Scare the Light Away

by Vicki Delany

  “Well if no one makes a sound then the cops will think that no one’s here, won’t they? And then they’ll go away.” Kyle pointed the gun at each of us in turn. “And no one will make a sound, will they?”

  If someone came to the door, Sampson might well bark. If she could. Her eyes were closed and she lay still, but she was breathing, thank God. It was hard to tell from where I sat, but the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. But stopped or not, there was a lot of it on the floor, and I was terrified for her. How would I be able to cope if I lost her? Tears welled up in my eyes, and I fought to push them away. Time enough to cry when all this was over.

  Outside, the rain continued to fall, coming down harder than ever, if that were possible. The windows and doors rattled and the roof shivered. Kyle jerked at every sound. If we were really lucky his heart would simply give out under the strain. Best not to count on that. More likely he would shoot one of us in panic if a window clattered behind our heads.

  “You.” Kyle waved the gun at Aileen. “Get me a beer.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, lady, get me a beer.”

  Aileen gripped my hand once, released it and stood up.

  “And no funny stuff, like running out the door for help. Remember that I have your friends here. Pass me that phone, I’ll listen in, make sure you aren’t calling the cops from the kitchen.”

  Aileen handed him the cordless phone and walked into the kitchen. Until she stood behind him, her eyes never left Kyle Taylor’s face.

  “Help me out here, Kyle,” I said, trying to be conversational. “I don’t understand what you want with us. Jimmy isn’t here and we can’t sit here until he comes back. He sometimes goes off for days at a time, doesn’t tell anyone. Heads to Toronto or Buffalo looking for some fun.”

  Aileen handed Kyle a can of beer, making sure that her fingers didn’t come any closer to his than was necessary. He exchanged the handset for the drink, and she replaced the phone in the cradle. He tossed most of the beer back in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his gun hand. Too bad he didn’t accidentally shoot himself in the head.

  “So what about it?” I said. “Suppose Jimmy doesn’t come back?”

  Kyle shook his big, ugly, stupid head. He had stopped sweating and the shakes were under a degree of control. If he had been calmer I would have been much less worried. He was like a huge, fat bomb with a big clock attached, the numbers ticking relentlessly down to 00:00.

  “He’s not going nowhere,” Kyle said. Mentally I corrected the double negative. “My dad told me that he’s under police orders not to leave Hope River.”

  “Does your dad also know who killed Jennifer?” I asked.

  He finished the rest of the can, not bothered by my question. Not that I expected he would be. Kyle knew who killed his sister, guaranteed. He wouldn’t have gone to these lengths otherwise. The only question was whether he had been alone or if the murder was a family affair. If he’d shown up here all set on avenging his sister’s murder he would have told us, in great detail, all about the justice of his noble cause. His silence spoke volumes.

  “It was an accident,” he said.

  Aileen gasped. Kimmy continued to murmur sweet nothings to Jason. The boy was curled up in her lap, but his wide eyes were fixed on me.

  “Of course,” I said, “I understand. Accidents happen.”

  “Damn right, they do.”

  “Everyone will understand. So why don’t we call the police and you can tell them all about it. They seem to be quite understanding, don’t they?”

  “Do you think the cops will believe me, lady?”

  “Of course,” I purred. “Everyone gets caught up in the heat of the moment.”

  Kyle nodded.

  “People understand that things happen as we might not necessarily want them to.” And I might well choke on my own garbage.

  Kyle’s head dropped forward. I almost had him. “It was an accident,” he said, and he began to cry, noisily and messily. The tension in his right hand collapsed and the gun slumped down, to point harmlessly at the floor.

  Fear, booze, braggadocio, and, hopefully, a touch of guilt, all combined to turn Kyle Taylor into a bubbling brew of emotion. The time to get to him was now; if he swung back to anger we might all be finished. I stood up and took a step forward, my hand outstretched, not daring to breathe. Deep in my pants’ pocket my cell phone rang. The William Tell Overture, a stupid ring that I’d once thought so clever.

