by Gail Lukasik
I moved back away from the cave, but it was too late. As I turned around, Eva Peck stood in front of the fire. She held a rifle in her hand that was pointed at me.
“I knew you’d come,” she said.
“What’s going on?” I asked, looking from Eva to Sarah. Eva’s eyes looked clouded, as if she was blind.
“She said if I called you, she’d tell me where Joyce’s child was. I knew Joyce had been looking for her right before she . . . .” Sarah let out a deep breath. “I thought the child was adopted. I thought . . .” She choked on the words. “I didn’t know she killed it.”
“It wasn’t killed.” Eva’s face glowed and glistened in the light. “It was suffocated.” The way she emphasized the word suffocated seemed as if she thought that made the outcome different.
“You made a promise, Mother. To Joyce. You promised you’d take care of her child,” Sarah whispered.
“There was no other way, Sarah.” Eva talked slowly, as if she was speaking to a child. “She would have ruined everything. I thought you’d understand that. You know the family has to come first. Haven’t I always told you that? If you don’t have a family, what do you have?”
“Mother, I believed you. Joyce and I both believed you. How could you have done that? Not just to Joyce, but to that innocent baby?”
“Be quiet and sit down. Both of you.” Eva motioned with the rifle toward the fire. Her voice was low and menacing. “Put out that flashlight.”
Sarah switched off the flashlight, slipped it into her pocket, and sat down. My mind was racing as I sat down on the hard, snowy ground.
So the killer had never been Renn Woulff or Rob Martin or Sarah Peck. But Eva Peck? Why on earth would she kill her husband or Joyce’s baby? In some degree of shock, I asked, “Why did you do all this, Eva?”
With some effort, she squatted on her haunches in front of the fire. She cradled the gun in her arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t do anything.” She twitched the gun in my direction.
“Then why are we here? And why are you holding a gun on us?”
“No one can know.”
“Know what?”
“Who the father was.” She answered. “That silly, stupid girl. What did she think, he was going to leave me? He didn’t love Joyce. He always came home to me.” Her eyes were so wide I could see the dark, muddy pupils. They looked like brown glass. “The only thing she did right was to keep her mouth shut. But I knew. He could never hide anything from me. I followed him once. He took her right there in the woods, on the ground like animals. Disgusting.” Eva closed her eyes for a moment.
She shifted the gun slightly. “But things have a way of working out. No prayer goes unanswered. One night Sarah comes to me, says her friend needs help. She’s outside in the car. So I go. And there she is, lying down in the back seat and clutching her big ugly stomach. Crying in pain for me to help her. It was perfect. I took her out back to his workshop. I could see she was close to birthing the baby. She begged me to take her to the hospital. I told her they’d ask too many questions. She’d have to say who the father was. ‘You want to bring that shame on your grandmother?’ I asked her. She didn’t say anything, just kept moaning. I told her I’d help her if she’d let me take the child. I’d see it got adopted. Nobody would ever have to know. But she could never, ever try to find the child or talk about it to anyone. I made her promise."
In the firelight, Eva's eyes had a dangerous glint. She gripped the rifle stock. "But Joyce broke her promise.”
“What about him?” Sarah gasped. “It wasn’t just Joyce, Mother. Can’t you see that? He was always after some woman or other.”
“He was like all men, Sarah.” Eva sounded endlessly patient. “He’d have his good days and his bad. But the worst thing would be to lose him and break up the family. I couldn’t let that happen.”
Sarah’s laugh came out choked, as if it had been trapped inside her. “When were the good days, Mother? When he let you go to church? Let you cook and slave for him? How about when he wouldn’t let you work? When he twisted your arm in front of his friends until you cried out? How about the late night beatings?”
Eva's eyes flared, and she covered her mouth, shaking her head.
“Did you think you could hide that from me?”
“Sarah, your father was a flawed man, but you know he wasn’t horrible twenty-four hours a day.”
