by John Moralee
“Don’t make a sound,” I whispered.
Boone was breathing shallowly, his face pressed into the wet grass. I’d hit him fairly hard, but hopefully not too hard. I didn’t want to kill him. Unless he was working with Shannow. Then it would be a pleasure.
We were between some trees facing the clearing.
I looked up to see if Shannow had heard the noise.
I could see a faint glow by the creek, fading as he descended the rocks.
I moved off Boone. I turned him over and frisked him. I didn’t find anything except more bullets for his .45. I took them. I moved off him, but kept the .45 to his head. He lay on the grass, glaring at me. “You idiot,” he whispered. He touched his head, which was bleeding. He whispered, “Don’t hit me again. I’m here to help you. I’ve been following you. I saw Richard driving your car and figured he was up to something. I know he kidnapped you. I want to arrest him.”
“You could be lying,” I said.
“If I’m lying, why haven’t I killed you with this?” He had another gun in his hand, a small one that he’d sneaked out of his left sleeve. “This is my backup weapon. A .22. I could have shot you. But I’m telling the truth. I want to arrest Shannow. So quit pointing that gun at me, okay? We have to get out of here. My vehicle has a shotgun -”
“Shush,” I said. I had heard something. I could see yellow light by the creek, but it wasn’t moving. And I had heard something bigger than a squirrel much closer to us.
I gave Boone my free hand and pulled him up. He muttered thanks. I indicated we go back through the trees until we got to his cruiser. He put his hand out for his .45, but I shook my head. He could keep the .22, but the .45 was mine.
We crept towards the cruiser. We kept to the pitch blackness. When it was just a few yards away, Boone stepped forward into the moonlight with his keys. He was almost at the door when a shadow separated from the trees and pointed a gun at his back.
“Dumb move,” said Shannow. He was looking at the trees – looking for me - but he could not see me. Having abandoned his flashlight as a decoy, he now had no flashlight. Realising he had been too hasty in revealing his location, he swore. “Both of you drop your weapons now or I’ll shoot.”
This was it. Boone dropped his .22. I moved anti-clockwise around the cruiser, hoping to sneak up on Shannow. Shannow pushed Boone against the cruiser like a criminal about to be searched and told him not to move.
“Shoot him,” Boone called to me.
“Shut up!” Shannow cried.
He was moving erratically around the vehicle.
Boone said, loudly, “You going to kill us all, Dick?”
“Shut up! I’m thinking.”
He pointed the gun at Boone. He was breathing hard, wiping sweat out of his eyes. “Michael? If this was one of your movies, my gun would be empty. But I have two guns. And they both have plenty of bullets left. I will kill him if you don’t come out right now.”
“Dick, he doesn’t care about me,” Boone said. “You’re making a mistake bargaining with my life. Quinn would like you to kill me.”
“Shut up!”
“Put the guns down,” Boone said.
“No! Michael, come out!”
I had sneaked behind them now. Shannow was standing beside Boone with a gun pressed to his ear. I aimed, but I doubted I could make the shot with a .45. The .45 was likely to take Boone’s head off as much as Shannow’s.
“Michael! I’ll give you three seconds. One …”
I could not get a clear shot.
“Two.”
I thought about stepping forward, revealing my location, but that would guarantee we both died.
“Three.”
Shannow struck Boone with the butt of the gun. Boone slumped over the car. The moonlight vanished behind a cloud and when it returned, I couldn’t see Shannow. Boone was on his own, groaning.
I tried looking under the cruiser but it was too dark.
Boone, tell me where he is, I thought. But he looked stunned.
I inched forward, stopping where the grass ended.
I waited. I listened. I could hear the rustle of night creatures.
But maybe it was Shannow.
I swung my .45 and let off a round low and to my left.
That was when Shannow pressed his gun to my head.
“That was a stone,” he said. “You shouldn’t have fallen for that, Michael.”