  Kyle jumped straight out of his chair, as if he heard the army arriving in a fleet of helicopters. “What the fuck is that?” he screamed. The gun came back up, I could see down its tiny black barrel all the way to the gates of hell. I lifted my arms out to my sides, as I had seen them do in so many movies. “Calm down, it’s my phone. That’s all.”

  “Give it here.” Not totally out of control, he maintained enough sense to keep some distance. “Throw it here, now!”

  I did as he asked. The William Tell Overture played on. There isn’t a young person in the world who can ignore the siren call of a cell phone. Kyle pressed a button and held the phone to his ear. He kept the gun trained directly on my stomach. The Overture stopped and Kyle grunted once.

  “She’s busy,” he shouted.

  Then, after listening for a moment, he screamed, “I said she’s busy, bitch!” and threw the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall and the battery casing fell off as it hit the hardwood floor. “Who the fuck was that?” he screamed at me. Sampson shifted on the floor; she moaned and flicked her eyelids.

  “I don’t know. You didn’t let me talk to them.” It was probably Jenny, calling to begin the pre-arranged conference call with my boss and the executive team. Something else I’d forgotten today.

  “Sit down.”

  Sampson whimpered. Jason pulled himself out from the depths of Kimmy’s comfortable bosom.

  “Please, mister,” he said, “the dog’s hurt. She’s scared. Can I sit with her?”

  Kyle looked at Sampson. The newspaper reports on his family mentioned that the Taylors had two dogs.

  “I guess it won’t hurt. You can sit there, but no funny stuff, understand?”

  “I have to go to the bathroom. Please, is that okay, mister?”

  “Yeah. But come right back. You go anywhere else and I’ll shoot the dog.”

  Kimmy tried to hold him to her, but Jason wriggled out of her arms and off the couch.

  The toilet didn’t flush and water didn’t run and my great-nephew came back in record time, cradling an armful of thick yellow bath towels.

  Kyle didn’t look at the boy as he slipped back into the room, staying close to the walls. Jason dropped to his knees beside Sampson and gently lifted her big head to tuck a towel under her. He covered her with another towel and folded it around her body. My heart cracked in two. The bright, cheerful yellow towel gulped red liquid with the thirst of the man who had swallowed the sea.

  Kyle gestured to Aileen. “You, get me another beer.”

  Aileen did as she was told. When she returned from the kitchen one hand held a can of beer, the other rested at her hip. Her eyes darted between Kyle and Kimmy and me. Kyle wasn’t watching her. She looked into my eyes and pulled her sweater back a fraction. She’d slipped a kitchen knife, one of the fabulously expensive, top-of-the-line, sharp as a sword Henckels, into the waistband of her colorful skirt. The sweater fell back into place, and Aileen walked into Kyle’s line of vision to hand him his beer.

  “Do you want to tell me how it happened, Kyle?” Kimmy said. It was the first time she’d spoken, except to whisper to Jason, since she sat down.

  “How what happened?”

  “How the accident happened? How Jennifer died?”

  “No.”

  “You’ll feel better if you tell someone, Kyle. Really you will. And I’d like to hear about it.”

  “She was a whore, a common whore. My dad said so. Hanging around with the likes of Jim McKenzie, wanting
to do a man’s job.”

  Kimmy sucked air through her teeth; Aileen lifted a hand to her chest. Jason stroked Samson’s head gently, murmuring softly to the big dog, exactly like Kimmy had held and comforted him.

  Children copy adults. It’s how they learn.

  What had Kyle Taylor learned?

  “If your dad felt that way why did he let her work for Jim?” Kimmy asked, her voice so calm she might have been asking a question at the church women’s group.

  “He didn’t like it, but Jennifer made a big fuss and said she’d quit school if Dad wouldn’t let her learn to be a carpenter, and Mom said it would be all right long as Ry or me was around.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Kimmy said. “What went wrong?”

  “Ry didn’t want to go back this year. It’s a fuckin’ boring job and hard work too. Can’t imagine why Jenny likes it. Stupid girl. Good money, though. But if Ry isn’t gonna be there this summer then I don’t wanna be hanging around babysitting.” Now he sounded like a petulant child, whining because he couldn’t have a second piece of chocolate cake or stay up past bedtime. A petulant child Kyle might be, but he was still a petulant child waving a loaded gun in our faces.

