Only Ever You

by Rebecca Drake

  “String, this is Jill, Jill this is String, a.k.a. the inconsiderate asshole who dumps all his shit around the house.” Leo waved his hand and the other guy made a grunting sound, his fingers moving on the controller. “He’s in sales,” Leo said and Jill wondered what that guy could possibly be selling. Leo led the way down the hall into a kitchen.

  Every available surface appeared covered in something. Piles of books and unopened mail lay scattered across a small table and dirty dishes filled the sink. There was a heavy smell of grease, probably related to the open pizza box with two decaying slices sitting on top of the stove, or the two other empty boxes poking out of an open trash can.

  Jill tried to focus on what to do next; she couldn’t stop shaking. She was officially on the lam; if she didn’t find Sophia she would be charged with murdering her own child. It was only a matter of time until the police found her, and with the evidence they’d trumped up there was no way that she and David wouldn’t be convicted. The court of public opinion and the media had already found them guilty.

  Just like they’d vilified Lyn Galpin. Jill pulled out David’s phone and looked again at the last photo he’d taken, the shot of an older woman taken through a car window. Who was that person? Why had he taken her photo? The only other photos on his phone were family shots—his father’s birthday party, Jill holding Sophia up to see the elephants at the zoo. Everyone smiling. It was like looking at a world that she’d lost. There were no shots of other women, not Leslie Monroe, not Lyn Galpin. Disappointment followed fast on the heels of the relief Jill felt at not having to look at David’s other women. She was no closer to finding Sophia. “I need a computer.”

  “What you need is a drink.” Leo reached into a dingy cupboard above the ancient gas range and pulled down an expensive bottle of whiskey. Good to know that his money was going somewhere. Failing to find a glass in a cupboard, he plucked one from the sink and gave it a cursory wash. Jill took David’s phone to call Tania, but stopped, realizing that at that very minute Ottilo might be holding Tania’s phone and waiting for Jill to call so they could track her.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Leo said, “Tania’s going to come over later if she can.” He pushed the pile of mail aside to put down the glass. “Got to sort that shit at some point.” He poured a healthy slug of whiskey into the glass and pushed it toward her. “Here, have a seat.”

  Jill didn’t want a drink, she didn’t want to sit down, she had to keep moving, but now she was in Leo’s house and she was indebted to him. She shifted a pile of newspapers off a kitchen chair and onto the floor and sat down. “Thanks,” she said, eyeing the dirty glass before lifting it in a small salute and taking a sip. She’d heard that no human pathogens could live in alcohol; she hoped it was true. The whiskey burned going down, but took away some of the chill. Leo moved more junk off the other chair and sat down across from her, watching her with frank curiosity.

  “I thought you lived with your mother?” she said, wondering if Leo’s mother could possibly be somewhere in this rat hole.

  “I moved out; this is my own place.” He looked at her over the coffee mug he’d filled to the brim with liquor. “Kind of ironic, don’t you think?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You turned me in to the cops, and now I’m harboring you.” He grinned, but his eyes were hard.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”

  “I didn’t take your kid.”

  “Then help me find out who did.”

  He stared up at her for a long minute and she met his gaze, trying to project a calm she didn’t feel. After a second he got to his feet. “The computers are upstairs.”

  chapter thirty-eight

  DAY TWENTY-THREE

  Bea looked from Patsy Duckworth’s SUV up to the house and thought she saw a shadow behind the curtain in her bedroom. She could leave right now, just load the child into the car and go, except she couldn’t—her exit from the garage was blocked by the other vehicle. Bea tugged on the SUV’s driver door and it opened. Cosmo jumped up onto the driver’s seat, always happy to take a ride, but the keys weren’t in the ignition. Bea left the dog in the car. The garage hadn’t closed fully again; she’d never been so happy to see that five-inch gap. She slid the child under the door and crawled in after her.

  The smell hit Bea as soon as she stepped in the basement. She tensed in the doorway, sniffing the faint, unmistakable odor of nicotine and ash. Patsy’s cigarettes. Light shone under the base of the door at the top of the stairs.