Taking my .45, he directed me towards the police cruiser, telling me to stop when I was beside Boone. He made me put my hands on the roof, like Boone. Boone had his eyes open, but he was bleeding from his scalp. Shannow was talking to himself as he reached into the cruiser and turned on the flashing lights. Now everyone could see each other clearly. It allowed him to aim two guns at us and stand back.
“I have to kill you now,” he said.
I turned my head to look at Shannow. “You can’t kill us, Dick. It’s over. Maybe you could get away with killing me, but not the sheriff as well. Besides, I’ve already told people about you. This won’t end with us.”
“Maybe I won’t have to kill Tom. Tom?”
“What?” Boone mumbled. His head was clearing.
“Do I have to kill you?”
Tom Boone glared at him. “I’m the sheriff, Dick.”
Shannow slumped, pacing up and down. “You can pretend you didn’t come here, Tom. Let me take care of business. I know you want him dead for Abby’s sake.”
“You have to stop this,” Boone said. “I can’t defend this, Dick. Please put the weapons down. Let me take you in.”
“No! I can’t. I can’t. The truth can’t get out.” Shannow looked at me. His upper lip was dripping with oily sweat. His whole face was breaking out in it.
“Don’t do it,” I said. I lowered my voice, hoping to calm Shannow down. He looked on the point of having a heart attack. In his present state, there was no predicting what he would do. “Dick, drop the guns.”
He shook his head.
I said, “Would Abby want you to do this?”
“Can’t do nothing.” He kicked the car, swearing. Then he faced us again. He was waving the guns around as he talked.
“Tom,” Shannow said, “I guess I’ll save you having a trial.”
“What?”
“I confess to the murders of Billy Quinn, Ted Genero and Scott Taylor. I am truly sorry for the deeds I have done. God forgive me.”
He raised the guns to his temple.
“DON’T!” I cried.
But he pulled the triggers. There were two white flashes from the barrels that lit up his face in an ethereal glow. Darkness followed. He toppled immediately. The back of his skull dripped a thick red syrup of blood and brain tissue. The guns fell out of his dead hands.
“Jesus,” Boone said.
We both approached the body.
“He did it,” Boone said. “We both heard him confess. He did it all, right?”
I was silent.
“I’ll call this in now,” he said. “Close the book on it once and for all.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. “You do that.”
I left him to do that. I walked to the clearing and to my car. I sat down and rested. My leg had stopped bleeding, but it hurt like a burn. The bullet had just cut a groove in the flesh, missing the bone. After a minute or so, I realised I could hear a ringing that wasn’t in my head. My phone – it had been ringing for all this time. I limped over to it and picked it up.
“Hello?” I said.
“Why didn’t you answer?” Sarah said.
“Sarah. God, it’s good to hear you.”
“What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” Apart from a led wound. “Is Abby there?”
“She’s asleep upstairs, using my bedroom. You want me to wake her?”
“No. I actually want to talk to you - I just didn’t want her listening in case she freaked out. Her father’s dead.”
“What? How?”
“He kille
d himself. Van Morgan didn’t have anything to do with Scott’s death. He was responsible for the murders of Ed Wendel and David Freeman, but not Scott’s death. Scott’s death was related to things that happened twenty years ago. Abby’s father killed him to cover up the murder of my brother.”
“What? Why?”
“He was having an affair with Hanna Devereaux. She wanted him to leave his wife, but he wouldn’t. To make him jealous, she went out to the prom with my brother. It’s all in Hanna’s diary, which I’ve got on me right now. Then there was the so-called car accident, which I can now prove wasn’t my brother’s fault. He was rammed. Somehow Scott found out the truth and went to confront Shannow. I guess Scott posted the photograph to me in case something happened to him. It did. Shannow killed him, just like he killed a guy called Ted Genero when he wouldn’t give up on it. He’s been covering up the murders he committed twenty years ago.”
“Michael, where are you?”
“I’m on Emerald Point. Shannow brought me here to kill me. But I’m okay except for a leg wound. I think we should keep this a secret from Abby until tomorrow morning. I can tell her the bad news in person.”
