February 2, 2023
5:42 p.m.
“I didn’t do anything,” Tyler said, but his hand gripped the freezer, tight, as if he were holding himself up. “We slept together. That’s all, okay? And after that, I don’t know what happened.”
“Tyler,” Billy said, a warning. “Tyler, don’t indulge her. None of this matters.”
“But things didn’t go how you wanted, did they?” I asked, pushing. “What did she do?” I asked, knowing the question was wrong, unfair, but also knowing that he had somehow absolved himself, and this might be the only way. “What did she say? She’s a tough one, Allison. She’s pissed me off before, too.”
Tyler eyed Billy, then turned to me. “I thought she wanted to help people, creative people, like me. She was always writing about how so many people have this spark in them, how they just have to uncover it, and I thought I could trust her. I just wanted to show her my story. I worked on it for years.” His voice cracked.
“What did she do, Tyler?”
His eyes caught mine, flashing with rage. “She laughed at me, like I was nothing—like I was an idiot for even trying. And she wouldn’t stop laughing. I only wanted her to stop. Goddamn it, I just wanted her to stop!”
My heart was practically pounding against my rib cage. Here was the answer. Allison—beautiful, brilliant, tactless Allison, Allison, who could dish it out and also take it, who I could totally imagine laughing when presented with this boy’s precious work, with the earnestness of a white man with a story he thought everyone should hear.
The Margaret Atwood quote blazed into mind, hot and fiery as a brand.
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
How true it was. Both had happened that night, and now we were here.
“It was just a little push. But then she wouldn’t move. And I—I ran. And then when I went by the next day, she was—she was there—and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t mean anything. But then”—he eyed me—“then you came. Then you found her. Then I—” He shook his head. “I had to do something, didn’t I?”
Tyler’s shoulders shook, and I glanced to his uncle, fully ready to see a pair of handcuffs in his hand, for words—kind yet firm—to spill from his mouth. Tyler, you’re under arrest.
But he was simply rolling his eyes. “Are you done, boy? You’re making a fool of yourself.”
Tyler looked over, connecting eyes with his uncle.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” the officer went on. “You’re not making sense.”
I shook my head, trying to understand. “But—but you heard him—he—he—”
“You said this wouldn’t happen,” Tyler said with anguish, looking at his uncle now. “You said you’d take care of it.”
A gasp, and it clicked. Because of course. Of course.
I thought of what McKenzie had scrawled across that note, so much younger than me but also somehow wiser. Sorry—no cops.
And then, I saw it, beads of sweat on the top of Billy’s head. Beneath the hunter’s cap. His hairline was wet with sweat. From nerves. From adrenaline.
From exertion.
“You,” I said, my eyes trained on him, because suddenly it made so much sense. Tyler didn’t—couldn’t—have done this on his own. Yes, he had killed Allison, but he had turned to someone else to cover it all up.
The police had been there already, before I returned with Tyler this afternoon, their utility vehicles leaving tracks around the perimeter of the motel.
And there had been two vehicles, hadn’t there? That meant that Billy could have come before that woman did. He could have already been at the motel when he got the call from Denise on his radio. Cleaning up his nephew’s mess. But it was broad daylight, and he was in an open vehicle. So he put the body in the freezer until he could come back tonight and find another place to hide it, the falling snow covering any tracks.
And now that it was dark, he had come back. What’s more, he had told the other cops he was taking the call. No one else was coming. When Tyler had stepped outside, to call his uncle, see how far away he was, what he had really been doing was checking if the deed was done, if Allison’s body had once again been moved, so they could watch me think I was losing my mind, seeing things that weren’t there once again.
Tyler leaned against the freezer, as if he’d just set down a weight he’d been carrying for days now.
His uncle stared at me, a dare in his eyes. “I would do anything for family,” he said, his hand lifting to his waist, in the direction of his gun. “I will do anything for family.”
Fear shot through me, pumping in my blood.
“Besides,” he said, “no one is going to believe some washed-up alcoholic from the city over an upstanding local officer.”
I felt the shame build within me once again, and I thought of all the things I’d lost to drinking, all the time in my adult life I’d spent trying to escape, whether it was in the bottom of the bottle or into an Instagram feed. I was always looking for a way to numb, and where had it gotten me?
Because he was right, wasn’t he? Who would believe me over him?
But Allison deserved more. I deserved more.
I didn’t want to be that person. I didn’t want to be a liar, a cheater, a drunk who screwed people’s boyfriends, who cheated on my own husband. A woman who sabotaged her own chances at a baby, who couldn’t even finish a goddamn book.
