Polished Off (32 page)

FAYE SHOOK HIS HEAD. “UH-UH. YOU DRIVE.” HE KEPT the gun trained on me as I walked around to the driver’s side and got in. I made a show of examining the dashboard and trying the windshield wipers, playing for every minute I could get.

“Just drive,” he ordered.

I turned the key and the door locks
thunk
ed loudly. Great. Locked in a car with a man waving a gun around. “Where to?”

He scrubbed the hand with the gun along the side of his face and then leveled it at me. “I don’t know. Just drive. Let me think.” One strand of his gelled hair came loose and flopped over his ear.

I backed out of the driveway and drove slowly, hoping to see a jogger or a postal carrier . . . anyone I could signal for help. The street was deserted. When I reached the cross street, Faye said, “West. Head west and take I-95 north.”

I drove slowly, trying to use just my fingertips on the steering wheel since my palms hurt like the dickens. We passed Doralynn’s restaurant and I noted plenty of tourists on the patio, chatting and eating under the striped umbrellas. I stopped at a crosswalk as a group of preschoolers in tie-dyed shirts crossed two by two under the supervision of a young black man and a woman with long gray hair. No way could I put the kids at risk by trying to alert the adults to my situation. The last kid in line, a Chinese boy with black bangs cut straight across his forehead, waved at me and I forced a smile.

Several blocks later we came abreast of the Oglethorpe. I smelled it before I saw it. Even with the windows up and the air-conditioning humming, the scent of charred wood and chemicals freed from plastics and fabrics by the flames seeped in. The blackened ruin of the building, still square and solid looking, loomed on the left. Both Faye and I turned our heads to study it as the car glided past.

“I shoulda thought of that,” Faye said. “After I shot Barnes, I shoulda torched the place.”

“Why did you kill Audrey?” I asked as the car approached the on-ramp for I-95.

Faye waited until I had merged successfully before answering. “Do you know what she told me that night?”

I shook my head when he paused for my response. “No.”

“That she was pregnant.” He ground the words out.

I depressed the accelerator, thinking that if I got stopped for speeding I’d have a chance to alert the trooper. Faye spoiled my plan almost immediately.

“Slow down.” The cold muzzle of the gun pressed against my temple and I eased my foot off the pedal. “If we get pulled over, I’ll shoot the cop first and then you.” He kept the gun at my head for a few moments and then pulled it back. “She told me she was pregnant.”

“And you knew it wasn’t yours.”

I caught his startled response out of the corner of my eye. “That’s right,” he agreed after a moment. “It couldn’t have been mine. We had all the tests done when she didn’t conceive. It seems my sperm aren’t lively enough.” He barked out a bitter laugh. “Well, she’s not so lively now.

“I’d already been thinking about killing her, you know,” he said.

I arched my brows in surprise and he nodded. “Oh, yes. I knew she was screwing around on me, seeing that Michaelson guy, and I needed the insurance money. My properties in Florida are being foreclosed on . . . the Delta Bayou project isn’t getting off the ground . . .” He paused and worried at the mole on his temple with his left hand. “But I wanted to plan it all out, have an airtight alibi, do it right. But then she told me about the pregnancy, said she was divorcing me, and I just snapped. You can understand that, can’t you?” He slewed his body in the seat so he was almost facing me.

“Sure,” I said.

“I grabbed up that file thing and stabbed at her. God, what a mess! Blood everywhere. All over my shirt, my hands . . . I wasn’t expecting that. I had to think fast, grab the cape off the rack to cover my clothes. And then you saw me when I was leaving.”

I didn’t bother telling him that I couldn’t have picked him out of a lineup featuring Brad Pitt and Ronald McDonald.

“I got rid of the cape in the parking lot—tossed it into Michaelson’s truck. I’d followed Audrey to one of her hook ups with him so I damn well knew his truck. The bastard! I put the police onto him by telling them about him screwing my wife.”

I glanced over to see a smile of grim satisfaction twisting his face.

