by David Beers
He walked closer though and understood.
His mother sat at one of their tables, and the orange he saw was the cigarette she smoked.
Have I ever seen her smoke? He couldn’t remember it, not even once.
John came to a stop when he reached the table, his eyes finally able to see his mother in the early morning’s darkness. She didn’t say anything, only brought the cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. She held it in for a few seconds before letting it out into the yard.
“How are you?” she said as she stared into the sky.
“I’m tired.”
“Me too,” she whispered.
Neither said anything else for a few minutes, John also shifting his view to the sky.
“Is everything okay?” Lori said finally.
“As okay as it can be.”
His mother nodded, flicked the cigarette into the grass, and then walked back into the house. John stood for a minute or two, watching the tobacco continue burning.
Eventually he went in too.
He fell asleep easy and slept peacefully.
25
Present Day
Alicia said nothing on the drive. Not a single word and Diane matched her minute for minute. Alicia didn’t know what went on inside Diane’s head, but she knew Diane’s thoughts were very different than her own.
Alicia didn’t know if she believed what the cop told her, but she certainly wasn’t dismissing it like Diane. Her father was dead; she believed it and felt surreal that she hadn’t cried yet—not in mourning, at least. Her father, the last of her parents, no longer lived. She would never call him and hear his sarcastic responses again. She would never stand at her mother’s grave and remember the good times with him. He would be at the grave, but in a very different capacity.
Alicia knew all of this in the same way that she knew the car she now rode in was a BMW. Just a fact. No emotional significance tied to it and she hated herself for that. She should be destroyed, unable to crawl due to wracking sobs, not hopping into a car and riding a hundred miles. Yet, she couldn’t figure out how to turn her emotions on.
Alicia gave a quick glance to Diane and saw her emotions were working fine. Worry strained her face and Alicia knew Diane was doing all she could to hold it together; she was worrying about John though, not herself. She worried about how the hell they would get their family out of this mess. She thought Scott was still alive.
Alicia reflected on all of it passively, not even with the interest of a pet watching his master eat.
Two hours of reflection, and then she watched as the small hotel came into view. A large pole stuck out from the ground and at the top The Rhinehart beamed across it in bold, red letters. A small electronic sign hung beneath the hotel’s name, letting the world know there was vacancy for any half-crazed women needing to meet their serial killer brothers and husbands—WiFi available too, if one of the half-crazed women might require it.
Diane slowed the car, taking a right into the parking lot, and then rolled along the hotel’s edge as she searched for the correct number. “There it is.”
She parked the car and was pulling her key out of the ignition when Alicia finally spoke.
“Hold on.”
Diane looked over to her, the key halfway out. “What?”
“You’re just going to run in there and see what’s going on? What about everything else that’s happened, Diane? I’m here with you, but we need to have an honest conversation before we go in.”
Diane pulled the key the rest of the way out, but didn’t move to leave. “What do you want to say?”
“I think there’s a real chance you’re wrong about John. I think there’s a possibility that something has happened to him and that he’s dangerous. I think if we go in there without even considering that, we could get hurt.”
Alicia’s face held the same calm as her words. She didn’t know if Diane could truly understand what she was saying right now, but Alicia had to try.
“He’s not going to hurt us. Why would you say that?”
Alicia didn't know this Diane. The woman that married John was fiery, full of piss and vinegar if need be—like at the house a few hours ago. Alicia always attributed John’s ‘recovery’ to the fact that Diane was both tough and loving. She was what John needed. This woman here, though—Diane couldn’t think clearly because fear drove all her decisions.
“Diane, do you think everyone is lying to us? Do you think the reason my dad went down to Mexico alone was because he thought John was okay? Why wouldn’t we all have gone?”
Diane shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything right now. Only that my husband is in that building and I’m going to him. Once I get in there, I’ll try to figure out the rest. What else can I do?”
Alicia nodded, the grief on her friend’s face overpowering any resistance. “Okay.”
She opened her door and listened as Diane followed.
They met in front of the car and walked together across the parking lot. Alicia couldn’t feel like Diane even if she wanted to. Her mind had detached itself from this whole endeavor as well as it could. Diane was lost in hers, unable to find a single rational thought to float on amongst the sea of fear.
Alicia didn’t know what to expect when she went in, only that if she wasn’t on guard, no one would be.
There’s a very real chance you might die in the next few minutes, at your brother’s hands.
Diane reached the door first and knocked on it. Alicia heard no movement and after a few seconds Diane knocked again. Someone started walking around inside the room, followed by silence as they looked through the peephole. The locks moved next and the door opened.
John stood before them.
Alicia’s mouth opened, the first show of emotion she had managed in hours. She couldn’t help it.
John looked at both of them, but—
That’s not your brother, she thought. Whoever that is, whatever that is, it’s only wearing John’s body.
The thought was crazy, something out of a Twilight Zone episode, but yet felt as true as anything Alicia had thought over the past three weeks.
