why me?’ I asked again.
He stood up. ‘You let me down.’
‘This won’t work,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘It’s already done. I’m already gone.’
‘What about the car in your garage? What about the little things that you’ve left behind?’
‘I leave nothing behind. Ever. If they look for the car they won’t find it. Or if they do they’ll connect it to you.’
Susan was struggling inside the bag. Her breath had fogged the plastic over her face. I couldn’t see her eyes and for that I was grateful.
‘What now?’ I asked.
He offered me the chair he’d been sitting in. ‘Why don’t you take a seat?’
‘I’ll stand.’
He pushed the pistol against the plastic so that its muzzle pressed into the skin on Susan’s forehead. ‘Please,’ he said.
He tied my wrists and ankles to the chair with clothesline. He cut another length, wrapped it around my throat and tied it to the chair back so that I would garrote myself if I leaned forward.
When he was done he asked, ‘You keep a toolbox in your garage?’
‘Why?’
‘Do you or don’t you?’
‘Go to hell.’
He left the room.
I spoke to Susan. ‘If there was a way that I could …’ I stopped. There wasn’t a way and never had been. But for a moment she ceased struggling and I felt that in that moment there was forgiveness.
Charles returned from the garage with a long-shafted screwdriver. He sat on the foot of the bed opposite me and looked me in the eyes. He touched the sharp tool-end to my chin and forced my head up. Sweat formed on my brow and ran down the back of my neck.
‘Now, say you’re sorry for failing to live up to my expectations,’ he said.
‘They were unreasonable,’ I said.
He increased the pressure so the straight steel edge pushed into my skin. ‘Say you’re sorry.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘for failing to live up to your expectations.’
He removed the screwdriver from my chin. ‘Ah, that’s all right,’ he said, then flipped the tool and punched a hole through my right hand.
I screamed.
He yanked the screwdriver out and punched another hole.
I screamed again and blood splattered his white shirt. He regarded it and said, ‘Now that makes me mad.’ He plunged the screwdriver again.
Tears and sweat erupted from my face. ‘Don’t!’
He looked sincerely perplexed. ‘Why not?’
And suddenly I didn’t have a good answer. Why not stick a tool into my hand? Why not? I said, ‘The police will wonder why my own hand.’
He yanked out the screwdriver and plunged it into my other hand. ‘I’ll leave a note for you that explains it,’ he said. ‘It’s an act of expiation. Four hundred years ago sinners did it all the time. Margaret Mary Alocoque carved the name of Jesus into her breasts when she was younger than Thomas. Not many people do this kind of thing anymore, which is a shame.’
He yanked out the screwdriver and plunged it again. It hit bone.
When I stopped screaming, Charles shook his head. ‘Be a man, BB. Nothing more. Being a man is enough.’ He yanked out the screwdriver, leaned back in his chair and surveyed the room like a bored child looking for a new toy.
Susan had stopped struggling. She breathed slowly. The bag heaved gently. Charles smiled. ‘You’ve got yourself a smart wife, BB. She’s conserving her breath. Not that it’ll do any good in the long run.’
She grunted through her gag and struggled again.
‘Or maybe she was just in shock,’ he said.
Outside the room, footsteps climbed the stairs – slow, heavy footsteps, pausing, persisting. ‘Now who the hell is that?’ Charles said.
Daniel appeared in the doorway, his chest bloody, his skin pale.
‘Hey,’ Charles said happily. ‘You’re still alive.’
Daniel stepped into the room, his face haggard but his eyes furious.
‘Oh, stop,’ Charles said.
Daniel shook his head. ‘You … can’t …’
Charles casually lifted the gun from the bed and casually pulled the trigger. The report shook the walls. Daniel spun and fell on his face.
Charles shrugged, then looked at me level. ‘Should we finish this? Do you want to do Susan? Or d’you want me to do her after I kill you?’
I spit at him.
‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he said and he held the gun barrel to my head. ‘But things are as they are.’
A figure stepped into the bedroom doorway.
Thomas.
His eyes were wild and terrified and innocent. He wore green shorts, a brown soccer shirt and white tennis shoes. He held the shovel that I’d used to bury Fela.
‘Well, hello,’ said Charles.
‘Run,’ I yelled.
Thomas walked into the room. He glanced at his mother on the bed and me in the chair. His eyes turned to Charles.
Charles seemed pleased to have him join us. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘I’d been thinking I would need to go out to find you. I was just offering your dad a final shot at your mother. He wasn’t interested. How about you?’
Thomas lifted the shovel above his head and swung it at Charles.
Charles threw an arm up and grabbed the shovel. He pushed it and Thomas stumbled back. Thomas looked startled but then he grinned at Charles and Charles laughed. Thomas swung the shovel again, and again Charles grabbed it. Then he aimed his pistol at Thomas’s chest.
I begged. ‘Run.’
Charles grinned. ‘Did you hear him, boy? Your daddy said to run.’
An anger arose in Thomas’s face that I’d felt course through my own blood but had never seen in another man. Not even Charles. A terrible anger that transcended all impulses of fear or weakness.
Charles saw it too and for just a moment he loosened his grip on the shovel. Thomas pulled it from him and drove the blade into Charles’ chest. As the blow punched the air from Charles’ lungs, a look of surprise crossed his eyes and he tumbled over the end of the bed and landed on the floor.
His pistol fell from his hand and Thomas picked it up and pointed it at him.
‘Get help, Thomas,’ I said.
He let Charles pull himself to his feet.
‘Get help,’ I said.
Charles looked at the floor. He looked at Thomas’s white gym shoes and green shorts. He looked Thomas eye to eye. A grin crossed his lips again. ‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said and took a step toward him.
Thomas didn’t back away. He aimed the pistol at Charles, and Charles hesitated.
‘No,’ I said to Thomas.
‘No,’ Charles agreed. ‘I don’t think so.’ He stepped toward Thomas again.
Thomas shot him in the stomach. The roar of the gun shook the walls.
Charles looked at his belly, at the stain of blood that soaked through his white shirt, and he started to laugh but the laugh became a wheezing whine and he took another step.
Thomas shot him again.
Charles looked perplexed. He nodded and stepped again.
Thomas shot him in the chest.
Charles stumbled toward him.
Thomas pulled the trigger but the gun didn’t fire. He pulled it again. Nothing.
Charles reached for Thomas as if he would choke him but he just patted him twice on the shoulder. ‘You’re a good boy,’ he managed to say, and he stumbled out of the bedroom into the hall.