Born To Die

by Lisa Jackson

  “Who is he?”

  “There’s no reason to bother your father with this.”

  Kacey practically sputtered, “He’s not my father. You were married to my father. But ... this other man? He’s still alive?” Kacey was reeling.

  “Yes.”

  “You still keep in contact with him?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Does he know about me?” she asked and, when her mother didn’t answer, said, “And the others . . .” The faces of the women who had died ran through her brain, women with features so like her own. “Does he know of them? Are they . . .” She shook her head.

  No, no, this was all wrong. Suddenly she doubted her convictions for coming here in the first place. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, stop now. In a voice she didn’t recognize as her own, she asked, “Are you telling me that this ... this man went around impregnating women and just leaving them . . .”

  But Maribelle had fallen silent.

  “Mom . . . ?” There was something more, and Kacey braced herself. “What is it you’re not telling me?”

  The starch seemed to drain out of Maribelle, and she returned to her spot on the couch. Her eyes were focused on the fire, but Kacey knew that she wasn’t seeing the golden flames licking the ceramic logs. No, her mind was far away, in a place that only she knew of, a spot that was in the distant past. “It wasn’t like that. You have to understand. He’s a fine, upstanding man. A pillar of the community, really. People look up to him. . . . Ours was an affair of the heart.”

  She’d elevated her relationship to something pure and special and unique. Still. After over a third of a century.

  “Everyone thinks that. That’s the reason people cheat on their spouses, because this new relationship is just so exciting and new.”

  “But ours . . .” A beatific smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she remembered. She still believed what she and this man had shared was unique to the universe. Swallowing hard, Maribelle shot Kacey a hard look. “You wouldn’t understand. Couldn’t.”

  “Don’t patronize me, Mom!” Kacey hated that she was a part of this, an integral part of this. “Who is he?”

  A pause.

  “Maribelle?”

  “I promised myself that I would never say. And I’ve not broken that vow.”

  “I’ll find out,” Kacey insisted. “And it’ll be worse if I have to go looking.”

  Maribelle stared at her hands. “David doesn’t know.”

  David Spencer. Her mother’s would-be boyfriend. “I won’t tell him,” Kacey stated flatly. “But if he finds out some other way, then there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not going to live this lie another second!”

  Maribelle spoke in a voice that was little more than a whisper. “You’re angry!”

  “Angry and frustrated. You lied to me. All my damned life.”

  “I’m sorry for that. Truly.” She blinked against tears. “It was different then. I was young. Impressionable . . .”

  “Don’t forget married.”

  Maribelle winced. “There were problems there, too. For one thing, I couldn’t get pregnant, not that I planned this, of course, but your father, er, Stanley and I . . . Our marriage was pretty rocky at that time. I was taking classes and met a medical student who was . . .” She let her voice drift off before finishing. “Well, he was everything Stanley wasn’t. We, um, became involved, and just when we decided to call things off, you were conceived.” She looked up at Kacey with tears glistening in her eyes. “I was so happy. I’d thought maybe I was barren, but I’d never been tested, nor had Stanley, and then there you were, a miracle baby!” She smiled a bit through her tears, lifted her hands. “It was a blessing. At least for me. Look at you. I wanted a baby so badly, and you were conceived!”

  Kacey thought of the hardworking father she’d grown up with, the grandparents whose home she’d inherited, and everything seemed off, just half a step out of sync. “Dad will always be—”

  “I know.” Maribelle snagged her glass and walked to her kitchen, where the bottle of pinot noir was breathing on the sleek granite counter she had installed just the year before. “Would you like a little?” she offered, rummaging in a cupboard for another glass.

  Kacey shook her head. The last thing she needed was to think any less clearly than she already was. As Maribelle poured herself another drink, her hands trembling a bit, Kacey stood on the opposite side of the kitchen island. “So who is he, Mom?” Maribelle set the bottle aside. “I think I deserve to know.”