“And I know she said something to you. What did she say?” His skin pulsed under his jaw and his eyes bored into me.

I was tired of him not believing that Audrey was dead before I entered the room. “She said she loved you, that she forgave you,” I said.

“Liar!” He screamed into my ear from inches away.

Spittle landed on my cheek and I flinched away from him.

“Audrey never forgave anyone anything. She could hold a grudge like nobody’s business.” He sank back against the seat and the gun settled onto his thigh. “She didn’t really say anything, did she?”

“No.”

We drove in silence for another ten minutes. Just when I was hoping that Faye had drifted off, he gestured with the gun. “Get off at the next exit. There’s a cabin that’s been on the market for months—I showed it once a couple months back. Nobody lives in it. It’s out in the middle of goddamned nowhere without a neighbor for miles. If anyone hears the shot, they’ll just assume it’s a hunter a little bit ahead of the season. There’s bound to be a shovel in the garage,” he muttered to himself.

My fingers tightened on the steering wheel. I tried to clear my head so I could come up with an escape plan, but random images and thoughts whirled in my brain. I pictured my mother’s grief if I never turned up again and it nearly brought tears. I felt sad that my young nephews, Alice Rose’s boys, wouldn’t remember me in a few years. I hoped Vonda and Ricky would tie the knot again. Enough! The practical side of my brain tried to stifle my morbid imagination. What we need here is a plan, it said, not maudlin thoughts.

All I knew was I couldn’t afford to let Faye drag me into a deserted house. If we got to the cabin, I was dead. I was actually considering hitting the brakes and trying to leap out of the moving car when a flash of lights in the rearview mirror caught my attention. A swirl of blue and red strobed from the light bar atop a state patrol vehicle. My heartbeat sped up and I kept my eyes glued to the mirror, certain the trooper was going to pass us on his way to an accident up the road. But the blue car with red lettering stayed behind us and gave a single whoop of the siren. The silhouette of a lone cop, familiar Smoky the Bear hat on his head, sat behind the steering wheel.

Faye shifted to look over his shoulder. “Shit! What did you do? Are you speeding?”

“No.” I tried to sound calm but my voice shook. “Maybe the taillight’s out or something.”

His eyes narrowed and he brought the gun up again. “Get off here.” He pointed at the upcoming exit. “Then pull over.”

He didn’t spell out his plan, but I saw the implacability in his eyes before he dropped them to the gun, ejected the cartridge, and slammed it home again. If I did what he told me to, an innocent state trooper would die. And me, too.

I signaled for the turn and slowed. A sloping off-ramp led to a four-way stop at an intersection surrounded by nothing but piney woods. Not a McDonald’s or 7-Eleven in sight. The state trooper followed us off the highway and suddenly I knew what I had to do. Saying a quick prayer, I gunned the engine and drove straight for the stop sign. The car’s sudden acceleration flung both Faye and me back against the seat. Thirty miles an hour . . . forty.

“Don’t—” Faye shouted, then raised the gun and fired at me.

The noise deafened me and my hands jerked on the wheel. The window beside me blew out, showering safety glass chunks over my head and chest and into my lap. Hot air streamed in. Before Faye could fire again, I stomped the brake pedal as hard as I could and the car slid the last few feet into the stop sign, impacting near the passenger-side headlight.
Crunch.

I whipped forward into the exploding air bag. “Unh!” It punched my breath out and smothered my face. A powdery substance drifted through the car, making me cough. Faye coughed beside me and I couldn’t tell if he was seriously hurt or not. Panicking now, I fought the deflating fabric and scrabbled at the seat belt, desperate to get out of the car before Faye got loose. I pulled up on the door handle and rammed the door with my elbow, sending a zing of pain shooting up my arm. I hardly noticed it as I leaned my whole weight against the door. It popped open.

I tumbled to the ground, instinctively trying to break my fall with my hands. Loose gravel and roadside debris dug into the already wounded palms and I cried out.

“Police! Lie face down on the ground!” It was a woman’s voice, harsh and authoritative.

