As much as everyone would’ve liked, it wasn’t the end.
There was a wire tree standing on the round table near the window, a foot tall and decorated with what looked like tiny eggs hung from hooks, painted in orange and black. He’d asked the nurse what the little tree was and was told it was called a celebration tree. You could keep it up all year long and just change the decorations to fit the next holiday. Halloween was next, so the branches were sagging with little pumpkins and skulls.
There was a soft knock on the door, and then it pushed open before he could respond. It was the on-duty nurse, a woman named Kimmy, although Matt wouldn’t have remembered if it wasn’t written on the whiteboard beside his bed, the i dotted with an overinflated, cheerful circle.
“The police are here to speak to you,” Kimmy said. She was wearing pink scrubs with white hearts scattered across them, like she was still stuck back on Valentine’s Day. Or maybe looking ahead. “If you’re not feeling up to it yet, I’ll make them wait.”
Matt nodded. It was like it’d been before, with Reid visiting him in the hospital with all his questions. The same, even down to the bullet wound, although this time Marie had managed to hit farther from his shoulder and closer to his heart. He couldn’t remember any of the time after Marie had shot him, except for a brief few moments inside a helicopter, a paramedic leaning over and snapping an oxygen mask over his face. He’d woken up in the hospital, having already made it through surgery and into recovery, feeling like an elephant was sitting on his chest. That was different than last time, at least—the pain. Worse because of where the bullet had gone this time, or because he was getting old?
He wasn’t sure.
You’re very lucky to have made it, one of the nurses had said to him.
He’d laughed at that, which had turned into a grimace, and then he’d clutched at his chest.
Luck wasn’t the reason he was alive, he wanted to say. Marie could’ve shot him in the forehead, she had a clear shot, and he’d seen her eyes shift at the last minute, and the gun’s muzzle drop. She could’ve killed him, but she’d decided to let him live.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I can talk to them.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are,” Matt said. He thought Kimmy would be more than up to bossing around some cops, even though she was young and petite and looked naïve, but she was also what Matt’s grandmother would’ve called a firecracker.
Firecracker: noun. Grandmother-speak. A woman who gives no shits what anyone thinks.
“I’ll talk to them,” Matt said again. He held up the wand with the button at the end, the one that connected to his IV and pumped morphine into his system every time he pushed it. “If I start feeling overwhelmed, I’ll just hit this a few times. They won’t be able to get a coherent word out of me after that.”
Kimmy grimaced.
“You know that button doesn’t do anything.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Seriously, though. If you start to feel bad, we’ll give them the boot.”
“It’s fine, really. I suppose they need to wrap things up before I go home.”
“I should really ask Dr. Hammett—”
“Kimmy. Let them in.”
In all honesty, he wanted to get it over with. The cops had come by the day before, caught him when he was in serious pain, in that long thirty minutes before the next dose of good medicine came, when he thought it might be better to be dead than to feel this way. They’d left without saying a word. And now they were back. They were going to talk to him sooner or later, better to get it over with.
“I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Kimmy said, but then left to get the cops anyway, the door wheezing shut as she went. The sound of muffled footsteps out in the hall came to him, and a smattering of laughter, all before the door closed. He looked at the little tree. It would be getting cold outside, the leaves would begin to change and fall. Maybe he’d be out of here by then, enjoying the change in seasons from his home.
There was a knock on the door and it pushed back open. No laughter came in this time, and no Kimmy, but just the cops. Loren and Spengler.
“So sorry to bother you again, Mr. Evans,” Spengler said, pulling a chair to the left side of the bed. It made an unpleasant squealing sound as it dragged across the linoleum. She didn’t sound very sorry. “We just wanted to touch base with you, let you know what’s going on.”
“We won’t take much of your time,” Loren said. He didn’t bother sitting.
Matt nodded and smoothed his hands over the cheap hospital blankets. They could’ve been the same ones from twenty-three years before.
“How are you feeling today?” Spengler asked.
“Much better, thank you. I hope to go home soon.”
Spengler’s eyebrows drew together over her smile, and she glanced at Loren. Matt looked back and forth between the detectives.
“I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere near home soon,” Spengler said. “You’ll be staying here until the doctor gives the okay for you to leave, and then we’ll be placing you under arrest. A guard has been stationed outside the door to keep an eye on you.”