  Her mother twisted the stem and watched the dark liquid swirl, then sniffed it before taking a sip. “I suppose you do,” she agreed finally. “I’ve often thought so, but I just couldn’t tell you.”

  “You’d rather lie.”

  “Avoid the truth. It got easier over time, harder to find a way to . . . Oh, well, I finally decided it was best to let it all die.”

  “I need to meet him.”

  She was startled. “Oh, no! He’s past all this now, and I don’t want you bothering him or his wife.”

  “Wife?” Kacey repeated.

  “Yes. Wife. Of what? Oh, I guess about forty-five years now,” she said with more than a trace of bitterness.

  “I’ll find out who he is whether you tell me or not.”

  “Fine!” Maribelle was angry, but she saw that Kacey was dead serious. Taking a deep breath, she said, “His name is Gerald Johnson.” She glanced up, as if the name would mean something to Kacey. When Kacey didn’t react, she added, “He’s a renowned heart surgeon who helped develop a special kind of stent, and no, he doesn’t know about you. I decided it wouldn’t do any good to tell him. Soon after he left his practice, he moved his family to Missoula.” She shrugged. “It’s common knowledge. You can find that out in seconds on the Internet, so I’m not divulging any secrets there, but please don’t bother him. He wouldn’t appreciate it, and neither would Noreen and her brood.”

  “Noreen being his wife, and his brood meaning his children?”

  Half brothers and sisters. The missing piece. She, who had been raised an only child, had fantasized about a large family with enough siblings to play baseball or board games or cards, even another person for video games.... “How many does he have?”

  “Children?” Maribelle looked up, met her daughter’s gaze. “Five, I think. No, there were twins, so six. Or, was it seven? I can’t remember!” She slid her gaze to the living room and the coffee table, where the pictures Kacey had brought were still strewn. “Well, I guess, maybe even more.”

  That was the understatement of the year. “Maybe a lot more,” Kacey murmured, wondering.

  Who was this guy? A doctor who didn’t practice birth control, never used a condom, and had a string of affairs? The women in the pictures were all around her age, give or take a few years. What kind of Montana Lothario was he? No, something wasn’t right.

  And possibly women were being killed because of it?

  “I need to meet him,” she said again.

  “No!” Maribelle fumbled with her glass. It fell from her hands and shattered against the granite of the counter, splashing red wine onto her sweater and sending shards of glass skittering to the floor. “Oh, look what you’ve done! This sweater cost me a fortune,” she cried and raced off to the bedroom area. Kacey rotely began to clean up the mess.

  A mess that was a whole lot deeper than the spilled wine and shattered crystal.

  CHAPTER 23

  He should have killed the mother.

  That was where he’d made his mistake.

  He knew it now as he sat in his truck just outside the gates of Rolling Hills Senior Estates. He’d trusted that Maribelle Collins would do anything to keep her secret locked away, but now, as he watched Acacia drive out through the gates, he wondered what she knew, what damage she could wreak.

  Too much.

  He should have expected this. Anticipated this move. Was it too late?

  Probably.

  But the old
bat still needed to be silenced.

  It shouldn’t be too hard; from what he understood, she had a heart problem, took nitroglycerin tablets....

  He didn’t have time to deal with her now.

  He had to find out what her damned daughter had learned. If she had found out the truth, he had to stop her before she did anything that would ruin everything. With a final glance over his shoulder toward the still open gates of Rolling Hills, he silently vowed to return.

  He felt his scar pulse as he grabbed his ski mask and pulled it over his head. Then he started his truck and eased out of his parking slot.

  He caught sight of the taillights of Acacia’s Ford far ahead, but he wasn’t worried about losing her. The magnetic, splash-proof GPS device he’d installed in her rear wheel well wouldn’t be discovered until she rotated her tires, and maybe not even then.

  Which would be too late.

  Switching on the tiny monitor, he saw that she’d turned onto the highway, heading west. Toward Grizzly Falls. As expected.

