by Nathan Field
I thought for a moment. It wasn’t like Chloe to get flustered. “Are you sure it was her?”
“Yes. She turned round when I called her name.”
I gritted my teeth. “Did you use your quiet voice?”
“Hey, fuck you Sam! It’s not my fault your stupid…..”
Her rant cut off in my ear.
“No!” I yelled into the silent line. I waited a minute and then tried calling back. It went straight to CC’s voice-mail.
I blasted my horn in anger, drawing a rear-view glare from the driver in front of me. I shot him a middle finger in return. I felt utterly powerless. Traffic had ground to a complete halt, and I was still forty minutes away from San Francisco.
The news wasn’t all bad, I reassured myself. I might’ve lost my eyes and ears on the ground, but at least Chloe was inside her apartment – safe for the time being. And maybe she would finally check her messages.
But my optimism was short-lived. The bottleneck turned out to be an accident blocking an eastbound lane, and traffic was backed up for a mile. My forty minute journey turned into an hour-and-a-half. By the time I pulled up outside Chloe’s building, my head was close to exploding. I ran up the steps to the intercom.
To my surprise, she answered on the second buzz.
“Chloe, thank Christ! It’s Sam. I’ve been trying to call you.”
“I lost my phone yesterday,” came the muffled reply. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s a long story. Can I come up?”
She hit the door release, and I took my time climbing the stairs to the second floor, shaking off the tension from the drive. I paused in the corridor until my heart rate returned to normal. The truth about Bruno’s death needed to be delivered in a calm voice.
Chloe wasn’t in a good way when she answered the door. Bronze make-up was smeared around her eyes, and her skin had the appearance of wet cement. Her hair was pulled into a clumpy pony-tail and shoved carelessly to the side. “Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” she greeted in a thick voice.
“Jesus. Are you okay?”
“Nope,” she said simply, padding back into the living room. She was barefoot, wearing dorm-room sweat pants and a baggy t-shirt. It was a far cry from the short skirt and heels look she usually favored.
I followed her into the living room, my shoulders hunching as I felt the low ceilings bearing down on my neck. Chloe picked up a half-empty bottle of gin from the coffee table, waving it in front of me. “You wanna drink?” she said. “It’ll have to be straight, I ran out of tonic a while ago.”
“That’s fine,” I said, taking the bottle from her and moving to the kitchen. “You sit down, I’ll get it.” I took a clean glass from the dish rack and poured myself a triple shot, downing half of it immediately. I felt the alcohol burn at the back of my throat. It was wincingly bad gin. “You been working tonight?” I asked, topping up my glass.
“No, I’ve been drinking tonight.”
“With friends?”
“With myself. I’m not the best company at the moment.”
I left the bottle by the sink and carried my drink into the living room. Chloe was slumped on the sofa, head lolling against her chest, eyes clouded over. I perched himself on the armrest. “Have you seen Maxine today?” I asked.
She looked up, smiling suggestively. “Ah, Maxine. So that’s why you’re here.”
“Yeah, but it’s not what you’re thinking.”
“Sure, sure,” she said, reaching over to clumsily pat my thigh. “I believe you.”
I stood up, annoyed. “Chloe, I’ve got something important to tell you. Can you concentrate for a second, or are you too drunk?”
Her head drew back indignantly. “I’m not drunk, thank you very much. God, talk about the pot and the kettle.”
“Sorry, that didn’t come out right. I just want to make sure you understand me. This is going to be hard to swallow.”
Chloe’s face turned serious. “I’m listening, Sam. Say what you have to say.”
Satisfied that at least a few of her brain cells were still functioning, I proceeded to give Chloe a full account of recent events, complete with the back-story from Sacramento. She listened quietly, giving nothing away. Even when I reached the part about Bruno’s car crash, Chloe remained expressionless, prompting me to ask if she was still with me. She insisted that she was.
“But I’m saying Bruno death wasn’t an accident. He was killed by the same person who murdered Ralph Emerson.”
“Yeah, I heard you the first time.”