He looked back and forth between the two, thinking it must be a joke. He cleared his throat. It was time to sell, he thought. It was all or nothing at this point. The pitch of a lifetime.
“Look, I know I’m in trouble about Janice faking her death, but my lawyer said it’s not that big of a deal. It was Janice who orchestrated the whole thing, and it was twenty-three years ago. I know I’ll have to pay back that insurance money, but I have the cash in the bank—”
“First of all, what you did twenty years ago is a big deal,” Spengler said. “But that’s not the reason we’ll be arresting you.”
“You’re arresting me?” he asked slowly. “Let me get this right. Marie faked her death, set me up for her murder, killed Riley—and you’re arresting me?”
“That’s right,” Spengler said, smiling.
“Your wife was a sneaky gal,” Loren said. “Spengler here kept calling and leaving her voice mails, and then Marie responded. She didn’t actually have to call her back—you can just respond to a voice mail with another voice mail, did you know that?”
Matt shook his head.
“Anyway, your wife sent Spengler a voice mail. Well, not an actual message, it’s just a recording Marie made.”
“I think you’ll find it interesting. Here, listen.” Spengler held up her phone and pushed a button on the screen. There was a moment of static and then there was Marie’s voice, light and breathy, the one he hated so much.
“Tell me, did you enjoy killing her?” Marie whispered. “Riley didn’t even see it coming, did she? She went out thinking you were actually in love with her, isn’t that right? How humane of you.”
“I wish I’d had the chance to bash your skull in,” his own voice said. He didn’t recognize himself, as was the way when a person heard a recording of their voice, but he’d know his own words anywhere. “I wish I could’ve killed you instead of her. But I had to do it. Prove to everyone what a jealous, crazy wife you are.”
Spengler stopped the playback. Matt leaned back on the pillows and closed his eyes. It was like he’d gone back to the beginning again. Twenty years back, don’t pass go, don’t collect two hundred dollars.
“Have you found Marie yet?” he asked.
Loren laughed.
“The search continues,” he said. “We’ve been sweeping the river for a mile downstream from where she went under, but there’s been no sign of her yet. The team keeps saying there’s no way she could’ve survived that current, but I’ve heard that malarkey before.”
“And here’s a funny thing,” Spengler said. She looked amused. “A ranger found a life jacket abandoned on the shore a few miles downstream. There was some blood on it, and a rip that looked like it’d been done with a knife. Now, I don’t remember seeing Marie wearing a life jacket, but that sweatshirt she had on was awfully big. It could’ve hid a lot, I suppose.”
“But I’m sure she’s dead,” Loren said.
“Oh, yes. Definitely,” Spengler said. “But we’ve all said that about your wife before, haven’t we, Mr. Evans?”
The cops didn’t stay long. They didn’t have much else to say to him, now that they had what they needed. As they left and the door eased shut again, Matt saw the uniformed cop sitting right outside his door, scrolling through his phone.
He slept after a while. It was restless and full of dreams, although some of it might’ve been real. He saw someone come into the room and put flowers on the windowsill, and Kimmy came back in to take his blood pressure. And there was Marie, standing at the foot of his bed, her lovely face smiling, pointing a gun right at him, and he came awake with a start, a hand clutching at his throat, gasping for air.
He was alone.
No one had pulled the blinds, so the late-afternoon sun slanted through hotly, and there was sweat gathered on his upper lip. He reached out to push the call button, to ask a nurse to come to his room and flip the blinds, but then the phone rang. It was the phone on the table beside his bed, jangling with such ferocity that it shook in the cradle. Once, and then again.
Was it Marie? Would he ever hear a phone ring again without wondering if it was her, calling to taunt him?
No, she was dead. Had to be. Drowned. Or bled out from where he’d stabbed her.
But there was that life jacket.
He put a hand out to grab the phone and had the sudden awful thought that even if he ripped it right out of the wall, cord frayed and broken at one end, it would ring anyway, that there was no escaping her, that he’d made his bed and had to sleep in it, just like his mother used to say. Till death do you part, as long as you both shall live and all that jazz. He considered pushing the phone off the table, sending it clattering to the ground, but answered it instead. He couldn’t help himself.
You could never kill Janice.
Or Marie, either.
“Matt,” she said breathily, and if he’d been able to reach through the speaker and strangle his wife he would’ve gladly done it then. “Are we having fun yet?”