  Relaxing slightly, he began to follow at a safe distance. Checking his rearview mirror, he noticed another vehicle pull out of an alley and turn on its headlights. A niggle of apprehension slithered through his brain.

  It’s nothing! Another car, another driver, no big deal.

  And yet he watched as the headlights behind him, of some kind of sports car, he thought, were steady. Other cars came between them, but for every turn, the sports car behind slowly followed, never catching up, not even at the one stoplight.

  Someone going the same direction as you. Nothing more.

  But he thought of all the times he’d felt he was being watched, as if he were the prey rather than the hunter.

  Even if the car follows onto the main road, heading west, it’s just chance. Happenstance. Another driver going toward Missoula or beyond.

  Relax!

  But his fingers held the steering wheel in a death grip as he turned onto the highway and watched the traffic behind him. Yep, the gray sedan followed, but that wasn’t the vehicle he was watching.... No, the car he was worried about, a black sports car, maybe a BMW . . . didn’t turn onto the highway.

  Good.

  Exhaling a sigh of relief, he was instantly at ease again and, with one final glance to his rearview, turned his attention back to where it belonged. Hitting the gas, he homed in on Acacia. According to his nifty little device, she was less than two miles ahead.

  He planned not only to catch her but to pass her as well.

  Trace heard a moan and then a harsh round of rattling coughs from Eli’s room.

  Taking the stairs two at a time, he flipped on the lights at the second story and pushed open the door. Eli was on the bed, but his hair was sweaty, his face flushed, and his eyes looked sunken.

  “Hey, buddy,” he said, trying to rouse his son. “Eli?” Eli opened a bleary eye. “How ya feelin’?”

  “My throat hurts. Bad.” He blinked himself awake and started coughing deep and hard.

  “I’m going to take your temp again,” Trace said.

  Eli wasn’t very cooperative, but eventually Trace convinced him to slide the thermometer into his mouth. A few minutes later Trace discovered that his temperature had spiked, now showing 105 degrees, way too high for comfort.

  Crushing a children’s Tylenol into water, he insisted his son drink the whole glass, then, walking into the hallway, pulled the door to Eli’s room nearly shut. Sliding a cell phone from his pocket, he dialed the number Kacey had left for him, peering through the crack into his son’s room as he counted off the rings.

  Answer, he silently thought. He was used to tending to injured or sick animals, had dealt with trying to save calves that were twisted in the birth canal, had fought blackleg and pneumonia, and had even had a favorite mare die of colic. Dogs and cats had lived and died, and he accepted that illness and death were part of life.

  But now he was scared.

  By the third ring, he was worried that she wouldn’t answer, but then, just when he was certain he’d have to leave a message, she answered. “Hi. Trace?”

  He got right down to business. “I got your call earlier. Look, Eli’s temperature is up. A hundred and five and he’s coughing, having trouble sleeping.”

  “Bring him down to the clinic,” she said decisively. “I’m on the road and can be there in half an hour. Work for you?”

  “It can.”

  “Good. I’ll see you there.”

  She hung up and Trace wasted no time. He strode into his son’s room and said quietly as he grabbed a jacket and sleeping bag to wrap around his boy, “Let’s go, bud. I’m taking you to see Dr. Lambert.”

  Kacey had been lost in thought most of the drive back from Helena. It was dark now, long past the dinner hour, but she wasn’t hungry. The radio had been playing, but she couldn’t name one song that had been aired. She was too caught up in her own thoughts, replaying everything her mother had told her about Gerald Johnson and his family.

  She dimmed her lights for an oncoming car. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the other vehicles, driving by rote, her mind swimming in the waters of a murky past. Who the hell were Gerald Johnson and his wife? How had Maribelle played a part in their lives and marriage? Who were their children, her blood relatives, half siblings?

  It was almost as if Maribelle was still half in love with Johnson, as if she’d elevated their affair to something that was more romantic, more tragic, as if there was some nostalgic reverence to it.