I searched her face for a flicker of emotion. “Sorry, I thought you’d be shocked.”
She sighed. “To be honest Sam, this sounds like one of your scripts. But keep going, I’m dying to see how it ends.”
“You think I’m making this up?”
“I’m reserving judgment.”
I sat down next to her, suddenly feeling exhausted. She had a right to be skeptical. It was a lot to take in. I reached for my gin and took another sip.
“Are you feeling okay?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, turning to her. “Should I continue?”
“Please do.”
As I told her about my recent visit to Sacramento, I felt the stress of the last two hours creep up on me. I found it difficult to keep the facts in chronological order, and several times I had to backtrack. Before I lost it completely, I fast-forwarded to the revelation about Maxine and the mug shot of Kendall Piper. That was the key message I had to get across.
By that stage, Chloe’s skepticism had progressed to complete disbelief. She was gazing impatiently around the living room, checking her watch every few minutes.
“I know you don’t believe me,” I eventually blurted. “But it’s the truth Chloe, every goddamn word. Maxine only befriended you to get to me. I’ll bet she approached you first, right?”
Chloe stood up, not even bothering to respond. She went to the window and parted the curtains, staring into the night.
“Listen, I can prove it,” I said to the back of her t-shirt. “Call Oracle’s head office, I bet they’ve never heard of Maxine. How could they when she doesn’t exist? Maxine is just Kendall Piper in disguise...” I frowned down at my empty glass, leaning forward to place it on the coffee table. Somehow I missed the edge and it fell onto the shaggy white rug with a dull thud. “Whoops,” I laughed. “At least it didn’t break.”
When I reached down to retrieve the glass, I was rocked by an intense wave of dizziness. My hand appeared blurry and detached before me, and my head fell forward, like the muscles in his neck had gone to sleep. Before my body tipped over, I heaved myself back into the sofa. I pushed my shades back up my nose, trying to regain focus. The living room appeared cloudy, like a gentle fog had drifted in. When I shut my eyes tight and opened them again, the vapors had thickened.
A clock ticked slowly in the background….
The sound of wind chimes stirred me from a micro-sleep. I lifted my heavy eyelids and peered into the haze. Chloe was standing in the kitchen doorway, looking down at the tinkling cell phone in her hand.
“Hey, you found it,” I said. But my voice was barely a whisper; dissolving in the fog.
“He’s almost done,” I heard Chloe say. “No, I’m looking at him right now. His eyes just closed….”
She was right. Everything had turned black.
25. “We know you killed them”
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Lucy.
She was standing underneath an arch of blue and white balloons, wearing a strapless pink prom dress that appeared to be fashioned from tissue paper. Her blonde hair flicked at her shoulders, and she was fuller in the face than I remembered. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but her playful, twinkling eyes suggested she’d been all grown up for some time.
Surrounding the silver-framed portrait were more photos of Lucy. Most were taken when she was very young – from a baby to pre-teens. Her mother was easy to spot. She had the same blonde hair an
d dark blue eyes as Lucy, but there was a looseness about her expression, like she was high on something. An older, plainer-looking girl also featured – I guessed Lucy’s sister. There was no sign of Daddy, or any other relatives.
Below the collage of photos, a blue glass vase sat on a floating shelf. It took me a moment to put the arrangement in context.
Someone had built a shrine to her.
Panic rushed into my stomach. I reached for my eyes, realizing they were uncovered, but my hands were tied to the back of a dining chair. My legs were also bound – a thick rope looped over my thighs and under the seat, and another secured my ankles. I tried twisting and squirming against the ropes, but they were pulled tight, cutting into the skin of my wrists.
I looked around me. Somehow I’d ended up in a large living room with a flickering orange light. I searched my memory for a link. I’d been talking to Chloe in her apartment, warning her about Maxine. But suddenly I’d come over all woozy, worse than the cheap gin could explain. Like I’d just taken a massive hit of morphine.
The last thing I remembered was Chloe talking on her phone. Her voice had sounded cold and business-like. Not like her at all. Jesus….