And I felt, for a moment, as Billy’s hand hovered over his gun, that if I could only get myself out of this, I would treat myself better. I would live for me, not for what other people wanted me to be. Not for the me I pretended to be.
For me, flaws and all. Honestly, if nothing else.
I only had one shot at this. I had to get this right.
“You’re right,” I said. “I am a drunk. And I’m all over the place. No one will believe me over you. But—” I stared at him. “You’ve been sloppy.”
The cop’s eyes widened, but he didn’t move his hand from his gun.
“Her nail, I found that in only a couple of moments of digging. What else is in there? What else is all over this place?” I pointed to the freezer. “I can see more of her, right there.”
Tyler leaned forward, but Billy rushed to stop him. He reached to the lip of the freezer, grabbed his nephew’s hand. “Stop touching things, boy. Stop—”
I shoved my hip, hard as I could, against the freezer, and—
Slam!
The lid clamped down on Tyler’s and Billy’s hands like monster teeth. I wrenched my body on top of the freezer, bearing down with my weight, delighting in their cries of pain.
Then I ran, straight for the crack of the doorway. I threw my body forward, but then my foot caught on the edge of the shelf, and I toppled to the ground.
Behind me, a flurry of sounds—yelling and screaming, and then someone clambering toward me, the clatter of tin cans falling. I tried to push myself up, reaching for the door, but I felt a hand on my ankle, and I turned to see Billy latched on, Tyler standing behind him, holding his hands up, his fingers bent in all the wrong angles, wailing in pain.
I tried to wriggle away, but Billy’s grip on me tightened, and when I looked back, he was reaching, with his other hand, for his gun.
I knew then that it was too late. My chance at redemption, at being the person I knew I could be if I could only heal myself. It was a pipe dream. Allison’s life had been cut short, and now mine would be, too.
Then the door burst open, and there she was.
Siobhan.
Her eyes widened, and without hesitation, she rushed past me, lifted a foot, and smashed it, with all her weight, against Billy’s wrist. A snapping sound, bones breaking, and when he let go of me, crying, thrashing in pain, she knelt, reached her hand in mine, jerked me up.
Then we were outside and we were running, only it was so dark, now that my eyes had adjusted to the light inside, and I could barely sense which way to go.
The snow was still so thick, and I heard screams behind me, the clatter of the door, and I knew Billy was after us, wasn’t going to let us go without a fight. There was a pounding of footsteps, the pop-pop-pop of gunshots, and I stopped for a minute, but Siobhan screamed at me.
“Kerry! Keep going!”
And we did. She lurched forward, and I followed her, but then I felt it beneath me…
Something hard. Something solid. There under my feet.
“Siobhan,” I called as I tripped, throwing my hands out to catch me in the snow, and the coldness—the snow and ice—smacked against my face, suffocating me, but when I pushed up, I realized there was something beneath me. Big and weighty. Solid as a tree trunk.
Still no light. Still the sound of running.
“Kerry,” Siobhan cried, kneeling to help me.
I heard a scream worse than any I’d heard before. A banshee’s wail.
Because she could feel her, too.
Her hair. Her cold, clammy skin.
Allison. We’d found Allison after all. Billy must not have been finished moving her when I rushed back, insisting on checking the freezer again.
My screams joined hers—I couldn’t help it—and I knew we were done for, I knew that it was too late for us, that Billy would know where we were now, that the pop-pop of gunshots would be on us, that we’d be tossed somewhere, anywhere, along with Allison, just another mess to clean up.
Then there was a flash of light, a halo, and thought I saw Allison—her red nails, her blue skin, the frost-crusted hair—and I saw Siobhan, the horror and the grief and the pain pain pain, when I looked up, I saw someone else, too.
A figure, shining a light toward us. A figure I could hardly make out, and then that figure raised her hand, and in it, a gun.
“Easy there, Billy,” she said.
The woman officer who’d pressed her card into my hand. The one I had called only minutes before.
Siobhan was still screaming, but I reached for her, slipped my hand in hers. Then I turned, and in the orb of the flashlight I could see Billy and Tyler. Desperation on their faces.
Billy’s gun was drawn, pointed toward Siobhan and me. But the woman was here to stop him.
“It’s over,” she said from behind us. “And there’s a body now, right here. A body you can’t make go away.”
In the light I could see more tears on Tyler’s face and a look of resignation on his uncle’s, and after a moment, his grip began to loosen.
Siobhan let out another sob, and I pulled her to me, and she let me, caving into my chest like a crying child.
Then I watched as the gun dropped into the snow.
Sinking into the white, blanketed like everything else.