Defenseless

by Celeste Marsella

  I watched the scene in horror. “Oh my god.”

  He looked down at his blood-splattered shirt and grimaced. “Fuck,” he said. “I don’t have a clean one.”

  “A clean one?” I repeated his words, buying time for the punch line, hoping he’d look up at me and laugh.

  “Elliot?”

  Then suddenly he seemed to have remembered me—that I was still there with him and he needed to answer me. To respond to my presence.

  “You’ve made this very difficult, Miss Melone.”

  “Tell me what you mean. Tell me this is not what I think. Tell me it’s a joke!” I screamed.

  “It’s not a fucking joke!” he screamed back. “Why didn’t you stay away from me? Stay out of it.”

  “It . . . as in murders?”

  He looked at me coldly, perhaps calculating his next move. But I’d never been able to read Elliot very well, and that fact was never more obvious to me than it was then, as he stood before me, the murderer who had been beside me all the time.

  “Oh, Elliot . . . no . . .” And then what else could I say? The bridge between us had collapsed, and as if he had fallen into a bottomless gulf, the person I thought I’d known was lost to me.

  “Elliot,” I said again softly, trying to bring him back to familiar turf. “Let’s talk this through. Like we have in the past.”

  “Don’t patronize me. I’m sick of it.”

  “Okay, but think about this. What are your options now? What are you going to do without my help?”

  “I don’t need your help,” he said calmly. “Because everyone thinks Sherman is the one. They’ll think he killed Rod too. Especially after we plant the knife in his apartment.”

  “No! You’re pissing me off now. We aren’t framing anyone for anything. I’m calling the police. Put the goddamn gun down, tell me where Cassie is, and then just get out of here. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  But what I knew then was that Elliot had no respect for me, or my ability to “take care” of anything. I was never Carlyle’s cover, as Elliot had once suggested. Elliot had used me as his own cover. Had my presence at Holton actually extended his killing spree? Would he have been caught sooner if I’d not been hired and then used by him as a pawn? He had always been in control. Even when I unwittingly sought him out for help, Elliot allowed me to believe he was honored by my attention. He let me believe we were partners sharing a common goal, when all along he was using me for his own ends. And still, I had no good plan to deal with him, except to find out what he’d done with Cassie, and then get my family as far away from him as I could.

  Elliot looked at me with a cocky expression. He was still clearly in control and in a world of his own as, I should have seen before now, he always had been. “You aren’t getting any of this, are you?” he said.

  I shivered in utter exhaustion. Fighting Rod suddenly seemed easy. Rod was driven by the fear and self-preservation of the innocent. But this person standing before me—I had no idea what provoked him—or what it would take to stop him.

  As I stared at him, his chest began undulating in waves, each one deeper than the one before until each breath turned into an audible gasp. His intake of air became a high-pitched shriek, and then a long low growl of its exhalation, until he was gasping for air that suddenly stopped flowing in. His eyes widened. In seconds he would faint without breath. He dropped his head to his chest, not breathing at all, and held it there, and when he lifted his face to me, his lips had turned a grayish blue, and his eyes were rolling in their sockets.

  “You can’t breathe,” I whispered.

  I would have been terrified by an inability to breathe, but Elliot’s face showed only anger, as if his body was disappointing him. He tried to answer me, but like the skipping of a scratched CD, only spurts of broken sounds came from his lips. He needed to talk, and he tried to force his throat open to speak, but between every word he pursed his lips and sucked in strangled streams of air.

  “In the beginning . . . you’re the one person . . . who . . . respected me. You listened to me. And I hoped Cassie . . . would too.”

  “Cassie’s just a kid, Elliot. Like all these college girls, she was attracted to the glamour of someone like Sherman. You need someone older, more mature, who appreciates—”

  Elliot was fiercely shaking his head, trying to stop me from talking so he could continue. He wasn’t buying my babble. He had discounted my words for the obvious ruse they were.

  “But she treated me like the others. That day . . . in the cafeteria. They came over and your bratty little sister . . . just walked away with them. I wasn’t worth . . . a wave goodbye.”

