Noise assaulted Maggie’s senses.
A door crashed open. Shouts. A head-snapping jolt. A crushing weight. A roar like a train. Then weight sliding off her.
Acrid burning.
Shouting, shouting.
“Maggie! Maggie!”
“J.D.?” But it wasn’t his voice.
She raised herself up, reason sorting through the fragments.
Someone had burst in — from the storage closet, where something was burning — and fired a shot.
J.D. had pushed her to the bed, covering her with his body, then slid to the floor, carrying the bedspread with him. He wasn’t moving. Cold fear shuddered her heart.
Scott stepped into the room, holding a gun with both hands. Still aimed at J.D.
“It’s him, it’s him! He’s the murderer,” Scott shouted.
She started to drop to her knees beside J.D. Scott grabbed her arm, dragging her up, holding the gun away with the other.
“No! Carson’s the murderer. He shot Pan, strangled Laurel. Now he’s after you. Get away from him!”
Maggie backed away from J.D. to get Scott and the gun farther from him.
J.D.’s head spilled red streams onto the bedspread, where it wicked across the threads as if trying to run away. He lay still. She couldn’t see his eyes from this angle. Conscious? In shock? Worse? He was breathing. She held on to that.
“That’s right.” Scott talked fast and high. Behind him fire cackled at the closet’s treasure of paper fuel. Heaps of notebooks and paper. He was destroying his original notes from the trial, made while he’d lived here, sitting in that closet the whole time. “This time will be different.”
He stepped forward, aiming the gun at J.D. with both hands.
“Scott. Tell me, tell me the truth.” She reached for his arm. He flinched and backed up, the gun pointed up. Would playing along gain necessary time or use up time J.D. couldn’t afford? “You’re the only one who can tell me, Scott. The only one.”
His lips twitched. “I’m the only one who knows everything. That’s what none of them understood. But you do, Maggie, don’t you?”
“Yes, I understand. But first you have to tell me, Scott.”
“I listened. To all of them. Mother, others. Listening, always listening when they needed someone. But they wanted…dirty things. Like Mama. But with Pan … oh, Pan was different. No one else knew. I told her it was because of working for her divorce lawyer — confidentiality. I had her all to myself. She asked me things, asked about me. She loved me. It was over with Rick. She hardly even talked about him. We were going to be happy. Really happy.
“Then Carson came and she stopped calling, stopped seeing me. She didn’t have time. But she had time for him. Every day, every night. Everybody in town talking about it. That’s how I heard. Not from her. She had told me everything, every thought and fear and feeling. And now she wasn’t telling me anything. I had to call to know if she was home or out. I had to follow her to know where she went.
“The other times at the clearing, they’d talked in the car and I couldn’t hear. But that day, when he got out, she followed. Calling out, throwing herself at him. Practically begged him to fuck her. Hanging on him, touching him like a common whore. Needs — God, needs! Need more than companionship. Need a man. Even when I didn’t want to, even when it was disgusting. But she needed — she needed everything!”
That last wasn’t about Pan, was it? His voice had changed. Risen, out of control. Now he sucked in air, calming himself.
“It was ruined. She ruined everything.”
“Laurel, too,” she murmured.
Laurel wouldn’t have hesitated to use Scott as a convenient and sympathetic audience. And once she thought she had Eugene by the short hairs to dump him.
“That tramp told me she didn’t need me, because she’d fixed things just how she wanted. Like she got to decide.” His sneer faded into resolve. “This time it’ll be different, Maggie. It’ll be perfect. Roy’s out of your life. Just one more.”
J.D.
Was he stirring?
“But Teddie?” she prompted.
“Like Mother — memories all jumbled. They’d start jabbering. Telling what was secret. Had to go.
“Got him stinking drunk. Cost a hell of a lot more than I’d counted on. And then Carson scooped him up like some fucking guardian angel, and there wasn’t a damned thing I could do.
“I wasn’t doing that again. Next day, got out ahead of him, put good skidding gravel in the right spot, brought the car around, and came straight at him. That bike hit the gravel, he jerked the wheel, and plop, over he goes. No more moron. Perfect. Never touched him. No forensics at all.
“Like with Pan. Even when I didn’t have time to plan, I thought of everything. Leaving her because it was close to his shack. Wiping out the prints — because that’s what he’d do. He should have been convicted! Death row. I dreamed of recording those words. Now I have to finish the job.”
“No!” She forced calm into her voice. She had to delay him. Someone would see the smoke. Someone would call it in. Dallas. Evelyn. A neighbor. Someone. Help would come. “No, Scott. Think. We’ll call the sheriff. He’ll be tried. I’ll prosecute. I’ll get a guilty verdict this time.”
“No. I’ll finish him, my notes will burn. I have you to myself.”
He raised his arm, aimed at J.D.
She dove.
Her shoulder slammed into his chest, she swung her elbow into whatever it could find. He made a sound, mixed of surprise, rage and yes, pain. She clawed at his arm, his hand. Empty.
Where was the gun?
She pulled back. Looking frantically. She hadn’t heard it against the wood floor, but—
And then she saw it at the back of the window seat cushion under the middle window.
Scott saw it, too.
They reached it simultaneously. He had the stronger grip, but she had a better angle.
If he gained control, there would be no talking to him, no delay tactics. It would be over before anyone had a chance to help.
J.D.
Trust your gut, Maggie.
She released the gun, grabbed Scott’s arm and pushed with all her weight behind it. Caught off guard and off balance, he offered no resistance. His wrist cracked against the window frame. He screamed and released the gun. He lunged for it, but it was gone, scratches tracing its path as it skidded down the roof, then a glint in the dark when it skied off the edge.
She never heard it land.
Scott lunged. Pain exploded in her jaw. The blow knocked her back off the window seat. She felt herself falling.
Then nothing.