by David Bell
“Why didn’t you just leave?” I asked. “You could have put your mom in the car, apologized, and left.”
Morgan flared. Her cheeks and the tips of her ears flushed even redder than before. “Apologize? To him?” She shook her head from side to side. “Never. I was never going to do that.”
“Valerie could have. She was the one who brought the gun.”
“No. Never. I’d take her out of there, but I wouldn’t apologize. And I wouldn’t let her either.”
“So then what happened?” I asked. I didn’t say it out loud, but it was there between us. At some point, Giles ended up dead.
The pain in my chest increased, spreading through my torso. If I’d been older or in poor health, I would have worried I was having a heart attack. But I knew the pain wasn’t physical. It was emotional. I braced myself as though waiting for a physical blow.
81
Morgan looked away, out toward the concourse and then up at the TV, which played a commercial for a roasting pan. She puffed her cheeks out, and her hands were clenched into tight fists.
She turned back to me but didn’t say anything.
I said, “I’m not going to go away and uproot my whole life unless I know what happened in that house. That’s the only way I can do it.”
“I told you in the hotel that night. In Wyckoff.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You didn’t tell me how a woman with cancer, a woman who had collapsed in a chair, could strangle a grown man.”
“He was out of shape—”
“And you also didn’t tell me how that body got out of the house and from Laurel Falls out to Wyckoff. And ended up buried in the middle of Fantasy Farm. If it was Valerie, then tell me. We can all be done with this. Or if you thought your life was in danger. If he tried to hurt you . . . I’m sorry, but I have to know.”
She shifted on the stool a little. She looked at her watch and let out a deep breath. “Is that what you want to hear?” she asked. “You want to hear that I did it all? Would that make you feel better right before we leave together?”
“At least I’d know what I was getting into,” I said. “You haven’t exactly been predictable, Morgan. Hell, I’m kind of surprised you showed up here at all. You’ve left me hanging more than once.”
I could tell she was hurt, even with her eyes covered. “You know why I did what I did those other times. And I promised to be here today. We both did.”
I had promised that. And I couldn’t believe I was about to ask the question I needed to ask. But I had to do it.
“Who killed him? Who strangled him?”
Morgan stood up from her stool and took a couple of steps away, toward the concourse, and then she came back. She bent down to pick up her bag but stopped. She just waited there, hands on hips, obviously trying to figure out what to do next.
I let her think.
She eventually sat down again and turned to face me. She studied me for a long time, and then resumed her story.
“Did you see Valerie’s arm?” she asked, her voice as level as the bar I rested my hand on.
I thought about it. The bruise. Valerie had said something about falling, about Morgan worrying.
She thinks I’m protective.
“What happened?” I asked.
I held her gaze and waited for answers. My face felt numb. I expected my jaw to drop, but I kept it in place through force of will.
“I was going to take Valerie out of there. Just get her up and in the car and away. And hope nothing else came of it.”
“Okay.”
She shook her head from side to side, so slowly it was almost imperceptible. She didn’t look sad or angry. She looked tired. “Valerie . . . Mom . . . she couldn’t leave well enough alone. She couldn’t concede we’d lost. She tried to get the gun. She pushed herself out of the chair, just barely, and reached for the gun. When she did, Giles grabbed her by the arm. He held her and then pushed her back into the chair. Hard.”
“Did that hurt her?” I asked. “Did she try to get up again and get the gun?”
“It was a breaking point for me. I just got so sick of it. I got so sick of being told no. Of . . . of Giles’s absolute certainty that he could do anything or say no to me and get away with it. That he could shut me out and shut me down. Or try to hurt her. I had a sick mom, and we needed money. And he wanted to say no and not give an inch. He could just push someone around, literally and figuratively. It ended up being too much for me to take.” She laid her hand flat on the bar. “Joshua, he saw my mom. He saw what Valerie looked like and how desperate she was . . . and still he said no. Just like that. One word over and over. No.”
“And you just . . .” My words came out low. I almost couldn’t hear myself over the din of the airport.
“He took . . . I think, but I’m not sure—I think he took a step toward her, toward where she sat in the chair,” she said. “I was behind him, and he was watching Mom, so I got the advantage on him. I’m taller than he is—was—by a little, so I could get leverage. And it was like a choke hold, and I squeezed and I held on. And on. Valerie tried to stop me. I remember that. She told me to stop, to let go. But I felt like I was outside of my body, looking down on the scene, looking down on myself choking the life out of this man. And I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I just didn’t want to.”
I suddenly felt cold, like my core temperature had plunged twenty degrees, and if there’d been a winter coat or a blanket nearby, I would have wrapped myself in it. I sat there facing Morgan, letting everything she’d said to me sink in.
“It’s not like in a movie,” she said. “It took some time.”
A heavy silence fell between us, broken only by the never-ending noises of the airport. The announcements, the conversation, the ringing phones, and the low rumble of the planes.