“I think that’s wise considering …”
“Sarah?”
“Abby’s here,” Sarah said quietly. “She – uh – has my shotgun.”
“Sarah?”
She did not answer. I could hear muffled sounds, talking. The phone clattered. Then it was picked up.
“It’s me.”
It was Abby. She sounded weird.
“Abby?”
“I wanted to hear your voice one last time.”
I was suddenly very worried. Had she been listening in on my call to Sarah? Of course. She had heard me tell Sarah her father was a murderer. But maybe she could be reasoned with. “Abby, what are you talking about?”
“I heard you talking about daddy. I heard. It’s my fault. My fault. That’s why I’m going to do it.”
“Do what?”
“I’m the only one who loves you,” said the cold voice. “I can prove it. I can prove it. YOU! TELL HIM YOU DON’T LOVE HIM!”
“Abby, what –”
She hung up.
I called the number back, but it was off the hook. “GODDAMN IT!”
Boone was standing close to me. “Who was that? It was Abby, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You didn’t tell her about her dad, did you?”
“No – but she overheard me tell Sarah. And now I can’t get through. She’s hysterical. And she’s got a shotgun.”
“You stupid idiot. How many times did I tell you to stay out of her life? HOW MANY TIMES? Look – we have to get to her now. Where is she?”
Chapter 50
She was on Port Island. Port Island, accessible only by sea. Tom Boone and I were in his cruiser, heading towards Cape Mistral at a hundred miles per hour.
“What Shannow said to us about killing,” he said. “It was only half of the truth. He didn’t tell you what really happened on the night of your brother’s death. He didn’t tell you about Abby.”
“Did she see him do it?”
Boone answered in a desperate rush, desperate because he wanted me to believe him.
“Abby hurts Abby,” he said. “She’s always been like that since your brother died. It’s called Munchausen’s Syndrome. Abby hurts herself to gain attention and sympathy.”
Boone had told me the same before, but I didn’t want to believe it. “She wasn’t like that when I knew her.”
“It’s got worse over the years,” he said. “You see, a couple of weeks before the prom, Abby saw her father making love to Hanna Devereaux. She didn’t tell anyone, but it destroyed her. Seeing her own father committing adultery made her unstable. She loved her father and wanted her family to stay together. But what could she do? Her father was seriously thinking about leaving her mother. Abby didn’t want that to happen. She decided to frighten off Hanna by following her and confronting her. Abby drove her father’s car on the night your brother died. She followed them from the high school. When Hanna saw Shannow’s car behind them, she must have told your brother to speed up. Abby chased them – and hit them from behind by mistake. She didn’t mean to drive them off the road. It was a mistake, but she killed them,” he said, sighing, “and I’ve been protecting her ever since.”
“No.”
“The truth’s hard to handle, isn’t it? Abby’s lived with the guilt of that night for twenty years. She’s punished herself all that time. Physically. Mentally. No prison sentence could have punished her for one stupid mistake when she was fourteen. She didn’t mean to kill anyone. She just wanted to scare them so Hanna wouldn’t see her father again. But it went wrong, and they died. The car crash was an accident. I only know because Richard told me the truth after I married her. He found his car slightly damaged when he saw it that night. He knew Abby must have taken it out. She told him what she had done. Shannow should have contacted the police, but he knew how bad it looked. He did nothing. In the morning Abby couldn’t remember what she’d done. And she was telling the truth. She couldn’t remember a thing about the night. Abby couldn’t cope with it. So she blocked it out. I doubt she even knows what she did, not consciously. She’d blocked it out completely. Richard could have told the police, but he didn’t want Abby to get locked up for murder. She obviously didn’t mean it. She was a troubled girl. She wasn’t a killer. So he didn’t tell anyone. He thought … he thought he could just put it behind them as a mistake.”
“Two people died as a mistake?”
“She was only a kid. What would you have done?”
