Their Last Secret

by Rick Mofina

  Kayla was struggling against the woman’s stranglehold—like the kind Emma had seen in prison.

  A knife at Kayla’s face glinted in the sun.

  Emma flew out the door. “Let her go!”

  “Stop!” the woman said. “Or I’ll cut her.”

  Processing the scene, the familiar voice, registering a face from Eternity she could never forget.

  Nikki.

  Glaring at Emma, Nikki said, “Hello, sister.”

  In a heartbeat Emma rocketed back to that night in the house on Old Pioneer Road to the horror of what really happened all those years ago, all of it replaying in half a second...

  They were there for money, looked everywhere and couldn’t find any. This was a mistake... Janie saying, ‘We need to leave now!’ Nikki refusing, continuing to look. They didn’t hear the car, the door. Suddenly the Tullocks were home. No time to leave... Nikki saying, ‘Roy’s got guns!’ Nikki and Marie got knives... Connie saw them, said: ‘Why’re you here? What’re you doing?’ Then Connie, that stuck-up pretentious bitch let them know how much she loathed people like them and shouted: ‘Why are you here? What are you pieces of filthy trash doing in my house?’ And it was like she’d detonated a bomb, an explosion of white-hot fury illuminated everything the Tullocks had and everything they were against every anguish, abuse and heartbreak the girls had suffered in their young lives. A wild, growling animal jumped Roy from behind. It was Nikki, her knife flashing, cutting his throat, blood spraying... Connie screaming, Janie screaming, trying to stop her, too late... Marie and Nikki attacking Connie, Janie trying to save her, gripping wrists in a wild, furious fight to stop the knife, but the knife winning...blade flashing, slashing, plunging, blood spurting...the knives rising and descending, tearing and ripping. Stop! Stop! Connie screaming, her children screaming... Nikki and Marie chasing Neal and Linda up the stairs and Janie sobbing, ‘Stop! Stop!’ Running after them into the bedroom, Neal and Linda hiding in the closet, holding each other, screaming, crying... Janie trying to stop Marie and Nikki stabbing and stabbing...the children’s eyes...blood everywhere... Nikki writing in blood on the walls like a serial killer...the pact...sisters...we did this together...no one tells... EVER!

  And in a heartbeat the face from that night had returned and was now going to kill her stepdaughter.

  Eighty-Seven

  San Bernardino County, California

  Present day

  As he drove, Ben glanced at his ringing phone secure in its holder in the console. The number was a 204 area code. Manitoba? Using his app for his voice-activated hands-free option, he answered.

  “Ben, this is Ed Tracy in Winnipeg.” The lawyer for one of the girls. “Have you got a minute?”

  “Actually it’s not a good time, Ed. Can I call you back?”

  “We should do this now... Doctor says my time’s coming. Pretty soon lawyer-client privilege won’t matter, so you can use this in your book after I’m gone.”

  Ben considered pulling over but kept driving. He activated the record function on his phone. “Ed, I’m sorry to hear that. Please, go ahead.”

  “One of the girls didn’t kill anybody.”

  “Say that again.”

  “One of the girls is innocent of killing anyone.”

  “Innocent? But—”

  “She tried to stop the other two that night, fought with all she had. That’s how she got her prints on the knives, got all bloodied. She went along with the plan to steal money because she felt she was owed, and was mixed up with the other girls in that blood bond.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s complicated. In the early stages of the case, she broke down and confided to me in a private moment that she never killed anyone.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “She would not allow me to defend her on that basis. Didn’t want people to think she was trying to lie her way out because she was consumed with guilt. No one knew that she was not a killer. My strategy was to get her second-degree murder charge reduced to aiding and abetting. That way I could’ve argued that she didn’t know of any intent to kill, had in fact taken steps to prevent or stop it under the abandonment principle.”

  “Why didn’t you do that, or appeal or something?”

  “Again, she absolutely refused to let me.”