  “That must have been tough,” Kimmy said. “But I don’t quite see how she managed to get herself killed.”

  My hackles bristled at the wording. Jennifer didn’t “get herself killed.” Her brother killed her, perhaps with the collusion of their father. But I guessed where Kimmy was heading, and I kept my mouth shut and my eyes on the barrel of the gun.

  “They had a big fight. Jennifer and Dad. When Ry told him that he wasn’t going to work for Jim this year, and I said that I wasn’t neither. So Dad said that she would have to quit too, and she said she wasn’t going to. She said Jim was a nice man and he was teaching her to be a carpenter. Dad got all mad and said she was acting like a common tramp.”

  “What did your mother say?”

  “Oh, Mom pretty well goes along with whatever Dad says. But this time she stood up for Jennifer. Said she was a good girl and wouldn’t get herself into trouble. Dad didn’t say nothin’, but we all knew that he wouldn’t be able to stop her doing what she wanted. Not any more.”

  Aileen fingered the rich wool of her sweater, feeling the edges of the cold, hard knife stuck into her waistband. I widened my eyes and jerked my head toward Kyle, hoping to send Aileen a signal. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass why Kyle murdered his sister, and I didn’t know why he was here, lying in wait for my brother, who he didn’t seem to know had been arrested for the murder. I certainly didn’t care how stupid Kyle was, nor did I want to hear the sordid details of his troubled childhood. I wanted to bash him over the head with the fireplace poker while Aileen got him with her lovely sharp knife. I wanted to get my dog to the vet and Jason to his mother.

  I looked at Kimmy. She read my face and blinked once. A nod. “But why did she die, Kyle?” she asked, sounding as if she cared.

  I stretched and shifted in my seat.

  “Dad said she was no better than a whore.”

  “And I’m sure she wasn’t,” Kimmy said, her voice oozing with sympathy.

  “But she wouldn’t let me do her.”

  Kimmy sucked in a lungful of air. “Oh, God,” she whispered and the pretence of sympathetic listener cracked.

  I stood up and walked with great care toward Jason and Sampson. Toward the big stone fireplace.

  Kyle didn’t appear to see me move. His eyes were fixed on the image locked inside his own head. “She laughed at me, the bitch. So I shut her up, good.”

  Kimmy sobbed and buried her face in her hands. The spell was broken. Kyle’s head jerked back and he saw me, creeping across the room. But he was too late; I wasn’t going to stop now.

  Chapter 48

  Outside a car pulled up with a loud squeal of tires on wet gravel and brakes applied at the last minute. I instinctively glanced toward the window, although with the curtains pulled shut there was nothing to see. Kyle leapt off his chair, grabbed my arm and threw me off balance. “Where the hell are you going, bitch? You sit back down. Now.”

  A rap at the door. Loud, decisive. Kyle turned the gun on Jason. But his empty eyes were fixed on me.

  “Police, Mrs. McKenzie.”

  Silence. Sampson was too far out of it even to whimper. But still her chest rose and fell under the red-soaked yellow towel.

  “Police, Mrs. McKenzie. We’d like to talk to you for a moment, please.”

  Kyle pointed at me. Get rid of them, his lips moved.

  The police knocked again. “We’re looking for Rebecca McKenzie. Her father said she was here.”

  I opened the door. Constable Rosemary Rigoloni stood in the doorway, Dave LeBlanc behind her and slightly to one side. The rain fell in a steady torrent. Visibility was so limited, the edges of their patrol car blurred into the rain and mist. The lake and road had disappeared completely.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. McKenzie.”

  “Here I am,” I said, rolling my eyes like a mad woman at an orgy and drawing the edge of my hand across my throat. “What’s up?” I pointed to my chest, tucked three fingers into my palm, held my index finger out straight, and made the hand-jerking movement with thumb held perpendicular that everyone knows as imitating the firing of a gun. Could Kyle possibly be so stupid he wouldn’t expect that I would try to warn them?

  Rigoloni stiffened, every muscle in her body coming to attention. Her hand went to her gun belt.

