But you don’t know that for
sure, a voice reasoned.
You’ve been wrong about other things. You could be wrong about this, too.
It occurred to her then that there might be another means of escape.
Speculatively she eyed a Cat—a full-load track excavator -parked not more than a dozen yards away, beside the dune-size mound of dirt dug from the pit. Metal rungs led up to the cab that was perched on the flat box of its chassis like the glass lookout in a watchtower. Aeons ago, when she’d worked for Van Doren & Sons, one of her duties had been to fill out the order forms for replacement parts. She’d forgotten most of what she’d known, retaining random bits of information that were mostly useless. She knew, for instance, that the largest Cats weighed over three hundred tons and that the grease required to keep behemoths that size running made them prone to engine fires. (Robert had once likened the operating of such machinery to the handling of a very large incendiary device.) But she’d never actually operated one. Why would she have? Back then, if some fortune-teller had predicted that her life would one day depend on it, she’d have laughed at the absurdity.
But it was no laughing matter now.
Still, how difficult could it be? The keys were usually left in the ignition; who in his right mind would be stupid enough to imagine he could get away with stealing an earthmover? From Robert, of all people. As for which gears operated what, it wouldn’t take a degree in engineering to figure out.
You think it’s as easy as flicking a few toggle switches? Honey, your little sister isn’t the only one who’s seen too many movies,
mocked a cynical voice in her head. A voice she recognized as her husband’s. Robert, who’d spent nine years trying to cut her down to size, trying to make her believe her ambitions were less than worthless, laughable, really.
Anger rose in Noelle, momentarily eclipsing her fear.
I don’t have to listen to him anymore,
she told herself.
I
never
had to. It was just that I didn’t see it until
—
A shadow fell. And a voice from the darkness slid over her like icy water. ‘Tell mc, darling. Did you
really
think you could get away with it?’ Robert’s voice; only it was no longer in her head.
Noelle was so startled, her elbows collapsed under her like a rickety lawn chair, and in a hail of loose dirt she went sliding back down to land at the bottom of the pit with a jarring thud. She lay there a moment, struggling to catch her breath, too stunned to move.
Get up,
a voice ordered.
Get up while you still can.
Noelle scrambled to her feet, her head thumping painfully but her backside mercifully numb from the impact. Dizzy and disoriented, she peered up at the silhouette framed against the starry sky.
Fury seized her. A fury so great it didn’t seem possible her flimsy frame could contain it.
‘You fucking bastard!’
she screamed with such force that the tendons in her neck felt as though they might pop right through her skin like stays from a shirt collar.
Suddenly she understood. Why he’d let her climb to the top. Why he hadn’t tied her up before she regained consciousness. Like a cat with a mouse, he’d wanted her to think escape was possible. It was all part of the game. Robert
enjoyed
tormenting her.
‘Such language.’ His long shadow, angled over the edge of the pit, swayed from side to side as he shook his head in dismay. ‘But it shouldn’t surprise me. I knew what you were when I married you. Trash, that’s what You are. Irish lace curtain trash, just like the rest of your family.’
Noelle felt very small all of a sudden, a tiny speck swallowed up by the deep pit and the star-strewn universe that arched overhead. ‘Why are you doing this?’ she cried. ‘Isn’t it enough that you’ve taken my child?’
‘Your child?’ She caught a flash of teeth, a hellish version of the charming, devil-may-care grin that had so captivated her as a naive young woman. I’m afraid that’s not the issue here. As far as I’m concerned, all that’s been settled.’
‘You think so? Well, you’re wrong,’ she shot back, trembling so hard she could barely stand. ‘You might get away with it here in Burns Lake, but there are higher courts. I’ll fight you, Robert. And I’ll keep on fighting you. Even if it takes years.’
‘Well, then, maybe I can spare both of us that ordeal. Not to mention the legal bills,’ he added in a voice rich with amusement.
He’s going to kill me.
The thought sliced through her anger, clear and indisputable as something she’d known all along. Perhaps deep down she had.
She shuddered, gripped with terror, not so much for herself as for her daughter.
What will happen to Emma if I’m not around to protect her?
