Cemetery Road

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Cemetery Road Page 61

by Greg Iles


  He looks at Jet, contempt written on his face. “Can’t say I blame you. She’s been aging out of her prime for a while. She might perk back up after we relieve her of her motherly duties, though. Get a little nip and tuck where it counts.”

  “You won’t get Kevin,” she says with the last remnant of her defiance. “I’m the best lawyer in this town. I’ll stop you.”

  Max grins. “I’d say that depends on the judge, darling. And I own the judges in this town. Not to mention, I’m the boy’s father.”

  Fear morphs into panic on Jet’s face. But something in Paul’s posture changed during Max’s last words.

  “You’re forgetting one other thing,” Max says. “The only thing that really matters. In seven months, Kevin turns thirteen. Then he gets to decide who he lives with. And I took care of that a long time ago.”

  I can’t bear to look at Jet while she realizes what this means for her future. Max’s been coaching Kevin’s teams since the boy’s first season of T-ball, guiding him into what’s now a perpetual spotlight of hero worship, even at twelve. Max owns and drives the luxury RV that ferries Kevin’s traveling baseball team all over the Southeast. But what must Paul think of this picture Max is painting? Where does he fit into it?

  “All right, outside,” Paul says gruffly, walking toward his father.

  Max reaches for the doorknob. “About damn time. I’ll tell you how I see—”

  “Max?” Jet calls.

  He’s still grinning when he turns, and his chest blooms scarlet before I hear the first gunshot. Staccato concussions send me reeling against the wall. Jet has snatched up my pistol from the floor. She fires four times, and at least three rounds plow through Max’s upper body, spinning him wildly and dropping him on the floor by the back wall.

  “What the fuck!” Paul shouts, whipping up his pistol and aiming at Jet. “You killed him!”

  “Yes!” she shrieks, the gun shaking in her hands. “He’s a liar! He can’t do that to me!”

  “Paul, don’t shoot her,” I beg, stepping in front of Jet and throwing up my hands. “We don’t know what happened.”

  He shakes his head in stunned fury. “I saw what happened! She killed him to shut him up. She was scared he’d tell me more.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say quickly, staring at Max, who lies faceup at his son’s feet. “He pushed her past her limit, man, saying he’d take Kevin away. But it’s more than that . . .” The truth comes to me as I watch Max convulsing on the floor. “He was going to kill you. If you’d gone out on that patio, you’d be dead now.”

  Paul’s face tightens in confusion, but he looks down at his father. “What are you saying?”

  Max lurches up off the floor and gasps, then claws the air as though trying to pull himself to his feet. Watching him fight for life, I realize there’s no other possible reason he could be here.

  “He came here to get Kevin,” I explain. “And for him to get Kevin, you and Jet had to die.”

  A grating rattle issues from Max’s throat, then fades into a gurgle.

  “He’s trying to talk,” Paul says. He drops to his knees and takes his father by the shoulders. “Can you hear me? Pop?”

  A wet wheeze is Max’s only answer, but his eyes are wide with urgency. I don’t want Max Matheson voicing one more word. That bastard has the persuasive powers of Satan. But I can’t very well finish him off while his son kneels over him with a pistol.

  Max is shivering. Watching him bleed out, I remember how cocksure he was in this very room only two nights ago. Why couldn’t I see then that he’d come not to protect his son’s marriage, but to warn a rival away from the woman who held him in thrall?

  “Did you kill Mom?” Paul asks, leaning low over his father’s face.

  Of all the things he could have asked . . . it’s his mother that dominates Paul’s thoughts now. Maybe he’s already written Jet out of his life forever.

  Max’s head jerks up, falls back. “Shot . . . shot herself,” he chokes out. “Cuh-couldn’t believe it.”

  “What about Jet? Tell me the truth. Did you force her?”

  Almost any father would lie at this point, even if the lie would damn him in the eyes of his son. Because a lie would give his son a second chance at life. But Max has always lived for himself alone. Glancing left, I see terror in Jet’s face. She jumps as Paul slaps his father’s face to bring him around.