It took me a moment to come back to myself, to remember that there was still more to the story, more that needed to be told.
“And you took the body . . . out to Fantasy Farm.”
“I took the ring, and I messed the place up a little so it looked like a robbery. I just wanted to get rid of him, to never have to see him again.”
“You drove thirty minutes with a dead man in your trunk?”
“I sure as hell obeyed the speed limit. I had to stop and get gas on my way out of town. My car was on empty. I ran right into an old friend. . . . Every mile felt like it was loaded with land mines.”
“Why that park? Why not . . . a field? The woods?”
“I didn’t plan to go to Fantasy Farm. I was scared as hell, and I just wanted to get rid of him. Somewhere. Anywhere. I went outside of town to the Hawke River. I’d been kayaking there a lot growing up, and it was quiet and deserted. And this was late at night. I was just going to throw him in. But . . .”
“But?”
“I turned off the main road onto the smaller one that led down to the kayak put-in. And there was a cop back there. I don’t know why, but he flashed his headlights at me so I’d pull over.” She looked pale, sickened, as she relived the moment. “I thought I was done. Arrested and gone forever. He asked me what I was doing there, and I just stammered through something, saying I was out for a drive, clearing my head. He looked suspicious. And he ran my license, and when he saw I was clean, he told me to go home.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I had a dead man in my trunk,” she said. “I had to get out of there, so I did. And my mind scrambled for someplace else to take him. I thought of a cornfield, but they were all being harvested right then. If I put him there, he’d be found almost immediately. I tried to think of the last place someone would look for a body, a place that no one would associate with death or crime. A place nobody went anymore.”
“An abandoned amusement park.”
“I could only remember my mom passing out there. That�
�s the most powerful memory I had. Why not dump a body there? Why not bury another shitty memory in that place? Every kid in the county went there. Every family for fifty years. They couldn’t connect it to me.”
“That must have been a scary drive.”
“It was.”
“Morgan,” I said, “this sounds insane.”
“It was. Valerie left for home when I left with Giles. She made it okay . . . but something went out of her that night. She wasn’t the same. When I came back from Wyckoff, she was out of it, slipping. That was late on Thursday night, early on Friday morning. I was scared, but I couldn’t keep up with caring for her. She was in pain, tired. I told hospice she fell—that’s why her arm was bruised. And I told them I was worried she would fall again. They didn’t question any of it. She went in on Friday around noon. They had a bed open, and she went right in.”
“You must have been terrified you’d be caught.”
“I was. More than you can know. Mom told me to leave. She said I could just leave the state, the country. I had my passport and ID with the different name. I could go, but I didn’t want to. She’d die alone in that hospice room. It was Mom’s idea to send me to Virginia, to talk to Aunt Linda. I made a deal with Mom. If Aunt Linda agreed to come and stay until the end, I would leave. I wouldn’t even come back to Nashville. But Aunt Linda didn’t go along, and that was when you saw me in the airport flying back that first Tuesday morning.”
“People thought you’d disappeared. Didn’t they try to reach you in Virginia?”
“They did. I got texts and calls. But I ignored them all. You see, when I first got there, it looked like Aunt Linda was going to go to Nashville to sit with Mom. And then I would leave. For good. So I didn’t respond to anyone reaching out to me. I’d let them all go in my mind. And I was afraid someone would tell the police where I was. When the police asked Mom where I was, she said she didn’t know. That’s when they all reported me missing. But I should never have gone to Virginia. . . .”
“Because?”
“That’s when Simon came and threatened her. He came to Nashville on Monday and started asking about me. He’d heard about me from someone at TechGreen. He figured I was his best lead. Maybe his only one. Word got back to Mom from a friend of mine that he was asking about me, and she called him, telling him to knock it off. But he went to River Glen on Monday evening and confronted her. Threatened her. And me. I found out about it that day we met. When I went to the bathroom at the airport, my mom called. When Simon threatened her, I felt such enormous pressure. I wanted to make it right . . . if I could. That’s why I went to back to Wyckoff.”
“What were you going to do there? Leave the ring with the body . . . and what?”
“Call the police once Valerie was gone. Call the police and let them know where everything was. I’d be gone, and so would she. But you know what happened.”
Indeed I did.
I finally turned away from her and looked at my glass, but it was empty. I looked for something, anything, I could do with my hands, anything to distract me.
But there was nothing. Just the two of us. With all the truth laid bare between us.
Nowhere to hide. Nothing to hide behind.
“We should go,” Morgan said, looking at her watch. “We should head to our gate. It’s time. We were cutting it close already.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I mean, if you still want to go,” she said. “Do you?”
I still didn’t respond. I couldn’t. Everything she had just told me swirled in my head.
“Joshua?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know if I can do it, Morgan,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
82
Kimberly’s radio crackled.
“I think we have eyes on them,” the voice said.