“Spoken like a true victim.” Sarah’s words were tumbling out as if they had a will of their own. “I was glad when I thought you might have killed him. I didn’t care. I wanted to celebrate. I was on your side. Finally, I thought you'd mustered the guts to stand up for yourself. But now, after what you did to Joyce’s baby. Then not to tell me it was my own father. Did it occur to you, Mother, that baby was my half sister? You killed my baby sister.”
“I told you, I didn’t kill anyone. Carl picked those mushrooms himself. Came home with two kinds. Asked me if I could tell the difference between the angel of death and a harmless mushroom. He said it would be easy to make a mistake if you didn’t know what you were doing.” Eva was becoming so agitated, she was jerking the rifle from side to side. “He made the mistake. Him, not me. You think I would kill my own husband?”
"Of course it was someone else's fault, Mother, that's the whole story of your life, isn't it?" Sarah's tone was bitter and biting.
I had to somehow get her to stop inciting her mother. “Eva, of course, it wasn’t your fault. Whatever happened . . .” I tried to cajole her, tried to keep this crazy woman talking until I could think of some way out.
“It wasn’t my fault. I was just a girl, a child,” Eva began. “He was a friend of my father’s. He said he was going to visit the grave of his dead wife. I waited in the car while he did. It was hot that day. There was sweat on the back of my legs. They stuck to the leather seat.” She gripped the rifle, but stared past me, past Sarah, past the fire and this place.
“But I could have run away. The car wasn’t locked. But I was used to doing what adults told me. I was a good girl. I was brought up strict. Then we drove to a run down house he owned. Then . . .”
Her eyes went dead with the memory. Sarah and I looked at each other, unsure what Eva was referring to, but only able to wait in the firelight; I could feel the air grow more dense, like something besides weather or time had thickened it.
Eva was suddenly in a place that we could not see or know. “After that, he’d give me money. A dime. I’d buy candy. I loved the taste of sugar.” She sighed, and spoke now more to herself than to us. “He gave me a pin shaped like a heart. A green rhinestone heart.”
Certainly I hadn’t been prepared for Eva's revelation. I suddenly realized she had been wearing that pin when I had first interviewed her after her husband’s death. She had sat in that tidy living room feigning grief, wearing the pin of her abuser. My stomach roiled with disgust, but I managed to ask, “And you never told anyone about what that man did to you?”
“He said he’d hurt my family. So I bore it, I kept quiet. But I never forgot what he did. Where he touched me. How he looked, how he smelled of onions. Just thinking of that smell makes me sick. I hated him for what he did to me.”
I heard Sarah gasp, still she and I waited here under Eva's control, the twigs snapping in the fire, the icy air closing in around us. Eva remained far away, her face strangely calm. Finally Sarah said in desperation, “Mother, you could have told me. We could have gotten you help.”
Eva seemed not to hear her daughter. “Then that night when Carl came home after being with Joyce again after all these years, he told me he was leaving me. ‘You fat, stupid cow,’ is what he said. 'You make me sick.' After all the humiliations, after everything I did to make a home for him. I made him sick. That was the worst thing, the thought of him leaving and taking away our family name. I simply couldn’t allow that. After all of those years of keeping quiet, of keeping our secret for the sake of the family. Hadn’t I done my part? And now he wa
s leaving me.”
Somehow in Eva’s damaged mind, the man who abused her and Carl Peck had merged. She aimed the rifle at Sarah. “That friend of yours. It was all Joyce's fault. She did it, she told him about that child. After she promised not to tell. ‘You bitch,’ he called me, ‘You lying bitch!’ He was ranting and raving that I had betrayed him. Me. After all the women. I had betrayed him.”
“And that’s why you killed him?” Sarah asked. “Why didn’t you just let him leave?’
“Poisoned, not killed. He was poisoned.” She spat at Sarah. “After he was dead, I thought he was playing a joke on me, pretending to be dead. I sat there with him, waiting for him to say something. Then I thought, now I can hold my head up in town. People feel sorry for widows. Now I don’t have to be ashamed.”
All the horrible pieces of this family tragedy were falling into place for me. “You slipped the Antabuse in my drink when I went to the bathroom.”