I complied, lifting my head a fraction of an inch to see where the trooper was. I couldn’t see her so I glanced under the car. Faye lay on the ground, his hands behind his head, while a pair of black boots and blue-trousered legs were planted wide six feet in front of him.

“Miss Terhune,” the trooper called. “Are you okay?” How did she know my name? “He’s got a gun,” I warned the trooper, sitting up and brushing ineffectually at my hair and clothes. Blood from my palms streaked the blouse where I touched it and I stopped. Steam hissed from the car’s radiator as I struggled to my feet.

“Not anymore,” she said with satisfaction. Metal clinked on metal and she hauled Faye to his feet, his hands cuffed behind his back.

“She’s a crazy woman,” Faye babbled, jerking his head at me. His hair fell in disordered spikes around his face. “She tried to steal my car. I was trying to stop her—”

A car flew down the exit ramp and screeched to a halt, interrupting Faye. Agent Dillon and another GBI agent got out. Dillon’s sharp eyes took in the scene with a glance and he strode toward me. I smiled involuntarily at the sight of his trim figure with the gun holster showing as his sport coat flapped back in the rising wind. “Why the hell didn’t you just pull over?” he greeted me.

I glared at him, the sudden pang of happiness I’d felt on seeing him fading quickly. “Faye said he’d kill the cop first, then shoot me if we got pulled over,” I told him. My lower lip trembled and I bit it. “How did you know what was going on?” The breeze teased my hair into my eyes and I pushed it back impatiently.

“Daphne. During the interrogation it became clear she hadn’t killed Audrey or Barnes, but that she’d seen Barnes get shot. She was in the theater that night, leaving the skunk carcass, when she heard Barnes arguing with someone. She caught a glimpse of them on the stage and hid when she heard the shot. She picked Faye out of a photo lineup.”

“How did you know I was with him? Where we were?”

“We drove to his office to arrest him and saw your bicycle there. I thought my heart was going to stop,” he admitted. “I put out an APB on Faye and his car and it was less than half an hour before Trooper Garrity radioed in that she’d spotted you.” He gently touched an abraded spot on my cheek. “Hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” I admitted. I held out my palms.

“Good God,” he said. “The doc’s not going to be happy with the way you’ve torn up his handiwork. Does the ER give volume discounts?”

I managed a weak laugh as the other GBI agent stuffed Faye into the back of the state patrol car. A red-tailed hawk soared overhead and I followed it with my eyes until it landed atop a loblolly pine.

“I don’t want to go to the hospital,” I said. “I just want to go home.”

HOME WASN’T IN THE CARDS, OF COURSE. AGENT DILLON insisted on carting me off to the ER in his car and stayed with me while the doc cleaned my hands and rebandaged them. At least Dillon honored my request not to call my mom. I wasn’t at death’s door and she didn’t need to know I’d ended up in the hospital for the second time this week. Dillon made a good mom substitute, insisting I swallow my pain meds on the spot and reading over the discharge instructions before tucking them into his jacket’s inside pocket. When we were done at the hospital, he took me to GBI headquarters where I answered questions about the kidnapping for the better part of two hours. I’d get to repeat the experience on the stand when Kevin Faye came to trial. Oh, goody.

Just as I felt myself fading, Agent Dillon, who’d been watching me closely, called a halt, dismissing the other agents who were sitting in on the interview. “We can finish this tomorrow,” he said. “I’m taking you home.” He bullied me into taking more pills with a swallow of warm root beer before escorting me to his car.

I was tired and achy enough not to argue. Sinking back into the seat of his Crown Victoria, I suddenly remembered something. “It was Darryl’s baby, wasn’t it?”

Dillon shot me a look as he pulled into traffic. “No.”

I jerked upright. “No? Then it was Kevin’s after all? How ironic.”

He shook his head. “We’re guessing it was Barnes’s. We found some correspondence in his e-mail that suggests the two of them were involved. We’re running the tests now. If it’s not his . . .” He shrugged. “It’s not like we can DNA test the entire male population of Camden County.”