Now You See Her

by Joy Fielding

  “I was expecting you an hour ago.”

  “Yeah, well, have you seen what’s doin’ out there? Besides, your ma had to make a pit stop,” Jax said with a sneer, and Marcy had to grip the floor with her toes to keep from falling over.

  “Devon,” Marcy said, louder this time.

  “She prefers Audrey,” Jax said.

  “What’s the matter, Mommy?” the voice asked provocatively. “You don’t look very happy to be here.”

  Marcy spun around in a helpless circle. “Where are you?” she pleaded, her eyes skirting the bare gray walls. “Please, baby, let me see you.”

  “I’m not your baby.” The voice was flat, full of all-too-familiar disdain.

  Marcy’s eyes grew slowly accustomed to the dim light, like a camera lens subtly adjusting its focus. She could see Shannon more clearly now, the frightened girl securely fastened to her high-backed chair. She noted the almost imperceptible movement of Shannon’s feet as they struggled to loosen the rope at her ankles and saw her shoulders straining against the ties that bound her torso to the chair. She read the plea in the girl’s terror-filled eyes as Shannon glanced toward the large iron poker leaning against the jagged, irregular stones of the fireplace, then followed those eyes to a back door at the opposite end of the room.

  “Please, won’t you let me see you?” Marcy begged softly, her whole body aching to take her daughter in her arms. Even now, she thought. Despite the almost surreal tableau in front of her. Despite Devon’s part in it. Despite everything.

  “You’ll see me when I’m ready to be seen.”

  “I just want to hold you.”

  “I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

  “Why not? What’s going on? What are you mixed up in?”

  “Oh, I think you already know the answer to that one. Don’t you, Mommy? Understand you gave the gardai quite an earful. Understand they think you’re as mad as the proverbial hatter.” She laughed. “Which fits into our plans rather nicely, actually.”

  “What plans?” Marcy saw a shadow flicker on the wall, a shake of long dark hair.

  “You want details? You’re not going to like them.”

  “I think you owe me at least that much.”

  “I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

  “Look,” Jax said impatiently. “We’re wastin’ time, Audrey. We’ve got the money. Let’s just shoot ’em and get out of here.”

  A muffled scream escaped the gag at Shannon’s mouth. Her struggles became more obvious and desperate. She began furiously rocking her chair back and forth, back and forth.

  A distant memory echoed through Marcy’s brain—a closet door being opened, then closed, opened, then closed, opened, then closed—as Audrey suddenly emerged from the shadows and walked purposefully into the center of the room, her long dark hair obscuring most of her face, although a gun was clearly visible in her right hand.

  “Relax,” she said to Shannon, laying her free hand forcefully on Shannon’s shoulder, bringing the girl’s wild rocking to an abrupt halt. “We’re not going to shoot you.” She glanced toward Marcy, an unexpected spark from the fireplace dancing across her face, illuminating her cruel smile. “My mother is.”

  Marcy gasped and fell back, as if she’d been struck. Shannon resumed her frantic struggles with her restraints. The baby continued howling at her feet.

  “It’s really very simple, Mommy. You had most of it figured out already. Except your part in it, of course.” Audrey’s smile widened as she warmed to her subject, clearly pleased for this opportunity to show off. “You see, the original plan was to kidnap cranky little Caitlin here, hold her for ransom, and make it look as if Shannon was responsible. But then you entered the picture, showing your stupid photographs to half the populace and telling your ridiculous sob story to anyone who’d listen, so we had to improvise. I mean, your timing really sucked. We’d been planning this for months, and the last thing we wanted was to draw attention to ourselves just when we were ready to make a move. At first we thought we could just ignore you, and maybe you’d go away. But you wouldn’t be ignored and you wouldn’t go away. Then we tried to distract you, but you’re rather single-minded in your focus, aren’t you, Mommy? Then we thought we’d scare you. Turns out you don’t scare all that easily either. We thought of killing you, but then we realized we could actually use you to our advantage, that you could be our—what’s the word for it? Scapegoat? Yeah, that’s it. Poor Marcy, undone by grief over her daughter’s untimely death, fixates on dumb, naive Shannon, and when Shannon rebuffs her pathetic attempts at friendship, she goes off the deep end and hires someone to kidnap her and the baby. Increasingly desperate and delusional, she kills them both, and then, overwhelmed with guilt and remorse, turns the gun on herself. Meanwhile her accomplice disappears with the ransom money.”

