I went looking for Darcy. In my haste I had forgotten I wanted to bring him up-to-date on everything so that someone would have all the facts to tell the police after I left the next morning. But after fifteen minutes of searching I couldn’t find him.
I was at the bottom of the stairs to the mess when I heard a voice from above. I looked up and saw Mel. She was breathless.
“There’s a snake,” she said. “It’s a copperhead. You told me you wanted to see one. It’s at the lighthouse. If we go now it’ll probably still be there. I spent the morning filming it.”
We went on Mel’s ATV and I found myself wishing I could stay on the island longer as we barrelled through the woods. By the time we got there I’d forgotten why we had come, so wrapped up was I in the stillness and beauty of the island. Mel led the way to the lighthouse and I wondered what the chances were that two snakes would climb those stairs to bask in the windows. We went up to the final turn in the stairs to the fourth window.
Mel was blocking my view when she suddenly said, “Damn. It’s gone,” which immediately made me look around in case I was about to step on it. And that’s when I heard someone coming up the stairs, slowly, deliberately, and unhurried. I glanced at Mel but she was looking down the stairs. I called out but the steps kept coming. “Who’s there?” I called out again. The steps stopped for a second and a voice came drifting up. “Rosemary.” It sounded ghostly, echoey, creepy, and I had this weird premonition. I looked at Mel but she was still staring down the stairs as Rosemary came up out of the darkness.
She was different somehow — perhaps in the way she held herself, not mousy but strong and determined.
“The snake’s out on the parapet basking in the sun.” And she passed on by us on the way to the roof. Mel and I followed in silence. I was wondering if Rosemary had a special interest in snakes or was a clairvoyant when we all broke out onto the walkway that circled the top of the lighthouse. I could see the loose boards where I had almost fallen through. The view of the marching dunes, the swaying sea grass, the rolling waves, and the scudding clouds made me envy people who live by the sea. Its massive breadth and twisting, tumbling waves have got to be the closest thing to eternity that we have. That and the Himalayas. I brought my mind sharply back to the present.
“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” Rosemary asked me as she manoeuvred herself between me and the lighthouse wall. I looked over the railing. It was still a long way down but this time there was no vine in the offing.
“I don’t think I follow.” But of course I did. I wondered how often somebody who helped somebody else commit suicide had ever been sentenced for the offence. Was that why Rosemary was acting the way she was? Or was it because she actually murdered Stacey in cold blood?
“You’ve spent the last three days snooping in other people’s business.”
“I’m sorry if that’s a problem for you.”
“Damn right it’s a problem. You’ve found out too much for your own good.”
“What, that you’re a murderer?” I said with forced bravado.
Rosemary laughed. “Is that what you think? I thought you would have come up with a better theory than murder.”
“How about suicide, then?”
She looked at me with some surprise and maybe a bit of respect.
“Suicide lets me off the hook,” she finally said.
“Unless you helped her.” I saw Mel flinch at that.
“Go on.”
“Maybe Stacey decided to commit suicide but couldn’t get up enough nerve to do it all on her own,” I said.
“So I helped?”
“It’s a scenario.”
“Tell her it’s not true,” said Mel to Rosemary, her voice insistent.
I looked from Mel to Rosemary and back again. “You were in on it together.”
Rosemary smiled and Mel frowned.
“How did you know I was thinking of suicide?” I asked.
Rosemary coughed and then said, “Mel. She overheard you talking with Darcy back at the station.”
“But I really thought it was Wyatt,” I said.
“Just what we wanted you all to think,” said Rosemary.
I stared at her for several seconds and the penny dropped. “You were framing Wyatt with Stacey’s suicide.” It all finally came together. “You had her die for a murder conviction. You used her.”