  “She wanted to be found guilty of murder?”

  “During the entire case, she went along with being lumped in with the two killers, accepted being guilty because she felt guilty, and in her mind, she was guilty, for initiating the circumstances. Janie had a tough life before that night. She blamed herself for the entire tragedy.”

  “Wait.” Ben caught his breath. “You said Janie?” That was Emma’s previous name...

  “Jane Elizabeth Klassyn. She was no saint, but my God, she was no more a killer than you or me, Ben, and that’s the truth that I wanted you to know.”

  Ben felt his heart filling with warm relief.

  She didn’t kill anyone.

  After thanking Tracy and signing off, Ben accelerated.

  Guilt. It’s what Emma’s been carrying all these years and has been afraid to tell us. I understand guilt—believe me, I get it.

  He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.

  But who killed Rita Purvis? Where’s the other Skull Sister, Lucy Isabel Lavenza?

  Ben’s phone pinged with Emma’s text.

  Emma and Kayla were at the cabin.

  Ben increased his speed, praying that they were safe.

  Eighty-Eight

  San Bernardino County, California

  Present day

  Kayla was battling Nikki’s lock on her neck, gasping for breath.

  “Let her go, Nikki!” Emma said. “She’s got nothing to do with us!”

  Appearing to be in a drug-altered state, Nikki bared her teeth; her eyes flashed fire.

  “All these years, finally we find you and what do you do? You deny us. Your sisters! You broke our bond and now Marie’s dead because of you!”

  “We were children, misguided, stupid children! Our old lives are gone—”

  “And you’ve been living a lie ever since!”

  Kayla let out a weak cry as Nikki’s crushing grip tightened.

  “Each of us paid a price,” Emma said. “Let my daughter go. Let her go!”

  “We’re the Skull Sisters—forever! We were supposed to protect each other! Never betray each other! None of us is better than the other sisters. Remember? But you turned on us! You go off and live like the Tullocks! The people who loathed us! The people we despised! But I never got a chance at a life like you. It’s not right. If I can’t have a good life, then you can’t have one either!”

  Struggling with Kayla, Nikki sobbed, her grip momentarily loosening. Kayla twisted free, punching her in the stomach.

  “Run, Kayla!” Emma screamed, tackling Nikki.

  Kayla fled down the road, into the woods, watching as Emma and Nikki battled for the knife. Emma gripped Nikki’s wrists in a frenzied struggle, the blade flashing in the air. But Nikki, surprisingly agile and strong, slashed Emma’s forearm with the knife before Emma climbed on top of her, clasped her hair, smashed her head into the ground, then fled after Kayla to protect her.

  “Run, Kayla!”

  Nikki scrambled to her feet and pursued them, knife in her bloodied hand.

  Kayla ran through the trees, branches slapping and pricking at her clothes and face. Her throat aching, her lungs sore with panicked breathing she made it to the highway, unsure of which direction to go, praying for a car to wave down.

  Branches crackled, telegraphing that Emma and their attacker were close behind.

  Kayla ran for her life down the middle of the road toward an oncoming car.

  * * *

  There it is.

  Followi
ng the detailed directions her team had given her, Torrie Tullock rounded a curve in the highway, spotting a bear-shaped rock formation.

  She eased off the accelerator. Not far down the highway a girl—a terrified girl—was running toward her, waving her hands. Two other women were running behind her—no, chasing the girl.

  Both women were bloodied.

  Slowing her car, Torrie concentrated on the women with full focus, recognition dawning—they matched the faces in the most recent photos her investigators had taken.

  It’s them. The women who killed my family!

  Immediately Torrie pushed down on the gas pedal, accelerating, aiming her car at the women, keeping one hand on the wheel while reaching to the floor for her gun and thinking of what they wrote in her family’s blood.

  KILL THEM ALL

  * * *

  At that moment, driving faster than the limit, Ben suddenly came up behind three people running on the highway in front of him with a car bearing down on them from the opposite direction.