  “Nuh,” Max groans, a guttural monosyllable. “She gave it to me. We made that boy, her and me . . . that beautiful boy.”

  Paul swallows something sour, but he holds his place, unflinching, fighting to get the truth.

  “I had to,” Max croaks. “Had uh . . . do what you couldn’t. Carry on the line. Don’t blame me for that . . . or her. She loved me, you damn fool. Now you . . . gone and ruined it. You’ve took that boy’s real daddy from him.”

  “Do you know what you’re saying?” Paul asks in a cracked voice.

  Max’s eyes go wide, but instead of fear they hold inchoate fury. “Goddamn,” he rages. “This isn’t right. He’s the son you never were to me. And now . . . this.”

  After looking down in silence for several seconds, Paul lifts his right hand from the floor and covers his father’s mouth with it. Then he closes Max’s nose between his thumb and forefinger. Max’s shoulders jerk up off the floor again, but Paul keeps his head pinned against the wood. Paul’s body appears relaxed, even as Max’s legs kick wildly. Only in his arm do I see the force being applied. So tight is Paul’s grip that Max can’t even gasp. His eyes bulge in pain and terror, as if they’ll burst from their sockets. His face darkens to purple, and his midsection bounces off the floor like he’s copulating with an invisible woman—once, twice, and again. Then his back slams against the hardwood and stays there.

  Still, Paul doesn’t let go.

  I look back at Jet, who’s probably watching someone die for the first time. There’s pain in her face, but behind that, a savage satisfaction, and perhaps also gratitude that her husband is finishing what she started. Maybe murder will bind them more deeply than love ever did.

  After what seems an interminable delay, Paul releases his grip. No one moves. We don’t even look at one another.

  Max is dead.

  Chapter 53

  Whatever shape Paul was in before Max died, he’s barely coherent now. He sits in a pool of his father’s blood, hunched over, looking down at the bruised, motionless face. In the span of two days both his mother and father have perished, but that’s not the worst of it. Today Paul lost his wife and son as well. And not in the way of a man who loses his family in a car crash. He’s lost not only his future with them, but also the past. Every moment he ever spent with Jet and Kevin has been ripped away, tainted, invalidated by the knowledge that his wife loved his childhood friend and his son was sired by his father. Paul still has his gun in his hand. It hangs limp against the bloody hardwood floor, but I’ve seen Paul shoot in combat. He could put a bullet through both our heads in a second and a half.

  “Paul?” I say, surprising myself.

  He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even lift his head. Jet looks as though she wants to comfort him, and in fact starts toward him, but something makes her pull up short. There’s something brittle in the air, a sense that in this moment Paul is capable of anything, from murder to self-destruction. To touch him now would be like touching a wolf after a kill.

  You just don’t do it.

  Jet turns, and her eyes find mine across eight feet of space. Where two days ago an arc of pleasure and anticipation would have passed between us, now there’s only mutual awareness of all that’s been lost. We’re like hurricane survivors staring at each other through the ruins of our house.

  Below my line of focus I see movement. Paul has lifted his pistol into his lap. He’s staring at it more like a child than a military vet, an innocent who picked up a strange machine, unaware that death awaits in the steel tube. As I watch with increasing apprehension, Paul turns the gun until h
e’s looking down its barrel. His finger isn’t inside the trigger guard, but he seems hypnotized by the black hole. What does he see in it? A tunnel out of hell? An escape from unbearable pain? Is his suffering so all-consuming that oblivion offers the only peace?

  As I watch him, half-hypnotized myself, Paul opens his mouth like a baby waiting to be fed. For a terrible fraction of time I consider simply standing here and witnessing what I know must be coming. His finger will enter the guard and compress the trigger, beginning the irrevocable pull—

  I can’t. No matter what the risk, I have to stop him.

  But how? If I startle him, his training might trigger him to whirl and kill me out of reflex. Keenly aware that Jet has done nothing to intervene, I pad past her with my empty hands held out before me.

  “Paul?” I almost whisper. “Hey, man . . . you with me?”