“You’ve got that last part wrong,” said Rosemary. “Can’t you see the beauty of it? It was our one way to get back at Wyatt for what he did to Stacey and to my sister, and we planned it together. I borrowed his clothes and stole his necklace and planted it all in Stacey’s cabin, along with the boot and the cricket. I made everyone dislike him by making them believe he was beating me. That was really just overkill because no one much liked him anyway. He is a naturally nasty man. We even got him to handle the cheesecloth that we soaked in chloroform so that it would look like he knocked her out before tying her up. Stacey put it to her face to simulate that for the forensics guys.”
“How did you know your sister and Stacey were victims of the same man?”
“The vet conference. I broke down and cried because my sister had only been dead a year and Wyatt had just been acquitted, the fucking bastard. Stacey lent me her shoulder to cry on.” If Rosemary could have spit in anger she would have, her raw hatred exposed to the light. “So we hatched our plan and I took a job with him. He never knew who I was. I didn’t attend the trial. Couldn’t. It was too painful.”
“You took a job with him. I’d hazard a guess that that would have been pretty painful too.”
She stared at me. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, being at his beck and call, always smiling, always helpful. But I knew where it was going so I was able to live with it.”
“And Stacey?”
“Stacey saw me as a comrade in arms and Mel here as an innocent bystander, as were we all.”
“Does Wyatt know who you really are?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? He’d kill me.”
But I wasn’t so sure. I remembered Wyatt asking for Rosemary’s file. He must have had his suspicions.
“How did Wyatt know about Stacey and Mel?” I looked at Mel, whose eyes were as big and round as the harvest moon.
“He overheard a telephone conversation I had with Stacey months ago. I wasn’t sure how much he had heard so I didn’t tell Stacey. In hindsight it might have been a good idea to tell her.”
“Stacey was afraid she’d lose her nerve and not be able to do it,” said Mel. I glanced at Rosemary and saw a look of fear skitter across her face. Melanie continued. “She was a devout Catholic and it was against all she ever believed but this despicable excuse for a man made her turn her back on her faith.”
“That and Lou Gehrig’s disease,” said Rosemary dryly. “And can you imagine having to carry to term a baby born of rape? What kind of agony, what kind of horrible sentence is that? She had a damn good reason to despise the man.”
I glanced over at Melanie. She was crying and I wondered what kind of hell it would be to know you were born of rape. Which sentence was worse — the mother’s or the daughter’s?
“But Stacey changed her mind, didn’t she?” I said and stared at Rosemary.
“Oh, no. She didn’t,” said Melanie, her words slightly garbled through the tears. “She was determined to nail Wyatt.”
I looked at Rosemary. The fear was there again.
“You know too much, Cordi.”
I looked down at the ground, so far, but just a five-second fall away, and shuddered.
And then I remembered. “The slip knots,” I said.
“Exactly. You and Darcy and I are the only three who knew about them and Darcy destroyed the evidence. But I blew it. I referred to the slip knots when I was talking to you. I hoped you hadn’t noticed. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s gone too far. You have become a liability.”
Her eyes were so cold.
“You don’t seem to be very good at killing me,” I said, taking a stab at my own mortality.
She didn’t move a muscle and her eyes didn’t blink.
“Surely you didn’t think I believed that Darcy would do more than just scare me? The flipped bike and a chase into the sea were beyond his abilities.”
“So Darcy lit the fire.” She laughed. “Too bad it didn’t work.”
“What are you saying, Rosemary?” said Mel, her voice ending on a very high note.
“Stay out of it, Mel.”
“Stacey changed her mind, didn’t she?” I repeated.
Rosemary tried to stare me down but then she smiled. “Yes.” And in her decision to utter that one little word lay my death sentence.
“Nooooo!” wailed Mel.
“How did you know?” Rosemary ignored Mel and kept staring at me.
“A lucky guess, and the fact that her wrists were rubbed raw. She must have put up a big fight. A suicide would never have such marks unless they had a sudden change of heart.”
“No, Rosemary. Tell her it’s not true,” Mel wailed.
Rosemary continued to ignore her. “I was the one who had to be with her in the end,” said Rosemary. “I watched as she put the tape over her nose and mouth. We’d managed to get Wyatt’s prints on the tape. It was my job to collect the gloves she wore.”
