Arthur glanced toward the car, his shaking hand taking firmer grip on the hilt of the pistol. “He’s alive. For now. What’s it to you?”
“Call me a concerned citizen.”
“I’ll call you a dead citizen if you don’t stand back.”
Morgan eased off, keeping his back flat against the back door of his own car. Seeing him now, clear as daylight with the final victim beside him, Morgan didn’t think of him as a killer or a maniac—he was just a man in an incredible amount of pain. Like Morgan had been at the news of his cousin’s death. Like his Aunt Gladys had been when he’d seen her at the wake. “I’m not going to stand in your way, Arthur, but I want you to listen to me for just a little while, and then you can think this through rationally.”
“I’ve thought it through. For ten years.”
“And this is what you came up with?”
“You don’t know how much they took from me.”
Morgan nodded slowly, his hands still raised as he took a very slow and very cautious step forward. The last thing he wanted was to get shot, but something told him this man could still relate to another human being. Call it a look in his eye or just plain naivety, but Morgan had a faint hope that he could talk him down. Meanwhile, he kept his ears pricked for the sound of police backup behind him.
There was nothing.
“I know what they took,” he told Arthur. “Your wife. Your daughter. Their reckless driving cost you a great deal, and I know what that loss feels like. Your first victim, Dylan Young, was my cousin and a damn good friend. If you don’t think that hurt me, then think again.”
Arthur’s eyes shone with a hint of tears. He stomped forward two steps, keeping the gun trained on Morgan while frequently glancing over at the car. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not. And what’s more? I don’t want to take revenge on you.”
“Good, because you’re doing a bad job of it.”
“But I was hoping we could just talk. How about that?”
Arthur’s eyes shot over Morgan’s shoulder, widening in an instant. Recognition flashed within them, and he snarled, storming back to the car where he stood by the driver’s side window and reallocated his aim to Cooper Kelley’s head. “You brought the cops.”
Saying nothing, Morgan craned his neck to see Gary’s car racing toward them. Behind him, four police cars kept close to his tail. They looked like a small army coming to dispatch the villain, and Morgan hadn’t been so happy to see anything in his entire life. “They had to come. You’re about to kill a man, and that’s illegal. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Of course I do.”
“So… put down the gun.”
“No chance.”
The cars arrived a moment later, skidding to a stop as police officers launched themselves from the seats and drew their sidearms, taking aim on Arthur. Gary stopped close to them both, his own gun in his hand and fixed on the same target. It’d taken less than thirty seconds for a calm scene to become chaos, and Morgan knew immediately that his chances of settling this calmly had long since passed. All the same, as much as he wanted this to be over, he just didn’t want it to end in bloodshed.
As a protest, he waved his arms and stepped into their line of sight. “Hold your fire!”
“Out of the way,” Gary said. “I have a clear shot.”
“I don’t want you to shoot this man.”
Gary crooked an eyebrow, tilting his head to the side. He lowered his voice. “What?”
“Just… give me a minute.”
Sighing, Gary made a hand gesture to the team. “Hold your fire.”
“Thank you.”
Morgan turned back toward Arthur St. John, who continued to press the barrel of his gun at Cooper Kelley’s head. Lowering his hands slowly, Morgan stepped around the car, inching closer to the man who’d killed all those people. “Take it easy, all right?”
“Wh-What happened? Why aren’t they shooting?”
“Because I asked them not to.”
“Why?”
Morgan raised his hands in an I-don’t-know gesture. “You deserve a chance to turn yourself in. Nobody else has to die, and that includes you. So why don’t you just lower the gun and come quietly? We can figure this out.”
“We can’t.” Arthur shook his head, his eyes turning redder as he ground his teeth. He looked out among the sea of police officers, evidently learning now that there was no way he could win this one. From there, it could go either way. “I need this.”
“And I understand that.”
“You do?”