  No response. How can I break through that death trance? As I ease forward, memories of our time in Iraq return, the weeks I spent with Sierra Bravo in Ramadi. “Yo, brah,” I call softly. “Rangers lead the way, right? Remember?”

  Very slowly, like a man with a traumatic brain injury, Paul closes his mouth. Swallows. I crouch beside him, then sit, but I don’t risk touching him.

  “Paul? Can you hear me?”

  He says nothing, only stares down at his father’s motionless face.

  “I want to talk to you, man. Kevin’s still your son, okay? Nobody’s taking him from you. Ever. You hear me?”

  “Jet did this,” he whispers. “Jet put us here.”

  A bubble of fear rises in my chest, and I sense Jet backing away behind me. “No, man, listen. Max did this. He told you I was Kevin’s father. Remember? He lied. And he lied for a reason. He wanted you to kill me. Jet, too.”

  “Why?” Paul asks. “Makes no sense.”

  “Oh yes it does. He wanted to raise Kevin. He wanted custody of that boy.”

  Paul has yet to even look at me. But he says, “Killing you and Jet wouldn’t get him Kevin.”

  “It would if you were dead, too.”

  “You’re full of shit, Goose. It was her, man.”

  Jet’s got to be petrified. I can’t believe she hasn’t fled the house. “Think, Paul. Max showed you that video of us. Then he told you I was Kevin’s father. With all that rage, he was betting you’d come straight here and shoot us. And you almost did. He pointed you at us like a guided missile. He knew we’d be here, and he sent you to kill us.”

  At last Paul looks up with glassy eyes. “How could he know you’d be here?”

  “Jet, what brought you here tonight?” I ask over my shoulder.

  When she doesn’t reply, I risk a look back. Her face is a finger-painting of tears and smeared mascara. But Nadine’s gun now hangs by her leg.

  “What was the first thing you told me when you came in?” I ask.

  “Max sent me here,” she says in a shaky voice. “He called from UMC and told me to end it with you. If I didn’t, he’d tell Paul everything.”

  “There you go,” I tell Paul. “He pointed you at us, and then he blitzed out of that hospital and followed you here.”

  “Why?”

  “He was betting that once you killed Jet and me, you’d end up turning your gun on yourself. But if you didn’t, he had to be here to finish the job. That’s why he busted in when he heard your shot. A single shot didn’t make sense to him.”

  Paul is shaking his head. “No, man. You’re reaching.”

  “Shit. You think Max followed you here because he was worried about you? You know better.”

  “But you care about me?” Paul throws out his gun hand and knocks me off my heels. “You’re lying, Goose. You’ve both been lying all along. She wants to take Kevin from me, and you’re helping her.”

  “I don’t want Kevin, man. He’s yours. Use your head, damn it. Not your heart.” As I scramble to my feet, a gleam of black at Max’s ankle catches my attention. A flash of memory takes me back two nights, when Max’s jeans rode up and I saw the pistol in his ankle holster. Only on that night the gun was nickel-plated.

  “Check his ankle holster!” I tell Paul, pointing.

  “What?” he asks dully.

  “Max brought two guns. Why? Where’d he get them?”

  While Paul stares at me in confusion, I reach across the hardwood with my shoe and slide Max’s pant leg up over the nylon holster. Paul looks disinterested at first. Then his eyes narrow, and he pulls the gun from the holster.

  “This is mine,” he mumbles. “My compact Springfield.”

  “Did you lend it to him?”

  Paul hesitates, then shakes his head. “It was in my desk at home. It was there last night. This morning, too. He . . . he must have stopped on his way into town and grabbed it.”

  “If the guy he paid drove him fast enough when he followed you from Jackson, he just had time.”

  “This is too crazy, man. This is wack.”

  “This is Max. Remember when he asked you to walk over to him so that he could whisper something to you? He tried it twice. Twice. The second time he asked you to go out on the patio. I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what.”

  “No.”

  “You know I’m right. To fit his narrative, he needed a contact head shot. A contact wound with your gun. One that would look like suicide.”

  “But . . . why kill me first?”