“It was only a warning. For your own good.”
“I almost died!” In spite of Eva's waning grip on reality, I felt indignant.
“But you didn’t. I knew what I was doing. Only you didn't leave well enough alone, did you?”
“And Sarah, you overdosed Sarah and wrote the suicide note. You wanted her to be blamed for Carl’s death. In fact, you had this planned from the beginning. That’s why you insisted on an autopsy.”
“You’re not as smart as you think you are." Eva got to her feet with surprising agility, and now leveled the rifle at me.
I knew I had to keep her talking. “And Joyce. How did you get her to take the pills?"
She let the rifle drop a few inches. “She took those pills herself. I didn’t do anything. By the time I got there, she was already dead. I turned her over and made sure the whore was dead.”
With my eyes glued to the rifle, I shifted my legs to the right and leaned forward, ready to make a move of my own. “If you didn’t have anything to do with Joyce’s death, what were you doing there?”
“You’re trying to confuse me!” she shouted, bringing the rifle up level with my heart. She stepped toward me and pressed the barrel hard against me. I caught my breath. With one twitch, my life could be over.
I wracked my mind, trying to think of anything that would calm Eva and buy us some time. Enough time for Chet to get here. By now he should have received my message. At any moment, I expected him to burst onto the scene. I only had to hold Eva off a little longer.
“Eva, I can see you had no choice. Carl pushed you to it. But you still have the choice to tell the truth and make this right. You'll be the one who saves your family name.”
She slowly backed away from me several steps. “I am going to let you go.” She smiled broadly.
I didn’t like her tone. It was otherworldly and ice cold. “You’ll go first. Then Sarah. Sarah, stand up.”
Sarah didn’t move.
“I said, stand up!” Eva’s face contorted with rage.
Sarah got up slowly, as if in a trance, and I could see the child who had grown up following the orders of an often enraged, drunken father.
My heart was pounding loudly, and I felt hot at the temples. “This is cold-blooded murder, Eva. This isn't you. This isn't a good mother taking care of her daughter."
"More like murder, suicide,” she said, circling behind Sarah with the rifle, her eyes focused in that other place where Eva was all alone.
“I know that you were justified in killing Carl. I see that now,” I continued. “After what that other man did to you as a child, and then to endure those years of torture from your husband. I can see how you had every right. You had to do it to survive. But if you kill us, everyone will say you’re a killer. Your family name will be ruined for good. No one will understand.”
"If I shut you up, no one will know! I don’t want to think about those things anymore. They disgust me. But soon my problems will be gone and so will you. Sarah, take the rifle.”
“How can you possibly hurt Sarah, Eva? She's your only child. You’re her mother. You’re supposed to take care of her.”
“That’s what I am doing."
I could tell by her eyes, nothing I was saying was getting through to her. Where was Chet? Or for that matter, Jake? Why weren’t they here by now? Surely someone would come. And where was Rob Martin? Had Eva already taken care of him, like she was going to take care of us? Why hadn’t I at least brought Salinger with me?
"Don’t worry, Sarah, I’m going to help you.” Eva positioned Sarah’s hands on the rifle and put her hands firmly over her daughter's.
“Mother, please don’t, don't make me do this!” Sarah pleaded.
“It’ll be all right, honey. You’ll see. It’ll be over quickly. You won’t suffer, not like that old bastard suffered. Then no one can hurt you ever again.”
“Eva, wait, there's more of a chance here than you might think!" I was talking fast, trying to stall her, desperately hoping for one last attempt to reach her through her delusion. “Did you poison Carl?”
She seemed not to hear me. She was looking at Sarah with her strange, dead eyes. “We’re going to pull back on the trigger and kill her."
“I have a right to know. Answer me! Did you poison your husband?” Now I was hoping for a second of inattention. Just enough time to dash out of her line of fire.
For a moment, her expression seemed to clear. But she kept the rifle steadily focused on me. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything. If I don’t remember, it can’t be my fault. He blamed everything on me for years. You can’t know what I’m talking about. You can’t know what it was like. Covering up the bruises. Smothering my cries so Sarah wouldn’t hear. Now move away from the fire, Leigh.”
