She ran, and I took off after her. In seconds, we were in a gray Nissan Versa, rocketing away from the police station. As it was a small outpost in a tiny village, we hit the open road in no time at all. The St. Lawrence River was to our left, open lands to our right, and a large forest loomed into view. I looked around us. “I don’t see any other cars.”
Lilly gripped the wheel. “If you can, so can he. Don’t worry. They’re out there.”
I closed my eyes and dropped my head back, wincing. The exertion and lack of sleep were taking a toll. My temples throbbed. “In the hospital—” I said, my mind prodding at me.
“What?”
“Before you came into Jake’s room, Nestor had his hands on my neck. I thought he was trying to soothe my pains. And the pills—just one knocked me out. Was I that tired, or were they something other than Percocet? What if I’d taken both?” I turned to her. “Would I be dead now?”
She cut her eyes to me. “Don’t think about it.”
I sat back, trying to find calm as we barreled down the road. Cool breeze flowed over my arm resting on the open window. I breathed in the heady scent of pine and listened to bird calls over the drone of the engine and the whoosh of air as the car split the atmosphere before us.
I closed my eyes and forced myself to breathe steadily. Jake’s dead. My mind repeated it again and again. Don’t let him down, a voice whispered in my thoughts. Don’t give up. Think. It’s your only weapon. Something doesn’t fit. Timing is everything. Think!
“Why would he do this?” I said, as much to myself as to Lilly.
She glanced over. “Who? Nestor?”
“He can’t have been so angry with Jake over his intervention for Hunter. That’s too petty. But what other reason would there be? Maybe it had something to do with Chris dying. Think of the timing: it happened a few days ago. But what relationship could Nestor have had with Chris?” I scowled, staring into the trees on either side of the steep embankment as we entered the forest.
Lilly chewed at her lower lip. As she shifted, I caught a glimpse of her holster. Apparently being part of an official party meant she could carry her gun into a foreign country. “Chris?”
“Chris Crowel. He was Jake’s daughter’s boyfriend, except he also had his fair share of boyfriends and girlfriends. And that caused a lot of trouble, especially the extra boyfriends. Wait!” A thought circled around in my brain. “It’s so obvious! Lilly! Nestor was Chris’s lover!”
“What!” She whirled to face me, the wheel turning with her. The car skidded into the shoulder, bumping and sliding as the tires dug into the dirt. She gripped the steering wheel hard, twisting it, and slammed the gas pedal down, propelling us back onto the road. “Are you crazy?”
The jolt had thrown me into the side of the car, right onto my bad shoulder. Grimacing, I reached up to massage it. “Think about it! In the note, Nestor called Jake ‘Big D.’ Chris must have told him Adalida’s nickname for her father. And that’s how he knew about Tina and her affair with Lathos. He would’ve realized their regular rendezvous provided the perfect opportunity for setting Jake up. Maybe Lathos was involved, or maybe not, but even if not, he could have easily gotten someone to play Lathos’s so-called wife.” I struck the ceiling with a fist. “It all fits. Nestor said he’d been following Hunter and me, that’s why he was close when the call on the submerged car came in. Hell, maybe he was waiting there to make sure I died!” Anger churned in my gut. “The bastard! He knew you were working a double shift, so he could follow us without drawing suspicion. He attacked me while Hunter went out the back door of the apartment.” Timing is everything, a voice in my head said. “That’s a fact,” I murmured.
“What is?”
“It’s just something that I keep thinking: timing is everything. I even dream about it—stupid dreams about silver snow and piles of soot. Not to mention ‘Candygram for Mongo,’ ” I said in my best Cleavon Little imitation.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“You know: ‘Candygram for Mongo.’ From Blazing Saddles. When the sheriff tricked the bad guy into taking a bomb. The Zach in my dreams kept going on about the Candygram and how timing is everything and—wait! That must be what the Evil Little Dream Pixie has been trying to get me to focus on.” I held a finger up. “I kept seeing the ingredients of the bomb. The silver snow and disintegrating airplane were aluminum powder. The snow and the jail bars turned into soot: powdered charcoal. The piles of bull manure, like fertilizer, contain explosive chemicals. And Semi-Naked Dream Zach reminding me of resin was a clue too.”