  What the f–

  It happened instantly, so fast, too fast for Ben’s circuits to react—before his brain issued the order to lift his foot from the gas to stomp the brake, before his jaw opened...

  Before his hand spasmed on the wheel, before he formed the cognitive command to swerve, the opposing car was plowing into the women with heart-sickening thuds, bodies flying into the air, shooting to the side in blurring screaming horror as the car blasted with metal-crunching force into his...turning everything...

  Blank.

  * * *

  The air was hissing, smelling of burning rubber and plastic; something dripped like raindrops. Ben’s ears were ringing, his head dizzy, his chest aching and his pained breathing shallow. He was compacted by the seat against the deflated air bag and dashboard, coming in and out of consciousness with voices around him.

  “Hang in there, buddy. Help’s on the way!”

  “Dad!”

  Kayla?

  “Can you hear me, Dad?”

  Someone’s shaking hand had taken his.

  “Dad,” Kayla sobbed. “Stay with me, please, Dad!”

  In and out, everything went dark then bright to the sound of sirens.

  “We got to cut him out!”

  The clank of equipment bags, hoses dousing hot metal, rubber boots, gloves pulling debris away, firefighters, the deafening high-powered grind and sparks, rescuers cutting into metal.

  “We’ll have you out real soon, sir.”

  Ben passed in and out with a blurry glimpse of a TV camera, a news photographer, more faces. A voice shouted, “Get those press people back!”

  A gurney rattled, expert hands extracted him, fashioning some sort of harness and brace, placed him on a board then a gurney. Ben glimpsed ambulance doors while floating on the gurney toward them, Kayla’s face above him surrounded by sky. She was holding his hand and crying.

  The cross for her mother was four miles away.

  “Dad...”

  Ben tried to smile through his pain, ask her, “You okay?”

  She nodded, tears flowing. “I’m okay, Dad.”

  “Em—” Ben winced.

  As Ben was hoisted into the ambulance, he heard Kayla. “But I want to go with him.”

  “I’m sorry. You’ve got to go with the deputies, sweetie.”

  The doors closed. Ben passed in and out.

  In the ambulance a paramedic tended to him, quickly fixing him with tubes, an IV, a blood pressure cuff, an oxygen mask. Then she moved forward to read monitors and talk to the hospital on a cell phone.

  Ben turned his head to see another patient on a gurney across from him.

  Emma?

  No, it was a strange woman, bloodied, dirty, grass and twigs in her hair, oxygen mask accentuating the dark eyes staring at him.

  “Ben,” she moaned, “Ben Grant.”

  He nodded, not knowing who she was.

  Weakly she lifted her arm to take his hand, trying to squeeze it.

  “Ben, listen to me.” Her voice was hoarse. “Your wife killed Rita Purvis.”

  Ben was jolted. I must be delirious, not hearing correctly.

  “My real name is Nikki Gorman...” She gurgled and coughed. “Your wife’s name is Janie...get away from her...she’s a murderer.”

  Ben’s eyes widened with disbelief.

  “Your wife was going to hurt you and your daughter. I came to save you...”

  The woman lost consciousness, her monitor began beeping, her hand fell.

  Ben saw a ring on her finger.

  A skull ring.

  The siren wailed.

  Eighty-Nine

  California

  Present day

  The next morning Ben stared from his bed at the clock on the wall.

  He was in the hospital at Big Bear Lake. He’d been in a car wreck. He’d suffered fractured ribs and his daughter had minor injuries, the doctor and nurses had told him the previous night.

  But my wife?

  The doctors and nurses made no mention of Emma as Ben was being sedated. He recalled moments from the crash but his memory was a puzzle with missing pieces emerging slowly, not giving him the full picture.

  Not yet.

  A new nurse was tending to him this morning.

  “What about my wife, Emma?” he asked her. “And the other people? There were other people.”