Red veins crisscrossed his eyes, lighting up the whites like Christmas. Purple bags resided underneath; John had never looked like this before. How much weight had he lost? Thirty pounds? Alicia once saw a movie called Thinner in which the main character couldn’t stop losing weight, literally wasted away to nearly nothing. That’s what she saw in front of her now, a real life version of the man in the movie.
John reached forward and wrapped his arms around Diane. He pulled her close and shut his eyes as he hugged her. Alicia couldn’t stop staring at him and couldn’t close her mouth either. Even the crow’s feet around his closed eyes looked strained, as if his mind and body was being pulled apart by some great force.
John let go of his wife and looked to Alicia. “Thanks for coming,” he said. “Thank you so much. Will you come in? I don’t want to stand out here right now where anyone can see me, not until I’ve spoken with a lawyer.”
Diane walked in immediately, leaving Alicia standing alone outside for a moment. She finally followed and closed the door behind her. Alicia stepped forward as John moved around her to make sure the door was locked.
The room was simple enough. Clean. Nothing out of the ordinary besides her rotting brother.
“Why didn’t you ask the lawyer to come with us?” Alicia said, her mind suddenly understanding John’s last statement didn’t make sense.
“I want my own lawyer,” John said. He was checking the blinds, making sure that they lay flat against the window. “Not the one Dad found. I need a good lawyer, Alicia, especially with all the shit they’ve trumped up against me.”
John turned around and looked at the two of them, his eyes moving from Alicia to Diane and back again. Alicia saw a frantic creature inside them, not her brother.
“Where’s Dad, John?”
* * *
&
nbsp; What the fuck was he supposed to say to that question? John’s mind felt like he had wandered drunk out into the Indy 500. So many things whizzing around him at once and he couldn’t focus on anything longer than a few seconds—everything was a blur, speeding past just as another blur came into view.
John looked to Harry who stood at the window. “Where’s Dad?” he asked.
Harry had the blinds pulled back just a bit, using a single finger to peer out into the parking lot. “He’s dead, John. Don’t you remember?”
“YES, I REMEMBER GODDAMNIT!” he shouted, knowing that the longer he stood here talking to Harry, the more abnormal he’d appear to Diane and Alicia. “What am I supposed to tell her?”
Harry shook his head, his brow furrowed. “How am I supposed to know, man? Tell them your pops decided to stay down there a little bit to get his head right, because it worked so well for you. I don’t fucking know.”
John watched Harry’s eyes narrow.
He knew time was short; he couldn’t hold a full conversation with Harry, not if he wanted to come off as even slightly normal. Still … “What is it?”
“I don’t know yet,” Harry whispered, studying the parking lot.
John turned back to his sister. “I didn’t see Dad while I was down there. I couldn’t wait any longer. I’ve tried calling but his phone is off.”
His sister said nothing but he saw her face change. She had been serious when she walked in but anger showed now. Her lips drew to fine lines and her eyes narrowed just as Harry’s had moments before.
“You were in Mexico. Our father came down there to find you. Before you fucking leave, I say he’s down there. And then you leave without him? That’s your story, John?”
“You might want to look at this,” Harry called from behind.
“Why the hell do you keep looking out that goddamn window?” Alicia said.
For a brief second, John saw a reality he didn’t know existed. He saw Alicia on the bed, but further away by two feet, and he saw his own finger pulling the blind backward as he looked outside, his eyes going back and forth from the bed to the parking lot.
That reality ended quickly, though, and John once again stood in the room between Harry and Alicia. Both of them talking to him.
“Seriously,” Harry said. “It’s important.”
John turned from Alicia and walked to the window where he pulled down one of the blinds and looked out.
“That’s him,” Harry said. “Sitting right there in that car.”
John saw Alan Tremock, the person who started all of this. Blame, every fucking bit, could be laid to rest right at that man’s feet and he couldn’t say shit about it; Tremock would have to pick it up and take it home. The blame for everyone in this room, for John’s father, all of it belonged to him.
John flashed back to the women in the room as another rocket full of anger exploded in his mind. “You brought a fucking cop? I told you not to bring anyone and now HE’S STANDING OUTSIDE!” Spit flew from his mouth with the last sentence.
Diane started crying but Alicia held the same angry glare.
“We didn’t bring anyone. Just us. Because that’s what you wanted, John,” Alicia said.
* * *
Alan stepped from his car. Before closing the door he drew his weapon and held it at his side. The red dot on his display had led him to this hotel, a small thing with not much going for it—only staying in business because nothing else existed out here. You needed a place to stay and you had to pick this one.
He looked to the car parked next to him. A white BMW, the one with the tracking device under the front bumper. No one sat inside, which meant the women had gone into Hilt’s hotel room.
It could mean you’re too late.
Maybe, but Alan was betting no. People would have responded if they heard a gunshot. If Hilt was using a knife? Well, it was hard to cut more than a person at a time—which meant someone could escape.