  I stepped closer to him.

  “Get away from me!”

  The anger seemed to help him. He took a deep breath, but then began choking again. He lifted the loaded gun in his hand, threatening me to stay back.

  I hugged my sides and began to shake. “Okay. Okay, Elliot. Calm down.”

  “Move back!” he hollered again.

  Backing away, I lifted my hands in surrender. “But I thought you were worried about Lisa. You warned me about her cocaine addiction—tried to help her. Why?”

  “She called me that night. Commanded me, like a servant, to bring my notes to Emily’s room. I agreed to meet her at Sherman’s party. But she wouldn’t be seen with me there. She insisted on meeting outside. In the park.” He smiled. “So, yeah, I agreed. I met her outside—in the park. She never made it to the party.”

  I felt a wave of nausea at the thrill he seemed to get in recounting his bloody revenge against Lisa. Sure, she was a bitch, but did she deserve to die over it? The law said she didn’t.

  “So you pretended to be worried about her. Just like with Cassie. You pretended to be concerned about her going off with Rod and Cory—but you were just obsessively jealous. But you can’t own people, Elliot. You can’t control everything.”

  Elliot was breathing loudly, watching my lips move but no longer listening to me. “You have to help me . . . get into Sherman’s apartment so we can hide this knife there . . . okay, Miss Melone?” He was choking for air again.

  “You can call me Marianna now,” I whispered. “And you don’t need to point the gun at me. Find your inhaler. You need it.”

  But Elliot, as always, was ahead of me. Instead of lowering the gun, he dropped the bloody knife to the ground, and with his free hand, he struggled to get into a side pocket of his jacket while he held the gun still aimed at me. It was loaded, cocked, and I was no hero, so I watched quietly as he found his inhaler and shot it twice into his mouth.

  The color in Elliot’s face was returning to normal, his lips were regaining color. He stood stone-faced as he held my gun in one hand and picked up the bloody knife with the other.

  “Elliot, where is Cassie?” I asked carefully. I was afraid of him now as I realized all I’d missed when he’d acted as my ally. He planted seeds and culled information from me by day, while at night, he stalked and mutilated his prey. And now he had Cassie . . . “She’s not one of them, Elliot. Cassie’s just a middle-class kid who’s had the same iPod since they first came out.”

  He nodded. “Emily wasn’t like them either. Emily didn’t throw her privileged background around like crisp hundred-dollar bills. But she knew I was the last person to see Lisa alive. I couldn’t let her go.” He looked down and grimaced, as if the thought of killing Emily made him sick, or sad. “I had to make it look like the others, but I tried to be gentle—”

  “Stop it! I can’t listen to this.”

  His head rose slowly to mine. His eyes were slit and questioning, as if he was trying to make me understand the necessity of his brutal acts—as if there were some logic to the murders that he could explain, and that I would understand. “Killing the others though,” he said, “that was the pleasure I never got from them while they were alive because they thought they were too good for me.”

  “Okay, okay. I understand,” I lied. “So now do you see what I’m sayi
ng? Cassie’s a good girl like Emily. The others were drug-addicted ignorant bitches. And of course you’re right, framing Sherman for the murders is brilliant. Sherman will bring Carlyle down with him. It’s ineluctable perfection.”

  He looked down at the gun in his hand and it glimmered as if the sun had given him a cue. “But you. What I do about you? You and Emily shouldn’t have been hurt.” He shook his head, still lowered. “I hate making mistakes.”

  I whipped away from him and stumbled up the slope toward my car, looking back to talk to him, to see if the gun was still aimed. I needed to keep Elliot talking and his finger on the trigger at rest. So I crawled and climbed and talked as he began to follow me like an obedient pet—with a gun in his hand, pointed at my back.

  “Is Cassie all right?” I asked.

  But Elliot had tuned me out. “We’ll get the knife into Sherman’s apartment.”

  “Okay. We can do that now,” I said lightly, as if we had just agreed to share a cone of rocky road ice cream. “We’ll get the knife into Sherman’s place and then go get Cassie. Okay, Elliot? . . . okay?”