I didn’t know.
Boone told me he’d known for a long time that Abby caused the accident that killed my brother. However, he had not connected her to Ted Genero’s death, which he had believed was a genuine accident. But when Scott Taylor died, Boone had assumed Abby had done it. He was horrified. But he loved her too much to do anything. That was why he was reluctant to investigate – and why he wanted to keep her away from me. Boone had been protecting her. He had hoped he could get her treatment. But when I kept investigating, he started wondering if perhaps she was innocent of the murder. Boone had been hoping it had been Van Morgan, but after his arrest, Boone had had doubts. Since I’d been looking for the killer, he’d been watching me, suspecting I had evidence that I was keeping secret. He’d had me under surveillance when Richard Shannow made his move. He’d seen from a distance when Shannow knocked me out. Boone followed us up to Emerald Point, maintaining sufficient distance to remain unseen. He said he came to stop Shannow killing me. Even he could not condone what Shannow had done, not even for Abby. She was a victim, Boone said, but he was a killer.
“I wanted her to lead a normal life, but her subconscious guilt started changing her behaviour. She started hurting herself when she was alone. I paid for therapists, but they couldn’t do much. She wouldn’t even admit to herself what she had done. She seemed to recover all by herself. But then her mother’s death started it again. She started hurting herself again, but she believed I was doing it to her. I was powerless to help her. I guess Abby showed Scott the bruises.”
“And he believed her.”
“Yes. He believed her. She must have told him the same abuse story she told you. Slowly, over several weeks, he must have fallen in love with her. She basically seduced him into an affair. I guess he started doubting her story when he got to know what she was like – that was when he wondered if she’d done anything in the past. He must have started suspecting things about her after she said some weird things about the car crash. Things she couldn’t have known unless she’d seen it. He wondered if she was delusional, psychotic. But he couldn’t be sure.”
“Which is why he went to her father?”
He nodded. “Jesus. If I had known he had killed Scott …” He did not finish the sentence. “At least we know Abby had nothing to do with the other killings.”
“Abby needs p
sychiatric treatment,” I said.
He nodded, frowning.
“Quinn?”
“What?”
“I love her,” he said. It was almost a whimper. “She needs help, not prison. Don’t you see? She never meant to kill your brother and Hanna. It was a huge mistake, a mistake she’s more than paid for. And now her dad is dead it’ll destroy her even more.”
“How dangerous is she in this state?”
We were almost at the shore where my father’s boat was docked.
“Boone? What will she do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Chapter 51
There was no time to stop for anything. Boone parked his car at the jetty and we ran to my father’s boat, untying it and boarding as fast as I could, not daring to think about what I was doing because I had to get to Sarah’s house now.
I powered up the engine to maximum, causing the boat to rumble, then steered it straight for the distant coast. The water was choppy, but the bow sliced through the waves, sending plumes of freezing water over the deck and in my face. The speed increased as I pushed the boat beyond its defined limits. Boone held on as the boat rocked. It was soon roaring across the water. Port Island was ahead. The beach was silver in the moonlight, the cliff black. Caroline was going too fast for its own good – I could hear the engine protesting – but I didn’t slow down.
The house was on the cliff. I could see lights in the house.
“The lights have gone off,” Boone yelled.
The cliff was in darkness.
I was afraid Abby had killed herself. Or worse, killed Sarah and her sisters, then herself.
I headed for the beach where it was gently sloping, hoping I could just ride the boat up onto the shore. But it scraped the seabed. I held onto the wheel as the boat bounced out of the water. For an instant, my feet weren’t touching the ground. Then gravity returned. The boat rode up the beach making a sound like everything was falling apart. I was thrown off my feet by the impact with the cliff. The engine died. Smoke was coming from below. I pulled myself upright, looking at the damage. I could not see Boone but I’d heard him cry out as we hit the beach. The boat was wrecked. Boone had been thrown out. Looking back, I saw him on the sand. He was unconscious but breathing.