What about Kaitlin?
But nothing he saw gave him any indication about her. He walked along the back edge of his car, making sure to keep something in between him and the front of the hotel. He looked into the BMW but again saw nothing of importance. Just an empty car.
What if he’s watching you right now?
Alan’s eyes went to the building. Each room looked the same. The sun was falling behind the building, casting shadows over the whole damn place, and especially the parts he needed to see: windows and doors.
His phone vibrated in his pocket. Alan walked back over to the driver’s side of his car and ducked behind his door before pulling it out.
Susan.
He sent her to voicemail and then tossed the phone in the car.
He would call when this was over.
Which would be shortly.
* * *
Alicia felt worse with each passing second. John was acting schizophrenic. She had never seen him behave like this, and more, she wasn’t sure he even recognized it.
As soon as they entered the room, he locked the door and then went to the window. He pressed down all the blinds but remained in the corner, alternating between spying on the parking lot and talking with them. Not to mention the long pauses, as if he was thinking or simply hadn’t heard Alicia speak.
“You brought a fucking cop? I told you not to bring anyone and now HE’S STANDING OUTSIDE!”
Alicia watched his face turn red, a vein bulging out on his neck—a vein she hadn’t once seen in her entire life.
Because he’s never been like this.
Anger rose in her about their father but that detached piece still lived.
This is someone very different than the person you love.
“We didn’t bring anyone. Just us. Because that’s what you wanted, John.”
John went back to looking out the window, his face still red with rage. He was breathing heavily and spittle rested on his lips.
“What the fuck is he doing?” John said, clearly not speaking to anyone in this room. Alicia looked to Diane, but her sister-in-law only sat on the bed with her head in her hands, sobbing. She couldn’t take anymore, not of John, not of the situation.
Breakdown, Alicia thought.
“Why are you so worried about him, John? If you didn’t do anything wrong, what’s it matter if he’s outside?”
John didn’t even glance her way.
Enough, she thought as if about to correct a small child.
“I’m going outside,” she said. “I’m going to get him.”
Alicia stood up and started for the door.
* * *
John heard nothing going on around him. He and Harry both stared out the window at Tremock. Detective Dick Face as Harry so eloquently named him.
It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. He wasn’t supposed to be here.
“He is, though,” Harry said.
Someone said something from the bed, but John ignored them. He had to figure out what to do, because he couldn’t talk to these two with Tremock outside. Sooner or later, Tremock would find John’s room; hell, all he had to do was walk to the front desk and flash his badge.
“Hey,” Harry said.
John looked at him, eyes wide, unable to come up with a coherent plan.
“You better stop her.” Harry nodded toward the bed.
John looked, not knowing what Harry meant because nothing in this world made sense anymore. All of it was an insane whirlpool in which John found himself drowning.
Yet, for a second, he understood what Harry meant. Alicia was trying to leave.
No thought—and perhaps that’s all John had left in him, simple reaction. He propelled across the room and whipped his gun out, smashing the handle onto his sister’s temple.
She soundlessly collapsed to the floor.
* * *
Diane screamed. She didn’t know it, but it was a high and screeching thing—like cat’s fucking.
She watched Alicia collapse, a tiny drop of blood stemming from her tem
ple before streaming down her face. Alicia lay with her eyes closed and Diane couldn’t tell if she was breathing or not.
She looked to John who stood over his sister, the gun in his hand.
Where had that come from? He certainly wasn’t holding it when he hugged her a few minutes ago.
“John?” she said. Tears streaked across her face like wayward children running wild. Her eyes ached and her face felt like a balloon. And yet, she looked to her husband, because that’s what she’d done since they met. She looked to John because her heart had always looked to John, since the third date when he took her to a bowling alley where they ate corn dogs and drank beer. She married him because she loved him more than she loved her own life, and she put up with all the bullshit because love didn’t flee when things got hard.
Not for Diane anyway. Maybe for others, but not for her, not with this kind of love.
Some might call her an idiot, and sitting on the bed looking like a battered woman with her sister-in-law lying unconscious on the floor, they might have been right. It didn’t change who she was, though. It didn’t change anything.
“John?” she said, her voice a little more sure. The past three hours had descended into a black hell, and yet, watching her husband step forward and crack Alicia in the face … the tears stopped welling in her eyes.
Because that wasn’t the person she loved.
That wasn’t the person she knew.
She had ignored the police. She had ignored the late nights and all the other bullshit that came with John. Because the person underneath it all, the one from that third date, he wasn’t the one that did those things. He took the kids to the park every single weekend until they were old enough to say they wanted to start sports. Then he took them there. He was the man that made love with the lights on because he said he wanted to see how beautiful she looked. He mailed flowers every anniversary—even once all the way to China when she had to leave the country for work early in their marriage. She put up with the bullshit because her husband was worth it.
But, the thing that just slapped a gun across Alicia’s face wasn’t her husband.