  “That would be me,” Jax said, an audible swagger in his voice.

  “Well, not exactly,” Audrey said sweetly, raising the gun in her hand and pointing it directly at Jax’s head.

  “What the hell are you doin’?” Jax asked, all traces of swagger suddenly gone.

  “It’s just so much easier to divide five hundred thousand euros by two than by three, don’t you think?” she asked.

  Then she pulled the trigger.

  Caitlin’s screams filled the air as the bullet lifted Jax off his feet and propelled him backward, his arms shooting up and over his head, his legs extending straight in front of him, blood gushing from the gaping hole in the middle of his forehead as he came crashing to the floor. In the next second Shannon was hurling herself in Audrey’s direction, the chair to which she was tied catching the side of Audrey’s hip and knocking them both to the floor, the gun flying from Audrey’s hand. Marcy grabbed it just as Audrey was about to, their fingers brushing up against each other, sending shockwaves up Marcy’s arm, directly to her heart.

  “Don’t move,” she warned Audrey, pulling back and away, one hand fighting with the other to steady the gun.

  “Could you really shoot me, Mommy?” Audrey asked plaintively as the baby’s cries miraculously shuddered to a halt.

  Marcy stared deep into the young woman’s eyes. “Don’t call me Mommy,” she said forcefully. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not my daughter.”

  “Marcy!” a man shouted, his voice resonating throughout the room, her name bouncing off the walls like a stray bullet.

  Marcy didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. She’d been expecting him. “Liam,” she said, her head angling toward him while she still kept Audrey firmly in her sights.

  “It’s okay, Marcy,” Liam said soothingly, emerging from the doorway. “I’ve been right on your tail all afternoon. The gardai are on their way.” He moved closer. “You can give me the gun. It’s okay now.”

  “Stay back,” she warned, steadying her hand on the weapon.

  He laughed. “Marcy, what are you doin’? It’s me, Liam. I’m on your side, remember?”

  “You’re not on my side.”

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “It was you all along. You planned this whole thing.”

  How else could Audrey have known about her visits to the garda station, that the gardai had dismissed her as delusional with grief, unless Liam had told her? How else could Jax have known about her mother’s suicide and her sister’s many marriages? Or that Devon always called her Mommy? All confidences she’d shared with Liam. Just as she’d told him about her guilt at having yelled at Devon for scribbling on the walls and not practicing her piano lessons correctly. Things she’d never told anyone else.

  “You think this was my idea?” His eyes swept the room. “You think I’m the big criminal mastermind here? You really think I’m that smart?” He took another step forward. “Come on, Marcy. Give me the gun.”

  “You really think I’m that stupid?” Marcy asked in return.

  “Marcy—”

  “Please don’t make me shoot you.”


  “Shoot me? Come on. You’re talkin’ crazy.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure you did a great job of convincing the gardai that I’m nuttier than a jar of cashews.” She laughed, thinking of Judith.

  “A jar of cashews? Do you hear yourself?” Liam asked, as if she’d taken total leave of her senses. Marcy could almost close her eyes and hear Peter. The only difference was the Irish accent. “Come on, Marcy. Put down the gun. You’re hysterical. You don’t know what you’re sayin’.”

  Which was when they heard the sound of sirens approaching in the distance.

  My God, Marcy thought, momentarily distracted by the siren’s abrasive wail. Could she be wrong? Had Liam called the police after all?

  Liam suddenly shot toward her, wresting the gun from her hand and pushing her roughly to the floor. She tripped over Jax’s body and rolled toward the fireplace. “Get the baby,” she heard Liam shout.

  Marcy watched Audrey snatch Caitlin from her box and bolt for the back door, Liam right behind her. Struggling to her feet, Marcy grabbed the poker from beside the fireplace. What the hell am I going to do with this? she wondered.

