Woman in Red (39 page)

Gary laughed at the transparency of the lie. “I see. So all I had to do was ask nicely?”

“All right, you’ve made your point. Perhaps I
did
go a bit overboard,” Owen hastened to concede. “But, where your sister-in-law’s concerned, can you honestly blame me? She’d already tried to kill me once. How do I know she won’t try something like that again?”

Gary wasn’t buying it, though. “You know what I think? I think you were
hoping
she’d come back. I think you’ve been planning this for a long time. That’s why you set me up, so you’d have someone to do your dirty work.”

“Well, as far as that goes, you’re free from any further obligation,” Owen was quick to assure him. “In fact, you’ve served me and this community so well, I think a bonus is in order. Say, five thousand? Or, no, let’s make it ten.” Gary
didn’t react, which Owen must have misinterpreted to mean that he had some other compensation in mind, for he was quick to add, “Also, I can have the, ah, material in question delivered to you first thing in the morning.” He tactfully refrained from referring openly to the incriminating videotape. “I’d give it to you now, but it’s in a safe deposit box.”

But it was much too late for that; Gary was too far gone. “You know, I think Alice had the right idea about you.” He spoke in a queerly dispassionate voice. “The only problem was she didn’t finish the job.”

Calmly he raised the gun and pointed it at Owen.

Owen let out a little squeak. “Put . . . put that thing down. Please. Can’t we discuss this like rational human beings? Really, Gary, there’s no need for violence.”

“What’s there to discuss? As you can see, I’m the one holding all the cards.” Gary advanced on Owen, a cheerless grin stretching across a face he wouldn’t have recognized as his own just then. “How does it feel, now that the tables are turned? Not so great, huh? Well, here’s the good news. You won’t have to see the look on your wife’s face when she finds out what an evil piece of shit you are. You’ll be long gone by then. Just like your dad.”

“Wait!” Owen shrilled, throwing up his hands. Hands that had once controlled Gary’s every move and which now quivered pathetically. “Is it more money you want? I could call my bank, have them wire it into your account, if you don’t trust me to write a check.”

“Money? You think this is about
money
?” Gary gave a harsh laugh. He was feeling loosey-goosey, like when he’d had too much to drink, but he was perfectly lucid. He saw with sudden clarity that he’d been headed down this road all along, that all those weeks of agonizing had come from resisting what he’d
known had to be done. Now that he’d given himself over to it, he felt strangely at peace. This wouldn’t end well, but at least it would end. “You owe me more than that. I had to lie to my wife because of what you made me do. My own wife. She
cried
when those bulldozers moved in. She cried like a baby, and all I could do was stand there feeling sick to my stomach, knowing I’d had a part in it. And how do you think she’d feel if she knew that, on top of that, I was helping you drive her sister out of town?”

Owen lifted his chin in defiance. “That’s putting it a bit too strongly, don’t you think? All I asked you to do was keep an eye on Alice.”

“That’s not all, and you know it. You were out for revenge. An eye for an eye, right? Christ, don’t you think she’s suffered enough? And the kid, did you have to go after him, too?” Gary’s voice rose.

“What happened to your nephew was entirely his own doing,” the mayor protested.

“But you made sure they threw the book at him—an innocent kid.”

“What makes you so sure he’s innocent?”

“Because I
know
my nephew. He’d never do a thing like that, not in a million years.”

“Given the right set of circumstances, people have been known to do a lot of things they might not have otherwise,” Owen observed, giving him a pointed look that wasn’t lost on Gary—wasn’t he living proof of what a normally rational person was capable of when pushed too far? Now he saw that sweat had broken out on Owen’s brow, making it gleam, and though the room was warm, he was shivering as if the temperature had plunged a good twenty degrees. As though from a distance, he heard the mayor go on, in a calm
voice of persuasion that warbled only slightly, “Take you, for instance. I can see that I underestimated you, Gary. I failed to recognize your . . . your unique capabilities. In fact, Len’s going to be retiring soon, and we could use someone with your leadership qualities to fill his shoes.”

Gary shook his head in disgust. “Do you really think I’m stupid enough to think you’d make me chief of police? The minute I walked out the door you’d be on the phone with Len, and it wouldn’t be to convince him to take an early retirement.”

Owen slumped back in his chair, closing his eyes. He looked suddenly defeated. “All right, what do you want from me then? Anything, you name it. I’ll do whatever you ask.”

“What I want is this.” Gary leveled the gun at his tormentor.

That was when he heard sirens in the distance. Apparently they weren’t alone in the house after all—someone must have dialed 911. Gary felt a momentary pang of regret, thinking of his fellow officers, guys who’d have taken a bullet for him and vice versa, with whom he’d swapped shifts and joking insults through the years and unwound over beers after hours down at Frankie’s, whose kids he’d watched grow up and whose wives called Denise when they needed advice. What would they think when they encountered
this?
But the concern quickly faded. He thought,
By the time they get here, it’ll all be over
.

 

They buried the body at nightfall. First loading it onto a handcart and hauling it up the hill as far as they could go, until the trail became impassable. There, at the bottom of a deep ravine, where hikers and picnickers were unlikely to find it, they dug a mean grave, William and Yoshi plying the earth with their shovels while Eleanor stood watch at the top of the ravine, her eyes carefully averted from the tarpaulin-wrapped bundle at her feet.