Suddenly, I was slammed hard into the door as we were struck from the side. Airbags slammed Lilly and me backward. I screamed and clutched the dash as the car whiplashed left and veered across the road. We hit the gravel shoulder and went skidding before, just as suddenly, we rocked to a stop.
Disoriented and dizzy, I pulled myself up and looked at Lilly. Her body was limp, and her head lay on the steering wheel, blood dripping over the deflated airbag and onto her lap. As I reached for her, the door fell away behind me, and a hand gripped my arm with manic strength.
I was being dragged away from the car, desperately backpedaling to keep on my feet. A large, rough hand grabbed mine, spinning me around so that I was running in tow down the steep, wooded embankment.
“Nestor!” I yanked, breaking loose from his grip. He reached out again and gripped both my arms so hard I thought my bones would crack. I yelped in pain.
To my surprise, he let go and stepped back. But when I got a good look at his face, I nearly fell to my knees with shock. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red, swollen tear ducts. His unshaven face was streaked with sweat, and his unwashed hair was plastered against his head. Yet it was the look of desperation and despair that staggered me.
“Oh God, Nestor,” I said, in barely a whisper. “Why? How could you do this?”
He looked up the hill, toward the car, and then back to me, his eyes roving my face as if looking for salvation itself. I shifted my footing, readying to run, hopeless as that would be.
Nestor stumbled backward. For a moment, he looked like he might fall. I almost reached out for him as pity flooded through me.
He licked his parched lips. “I’m sorry.”
I stared at him, momentarily incredulous. Pity melted like butter under a blowtorch from the sheer inadequacy of that statement. “You’re, you’re sorry? That’s all you have to say?” My blood rose, pounding in my ears. “You’re sorry? You traitorous bastard! I fucking trusted you!”
He flinched, eyes darting away as he rubbed the thick, short bristles of his beard. “I didn’t mean for it to go so far. It was for my sister. I was trying to save her. That son of a bitch was destroying everything. I had to stop him. But we couldn’t catch him. We tried. God, you have to believe me. Madison, please!” He took lurching steps toward me. As I flinched, he stopped. His hands dropped to his sides, and he swayed, eyes closed. When he opened them again, tears streaked his filthy face. In a coarse whisper he said again, “I’m sorry. Please. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head, resisting the urge to care as I watched a man whom I’d admired and even longed for crumble before me. “Now what? You’ll kill me? Like you did the others?”
He nodded, his red, brimming eyes betraying utter and complete wretchedness. His voice was a hollow echo of his former humanity. “I’m a murderer.”
“Yes, you are, you bastard. And none of them deserved it.”
He broke down, sobbing. Rubbing his hands over his eyes, he nodded. “He didn’t. He didn’t. To die like that, in flames. Did he suffer? Dios, Dios. Forgive me. You were there. Did he suffer? You have to tell me.” He fell to his knees, his hands raised to me in supplication. “For my family, my sister. I was trying to save her. I swear to God. You have to believe me!”
“Fuck you,” I spat at him. “You’re a monster. I don’t believe anything you say.”
He sank down on his haunches. “I don’t,” he sa
id, still sobbing. “I didn’t know—at the office, when the bomb went off—until I heard his description. I only suspected. But he was at the hospital.” He swallowed hard. “It couldn’t be a coincidence. And now they found his body.”
“Whom did they find? Sweet Jesus, Nestor, did you kill someone else?”
He shook his head and dragged a sleeve across his running nose. “On his body … receipts … in my name. The powders, the fertilizer, in my name. I don’t know what happened.” His shoulders slumped. “It’s my fault.”
I studied him. He was distracted, off guard. Carefully, I edged away. “It’ll be all right.”
He laughed a short, hopeless laugh. “No,” he said, his voice almost too weak to carry.
“Sure it will. We can go back. You can make amends. No more killing.”
From behind his back, he pulled out a huge forty-five-caliber handgun.
I jerked to a halt. Ice ran down my spine as I watched death pointed at me. “Please,” I said, my voice quiet and trembling. “Please, you don’t have to do this. I don’t want to die.”