  He jumped in front of me. “Stop talking to me like I’m a dumb kid. Forget Cassie. She’s in my dorm room, but you won’t see her again.”

  “Why won’t I see her? What did you do?”

  He stabbed the gun at me like an accusing finger, jabbing it toward my forehead with each emphatic statement. “You aren’t as bright as I thought you were. I’m not letting you go. So it doesn’t really matter where Cassie is because you’re never going to see her again anyway.”

  “She’s alive. Cassie’s okay? Because if she’s all right, I don’t care what you want from me. You’re wrong in thinking you have to hurt me—”

  “Just go to the car and shut up.”

  I continued to talk as I faced forward and began climbing up the slope again. “Why can’t we talk like we’ve done in the past? We always got along. We’ve always talked.”

  I felt the butt of the gun slam into the back of my head. I tripped and rolled on my back to watch his next move. He seemed so much farther away from me than the few feet he actually was. His eyes seemed clouded by a cataract film, as if he’d gone into a trance that I was just now beginning to realize might be the killer’s haven. He was en route to that place where conscience is suspended.

  “Get up,” he said. “Don’t talk anymore. Go to the car.”

  When we reached my car, he walked in front of me, opened the driver’s door, and directed me in with the muzzle of the gun. I sat behind the wheel and I fumbled for the key in the ignition.

  “Cory’s apartment?” I asked.

  “No. Give me the keys.” His eyes were focused on some distant place. He would no longer look at me, and if the eyes are the bridge to the soul, he had tumbled into an abyss. I had the sense just then that one of us—or both—would never see another dawn.

  “Listen, Elliot, I’ll give you the keys. You take the car, and let me and Cassie go. There’s no evidence linking you with the deaths and I won’t say anything. Rod was self-defense. It’s over. I quit my job at Holton. I’m never going back—”

  “Too much has happened. Melinda, Lisa, Mila, Emily, and—” He glanced down the hill at Rod who was still drenching the ground with his last blood. “I hate mistakes.” He threw the bloody knife into the backseat and kicked me over to the passenger side. I surrendered the keys to him, knowing that if he drove, I would have some control. He turned the key in the ignition and started the engine. Pushing the gun into my temple, he ordered, “Sit up.”

  I had no sooner sat up than he slammed my forehead against the dashboard and I heard the painless crunch of the gun on my skull. When my eyesight returned, Elliot was out of the car. He leaned back into the driver’s side and I grabbed his arm, not caring if the gun went off, only knowing I had run out of time. He tried to yank his arm from me, but I held the sleeve of his bloody shirt and I wouldn’t let go. I needed to stay with him until I found my sister. I couldn’t let him go until I knew she was safe.

  He used my grip to drag me back across the front seat to the driver’s side, and then he twisted my hand until it was bent against my forearm. I let go before my wrist snapped, and he slammed my head into the steering wheel. I was dizzy, nauseous. I closed my eyes and gasped for air, and somewhere in the din of my pounding head I felt him reach over me and release the parking brake and move the shift into drive. The door slammed closed, and the car began to roll forward, crackling over dried branches and dead leaves. I looked up at the river ahead as the car picked up speed and bounced forward. Another wave of nausea, and then I remembered the smell of vomit and I must have passed out, because when I awoke (or was I dreaming?), my Jeep was speeding down the embankment. River reeds raced by the windows as I struggled to unbuckle my seat belt, but too soon I felt the earth give way, and I looked up at the water surrounding me. And then from somewhere far away I heard a woman screaming. Screaming my sister’s name. Screaming for her mother. Her father. Screaming, as water rose above the windows and the car made its bubbling descent to the bottom of the river.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Gone Fishing

  SOMETHING JOLTED ME, THE car hitting bottom, and I awoke—a fish in a bowl. My ears were plugged in a watery silence. I heard a muffled hissing as the car engine gurgled to a halt. My fingers pushed through heavy water for the window control, but the engine had sputtered dead and the control was useless. I needed a breath. Just one more breath and I could try to push open the door. I felt my lungs burning and my vision going dark. I passed out again and was dreaming of Mike. Underwater, his black hair billowed around his face through the window. Air bubbled from his mouth. Those fierce deep-blue eyes came toward me and then away and back again as he pounded his fists against the glass, trying to hit me. He was angry, screaming something at me.