“Come on,” Morgan said, fighting through his anxiety and forcing out a smile that probably looked as false as it felt. “You murdered my cousin, made me drink poison, and then pointed a gun at me. If anyone can relate to feeling bitter, it’s me. But you know what? It’s okay. I can let it go, and in time you can too.”
“You’re talking about forgiveness?”
“Not right now. I’m talking about making that decision later. When there aren’t guns pointed at everyone. You can make a calmer, more calculated decision then, and not do anything you’ll regret. Forgiveness can be figured out later.”
“If I turn myself in now, I won’t get another chance to finish this.”
“Maybe not.” Morgan glanced back at the cops, their expressions showing every ounce of tension they all felt. Their pistols were still aimed in his direction. Only now did he realize how dry his mouth was. “But you’ll have the rest of your life to find a way to deal with it. What I’m saying is, there are other ways than this. So, let’s just take this a moment at a time, step by step, starting with you lowering the gun. What do you say?”
Arthur St. John looked perplexed. His forehead creased at the thought while he stared over the car’s roof back at the police. It was obvious he was considering it, trying to battle past his demons to see reason. The struggle was visible in his eyes, nesting with the pain and torture that his loss had caused. If there was ever an internal battle to rule them all, this was it.
“Come on,” Morgan said softly.
It came as a huge shock when Arthur lowered the gun. Tears streamed from his eyes, his beard catching them as he hunched over in a resigned slump. He gave a soft, short nod to Morgan, slowly raising his hand to pass him the gun. “Just promise me you’ll—”
Then it happened.
Two shots from the police, each one hitting the car.
Morgan and Arthur ducked behind cover. Morgan’s heart beat like a drum. He heard yelling between the officers. He thought of Rachel wondering why her husband wasn’t coming home. He saw anger flush through Arthur St. John’s face as he raised the gun to retaliate. “No!” Morgan screamed, but by then it was too late. He knew there was no going back.
The cops had fired, and Arthur was going to kill.
Chapter Forty-Four
It was fight or flight. Morgan never would’ve expected it from himself, but his body launched into action before he could stop it. He balled his hand into a fist and shot forward, knocking the gun from Arthur’s hand. It clattered to the ground and went sprawling.
“Move in!” Morgan screamed, fighting to pin down the killer.
But he wasn’t strong enough.
Arthur reeled in his leg and shot it into Morgan’s gut. A hard burn hit him, knocking the wind out of him. Weak and dizzy, Morgan rolled off and into the mud, clutching at the pain while he gasped for air. From the corner of his eye, he saw Arthur scurry to his feet and flee the scene, sprinting into a range of trees that’d been stripped down by the winter.
That was when something took him over.
It was like he’d been possessed. All he could see was his kid growing up—a boy, with perfect hair and perfect eyes and a smile that meant the world to him. Perhaps Morgan was supposed to see it as a reason to stay down, but he didn’t. Instead, he felt an urgent need to soldier on, to fight for what was right. He remembered Dusty, and all of a sudden he knew he couldn’t let this killer get away. No matter w
hat it took.
Morgan climbed to his feet. “Gary?”
“Right here, buddy.”
Using the car to pull himself up, Morgan looked to his left where he saw Gary rush over in his bulletproof vest. The police officers hurried around him like ants running from boiling water, sprinting around the far side of the trees to cut off Arthur St. John. Morgan leveled his gaze on the car, watching Cooper Kelley’s desperate eyes beg for release and an escort to safety. “Do what you have to do,” he told Gary.
“Why, what’s your plan?”
Morgan didn’t really have a plan. All he knew was that he had to be the one to see this through, as he’d promised himself from the very beginning. Leaving the question unanswered, he recovered his breath and ran as fast as he could into the trees, bare branches whipping at his chest and face, scratching him all over. He didn’t care—he wanted this man caught, and if he could do it with no more shots fired, then all the better.