‘You’re crazy,’ she told him. She’d sensed it, sure, but its full scope hadn’t struck her until now. Not just the controlling, unscrupulous kind. But crazy as in Son of Sam. The kind of crazy that would think nothing of murdering a girlfriend … or wife.
A low, disembodied chuckle. ‘I suppose you’d be one to judge, wouldn’t you, darling? You didn’t spend six months in the nuthouse for nothing.’
She could see where this was leading and refused to take the bait.
‘What were you doing at the cemetery tonight?’ Her voice quavered, and she hated herself for that. For letting him see how scared she was.
‘I could ask the same of you.’
‘There are still a few people left in this town who aren’t on your payroll,’ she informed him, not without a small degree of satisfaction. ‘One of them tipped me off.’
‘I could get you to tell me who, but it doesn’t matter. Not anymore.’ Robert sounded distracted, almost as if talking to himself. ‘Tomorrow morning, when the good Reverend Clifford makes his rounds, he’ll discover that the miscreants who’ve been causing such a ruckus around town, not to mention pushing up insurance rates, have left their mark on
his
hallowed ground as well. There’ll be a police report, of course. And a sermon on Sunday about the sad decay of morality among today’s youth. The good reverend should know. He has a special interest in little boys. One seventh-grade boy in particular, one of his choristers, Jeff Norword’s kid.’ She caught another glimpse of his gloating grin and felt her stomach roll. ‘You’d be surprised how much I know, darling. Your doctor friend, for instance. I know all about you and him. I have just one question: are you fucking him?’
‘Stop it!
Just stop it!’
She brought her fists to her ears, beating softly as if to drive his words from her head.
‘My guess is you are.’ Robert continued in that horrid, disembodied voice. ‘You might’ve been fucking him all along, for all I know. All that sanctimonious crap about me and Jeanine, but you’re no better than that trampy little sister of yours.’
Noelle’s head jerked up. ‘What have you done with Bronwyn?’ she demanded in a shrill voice scarcely recognizable as her own. ‘If you’ve hurt her, I swear, I’ll—’
‘What? Have me arrested?’ His laugh took on a mean, grating edge. ‘Don’t worry. I have no interest in what she may or may not have seen. Who’d believe her anyway? They’d say she was just lying to protect her grease monkey boyfriend.’
Hanging tightly to the frayed rope of her sanity, Noelle pointed out reasonably, ‘Then you don’t have to worry about me either. I’m just another drunk who’s fallen off the wagon, remember?’
Robert fell silent, and for a wild moment she imagined he was going to let her go, let her climb out of here and walk to the road. She pictured herself doing just that, hitching a ride, and if none came along, hoofing it to the nearest pay phone, where she would call Hank. His dear face floated into her mind; his kind brown eyes and the lines in his freckled cheeks that deepened into grooves when he smiled.
Then Robert spoke. ‘It’s different. With you, it’s personal.’ His voice was no longer bemused. He sounded not so much angry as
…
cold. The kind of cold that leaves hinges frozen shut and car engines unable to start.
Noelle instinctively began to back away, a shopworn line popping into her mind:
Well, it’s been nice chatting with you, but I really must be going.
Weak laughter bubbled up her throat. Laughter that was knocked out of her when she bumped up against the solid wall of earth.
‘You really
are
crazy,’ she told him.
This time he didn’t disagree. ‘It’s a shame, really,’ he said, regretfully almost. ‘It didn’t have to be this way. I even had your anniversary present all picked out. A diamond pendant. Far too expensive, of course, but
…
nine years, I wanted you to have something special to remember it by.’
‘I have Emma.’
At once she realized it was the wrong thing to have said. The shadow above her shifted, and Robert’s face loomed suddenly, shockingly, into view. Noelle let out an involuntary little cry. She’d expected a monster, but it was only her husband. Smoothly expressionless and not without a measure of charm.
‘You’re wrong about that, too,’ he said.
In her desperation, Noelle took a wild gamble. ‘You might think you’ve won, Robert, but little girls grow up. She’ll see you for who you are. Then
you’ll
be left out in the cold.’
She knew immediately that she’d struck a nerve. ‘You lying bitch. You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he snarled. ‘Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone? It wasn’t enough you dragged your own family into it. You had to drag my mother in as well.’