“And to remove the roll of duct tape from the scene.”
“No, that was sheer panic.”
“You were running away from a woman begging for her life.”
“Her eyes. They were awful. But we’d come so far. We finally had Wyatt. I couldn’t let her change her mind.”
“You goddamn bitch.” Melanie screamed out the words and lunged at Rosemary.
I heard the boards splinter and watched helplessly as Rosemary and Mel fell over the edge. Frantically I reached out and grabbed Mel’s hand, grabbing the railing with my other. The weight was agony. I tried to pull up but it was impossible.
“Help us,” screamed Mel who had one hand on the edge of the parapet trying to support her weight and Rosemary’s. “Rosemary’s pulling my leg off. I can’t hold on.”
It seemed as though I was carrying them both and their dead weight was numbing. I was unable to do anything but hang on, and I knew I couldn’t do that for very long.
“Her fingers are slipping. Get us up,” cried Mel, but I couldn’t budge and I could feel my grip slipping.
“She’s got my shoe! It’s slipping. It’s slipping!”
I felt the weight lift and in that instant I let go of the rail, blocked out the sound of Rosemary screaming, and grabbed Mel’s other hand. Before I could even think that I was nowhere near strong enough I reared back and hauled her over the edge. We landed in a pile on the splintered walkway and sat there in silence, gorging on air, our lungs hungry for it. Neither of us trusted the strength in our legs and it was some time before we went down to help Rosemary. But nothing could help Rosemary. She was gone.
We were in Mel’s vehicle, heading back to the station, when I said to her, “What happened?”
“What do you mean?”
“You led me to believe you hated your mother’s guts.”
“I did. For most of my life.” She fell silent.
“And?”
“And then I found out about Wyatt and what he had done to her.” Her knuckles were white where she gripped the steering wheel.
“So why did you lie to me?”
“Because I couldn’t tell you the truth.”
“She must have loved you.”
“How would you know?” she glanced at me.
“Because of the lock of hair in her locket.”
“That was mine?” her voice went high and ended on a wail.
“Who else’s could it have been?”
“I’m the child of a rapist,” she said. “How could she love me?”
“Because she’s your mother and there’s nothing as strong as a mother’s love.” It sounded so trite, but it was true.
We drove along in silence for a while.
“Did your mother ask you to help frame Wyatt?” I asked.
“At first she didn’t know that I knew Wyatt was my father, if that is what you mean. Rosemary said it was best that way and I agreed. It would have broken her heart.”
“So Rosemary told you?”
“Yes. She thought I should know who my father was.”
What would possess someone to tell someone else their father was a rapist? It was an unbelievably cruel thing to do and I marvelled at how blinded Rosemary had been to anything but her own situation.
“And she told Stacey that you knew.”
“How could you know that?”
“She thought you should both know in the hopes that you would join her and your mother as an accomplice in the plot to frame Wyatt,” I said.
“Why would she do that?” asked Melanie.
It was a rhetorical question, but I answered it anyway. “Because she knew your mother might have second thoughts, but I’m guessing she also knew how much Stacey loved you and that your influence could make the difference between going through with it or not.”
“That’s a pretty jaded view of things. My mother desperately wanted Wyatt put away forever. He’d ruined her life. More than anything she wanted to ruin his.”
We were almost at the station when she blurted out, “Did you know that my mother once weighed a hundred and twenty pounds and was five feet nine inches tall? What he did to her made her hate herself and she ate and ate until she weighed more than three times what she had before. He dominated her life and she needed her revenge.”
“And so did you. He tried to talk to you, didn’t he?”
Her knuckles were white as she said, “Who told you?”
“I overheard him trying to get you to agree you were his daughter.”
“The bastard. He couldn’t leave well enough alone. He had to rub my face in his mess.”
“Why did you do it? Why did you help your mother?”
“You have to ask?” she said and paused. “To see my mother get her revenge and escape a terrible death by ending her own life, with her daughter and her friend by her side.”