Later, when all this was over, she would allow herself to think about it, she would let the bloody, fragmented images whirling in her brain piece themselves into a gruesome whole. Right now, though, she needed to remain steady while they completed this unspeakable thing. Because no one must ever know. Lucy, most of all. If anything was keeping Eleanor sane, it was the knowledge that her daughter wouldn’t be tainted by any of this. Earlier, Eleanor had phoned Sarah Donovan, the mother of Lucy’s best friend, and asked if she could pick up the girls from school and keep
Lucy overnight, explaining that something had come up rather suddenly, some urgent business she had to attend to.

Bloody business
, Eleanor thought, biting down on her lower lip to contain the hysterical giggle forcing its way up her throat. Far off in the distance she could hear the dogs baying in their kennel, almost as they sensed something or had caught the scent of blood. Dogs were smart that way. Maybe that was why she preferred their company to that of most humans. That, and because whatever your failings their devotion was unwavering. The way her husband’s had been. And now Joe was dead. As dead as the
thing
(she couldn’t bring herself to think of it as Lucy’s father, the man she’d once believed herself to be in love with) lying at her feet.

The blood was what had brought it all home, as she’d rolled up the rug and scrubbed the floorboards on her hands and knees, wringing her cloth into a bucket of water gone red with the terrible fruits of her labor: Her husband hadn’t merely ascended to some heavenly plane, he’d been shot to bits, or drowned, or, worse, left to a slow and agonizing death.

Now, staring down at the hole taking shape below, she began to tremble uncontrollably. She felt dizzy and realized she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The mere thought of food brought on a wave of nausea. Sick and shivering, she focused on the figures at the bottom of the ravine, bobbing in and out of the cone of light cast by the flashlight she was aiming their way, one tall and one slight, but at the moment more alike than they were different as they bent to their grim task.

The last bloody streaks of light had faded from the horizon by the time they were done, the ravine as deeply obscured from view as the town, on the other side of the sound, where the streetlights were dimmed and every shade pulled. Earlier in the evening, when Eleanor had gotten the
blackout alert, three long and three short telephone rings, it had seemed like a signal from on high, some divine presence taking pity on her, for it meant that few would be out and about and the chances of their being discovered minimal. But now, as she helped the men drag the body down the steep, brushy slope, she felt only numb and exhausted.

She stumbled over a tree root and would have gone sliding the rest of the way down the slope if William hadn’t caught hold of her just then. He held her tightly for a moment, so tightly she could feel the pounding of his heart against her ribcage. “Just a little more to go,” he whispered. “Can you manage?” She knew that it wasn’t just the distance to the bottom of the ravine he was referring to but the long and treacherous road she’d have to negotiate in order to get back to some semblance of normalcy.

She nodded, whispering back, “Yes, I think so.”

She shone the flashlight on the men as they tipped the tarpaulin-wrapped bundle into the hole they’d dug. For the rest of her days Eleanor would carry that image in her head: of that crude grave hacked out of the earth, dirt-clotted roots protruding from its rough-hewn walls like skeletal fingers reaching out to reclaim their own, and Lowell’s body rolling into the pit with a dull thud, amid a scattering of loose dirt and pebbles.

The men filled in the hole, tamping the dirt down as best they could, the night alive with the scrape of shovels, the ring of metal against stone. When the job was done they spread leaves over the grave to erase any evidence of their having been there.

The three were silent as they trudged back down the hill. Near dead with exhaustion, Eleanor clung to Yoshi’s arm to keep from stumbling, as William led the way with
the flashlight. She felt bad about Yoshi’s being dragged into this and she would have spared him if he hadn’t insisted on coming along. She was grateful to him at the same time, this boy whom some might have called an enemy and who’d proved his worth in ways that went beyond mere loyalty.

It was almost midnight by the time they reached the house. Eleanor could hardly see straight, she was so tired, but there was one thing left to do: They had to dispose of Lowell’s car. William drove the Cadillac to the ferry landing while Eleanor followed in her car. Luckily, they encountered no other traffic, due to the blackout. In any event, anyone they should happen to have passed would have been hard-pressed to make them out, in the all-encompassing darkness, with their headlights dimmed.

At the ferry landing, William parked the Cadillac and got out. She watched as he walked to the end of the dock, limping more than usual, and hurled Lowell’s key ring far out into the water—a glimmer of silver that was there and gone in an instant, like a falling star. Poor William, she thought. His only crime had been in coming to her rescue. Now he would spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. And what if he
were
to get caught? It wouldn’t be just William who’d suffer; his wife and son would pay the price as well. He’d lose even his rightful place in history, remembered not for the brilliance of his work but as a murderer.

She would be held accountable, too, an accessory to the crime. And who would believe that Lowell had tried to rape her, with no one to corroborate it except William and the man who now lay buried in an unmarked grave up on Spring Hill?

She grew cold at the thought. This was all her fault. She’d been naïve to let Lowell come to the house, thinking that no real harm would befall her. Yet despite the horror of it all, she wasn’t sorry he was dead.

William took the wheel on the ride home, Eleanor almost immediately falling into a deep sleep. She didn’t wake until they reached the house, and even then William had trouble rousing her. He kept an arm around her waist as they made their way across the suddenly endless stretch of yard. As they were passing the barn, she saw that the window was dark—Yoshi must have gone to bed. She hoped she would be able to get some sleep as well. She would need to rest up for the sleepless nights to come.

As she stood on the doorstep fumbling with her keys, she wondered how she would get through this one—what was sure to be the longest night of her life. William must have read her mind, for he asked gently, “Would you like me to stay the night?”

Her eyes sought out his in the darkness. “What about your wife?”

“I’ll tell her my car broke down.” From the grim, exhausted look he wore, it was obvious he was past worrying about such a small lie, with the larger one of tonight eclipsing all else. “She won’t suspect anything. She probably doesn’t even know I’m gone.”