  She heard Sarah admonish her. Don’t think. Just swing.

  Don’t think, she repeated silently. And then, aloud, “Just swing.”

  She raised her arm, heard the whoosh of the poker as it sliced through the air, absorbed the echo of steel impacting on bone as it connected with Liam’s back, then watched him pitch forward, the gun dropping from his hand as he crumpled to the floor. Marcy grabbed the gun and jumped over his unconscious body, the outside wind snapping at her face like a damp towel as she chased after Audrey. The police sirens were getting closer, filling the air with their caterwauling and harmonizing with Caitlin’s angry screams. Marcy searched frantically through the fog for Audrey, finally spotting her running down the side of the steep hill. Marcy struggled to catch up to her, stumbling repeatedly over the uneven terrain and falling twice. In the distance, she could make out at least half a dozen police cars making their way up the winding road. “Audrey,” she shouted toward the fleeing woman. “Stop! The gardai are here. You can’t get away.”

  Audrey’s response was to edge even closer to the side of the cliff, the wind causing her long hair to dance wildly around her face, highlighting her superficial resemblance to Devon.

  “There’s nowhere to go,” Marcy told her over the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below. Although they were standing no more than ten feet apart, they had to shout to be heard.

  “One more step and it’s bye-bye, baby.” Audrey extended the arm holding Caitlin, dangling the infant over the side of the cliff.

  Marcy pictured her mother in the seconds before she took her fatal plunge, imagined her flying through the air to the concrete below. “Just give her to me, Audrey,” Marcy pleaded. “That way at least you’ll have a chance of getting away.”

  “And what are the odds of that, do you think?” Audrey said. “Think I can just disappear into thin air?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Like your daughter?”

  Tears stung Marcy’s eyes. “My daughter didn’t disappear,” she said, acknowledging the truth aloud for the very first time. Her mother and her daughter, she thought, flip sides of the same tragic coin. “She’s dead.”

  “Thought you didn’t believe that.”

  “I didn’t want to believe it.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you what,” Audrey said as somewhere behind them cars screeched to a halt and doors slammed shut. “I’ll make you a trade—the baby for the gun. What do you say?”

  “It’s a deal,” Marcy agreed quickly.

  “You first,” Audrey directed. “Toss the gun over here.” She pointed with her free hand to a patch of grass near her feet. “No funny stuff or I swear the kid takes a very nasty tumble.”

  “No funny stuff.” Marcy gently pitched the gun in the appointed direction, watched it disappear into the tall, wet grass next to Audrey’s feet. “Now give me the baby.”

  Audrey stared at Marcy for several long seconds, as if debating her next move. Then she advanced slowly forward, extending the baby toward Marcy.

  Just like my dream, Marcy thought, holding her breath. Here’s the girl you’ve always wanted, Devon had said, just before releasing the baby in her arms and letting her fall.

  My baby is dead, Marcy thought. I couldn’t save her.

  “She’s all yours,” Audrey said now, dropping the crying baby into Marcy’s grateful hands.

  “Marcy!” a voice shouted as Vic Sorvino emerged from the fog and ran toward them.

  Audrey jumped at the sound of his voice. She lunged toward the gun in the grass, tripping over her feet and losing her tenuous grip on the bumpy ground. Marcy watched helplessly as she stumbled backward, unable to control the muscles in her legs, her arms flailing wildly at her sides as her feet lost contact with the earth and she plunged off the side of the steep hill, her screams echoing in the wind, accompanying her into the frigid waves of Roaringwater Bay below.

  THIRTY-ONE

  WHEN DID YOU REALIZE she wasn’t your daughter?” Vic was asking, holding on tightly to Marcy’s still-shaking hands.

  They were sitting side by side in front of the messy desk in Christopher Murphy’s office at the garda station. Murphy had just excused himself to confer with Donnelly and Sweeny in another room.