Had Chloe drugged me? Was that why the gin tasted so foul? And then it hit me, like a whop from a heavy bag.
They were sisters.
That’s who she’d been talking to on the phone. Chloe was really Tiffany Piper, the boring school teacher and Adele fan. And Maxine was Kendall, her deviant younger sister. The two of them had been collaborating from the start, working in shifts. That’s how they’d managed to stay one step ahead of me.
My mind reeled in disbelief. Discovering that Maxine was Kendall Piper in disguise had been hard enough to swallow. But Tiffany’s elaborate deception was even more difficult to comprehend. The lengths she’d gone to. Pretending to be Bruno’s girlfriend, and sharing his bed for six months, all just to get closer to me. Then calmly introducing her sister as my blind date. The fucking nerve on both of them. And to think they’d also been behind the script edits, the break-ins, the murders….
Suddenly, I was wide awake.
I twisted my neck to get a better look at the room. The walls were exposed logs, and the ceiling had a long cedar beam running down the center. There was a doorway to my right, leading to a hall and a wooden staircase. Behind me, couches and armchairs were arranged in front of an open fire, the source of the flickering light in the room.
Although I’d never been there before, I had a pretty good idea of where I was. The Piper’s fishing lodge at Lake Berryessa.
They planned to execute me at their father’s refuge.
Fear and adrenaline coursed through my veins. I struggled against my restraints, using everything I had, but there was no give in the ropes. The sisters had fine-tuned their kidnapping skills. I wasn’t gagged, but I knew the proximity of the neighbors wouldn’t have escaped their attention. We were probably tucked away in an isolated corner of the lake, where no one could hear my screams.
I tried calling for help anyway. I shouted, “Help me! Please, can anyone hear me? I’m being held hostage!”
Someone did hear me. Floorboards creaked through the ceiling, and the cedar beam groaned like a tossing ship. Then two sets of footsteps crossed over my head and started tumbling down the stairs. They’d been looking forward to this.
Tiffany appeared first – her face scrubbed clean of make-up, and her blonde hair pulled neatly under a headband. A knitted sweater and white sneakers had been added to her dorm room ensemble. She smiled triumphantly, clearly tickled by my predicament. Kendall was close behind, her head held low, scowling up through her eyebrows. Her latest incarnation was somewhere between the polished corporate executive I’d met for dinner, and the seething Goth from the mug shot. She still had her chic shoulder-length hair, but her clothes were now casual: plaid shirt, skinny indigo jeans, and black high-heeled boots. Unlike her sister, Kendall wasn’t smiling. She was all business.
“Surprised?” Tiffany said with glee.
“Yeah, what happened to you?” I said, trying hard to keep the tension out of my voice. “I much prefer your old look.”
Her smile twisted into a sneer. “You mean slutty. That’s what you look for in a woman, isn’t it Sam?”
Kendall was circling my chair. “Of course it is. He fell for the queen of sluts.”
“Just like your dad,” I said.
Kendall’s hand flashed across my face, stinging my left cheek. “You shut up!” she cried. “Don’t you dare compare yourself to him!”
Tiffany stepped forward, placing a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “Kendall, he’s trying to provoke you. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”
“The truth always hurts,” I said, looking pointedly at Kendall.
“Fuck you!” Kendall screamed, slapping me hard again. I felt my cheek begin to swell.
“You deserved that,” Tiffany said, gently taking Kendall aside. After she’d calmed her sister with a few soft words, Tiffany turned and gave me a longsuffering look. “It’s not the truth that hurts, Sam. It’s the lies. Our father was a good man. His only sin was to presume his wife loved him back.”
“You’re not seriously trying to paint your father as a saint. He was a murderer. And clearly the apples don’t fall far from the tree.”
Tiffany lifted her chin defiantly. “He wasn’t a murderer, Sam. You’re the murderer.”
I frowned. “What?”
“We know you killed them,” Tiffany said. “You might as well come clean.”
“Christ, are you both completely delusional? The police ruled it a murder-suicide.”