For a long while he felt as though he would never catch up. The sun faded beyond the trees, and Morgan found himself in complete silence, save for the distant shouting of the cops and his own breath as he panted and wheezed. There was no way he was going to beat Arthur, he thought as his body drained of energy and he started to slow down. If he couldn’t catch him before, then how could he now? He was all out of hope.
Until he saw it.
Far away, between the dark brown stems that used to be green, healthy trees, Morgan spotted the familiar figure standing still. It looked like a scarecrow from this distance, but he knew better. He stopped in his tracks, giving it only a moment’s thought before breaking into a slow, easy jog. The nearer he stumbled, the more the scenery came into view, until he found himself stopping a few feet from Arthur St. John, a man who had killed in such cruel ways.
A man who stood on a rocky outcrop, threatening suicide.
Morgan couldn’t see the severity of the drop, but he could see beyond it. A quiet neighborhood sat innocently in the distance with kids playing in the backyards. Birds glided, dove, and then swooped up to indicate a fall of at least fifty feet, from what he could guess. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The ending was supposed to be… he didn’t know—different, he guessed. He still couldn’t see why anyone else had to die. “Don’t do it.”
Turning, Arthur revealed a glum, serious face. He’d given up entirely, his feet scuffing on the edge of the rock that led to his death. “Why not? What do I have left?”
“Everything,” Morgan explained. “There’s life beyond this.”
“In a prison cell.”
Morgan silently agreed but didn’t dare say it out loud. Every word mattered now. Something as simple as a bad phrase could push this man over the edge. He understood that he couldn’t save Dusty or Teresa, but if he could save Arthur St. John from himself, then he hadn’t completely failed. There was still hope. “Let’s just try that thing I said, all right? One step at a time. You have the rest of your life to contemplate suicide, so why decide now? Just take a nice, slow step this way.”
“Stay back,” Arthur spat. “This isn’t a game.”
“I know that.”
Arthur gripped his hair as if he were about to tear it out. “You just don’t get it. You think you understand, but you don’t. I didn’t just lose my family that night. It goes a lot deeper than that, but you don’t understand. I have to do this.”
“Why don’t you help me understand?” Morgan held out a palm—an indication to stop as he stepped close enough to peer over the edge. There wasn’t a chance anyone would survive a fall that far. He had to make him stop. “Tell me, Arthur. Tell me what happened. I’m listening.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“It was ten years ago today. We fought that night. It was a bad one. See, Clara was a very attractive woman, and as such she got a lot of attention from other men. If you ask me, a ring on the finger isn’t enough to make a guy back off, and Clara was too nice to tell them otherwise. She didn’t cheat—at least not that I know of—but she didn’t have the heart to tell them she wasn’t interested. I guess you could say she was unintentionally stringing them along.”
Arthur wiped his eye with the heel of his hand.
“It put a lot of strain on our marriage. I was a jealous man. That’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s true. Every time she came home from work, I found myself wondering if she’d really gone to work. I’d play out all sorts of illusions in my head, and although I tried to keep those thoughts to myself, they eventually came out of me. She never reacted well.
“The fights went on for months and months. We started seeing a marriage counselor, airing our problems out to some stranger who expected one hundred an hour just to listen. It wasn’t enough. I knew I had to take action, and so I thought… how about a trip?”
Checking over his shoulder, Arthur adjusted his balance.
“Well, that took me around the city for a while, kept me busy while I personally went to find the perfect place to spend a long weekend. I figured we could bring our daughter and she could have a great time too, Mommy and Daddy happy together for once, you know? I kept looking until eventually I found this perfect place just outside the city. It’s not far from here; you could beeline it a few miles that way and find it, but it felt completely isolated. It was perfect, and I was convinced a single weekend would solve our problems.
“Unfortunately, Clara didn’t see it that way. She kept putting off the trip for as long as possible. Every time I asked, she went silent and sometimes even left the room. One time she pulled me aside when I was playing with our girl on the floor. She told me that if I booked that trip, then I could forget about solving our marital issues. I asked her what was so bad about the idea, but she never did answer me. I never found out, until that day.”