  The nurse’s eyes were shining, heavy with sorrow. “Try to relax, Mr. Grant.”

  Then the door opened and two San Bernardino deputies and a doctor came into the room.

  They were accompanying Kayla, her face bearing cuts, scrapes, bandages on her chin and neck. She kissed him and took his hand.

  The doctor looked to one of the deputies, then cleared his throat. “We’re very sorry Mr. Grant, but your wife did not survive her injuries. She passed away.”

  The earth stood still.

  Ben could not believe the doctor’s words because he had shut down.

  All he could manage was: “What?”

  Kayla caressed the top of his head, then leaned her face to him, gently touched her head to his.

  “Emma’s gone, Dad.” She sobbed. “She’s dead.”

  It’s not true.

  Ben couldn’t believe it, beseeching God to intervene, to let it not be true. Breathing hard, lightning flashed in his mind, pulling him back to when he had first met Emma, her first words to him.

  “You have a deep understanding for everyone touched by the crime—even the killers. Your writing reaches a part of me.”

  Ben opened his mouth to speak but ceased his effort.

  He was deaf to what the deputies and doctor were now saying, a new icy thought piercing him: Kayla. This was the second mother she’d lost. The second wife he’d lost—only miles apart.

  The karmic wheel had turned on him.

  Again.

  After everyone but Kayla left, Ben hugged her while wrestling with his grief. And confusion.

  “Dad,” Kayla said, tears rolling down and over her bandages, “I’d be dead too, if Emma hadn’t pushed me out of the way. She saved my life and sacrificed hers.”

  Three women, including Emma, were killed, and two people, Ben and Kayla, were injured in a two-car collision involving pedestrians. That was the first confirmed report released out of San Bernardino’s Big Bear Sheriff’s Station.

  Ben declined all media calls that came to the hospital.

  Anguished in his recovery, Ben hadn’t yet revealed to anyone what the woman dying next to him in the ambulance had claimed: that Emma, his wife, was a cold, calculating, remorseless killer.

  How could this be?

  Ed Tracy had told him Emma hadn’t killed anyone.

  What should I believe?

  Saying he want
ed to thank first responders, Ben managed to speak privately with the paramedic, Lauren Fenton, who had been in the ambulance when he was transported after the crash. Ben asked her what the other patient had said.

  “I was on the phone at the time,” Fenton told him. “I never picked up on what she said.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Not a word. If it helps,” Fenton said, “people say all kinds of things when they’re in a traumatic situation, and often it doesn’t make sense.”

  Ben then told police all he could recall, including the claim made by the dying woman.

  Kayla had also recounted for police the events leading up to her flight with Emma to the cabin, and the actions and ramblings of the disturbed woman who’d attacked her. Kayla’s attacker had been tentatively—they stressed tentatively—identified as Lucy Isabel Lavenza of New York City.

  The deceased driver of the opposing car had also been tentatively identified as Victoria Tullock, a Canadian citizen, from Toronto. San Bernardino County was working with the FBI, and other investigators, to confirm Torrie’s identity and determine her actions prior to the fatalities, including her possession of a firearm and links to tracking devices on Emma Grant’s car and Lucy Lavenza’s rental.

  * * *

  The story drew news headlines around the world, lighting up social media.

  Ben declined the mounting interview requests he’d received when he was released and got home with Kayla to Cielo Valle.

  Tug was overjoyed to see them but whimpered when he searched the house for Emma.

  In the days that followed, they received cards, flowers, calls and messages of condolences from Emma’s friends and colleagues, Kayla’s friends, Ben’s agent, publishers, his readers, along with actors, directors and writers involved in screen adaptations of his books.

  Some asked about funeral arrangements. But Ben delayed holding any kind of service for Emma because he was tormented by uncertainty arising from the incident in the ambulance and awaiting results from investigators.

  I refuse to believe that I was married—and in love with—a deranged murderous liar who deceived me. Have I been staring too long into the abyss?