  Maybe Maribelle was losing it.

  And what about the man she still thought of as her father? Stanley Collins, a hardworking carpenter. She wondered about the day he’d learned the truth, though, of course, she couldn’t remember it, couldn’t even think of one action that indicated his love for his only child had shifted in the least little bit.

  When she reeled back the years of her life, she remembered no incident that would indicate he’d found out the truth. The same held true for her grandparents. If Stanley Collins had ever confided in them, they certainly hadn’t changed their attitude toward her in the slightest.

  But she had the bad feeling that she’d just scratched at a hidden scab that was over a long-festering and maybe deadly wound.

  She snapped off the radio as a rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” was being warbled by some country star she’d never head of. She needed the ride to be quiet so she could think and sort out what exactly she was going to do. Had Jocelyn Wallis or Shelly Bonaventure or Elle Alexander suspected they had been fathered by the same man? Had their mothers all hooked up with the same local Romeo?

  What were the chances?

  Bone weary, she tried to clear her head and concentrate on getting home.

  Tonight traffic was light, the roads nearly clear of snow, though a few crystals shimmered as the moonlight pierced the thin cloud cover. Watching the play of light, Kacey was thinking about the women who had recently died when she spied a still-open coffee kiosk less than ten miles from the outskirts of Grizzly Falls.

  Pulling in, she rolled down her window and ordered a skinny decaffeinated latte from a woman who looked dead on her feet. The Christmas spirit was missing at the kiosk, despite the string of winking colored lights decorating the windows, stencils of snowflakes on the glass, and an advertisement for a Santa’s Cinnamon Blend Latte.

  Waiting in her darkened car, she hoped the steaming milk would coat her stomach, and she accepted the hot cup gratefully, leaving a tip. Showing the barest of smiles, the barista shut the window, then turned off the neon open sign.

  Kacey tasted the hot drink, hoping to warm herself up from the inside out. No amount of adjusting the temperature in her little SUV had been able to ease the chill that had settled in her soul when she’d learned the truth.

  As she was starting to pull out of the gravel, she saw fast-approaching headlights and, holding out her cup from her body, hit the brakes. Her SUV ground to a stop at the edge of the road as a big dark truck s
ped past. Her coffee slopped a little bit onto her lid.

  For a split second she remembered the pickup with the big grille, the one that had put the dent in her back fender, and the driver Grace Perchant had referred to as “evil.”

  Kacey shook that off, still frozen in position. She brought her cup back and sucked up the overflow of coffee.

  Grace wasn’t reliable.

  She thought she could talk to ghosts or something.

  And this was Montana, where pickups reigned.

  For a split second she thought about giving chase, checking to see if the big rig had out-of-state plates with a three or an eight in the lettering. Then Trace called about Eli. All of her thoughts turned to the boy.

  She made it into town in a little over twenty minutes and pulled into the empty parking lot of the clinic. This side of the building was shadowed and dark, only weak light from the streetlight at the front of the clinic offering any kind of illumination.

  She left her finished coffee in the cup holder, locked her car and walked to the back door, where she let herself in with her key and reached for the light switch.

  Click!

  But nothing happened.

  She hit it again, but the rooms remained dark, not even the few security lamps glowing. And it was colder than usual in the offices.

  The damned circuit breaker!

  She’d like to wring her lowlife, tightwad of a landlord’s neck! How many times had she complained, even ordering out an electrician once herself?

  “Great,” she muttered.

  She knew the layout of the offices, of course, and she had a flashlight in her desk drawer, so she worked her way through the back hallway and past the examination rooms, which somehow appeared dangerous and slightly sinister, the odd shapes of the equipment looming like robotic monsters and sending her already vivid imagination into overdrive.

  It’s just the damned lights.

  Fingers running along one wall, she eased past the exam rooms and around the corner. She stubbed her toe on the edge of the freestanding scales, then bit her tongue to keep from letting out a yowl.