  “Seriously? You were the only real threat to him in here. He’d have shot us right after he shot you. But when he talked to the cops, he’d have told it in reverse. I followed Paul out there, worried sick. I heard two shots and busted in. I saw Jet and Marshall dead, and Paul turned the gun on himself before I could stop him.”

  Paul blinks like a man struck with a club. “You really think he would have killed us all?”

  “It’s the only way he could get custody of Kevin. Last night he tried to talk Jet into leaving you. He had some crazy plan to move you to Atlanta or Dallas, offer you a lot of money. But Jet refused. No threat would make her screw you over like that.” I turn back to her. “Tell him.”

  “It’s true,” she says in a ragged voice. “He’d lost his mind. He said he was going to cut you out of his will if you didn’t get out of his way. He tried to rape me last night, I swear to God. That’s why I hit him with the hammer.”

  “Don’t talk to me,” Paul says sharply. “Don’t say one damn word.”

  Paul looks down at his father again.

  What can he be feeling? I spent most of my life believing that my father wished I’d drowned instead of my brother. What can it feel like to know your father would disown you—even kill you—so that he could take your wife and child for his own?

  Paul raises his head and turns until he can see Jet. His eyes are filled with what looks like Puritanical judgment. “Pop was right,” he says. “This is your doing. All of it. You poisoned this family with your lies and betrayal. You seduced him. You wanted a kid by him. Then you brought Marshall here to take you away from the lie you made us all live.”

  “Paul, listen,” she says in a quavering voice. “I’m not sure who fathered Kevin. Okay? You were with me three times that month. I never saw any DNA test report, and I don’t want to see one. Our job is to make sure our son never questions who his father is. He’s ours, okay? Yours and mine.”

  Paul gets slowly to his feet, and for a moment I think she’s gotten through to him. Then he raises his gun and aims at her midsection.

  “That’s what you say now. But you’d say anything to get out of this room. You could always talk circles around me. But not tonight. Pop showed you for what you are. A liar. And a whore.”

  Jet recoils as though struck. Then she takes a step toward Paul and says, “A whore gets paid for what she gives up. What did you pay me with? I never had a husband. I’ve had two little boys.”

  With a long sliding step, I interpose myself between them, blocking Paul’s aim. He’s only ten feet from Jet, though, and he could still hit her almost anywhere with a
snap shot. I hold out my arms, trying to make myself as wide a shield as possible.

  Paul smiles strangely. “There you are, old friend—right where you’ve always been. Between us.”

  “I can’t let you shoot her, man.”

  He takes a step closer. “I don’t want to shoot you. You’re just another sucker like me. But I will. She’s not taking Kevin.”

  “You’re not doing this for Kevin,” Jet says from behind me. “Have the guts to be honest, at least. You’re doing this because of what Max said. Your sense of ownership is offended. He got me pregnant when you couldn’t. You’re afraid he fucked me better than you. You think by shooting me you’ll stop that pain? You won’t.”

  Jesus, would you shut up? I think in desperation. You’re committing suicide—

  “You and Max were so blind,” she goes on. “You think Kevin loves baseball more than his mother? For God’s sake.”

  “I know he loves you,” Paul says. “And I wish I didn’t have to do this. But it’s the only way I can stop you. As soon as the sun comes up tomorrow, you’ll be charting out your legal strategy to steal him from me. And if I’m not his biological father . . .”

  Nearly paralyzed by futility, I experience a thunderclap of revelation. “Paul, wait, man. You’re missing the forest for the trees. Max is dead. You have his seat in the Poker Club now. You own the judges in this town. She can’t get Kevin from you. Think, man! Come on.”

  For the first time since he got up, my words have struck home.

  “But the DNA,” he reminds me. “There’s no way around that. Blood trumps all, like Max told me in the hospital. To get Kevin, I’ve got to be the only parent left. So nobody even raises the question.”

  “And me?” I ask, stating the obvious. “Are you gonna kill me, too?”

  When he averts his eyes, I realize the answer is yes. To get custody of Kevin, he will kill me. Maybe I should have let him kill himself after all—

 

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