Her heart jumped out of her chest.
“Where?”
“Concourse A. Some bar. BrewFlyers. Back by the window.”
“Concourse A is one over,” Brandon said. “Let’s go. Fast.”
They started running.
“Keep an eye on them,” she said.
Please, please, please . . .
83
Morgan slid off her stool and picked up her bag. She slung it over her shoulder.
“What are you saying?” she asked. “We need to go.”
“I just wanted to know the truth,” I said. “And I thought . . . I hoped the truth would be different from what you just told me. I really did.”
“I’m not lying to you, Joshua,” she said. “I told you exactly what happened that night in Giles’s house.”
“I know,” I said. “That’s the problem. Your mom threatened him with a gun. Can you blame him for grabbing her? For defending himself? Maybe he was a shit heel to those other women, but in this case . . .”
“Did you want me to lie?”
“No, I didn’t. You had a lifeline. Self-defense or Valerie’s confession, but neither of those is true,” I said. I felt frozen. Stunned. “Go now. Maybe you can make it to the gate. Maybe you can get on the plane to California. I won’t tell them anything else until after you’re gone.”
She looked at me, confused. Then realization spread across her face.
“You’re not going to come, are you? You’re really not going to come.”
“I wanted to prove to the cops you didn’t kill Giles. I wanted to prove it to myself. I really had myself convinced until this conversation. I wanted to get away clean with you, to have a clean slate and leave the past in the past.”
She continued to stare at me. Then she took a step forward, her face showing a mixture of hurt and affection.
“You really can’t do it, can you?”
“I’m sorry.”
She lowered her head, her shoulders slack and loose. It took her a moment to look back up, and when she did I saw one tear on her cheek.
“Don’t be,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to go with me if you didn’t want to. Even if in the end it means I can’t have you.”
She leaned in and pressed her lips against mine. For an eternal but fleeting moment, we kissed, our tongues touching, my hands on her back, her hands in my hair.
And just as quickly it was over.
She pulled back from me, letting her hand trail along my arm and squeeze my hand before she left.
“Good-bye.”
Morgan turned and started for the concourse, walking quickly. She almost bumped into a waiter who carried a tray of food, and he bobbled everything for a moment but managed to keep it all from falling.
I paused a moment, and then I jumped off the stool, leaving my bag behind, and followed her. I also brushed past the frazzled waiter, almost knocking him over, drawing stares from the other patrons, shocking them out of their airport-induced stupor.
Morgan turned right out of the bar and onto the concourse, walking fast at first and then breaking into a run. I hustled along behind her, dodging passengers and employees. The airport had become more crowded, filling as the clock ticked toward noon.
“Morgan!”
I lost sight of her in the crowd.
I ran faster, bumping and brushing against more bodies. A woman cursed at me when I stepped on her foot. A man pushed me, saying, “Slow down.”
I ignored them and kept going.
And then the crowd thinned for a moment. Or maybe it parted. I couldn’t be sure which.
Morgan stood in the middle of the concourse twenty feet ahead of me. She clutched her bag as she turned to face me.
I froze. There was no one between us. No one obstructing my view.
She looked so beautiful and so, so sad. And I didn’t know what to do.
She raised her right hand, palm up. Empty.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s over.�
��
“I know,” I said.
She looked past me. I heard rushing footsteps behind me.
Cops?
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll tell them everything.”
And I really didn’t know what else to do.
Detective Givens came up behind Morgan. With three uniformed airport cops. And two more cops appeared from behind me, heading for Morgan.
They closed in on her, engulfing her.
Let her go, I thought.
But I was telling myself more than I was telling them.
She disappeared from my sight again.
For good.
84
It took a few hours to sort everything out.
I spent most of the time sitting in a room outside the airport police station. Waiting.
Eventually Detective Givens came out and sat in the chair next to mine. She looked worn-out—her hair was pulled back and her clothes were wrinkled—but also relieved, as if a burden she’d been carrying for weeks had been lifted from her back and shoulders.
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Fields,” she said.
“I am?”
“You are. Morgan is telling us everything. And from what I can tell, she told you everything in that bar. I think she’s relieved to get it out in the open.”
“How does that make me lucky?” I asked.
“She’s saying you had nothing to do with any of it. Not the murder, not the cover-up. I’ve had my doubts about you, considering the way you’ve behaved. And especially considering the fact you jerked us around a little here, telling us the wrong concourse and the wrong bar where you were going to meet. We could charge you.” She raised a finger for each charge she ticked off. “Obstruction. Aiding and abetting. Conspiracy.”
“Conspiracy?”
She remained silent for an uncomfortable amount of time, staring me down. She wanted me to squirm. She wanted me to panic and sweat.
I didn’t have much left to feel. Morgan’s story in the bar and her arrest in the concourse had pretty much drained me. It was over, and I didn’t really care about the threats from the police. If they wanted to make my life miserable, they could.