I stepped back a few steps.
“Mother, I won’t do it.” Sarah began to squirm against her mother's hands.
“You don’t have any choice, Sarah. I can’t trust you to keep quiet, like I did when you were little. Like I did when I was little.”
“You can trust us, Eva,” I pleaded. "We've come out here alone to this deserted place, we don't blame you for what's happened. Not like when you were a child. What's happened isn't your fault."
“Step back!” She raised the rifle slightly, engulfing her daughter with her bulk, amazingly strong in her ability to keep Sarah's hands on the gun.
I stepped back further.
“Since Carl's death, I haven’t had one nightmare, not one. And the flashbacks are gone too. They were the worst. When they’d come, it was like I was back there, and it was happening to me again and again. What could you know? If they found out about the baby, they’d put me away. Then I’d have to talk about it. It would be like that man touching me. I’d never be clean, never.”
“Eva, you’re right. I can’t know what it was like. But I can help you. Give you some peace and justice, if you let me. Just put down the rifle.”
Sarah was crying and slumping toward the ground. “Mother, please, I can't . . .”
I watched in horror as Eva’s eyes glazed over again. Then as if emerging from a deep trance, she spoke softly, looking up into that icy sky. “Thy will be done.”
I said a prayer of my own.
The bullet hit me like a mule kick tearing into my left arm and propelling me backwards.
At the last moment, Sarah had jerked the rifle up.
“Bitch! Evil bitch!” Eva swore, and swung the butt of the rifle at Sarah’s head.
I hoped Sarah ducked but didn't wait to find out. I ran into the darkness, toward the only weapon I had to defend us. My feet knew the path with some Divine guidance, because I couldn't see anything. My hands found the prize, and I grabbed the bow and arrows and crashed heavily into the evergreens.
Another bullet sung by me as I ran deeper into the woods. The moon had disappeared behind a tuft of clouds, and the darkness was absolute. I didn’t dare switch on my flashlight and give myself away. I could hear myself panting. I could hear Eva panting behind me. Should I burrow in and wa
it until I could hear her closer, possibly make out her shadow?
I chose to keep moving. While staying a distance ahead of her, I made enough noise to keep her trailing me. I knew it would be impossible to make it back to the truck without Eva getting off several clear shots at me. I didn’t want to take the chance. My best bet was to trick her out into the open.
When I reached the beach, I hid in a copse of trees and undergrowth that faced the trail. There was enough moonlight for me to see shapes about ten feet out. I readied one of the arrows in the bow.
Within minutes, Eva strode onto the beach with rifle at the ready. The moon edged out further from the clouds and shown on the white sand. She scanned around, turning slowly, then back again. Then she stopped, pointed the rifle where I crouched, and started walking forward.
I jumped out from the trees and released the arrow with all my strength. The force of the bow string vibrated against my fingers hot as fire.
Eva crumpled backwards on the sand. I sank to my knees, shaking. She had gotten a shot off, and my ears rang.
In the moonlight, the high tide was black and silvery as it flowed around Eva's head like tendrils of seaweed, and the water glistened in her hair. I stood over her. Her right hand was clutched around the arrow shaft where it pierced her chest. She stared up at me in disbelief, gasping for air.
31
Sunday, November 26, Present day
“That’s some shot ya made. Got her right in the lung.” Chet took the last swig of his beer. “Sure I can’t change your mind about huntin’?”
It was my first full day home from the hospital.
“I’ve had enough hunting for one season,” I replied. My left arm ached as I ran my fingers through Salinger’s abundant coat.
“Why don’t ya get Jake there to go with ya?” Chet suggested, raising his eyebrows.
I smiled, but I didn’t want to talk about the shooting anymore. I was still having nightmares. Always ending the same way: with Eva’s eyes gazing up at me, her mouth stretched open as she struggled for air.
“Chet, how many times do I have to tell you my opinion about hunting?” Jake grinned at me. “Best left to the experts.”