He was still on his knees, his body shaking, but the gun held steady enough. His eyes were full of pleading. “I came for you, because you saw.”
I nodded, my eyes flooding with tears of frustration, my throat too swollen to speak.
“You saw. Did he suffer? Please, I’m begging you. Tell me.”
My mind swirled, buffeted by both rage and terror. “Who? Which of your victims do you want to know about? Do any of them matter? Why would you care?”
“The old man,” Nestor said in barely a whisper. “Did he suffer?”
Swallowing hard, I blinked in confusion. “Mr. Keeper?”
He nodded.
I hesitated, not knowing whether a lie or the truth would save me, or kill me. Finally, I said, “No, I don’t think so. The blast was too big. I think he died instantaneously.”
Relief washed over him like a baptismal rain. He groaned and smiled, lifting his face to the sky. “Gracias, Dios. God is merciful.”
“Not from where I stand,” I said sullenly.
Tears continued to stream down his face. “He is. He forgives all. I know I have to pay: an eye for an eye. But I had to know if he suffered. And now I can put my soul in His hand.” He sniffed back his tears, wetly wiping his nose again. I saw a shadow of his former calm strength return to his features. He gestured toward me with the gun. “Now, you have to go.”
“Go?” Salty tears flowed over my lips, and I scrubbed them away. “You mean die?” I stepped backward, glancing up the hill. “You think God will forgive you for that?”
“I’ve done what I could, up there, for you.” He nodded to the road. “Now, turn around.”
“Why, so you can shoot me in the back? Fuck you!”
“Will you forgive me?”
“No! Never! I hope you rot in hell for eternity, you fucking traitor! You bastard!”
He smiled. Yes, he smiled. It was serene, relieved. “You’re safe. And God will judge me as He should.” Then he raised the gun to his chin. My eyes shot wide. He closed his eyes and whispered something low. His finger contracted on the trigger.
I stepped forward, reaching out to him. “Nestor, no!”
The blast ricocheted through the surrounding forest, startling the birds into flight. A red fountain exploded from the top of his head. He fell forward.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Stumbling backward, I tripped over a root and landed on my ass. I sat there, dumbly watching Nestor’s blood seep into the dirt and then form a puddle when the earth could drink no more of it. Nearby a squirrel skittered over dried pine needles, and the wind ruffled leaves above me. The scent of sunbaked earth mixed with the iron tang of blood and my own sour sweat.
And I just sat there, staring.
Finally, I struggled to my feet and then used the bottom of my shirt to scrub away the tears and snot, sniffing wetly. I looked around, my numbed brain trying to remember the way back to the car. I chose a direction and, out of sheer luck, found myself climbing the rise to the road. My head pounded and my stomach churned, harbingers of a migraine. Fuck!
Lilly’s car came into view. It was half off the blacktop, tires sunk into the soft dirt, the chassis perched at a precarious angle on the steep embankment. The left rear panel was caved in. Yellow paint from Nestor’s car—battle-scarred and thirty feet away—was streaked across it.
Seeing Lilly still slumped over the wheel brought me back like a slap to the face. I ran to the car, hauling myself up the last steps by grabbing on to the listing bumper.
I wrenched open the door. Breathless with exertion, lightheaded with pain, I touched the face of the woman who had tried to save me from her own partner. Had it cost her life?
As she stirred beneath my touch, I sighed with relief. Gingerly, I felt for broken bones where her clavicle had impacted the wheel. No breaks. My hand brushed against her shifted shoulder holster, which I gently settled back into place. Damn it! I could have used that gun to stop Nestor. The thought filled me with regret. But why should it? He deserved what happened. A murderer was dead and any of his future victims were now safe.
So why was my heart breaking?
Lilly groaned and tried to push herself up. I put my hand to her back and carefully eased her into a sitting position. “Shh. Shh. It’s okay,” I said. “I have you. You’re safe now.”
“What—”
I lowered myself, sitting on my heels, beside her. “It was Nestor. He’s dead now.”
She blinked and took several deep breaths. Blearily, she said, “Tell me.”
I related everything as exactly as I could, empathizing with her every grimace.