“Only because Ralph Emerson’s alibi checked out,” Kendall said. “They didn’t realize how much of a slut Lucy was. They assumed she just had one fuck buddy.”
“But the forensics…”
“–The forensics were inconclusive,” Kendall said tetchily, like she’d made the argument many times before. “The police fiddle the results to match the crime, everybody knows that. And when Ralph was ruled out as the killer, they didn’t bother looking for anyone else. It was much easier to frame Dad. But we know better, don’t we. So tell me, Sam – where were you on the night of the shootings?”
“At Sutter Memorial Hospital, recovering from a hit-and-run.”
The sisters looked at each other. It wasn’t the answer they’d expected. Kendall said, “Did you have that excuse prepared?”
“It’s the truth. How do you think I got these scars? On the night of the shootings, Ralph Emerson ran me down in his BMW. Check with the hospital – I was there for two weeks.”
Kendall’s forehead darkened, and she turned to her sister for guidance. Tiffany was looking at me with faraway eyes, momentarily thrown.
I seized the opportunity. “Think about it Why would I kill Lucy, or your father? What was in it for me? I didn’t get any inheritance money. Your theory doesn’t make sense.”
Tiffany sneered, regaining her focus. “Maybe Lucy pulled a gun on you at the last minute, hoping to frame you, and you were forced to defend yourself. Or maybe she was caught in the firing line when you shot Dad. At the end of the day, we don’t care about the details, or whatever fancy excuse you try and invent. We’ve heard enough lies and theories about the night Dad died. The important thing is, we now have proof that he didn’t kill himself. That’s what we’ve been telling the police for years – Dad never would’ve left us willingly. He loved us too much.”
I suddenly realized what I was up against. The sisters weren’t especially concerned with their father being labeled a murderer. In their minds, Lucy deserved to die, anyway. They just couldn’t accept that he’d committed suicide. If that were true, their spiteful mother would’ve been right all along. He’d never really loved them. And that idea was simply unbearable. They needed to believe he was taken from them. They needed to put the gun in my hands.
I tried another angle. “Okay, let’s say you’re right and your father didn’t kill hims
elf. That doesn’t make me the killer. I swear I had nothing to do with the shootings. If you don’t believe me, take your evidence to the police. Let them check my alibi.”
“The police aren’t interested in new evidence,” Tiffany said. “Re-opening the case would only draw attention to their mistakes.”
“We gave up on the police a long time ago,” Kendall said.
“That’s bullshit. You’re just afraid of the truth. If you’re so sure I’m the killer – why don’t you call the hospital?”
“We don’t need any more proof,” Tiffany said. “I mean, look at yourself. You’ve been living with a guilty conscience for the past eight years – changing your name, severing all ties to Sacramento, developing a psychosomatic eye condition…”
“–It’s not a psychosomatic condition. I suffer from photophobia.”
Tiffany shook her head, not listening. “It must’ve been eating you up inside.”
“Jesus, I didn’t kill them,” I groaned, the hopelessness of my situation sinking in. For years the sisters been looking for someone, anyone, other than their father to blame for their family’s woes. Now that they had their scapegoat, they weren’t about to be talked around.
“We’ll be doing you a favor,” Kendall said. “You’re life’s a mess anyway.”
I laughed, despite myself. “You’re both out of your fucking minds. Don’t pretend to rationalize what you’re doing. You just have a taste for blood.”
“It’s called revenge, stupid,” Kendall said. “An eye for an eye.”
“Kendall’s right,” Tiffany said. “There’s nothing insane about our behavior – we’re simply balancing the scales of justice. The three of you deserve to rot in hell for what you did to our family. Lucy, Ralph, and now you, the grand finale.”
“What about Bruno?” I spat, enraged by their conceit. “How do you rationalize that killing?”
The sisters looked at each other and frowned.
I jumped on their hesitancy. “See? You can’t. Well, that’s a pretty big hole in your argument, girls. Face it – you’re just a couple of bloodthirsty bitches.”