“But you weren’t by her side, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t, I couldn’t and I’ll live with that for the rest of my life.”
She started to cry as we came to a stop in the clearing. She got off the ATV and turned abruptly to leave, garbling about going to find Darcy to tell him about Rosemary. I offered to go with her but she was putting a brave face on things and wanted to go herself. I went back to my cabin, hoping Martha was there. She wasn’t so I flopped on the bed and tried to relax but couldn’t. I went up to the mess for a snack and to see who was about, but there was no one and I figured they must be out collecting Rosemary’s body. When I went back out on the balcony Wyatt was there, gazing out over the clearing. He turned when he heard my footfall.
“Have you got your murderer?” he asked.
“You could say that,” I said, not wanting to get into a conversation with him. But he wanted to talk and he was the type of guy who got what he wanted and I was too polite to ignore him.
“Three conniving little bitches, two down and one to go.”
“I think the courts will look lightly on Mel,” I said, between gritted teeth.
“She can’t be allowed to get away with murder, can she? Even if she is my dear little daughter?”
“You did,” I said. We stared at each other and I felt impotent, which made me angry.
“You killed Rosemary’s sister.”
“Case was thrown out,” he said with a supercilious smile on his face.
“Through lack of evidence, not through lack of guilt,” I retorted.
He smiled again and I had this overwhelming urge to wipe it off his face.
“You don’t really give a damn about your daughter, do you?”
“Oh goody goody, here comes the rap-me-on-the-knuckles speech.”
“You should be in jail. You raped Stacey and murdered Rosemary’s sister.”
“Did I hear you say, ‘among others’?” He smiled then and I shuddered. There’d been others?
“I am completely innocent in Stacey’s death.”
“How can you say that? You raped her and left a daughter to be raised in foster homes. You destroyed their lives.”
“You mean had consensual sex with, don’t you?” he said with a leer. “Anyway, that’s Stacey’s fault. She should have looked after our daughter better.”
“Do you have any idea what it must have been like for her? To have to have a child born of rape.”
“She could have had an abortion.”
“She was Catholic. Her parents were Catholic. She had no choice.”
“Bullshit. What’s the big deal anyway? You get knocked up. You either abort or have it. She just liked the attention. The way I see it I did her a favour.” He laughed. “I gave her a purpose in life.”
“You’re going to jail for a very long time.” I said it without thinking, biting my anger back.
He looked momentarily disconcerted but then the old smirk was back. “And just how do you intend to do that? Are you going to fight my cases the way you did your other murders up in Quebec and in the Arctic? With clumsy good luck?”
“No,” I said as evenly as I could. Clumsy good luck! I could have killed him. “Nothing as mundane as that. The police have new evidence that has come to light in Rosemary’s sister’s case. They are going to reopen it.”
I stared him down, knowing that I’m not a very good liar but really believing that I could find that evidence, and needing him to believe it too.
“That new evidence is irrefutable and will nail you securely to the maximum-security-prison wall. You’re going down for multiple lifetimes.”
And there it was. The smirk was gone. He went very pale and his eyes darted about as if they’d lost their anchor.
He moved over toward the railing like an automaton and too late I realized I had never put up the orange tape. I hesitated and in that moment of hesitation he leaned against the railing. It splintered and pulled away from the verandah and Wyatt went with it.
For the next couple of hours things were pretty chaotic, with two more bodies joining Stacey in the cooler. Darcy insisted on putting Melanie under house arrest until the police came, and everybody was talking about what drove Stacey and Rosemary and Melanie to do what they did. Revenge is an evil thing. It takes hold like a cancer, growing and growing and spreading and spreading until its only outlet is action. Lives ruined at the hand of a sick man who never paid for his crimes. And his influence still stalked its prey, still stalked Mel, still stalked me. The way he died had me second-guessing myself a million times and I could see him laughing at that.
He died because of me.
He died because I didn’t like him.
He died because I hesitated.
And I find I am glad that I did. And that is what haunts me the most.