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Oh right. The bathroom floor of the Baker place. His head pounded as he remembered the pain of the porcelain smacking against his skull. Little bitch could have killed him.
Wait. Sirens? Dammit. Cops. Apparently enough of the clipped phone call back at his house had gone through.
Weiss pulled himself up. It hurt, sure, but he wasn’t gonna give the hell up now. He didn’t have many years left as it stood, but in prison? He wouldn’t last a day.
He briefly stopped at the mirror to compose himself. The blood seeping through the hair on his temple would raise questions, but as old as he was, he’d learned that “I fell” provided an excuse for just about any injury. He smiled at his reflection. Not even he believed the sincerity of it.
Where the hell was Millie?
No matter. As he made his way out into the living room, he tried to spin a story in his head that could possibly explain the mess. He didn’t come up with one.
With some effort he slid the cabinet out of the way enough to get out the door and onto the porch. Sure enough, a single cop car sat parked next to the lake, its lights flashing. Two officers had just gotten out. He recognized one of them.
Weiss raised a hand in greeting, searching his memory for a name. He found it just in time.
“Tony! Haven’t seen you in a while.”
The officer on the driver’s side flashed a smile. Tony West. Grew up with Al. He’d been on the force a long time. Just a rookie the last time the cops had been needed out at the Weiss place.
“Everything okay, Mr. Weiss?” Tony asked. His partner rounded the front of the car. A younger girl that Weiss didn’t recognize. She looked scared.
“Yeah, yeah,” Weiss said as he made his way down the stairs. “Why? Did you get a call or something?”
“Yessir,” Tony said. “From a former cop out of Rose Valley. Said his daughter called, wife was in trouble, needed help.”
Weiss pursed his lips, as if trying to remember details of some event that he remembered all too well. Tony didn’t seem suspicious. Not yet. He didn’t flinch when Weiss walked over closer to him and offered a handshake. Tony took it firmly.
“He said they were staying here at the Baker place.”
Weiss glanced behind him. With the door open and the dark of night, the destruction inside was obscured.
“Yeah?” Weiss scratched the back of his neck. “I woulda seen’em come, I think. Ain’t nobody here. I was just checking the place out. Making sure everything was safe. I do that sometimes. For Mr. Baker. You know, he ain’t able to make it out here all that often anymore.”
Tony squinted his eyes, not focused on Weiss anymore, but on the house beyond.
Hoping to distract, Weiss kept talking. “As you can see, no car or anything. Hasn’t been anyone out here in years.”
“We already found the car, sir,” the young girl said from further away. “Out on the highway, crashed into a tree. Figured maybe that’s why we got the call, but didn’t find anyone. Caller said he’d gotten confirmation they’d made it out to the cabin. You sure they didn’t come back here?”
Weiss swallowed hard and licked his lips to restore some moisture to his quickly-drying mouth. “Like I said, I was just up in the house. Nobody home.”
Tony threw a look back to his partner, but Weiss couldn’t decipher the meaning. Did they not believe him? If they went into the cabin, all hell would break loose with the mess he’d left. He couldn’t allow that. He needed options. A way out. Tony was close. Close enough to touch, or attack, but how quick would the girl be on the trigger? She was young. Probably just a rookie.
His eyes wandered down to Tony’s hip to find his sidearm, comfortably in the holster, not even snapped shut.
Weiss knew a thing or two about guns. Been firing them since before either of these cops had been born. He chose his out—either of this mess or life itself—and reached down for Tony’s gun. Clearly, Tony didn’t expect it, because Weiss had the gun out, the safety off, and the muzzle pointed at the cop’s back before anyone could react. It all happened so fast that Weiss impressed even himself.
The rookie girl had her gun out in record time, too, though.
“Mr. Weiss!” she cried. “Drop the gun!”
Would she really shoot him? Weiss had done some horrible things, and he knew the toll it took. Not everyone could stomach it like he had all these years.
Tony slowly put his hands up as he turned around. His dark eyes fixated on the muzzle of the gun. When he spoke, he didn’t sound authoritative or warm. He sounded scared. “What’s going on, Mr. Weiss? You can tell us. We’re on your side.”
The hell they were. The world had never been on his side. Certainly not since...
“Ain’t nothin’ to tell,” Weiss said, more breathlessly than he expected. “I don’t wanna kill no one. I really don’t. But I think I have to. I think that’s where we are.”
Tony didn’t answer right away. Weiss could only see the rookie out of the corner of his eye. Didn’t know when she might pull the trigger. If she got the jump on him, it’d be too late. Almost imperceptibly, Tony’s eyes drifted from the muzzle and toward his partner. An unspoken word. A command, maybe.
Weiss pulled the trigger. The bullet tore through one of Tony’s hands and then his chest. Blood sprayed. Weiss could feel the warmth of it on his face. But there was no time to think about that. Almost the same second he pulled the trigger, he dropped to the ground. A second shot, this one from the rookie’s gun, echoed through the air, but Weiss was down before that happened. He didn’t exactly move gracefully, but neither did the officer. He had the gun pointed up at her before she retrained her aim on him.
No time for standoffs. Not now. Weiss pulled the trigger. The angle caused the bullet to miss the chest, drilling instead into the side of her belly. Less blood this way for some reason. It trickled out more than it exploded.
She dropped the gun, but didn’t fall. Weiss took the moment of safety to get back on his feet, but he was far too slow. By the time he’d managed it, she’d turned. To go where? Not back to the car. She wasn’t wearing a radio, and she probably didn’t have keys. Instead she ran away, into the darkness. Into the trees.
Surely she’d bleed out. Or... the demon pig would get to her. Out of breath, his heart beating faster and faster, Weiss couldn’t find the strength to chase after her. He’d have to trust that he’d done enough damage.
Millie was home now, right? He couldn’t remember. Would she help him with this mess? No, no. Of course he couldn’t involve her in this. Just like he hadn’t involved her in the last murder, flashbacks of which rose to the front of his mind. It’d all been so easy at the time. Nothing to worry about. But oh, the lasting effects of it were insidious. It tore his family apart. Some days, he thought, maybe even his sanity. But there was nothing left to tear apart this time. His actions didn’t matter. They never had.
He’d tried to be a good dad. Better than his own. He never laid a finger on Al. Tried to instill values and virtue in his son. None of that worked. None of that mattered.. He could only provide his son with love, and that refusal to let reality overtake it, had led to all this carnage.
He sighed. Fear grew in him. He suddenly regretted everything, but at the same time felt trapped by his choices. He’d covered up a murder once, he could do it again. He’d dump the car in the lake, where the other one had sat for almost a decade. And the body? He’d bury it right on top of the other one.
His gaze drifted over to the ramshackle shed pushed up against the Baker cabin. The place that held all his secrets. He’d been so sure earlier that the Baker girl had stumbled across the body, and the redhead, surely she knew as well. But now, all of that seemed preposterous. They’d gone in there to turn the power back on. Not to dig.
Tonight, he would be the only person digging up the shame that had been buried for far too long.