  Moving soundlessly, Bea carried the child back to the hidden room and left her on the bed, quietly bolting the door. She crept up the stairs, slowly and soundlessly. No one in the kitchen, but the lights were blazing. She heard a familiar, annoying voice whispering somewhere inside the house. She crept through the living room, following the noise down the hallway, pulse racing when she saw the door to the second bedroom standing open. Wearing a full-length white wool coat, Patsy Duckworth stood with her back to the door examining the far wall. It was too late to stop her. She was looking at what Bea had spread on the worktable and pinned to the wall. The woman’s head bobbed up and down as she examined everything, muttering, “Oh dear Lord, I knew it, I just knew it.”

  Bea crept back around the corner closest to the front door and waited. A minute passed, then Patsy came clicking down the hall, struggling to hold on to her enormous leather handbag and text at the same time. Bea stepped out in front of her and Patsy leapt back, dropping the phone. “Jesus H. Christ!” she exclaimed, one manicured hand flapping against her chest.

  “What the hell are you doing in my house?” Bea said.

  Patsy tried her trademark Cheshire grin, but it faltered. “My, but you surprised me, Bea! Sorry to just drop in on you like this, but I told you the buyer and I were going to stop by. He should be here soon—I was just trying to call him.” She squatted to retrieve her phone, but Bea put the tip of her shoe on it and pulled it back, bending to pick it up herself without taking her eyes off the other woman. Patsy stood slowly upright, swallowing like a bird with something caught in its gullet.

  “Thank you,” she tried, holding out her hand for the phone, but Bea didn’t oblige.

  “How did you get in here?”

  “Well, I have the extra set of keys.” The woman fumbled in her enormous purse and pulled out a jangling ring. “But I didn’t have to use them—the front door was open.” Her trademark nervous cackle. She even resembled a chicken, between the thrust of her massive chest and the shiny auburn coxcomb of a hairdo.

  “You can’t just come in here,” Bea said. “This is private property.”

  “You’re right, of course,” the agent said, smile stretched so thin that her eyes were mere creases. “So rude of me, I’m so sorry. It was just so cold out, and I didn’t think you’d mind.” Her voice trailed off when Bea didn’t say anything. She clutched her bag a little more tightly and stepped forward. “Look, today obviously isn’t a good day. I’ll come back another time when it’s more convenient—”

  Bea didn’t move. “Don’t you want to ask me?”

  Patsy’s head tilted sideways as she cackled again. “Ask you what?” Her gaze flitted to Bea and away.

  “About what’s in the second bedroom. I saw you looking at the photos.”

  Patsy locked eyes with Bea. In a strangled, completely unconvincing voice she said, “What photos?”

  “Now, Patsy, weren’t you the one who told me I could always expect honesty if I chose you as my real-estate agent?” Bea moved slowly toward her and Patsy cracked, stumbling back, pointing a nicotine-stained finger at Bea.

  “Stay away! Your grandson—he isn’t a boy at all, is he? I didn’t realize it when he—she—said the name, but I saw those pictures. That’s Sophia Lassiter. You abducted Sophia Lassiter!” Her voice was high-pitched and hoarse, hysterical.

  “Her name’s not Sophia; it’s Avery.”

  “Where is she? What have you done with her? She doesn’t belon
g with you.”

  Bea shook her head. “You’re wrong.”

  “I’m calling the police!” The agent leapt forward and snatched the phone from Bea, frantically pressing 911 and holding it to her ear.

  “Don’t bother,” Bea said. “There’s terrible coverage out here.” She reached out and pried the phone from the agent.

  The slightest quiver of the woman’s face gave away her fear, but the begging Bea anticipated didn’t transpire. Instead, Patsy turned and skittered down the hall on her high heels. Bea followed her, hearing the basement door open and Patsy clattering down the steps. “Sophia?” Patsy called. “Sophia? Where are you?” She hesitated at the bottom of the steps, flinching as Bea appeared in the doorway above her. “Where is she?” she demanded, but her voice quavered. Bea didn’t answer, just reached in her pocket, the metal cold to the touch. She heard a gasp and knew that Patsy had remembered the hidden room. Bea went after her and found the real-estate agent with a hand on the bolt. She flinched as Bea approached, giving her a baleful look. “You can’t keep a child locked in the basement. I’m taking her home.”