In her mind Noelle once again saw the rotting coffin beside his brothers open grave. ‘There’s something I still don’t understand,’ she ventured, desperate to keep him talking, to keep him from focusing on what he was going to do to
her.
‘Why
Buck?’
There was a beat, then Robert replied simply, ‘He deserved it.’
She felt a moment of confusion. Then with a jolt the connection was made. Suddenly, horribly, it all made sense.
It wasn’t Corinne he murdered. It was Buck.
That’s why he’d dug up his brother’s grave: to get rid of the evidence. And why he’d had his men trash the warehouse and that other graveyard—to make it look like just another random act of vandalism. Robert must have sensed they were closing in, that the inquiries her parents had made into Corinne’s death, and possible exhumation, would eventually lead to Buck.
His own brother.
It must have been violent, she thought. Something so violent that even after all these years an autopsy would reveal it. She remembered her father’s commenting just the other day,
They’ve made amazing strides in forensic medicine. Who knows what might turn up?
But he’d been talking about Corinne, not Buck. Without any of them realizing it, they’d stumbled on to the source of Robert’s paranoia.
Noelle’s mind processed all this calmly, like a prosecutor laying out facts for a jury. At the same time she recognized her mental detachment for what it was, the onset of hysteria. She thought:
A man who could murder his brother is capable of anything. Anything at all.
And something even worse:
I was
married
to this man. I bore his child.
She glanced up to find that Robert had retreated from view. Was he gone for good? It seemed almost impossible to believe. But hope rose in her nonetheless, like crabgrass pushing its way up through a sidewalk.
With a cry she once more launched herself against the side of the pit. Wildly this time, roots breaking off in her hands, chunks of clayey earth dissolving under her blindly scrabbling feet. Incredibly, she’d nearly succeeded in scaling the wall—a good fifteen feet of crumbling dirt—when she heard the deep rumble of the Cat’s engine firing to life.
Some instinct made her look down just then. A quick assessment of how far she’d climbed … or a sixth sense perhaps. That was when she saw it, half obscured by the shadows at one end of the pit: a skull.
It gaped up at her from atop a dirty tarp that had come unwrapped. Scattered alongside it were bones the color of old, rust-stained adobe. The dirt-clotted sickle of a mandible; a strip of rotted cloth, which she recognized with a sickening jolt as the remains of a necktie.
The hysteria glinting in the depths of her mind rocketed to the surface. Noelle opened her mouth to let out a scream. But before any sound could emerge from her parched throat, the heavens opened up and a torrent of earth rained down.
It was shortly past midnight by the time Mary arrived home. She wasn’t surprised to find the house dark. Noelle would be in bed by now, and to judge by how exhausted she’d looked, no doubt fast asleep. Letting herself in the front door, she flicked on the light, squinting at the sudden brightness. The long drive back had left her tired out as well. Naturally, Doris hadn’t helped. Just as she and Trish were about to leave, their mother had put up a fuss with the nurse, and it was some time before they could get her settled down and back to sleep.
Mary was halfway up the stairs, shoes in hand so as not to wake Noelle, when she heard the knock at the front door.
She froze, her heart racing. Her first thought was that it had to be one of Robert’s henchmen. She imagined a burly guy in a ski mask, wielding a gun or a knife, and she glanced about for a weapon of her own, something heavy enough to hit him over the head with.
Then came Charlie’s voice, muffled by the door: ‘Mary, it’s me. Open up.’
She sagged with relief, her knees buckling slightly as she padded back down the stairs. Charlie, dear Charlie. Somehow he’d known she needed him. He must have been waiting outside in his car; she just hadn’t seen him. Wasn’t that just like him? Over the years, when embittered single friends griped that knights in shining armor were but a myth, she’d always suppressed a secret little smile. Because she’d known better, you see. Even with other men, she’d think of Charlie. How whenever they were caught in the rain, he’d take off his jacket and drape it over her … as unthinkingly as he might have popped open an umbrella. And how at night he always remembered to turn over on his stomach so she wouldn’t be kept awake by his snoring. Little courtesies, sure. But they signified so much.