Finally turning to me, her expression resolute, she said, “Take me to him.”
“Lilly, there’s nothing you can do. You’re hurt. Our first priority is to get you help—”
Pushing me aside, she rose to her feet. She swayed a step but brushed aside my offered hand. After a few steadying breaths, she started down the incline through the tall pines.
I blew out a breath and stood. “That way,” I said, gesturing left, noticing as I did sticky yellow paint from the bumper on my palm. I brushed it off on my jeans. In so doing, my hand impacted Nestor’s cell phone, still clipped to my belt. Oh for God’s sake, how could I have forgotten about it? I could have called for rescue a dozen times already! I’m such an idiot!
As we trekked down the hill, Lilly’s stride becoming steadier, I trudged wearily in tow, brooding on Nestor’s obsession with Mr. Keeper. Why had he been so fixated on only one of his victims? Surely the old man was just an innocent bystander. Jake, Octaviano, and Tina all seemed to be part of the same story; probably Chris and Adalida were too. But Mr. Keeper? How did he fit? The office building was his only link to Jake, a place that had been bombed in an attempt on Jake’s life. Nestor had admitted to being involved. He’d even rattled off the ingredients—
Wait!
I stopped dead as the reality hit me like a 30GeV electron beam. Rocked with the insight, I weaved as I looked down at the paint I’d just wiped off on my jeans. It wasn’t the same color as Nestor’s rented car. And dried paint isn’t sticky. I’d seen this gummy material before.
And I knew.
Nestor wasn’t the only killer in these woods.
Like Dorothy—flinching as the screens crashed to the floor, fabric ripping, the discordant cacophony of clanging pipes, nuts and bolts skittering across polished marble, echoing through the cavernous hall as the illusion fell apart, revealing the fussing, inept Wizard—I got it!
Timing is everything, Dream Zach had said. But who had first said that to me? At the scene of the fire, while Mr. Keeper’s body was being hauled away, who had uttered the comment that had started my dreaming? Those surreal forays had cryptically taunted me, berated me to focus on the bomb. The timing of it, yes, but, even more on when I first saw the ingredients.
I glanced at the woman tramping purposefully through the
brittle forest undergrowth and caught clear sight of the yellow resin streaked across the butt of her gun that I’d touched moments before. And who had I touched at the hospital only to come away with the same gummy resin, thinking at the time it had come from the coffee machine? On whose nightstick had I seen what I thought was dirt, but I now knew had to be charcoal dust?
Lilly!
My mind soared with that dizzying joy of discovery, like the first leap from an airplane, parachute strapped to your back, that yahoo feeling of doing something wildly alive and daring—followed immediately by the deafening roar of wind in your ears, the sight of solid, unyielding ground rocketing at you at bone-pulverizing velocity, and the bowel-evacuating terror screeching now what the hell are you going to do in your ear.
Reacting to my reflexive mew of distress, Lilly glanced over her shoulder. “What is it?”
You’re an evil bitch, that’s what it is! I wanted to scream. But the last time I thought it a good idea to confront a murderer with no rescue at hand had netted me a gun to the temple.
Oh!Wait. I know what to do.
Surreptitiously, I felt for Nestor’s cell. Fatigue was taking its toll and my hand shook, but I still managed to thumb it on. I hit the “talk” button twice, calling the last number I’d dialed. Palming the speaker, I coughed to hide the muted ring and pickup.
Lilly stopped fully and turned, narrowing her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I was just thinking how close I came to being Nestor’s latest victim,” my voice was thin and thready. I rubbed the bridge of my nose as the thumping behind my eyes intensified.
I told you the handsome, square-jawed cop was a good guy, a pixie-like voice in my head said. Shut up, my dominant inner voice replied. We can fight it out later. If we survive!
I went on. “It’s terrible that Nestor’s dead. But Lilly, you’re right about backup.”
She blinked. “I didn’t say anything about backup.”
I swallowed as the urge to throw up surged. “You’re right. It was someone else who recently told me never to confront trouble without backup. But you don’t have to put a gun to my head to teach me that lesson. Nope, no gun to the head needed.”
The Last Best Lie Page 26