  “No,” Bea said. “You’re not.” She stepped forward, arm raised, but the agent screeched, flinging out a hand to block her, and Bea missed, the gun firing with a deafening bang, the bullet sinking into Patsy’s neck instead of her head.

  * * *

  A cramped bedroom on Leo’s second floor had been converted into a crowded office. Two recycled doors resting on sawhorses served as desks and on them were four desktops of various sizes, two laser printers, a scanner, and dozens of wires and other equipment that Jill couldn’t begin to name. A high-tech paradise in a low-rent house. “What exactly do you do?” she asked. Leo smiled. “We’re consultants.” Purposely vague; she decided she didn’t really need to know. He pointed at a desktop. “You can use this one.”

  She googled Lyn Galpin again, hoping to find out where she’d gone after the accident. The woman had been pilloried by the media, all the worst details of her life exposed—the local bar where she’d become a regular, the empty wine bottles piled high in a recycling bin outside her cheap apartment. There were professional photos, too, headshots from a law journal and from Adams Kendrick’s newsletter, but also gruesome shots of the crash scene and a few of a bloodied and unconscious Galpin being carted off on a stretcher.

  Her family had been caught on camera, too; there were photos of her parents arriving at the hospital soon after the accident, caught off guard and unable to shield themselves from the media. Jill stopped scrolling, went back. The mother. She looked familiar. She zoomed in on the shot, but the grainy news photo dissolved into individual pixels. She zoomed back out and grabbed David’s iPhone, bringing up the blurry photo and comparing it to the one on the desktop. “What the hell?”

  “Holy shit,” Leo said over her shoulder. “That’s the same woman.”

  David didn’t have a picture of Lyn Galpin on his phone, he had a picture of her mother. Why? “When was this taken?”

  “That’s easy.” Leo plucked the phone from her hand and connected it by cable to the desktop. “You just connect a USB cable so you can download this and access the time stamp.”

  He quickly downloaded the iPhone’s photos, his hands racing over the keyboard with the grace of a concert pianist. Larger versions of David’s photos showed up in a separate window. Underneath the blurry shot of Lyn Galpin’s mother was a single line of text that gave Jill an even greater shock.

  The photo had been taken today. No more than an hour before Jill had been told about David’s accident.

  “You trying to find her?” Leo jabbed a thumb at the blurry image, a silver skull ring bobbing on his knuckle.

  “Yeah. Or her.” Jill pointed at a photo of Lyn Galpin on the other window. “They’re mother and daughter.”

  “You think they took your kid?”

  “Maybe. My husband had an affair with that one.” She tapped Lyn’s picture.

  “Whoa!” Leo said. “He fucked her, so she took your kid? As payback or something?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “That is some heavy shit, if it’s true.” He shook his head.

  Where had David seen Lyn Galpin’s mother? At the hospital they said he’d been hit by a car in the garage next to Adams Kendrick. Had he seen her in the garage?

  Jill kept searching online, trying to find either woman. She opened a YouTube link to another longer, soundless segment of Lyn Galpin’s accident footage. It had been taken from a short distance away; she could clearly see a car driving erratically, weaving in and out of the oncoming lane to pass the cars in front of it. As Jill watched, the car failed to calculate the distance properly and couldn’t get back into its lane in time. It crashed head-on into a car coming in the opposite direction. Then a tractor-trailer, braking hard, slid sideways, jackknifing in an unsuccessful attempt not to crash into the other two vehicles. Another car slid into the tractor-trailer, and then the screen stopped and the footage began again: Weaving car, first crash, second crash, a moment’s blackness as the third car hit. Jill watched it again, then a third time. She realized that Lyn Galpin had been trying to catch another car moving ahead of her on the parkway. That car was speeding, too, faster and tighter in traffic, moving with a precision that Lyn Galpin didn’t have. The other car shot ahead through a yellow-to-red light literally seconds before the crash.