  Maybe he had come with Elliot and was trying to kill me. But I wasn’t afraid. Let him kill me fast so the tight burning in my chest would subside. I wanted to let Mike in, to hold him, wrap my legs around his body, take a deep breath from his mouth. I just wanted air. I tried to open the car door for him, let him in, but I couldn’t budge it. Mike was slamming something against the window. A car jack? Muscles contorted his angry face, but as hard and fast as he tried to bang against the glass, his movements under dense water were slow and awkward. He seemed to be striking at me. When I reached up to guard my face, shattered glass floated at me. Mike lunged in, pulled me out, and dragged me farther underwater.

  My vision went in and out of focus, dark then light, then a total blackout, until I awoke in the pool I swam in as a child. Almost drowning once, I’d been terrified of water ever since. Mike dragged me to the deepest end, where my feet couldn’t touch the ground. I rubbed my mouth against his lips and watched my hair swirl around his face. Taking the air from his mouth—his lips over mine—he gave me his breath. He pulled away from me, swimming up, and the world went dark again as I knew it would if he ever stopped kissing me.

  Then the water was gone, and we were on dry land, but I still couldn’t breathe. And Mike was still angry. Why? Why, Mike? What did I do? His fist came at me again, slamming the flat of his hand against my face. Slapping me again and again.

  “Goddamn you!” he screamed. “Fuck you! Fuck you!”

  He punched his fist into my chest, over and over, and I felt nothing but sadness.

  He was on top of me now, coming down at me, angrier than before. He was tired, and dripping, and the look on his face told me he didn’t want to do it anymore. He wanted to stop hitting me. One more time, his face told me, and he would finish. With one more hard blow, I would stop breathing forever and finally sleep.

  * * *

  MY EYES BLINKED open to a paramedic in a white uniform who was holding an ammonia tab under my nose. His face was looming above me. I raised my hand to touch his face, to see if he was real, but my arm was too heavy to lift. He was so far away, and beyond him, farther in the distance, were branches of a weep
ing willow tree and then a darkening sky. The wind had picked up.

  “You guys have a blanket in the truck?”

  I turned my head toward the gruff voice. Mike was tearing off his wet clothes. “Can’t you see she’s shivering like a live wire?”

  Mike was shirtless and dripping, yelling into a cell phone for backup.

  The paramedic brought a blanket and dropped it at Mike’s feet, then backed away from me, letting Mike take his place at my side. Mike knelt and savagely ripped off my wet jacket as if he were doing it for himself and not me, like I was a child who didn’t know better and had to be roughly disciplined. He pulled at the buttons of my blouse until they broke away all at once. Bending me over his forearm, he slid my blouse off from behind. With only a bra on, I felt instantly warmer. He grabbed the ambulance-issue blanket from the ground and covered me, tucking the sides underneath me.

  Each shallow breath burned deep inside my chest. I tried to speak but every word was a cough. I tried again and again until I felt a soft stream of painless air come through my throat. I formed the air into a soft whisper.

  “Kiss me again, Mike.”

  “Later, babe. You just threw up.”

  He stood at the sound of approaching sirens. Another patrol car had driven down the embankment. Vince got out with the driver and was standing with uniformed police. Behind them, Laurie and Shannon emerged from Shannon’s white Suburban and were running toward me.

  Shannon bowed by my side. “What happened here, sweetie?”

  “My car,” I coughed. “In the water.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Cassie?” I whispered again through my burning throat. “There’s a dragnet in Massachusetts. All of Cape Cod is out searching with dogs.”

  “Not at the Cape . . . Here . . . in Providence.”

  “We got that warrant for Sherman’s place. She isn’t there. No sign of her around here either. You know something we don’t?”