  “Not right away,” Marcy answered. “It was dark in the farmhouse, so when I first saw her I couldn’t be sure. Her hair was the same as Devon’s; she looked to be the same height and build. The shape of her face was similar, although her voice was different, even when she whispered. But she kept calling me Mommy, and so I kept telling myself that it had been a few years since the last time I’d heard her speak, and that she was older now and she’d been experimenting with various accents, that her voice could have changed. The usual rationalizations. I’ve gotten pretty good at them lately.” She sighed, deciding that “rationalizations” was something of an understatement. “Anyway, like I said, it was pretty dark, and at first she kept her head down. Her hair was hiding most of her face. And then Jax said they should just shoot us and get the hell out of there, and Audrey walked over to Shannon and said, cold as ice, ‘We’re not going to shoot you. My mother is.’ And suddenly, there was this spark from the fireplace that lit up her whole face. She was smiling, and I heard Peter say, ‘That girl needs a good set of braces.’ ” Marcy shook her head. “And that just knocked the wind right out of me. I mean, you remember the picture of Devon with her porcelain braces. Her teeth were perfect, and this girl’s teeth were crooked. They weren’t Devon’s teeth!” She released a long, audible breath. “The truth is I probably knew all along.” She reached into the purse on her lap and withdrew the tattered envelope containing Devon’s photographs and the note her daughter had written, handing it over to Vic. “You can read it,” she said as Vic gently unfolded the piece of paper. “I think I knew it was a suicide note all along. I just didn’t want to accept it. I kept telling myself that she could have changed her mind at the last second. Or that she just wanted us to think she was dead.”

  Vic read the letter, then quietly returned it to Marcy’s purse. “She obviously loved you very much.”

  Marcy nodded. “I loved her, too. But it wasn’t enough to save her.”

  “I loved my wife,” Vic said. “It wasn’t enough to save her either.”

  “Your wife had cancer. It’s not the same thing.”

  “Isn’t it? They were both sick. Sick with something they couldn’t control. You have nothing to feel guilty for, Marcy.”

  “Don’t I? I told her I was tired of parenting. What kind of mother does that make me?”

  “A pretty normal one.”

  Marcy thought again of the times she’d berated Devon for not concentrating on her piano studies, of that awful afternoon when she’d hollered at the proud toddler for scribbling on the walls, the way the child had turned and clutched her stomach, as if she’d been mor
tally wounded.

  Except that Devon’s note hadn’t mentioned any of those things, Marcy realized. Instead she’d written about all the wonderful times they’d shared, the happy memories of watching TV together, of going to the ballet and relaxing at the cottage. She’d talked only of love.

  “I loved her so much,” Marcy said, crying softly.

  “I know you did. And more important, Devon knew it.”

  Marcy swiped at the tears falling down her cheeks with the back of her hand as the door opened and Christopher Murphy reentered the room, followed by John Sweeny and Colleen Donnelly.

  “Apparently Mr. Flaherty has supplied us with a full confession,” Murphy said, coming around to his side of the desk and plopping down in his swivel chair.

  It took Marcy a few seconds to comprehend that Liam was the Mr. Flaherty in question, a little longer to digest the rest of what Murphy was saying.

  “It seems that Liam’s father used to work for the O’Connors’ construction company. He was killed in an accident at work some years back, and according to Liam, his family was denied proper compensation. Liam decided to rectify that by kidnapping the O’Connor baby and holding her for ransom. He met Audrey when Jax brought her ’round to Grogan’s House one night. Audrey was new in town, from London originally, in and out of trouble most of her life. Together, the three of them hatched this plan to seduce Shannon and kidnap Caitlin, all stuff you pretty much had figured out,” Murphy said with an admiring nod in Marcy’s direction. He leaned forward, resting his elbows uneasily on the mounds of paperwork. “Then you showed up, convinced you’d seen your daughter, and started showing Devon’s picture around, and apparently a nosy waitress decided she thought the picture looked like Audrey. Things just sort of mushroomed from there.”

  “When did they kidnap the baby?” Marcy asked, trying to assign an order to the day’s events, as if that might help explain them.

  “This morning, when Shannon took her for a walk. The ransom demand was made within minutes of her being spirited off. Mr. O’Connor had three hours to come up with the money and was warned not to contact us or Caitlin would die.”