  Jill stared at the screen. She forgot about Lyn Galpin’s mother, forgot about everything except that faster car. She played the footage a fourth time and paused when the other sedan was in the frame, staring with horrified recognition. She knew that car. It was David’s.

  chapter thirty-nine

  DAY TWENTY-THREE

  Patsy Duckworth fell backward screaming, blood spurting like a geyser from the side of her neck, spattering her white coat, spraying everywhere.

  “Damn it! You should have held still!” Bea panicked. She dropped the gun and bent down to grab one of Patsy’s slim ankles, dragging the woman toward the utility area and the drain. It was slow work. Even with the size difference, it was not easy to drag Patsy. She struggled to kick free, screaming and clawing at her throat.

  “Stop it! Just stop struggling!” Bea begged. She heard a strange noise and realized it was the sound of the other woman’s fake nails popping off as she transferred her clawing to the floor.

  “You shouldn’t have moved!” she screamed, cursing as the high heel on Patsy’s freely kicking foot grazed her forearm. She dropped her and ran for the gun, flashing back to years ago when she’d gone deep-sea fishing with Frank and he’d landed a massive tuna after a long fight, using all his energy to reel it up, out of that crystalline water and onto the boat, where it had flopped, untouchable, on the fiberglass deck until he had finally and mercifully clubbed it.

  Frank wasn’t there to do it; he was never around when Bea needed him most. She took the gun to Patsy in the same way he had, smashing it against the woman’s head, until Patsy stopped moving, just like the fish, and merely twitched. Bea let the gun drop, panting. She waited for her heart rate to fall a little before she dragged the body the rest of the way to the gentle slope near the drain, kneeling to angle her so the blood dripped down it.

  Sudden singing made Bea jump. For one awful minute, she thought The Sound of Music came from the bloodied cavern that had been the other woman’s mouth. Then it stopped and started again and she realized it was a cell phone. She scrambled in the pockets and found it just as it stopped ringing and went to voice mail. A man’s voice, “Hey, Patsy, Mike Reynolds here. I got held up in a meeting, but I can meet you at the property in a half hour if that’s still okay?”

  Bea texted a reply, her fingers leaving bloodstains on the keys. “Sorry, must cancel. Emergency. Next week?” She hit send, but it began to ring again almost immediately. “Shut up! Just shut up!” Bea smashed the phone again and again against the floor until it shattered.

  In the silence that followed she could hear the sound o
f her own ragged breathing. Bea’s vision cleared, and she stared down at the blood freckling her hands. She stood up on shaky legs and stripped off all her clothes, but there was still blood on her skin. She staggered to the laundry tub and grabbed the bar of soap, scrubbing at her arms and face, running wet hands through her hair, desperate to get rid of it. Only she couldn’t get rid of the smell. The metallic odor permeated the basement, the smell of raw meat and the slaughterhouse, the smell of death. She tried not to inhale, breathing only through her mouth, but it was no use, the odor filled the air like a mist; it caught in her throat threatening to choke her.

  She stumbled upstairs to her bedroom, pulling a suitcase from the closet and throwing clothes blindly into it. They had to leave. Now. Tonight. They would find the old man down the hill first, and then someone would report Patsy Duckworth missing. It was only a matter of time. She thought she heard a noise and ran to the window, terrified that Patsy’s buyer hadn’t gotten her text. There was nothing out there except Patsy’s bright and shiny SUV dusted with snow. What if the guy showed up? She had to dump the car to buy herself some time.

  Bea threw on clean clothes and found a red wig in her collection, fixing it quickly over her hair. It wasn’t a match for Patsy’s, but it would do. She hustled back downstairs and into the laundry area, finding the agent’s enormous purse and carrying it out the garage, rummaging for the keys as she walked. Cosmo, perched against the passenger window, barked a greeting, tail wagging. She ran back in the house to get his leash. “I’d forgotten about you,” she said, sliding onto the driver’s seat. She ran a hand over the leather. What a luxury. The only downside was the smoke smell, but some air freshener would fix that. For a moment, as she started the car and before racing down the driveway, Bea contemplated keeping the SUV and ditching the old sedan. Grand theft auto—the surest way to attract police attention. Someone out there might miss Patsy, but the car they’d truly mourn.