  I shook my head. “I’m here with my nephew Jason, Aileen and Kimmy Wright, I mean Michaels.” I made the shooting gun gesture once again, this time pointing at Rigoloni. “We’re sitting in the living room having a nice chat.”

  “Just checking, Ms. McKenzie. Glad everything’s fine.”

  Behind me Kyle hissed, telling me to hurry up.

  “Have a nice afternoon. Please give the Taylor family my regards.”

  Rigoloni’s eyebrows twitched at that and a question creased her forehead. With her face full on me, I closed my eyes and shut the door.

  We listened to the heavy tread of police boots tromping down the steps, LeBlanc’s murmured question and Rigoloni’s light laughter. The engine roared to life and their car pulled away.

  “Well done,” Kyle said. “You get to live a bit longer.”

  Aileen fingered the buttons of her sweater and Kimmy moaned. I returned to my seat.

  “Shit,” Kyle exploded. “I have to go to the can.” He looked at us, three middle-aged women sitting in a line on the living room couch and one little boy comforting a gravely wounded dog. “Kid, come here.”

  Jason hesitated.

  “I said come here.” Kyle crossed the room in two steps and jerked the boy to his feet. Sampson’s head hit the floor with a thud as the support of Jason’s arm was pulled out from underneath it. The dog groaned and her eyes flicked open. Kyle held the gun to Jason’s temple. “I’m gonna have a leak. One of you bitches so much as breathes too heavy and I’ll plug the kid. Understand?”

  “We understand,” Aileen said.

  Kyle stood in front of the fireplace, unzipped his pants and pulled his penis out. The gun remained firmly planted against Jason’s head. The scene was so ridiculous that I almost laughed. But if I did, Kyle would shoot Jason.

  Never laugh at the penis of a man who is threatening you with a gun.

  If I live through this I will publish that bit of wisdom.

  Had Rigoloni understood my wild gestures? Was I too confident about my own ability to communicate without words? Why did she laugh as they walked away? Was she laughing at me?

  Sampson heard it first. Her ears twitched and she tried to lift her head, but the effort was too much and with a grunt she collapsed back onto the towel. Soon we could all hear it—tires crunching on gravel, doors slamming, men scurrying for cover, a whispered shout.

  The cavalry.

  Kyle ran to the window and ripped the curtains to one side. “Fuck it,” he screamed. Once again he
jerked Jason up off the floor. “Get rid of them, kid.”

  Jason yelped and Sampson growled, as much of a growl as she could manage.

  “You can’t get rid of them, Kyle,” I said. “They obviously know something’s happening here.”

  He wrapped his forearm across Jason’s chest and lifted so that the boy’s toes weren’t touching the ground. “What did you say to them, you bitch?”

  “Me? I didn’t say anything. You didn’t hear me say anything, did you? They must have had someone creeping around the back while we were talking at the door. They’re so sneaky.”

  Jason’s eyes were wide with terror. His fingers, small, chubby, and streaked with my dog’s red blood, scratched at the muscular arm squeezing his chest. His oversized running shoes waved in the air, seeking solid ground.

  “Let the boy down, Kyle,” Kimmy said. “You’re hurting him.”

  Kyle loosened his hold and Jason’s feet reached the floor. He slipped out of Kyle’s grip, took a deep breath and returned to Sampson’s side.

  The phone on the table beside Kimmy rang. Wide-eyed she passed it to me.

  “Rebecca McKenzie speaking.”

  “Ms. McKenzie, this is Inspector Eriksson. Are you in some danger there?”

  “Yes.”

  Kyle ripped the phone out of my hand. “Who the hell are you?” he growled into the receiver. Kyle listened for a moment and then slammed the phone down.

  It rang again.

  He picked it up.

  “I want Jim McKenzie here,” he said. “You find him and tell him I have his wife and sister and I’ll kill the loud-mouthed sister in half an hour, if he isn’t outside.”

  A tinny echo as Eriksson shouted into the phone. Kyle slammed his end down.

  “Hear that?” he said, waving the barrel of his gun at me. “Time to get this show on the road.”