The pain finally got to him, and Arthur broke into tears. He wiped his eyes, his voice cracking under the weight of his misery.
“It was my birthday. She said she had a surprise weekend booked. Talk about the best present ever. We all strapped in and began our journey to this mysterious place she’d booked, only giving me directions a piece at a time. It took us here, right over to where you and I stood only a few minutes ago. That was where it happened.
“I only took my eye off the road for a few seconds, but a few seconds was all it took. Combine that with some little pieces of shit who were drifting around the corner like a bunch of hooligans, and that’s the end of that. Every problem Clara and I had—every ounce of love and bitter memory or hopeful dream—they were all taken away on that night. On my birthday, during a journey to a place that would’ve made us happier. I remember being upside down in that car, seeing the two people I cared about most in this entire world with their eyes closed. I couldn’t reach them, and I couldn’t help. All I could do was wait for help to arrive and hope that by then it wasn’t too late. I prayed they were going to be okay, because if anything happened to them, I didn’t know what I would do.
“They died before the help arrived.”
Arthur clenched his fists and stared up toward the sky. He sniffed, wiped his face, and looked down behind him again like he was giving it some serious thought.
“I don’t just blame them. I blame myself too. What I really wanted, more than anything, was to teach them a lesson and then end things for myself. There’s no way I can carry on with this pain. Not when everything felt so unfinished. This whole thing had to end somewhere, so why not here? Death is the least I deserve.”
Chapter Forty-Six
“But it’s not your fault.” Morgan lowered his defenses and walked toward him, stopping only a few feet away. He could feel this man’s pain, understood what it’d taken to confess such a story. He only felt sympathy. “Things happen. It sucks, but that’s the truth of it all. My cousin died, and I hate that, but at some point I have to move on. You can do that too. It’s not exclusive to me.”
Arthur wept. “That’s not even the worst part.”
“Then tell
me.”
“That weekend away… it was to the same place I’d been trying to book for us.”
Morgan nodded slowly, adopting his most sympathetic tone. He’d caught his breath again now, and that was just as well—he needed to maintain as much control over his body as possible, because if this man jumped, he had to be ready to pounce. To try to catch him. “So your last memory of Clara was that she did a nice thing for you?”
“What?”
“I mean, you made it through all the fighting and came out the other side. All those times she told you not to book it—all those times she said she didn’t want to go—she was just postponing until she could take you there for your birthday. That doesn’t sound like a bad marriage to me. That sounds like a wife who loved you, and she wanted to prove she’d do anything to make it work. If I were you, I’d cherish that memory of her, not the daunting one that detailed her final moments.”
While neither said a word, the police caught up to a far side of the rocky gap. They must have recognized Morgan’s hard glare, as they stopped where they were and watched. Morgan was about ready to burst with anger at whichever one had shot at Arthur, but he could address that later. Right now, he had to talk a man down from a ledge.
“I loved her,” Arthur said.
“Yeah, I bet.” Morgan took one small step closer, reaching out his hand. “You don’t have to be alone in all this. I’m here for you. If you need a friend, I’ll be right there beside you helping you work through it all.”
Arthur looked at him skeptically. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because there’s light at the end of the tunnel. Your life isn’t over just yet.”
“But I’ve done some terrible things.”
Morgan shook his head. “That doesn’t matter right now. You just need to step this way a little bit, and we can figure everything out from there.”
He held his breath while anxiety clawed at his skin. He wondered if he would follow through on his promise to be there for the man who’d killed Dusty. Did he really have it in him to forgive and forget? It wasn’t likely, but he would probably try. In spite of everything he’d done, Arthur St. John was little more than a man in excruciating pain. It’d driven him to do things he clearly wasn’t proud of, but that didn’t mean he had to die. After all, he’d been a normal man once, just like Morgan. Just like Dusty.
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