Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  Fight it.

  Get up.

  His eyes fluttered open to the sight of tall trees and a whitish blur of sky. His back and legs were numb; it felt as if he had frozen into the ground. His face was also numb but he felt an inkling of pain underneath the bones of his nose and the trickle of blood at the back of his throat. He took shallow breaths through his mouth; there was no feeling in his nostrils. He turned his head from side to side, saw his motionless arms, and concentrated on moving his fingers. For several seconds he felt nothing—it was as if the connection between his brain and muscles had been severed.

  But then he felt a twitch, in the right hand and then the left. And then a tingling in the tendons behind his knees.

  Thank God.

  You can move—

  He sat halfway up before the explosion of pain in his ribs knocked him back. He felt the blood flowing faster down the back of his throat. A panicked gagging reflex sent him into a coughing spasm; the pain like a pulsing, electrified force through his upper body. It felt as if every one of his internal organs had been ruptured, as if every bone in his chest had been cracked.

  He managed to draw air into his lungs as he turned sideways and coughed again, sending a spray of bright red blood into the snow. He rose up on one elbow, the pain lessening slightly as he eased into a sitting position.

  He stayed still for several seconds, fighting the terror brought on by the pain.

  Have to calm down.

  Think—

  He took a deep breath of the cold air, fortifying himself for the agony as he stood all the way up and peered through the trees, searching for his bearings, and saw the foundation of the fire-ruined house and the road beyond. He managed two steps before his legs buckled. He dropped to his knees, the pain of simple movement pushing him to the edge of a dead faint.

  Can’t—Have to stay awake.

  His mind flashed on the memory of Sara getting into O’Shea’s truck.

  It’s not over.

  He’s going to hurt her.

  He thought of the lies he had told Caruso, and now the consequences.

  Call him, tell him everything. Get him to send someone up here.

  He reached into his coat pocket for his phone. It wasn’t there. He put his palm on a tree for balance as he looked down at the ground, his line of sight drawn to O’Shea’s footprints in the snow.

  And then he saw it. The screen was shattered, as if it had been stomped.

  His lungs tightened with panic. It had been several minutes since O’Shea had beat him unconscious. His balance wavered as he staggered toward the road. He stumbled again but remained upright, gasping into another coughing spasm as more blood hit the back of his throat.

  Joseph Niles signed the papers that granted the release of his stepson into his custody, and then stood in the small waiting room of the station, his hands in the pockets of his coat, his back against the wall, doing his best to look tired and disappointed and give nothing else away. The deputy at the desk glanced at him as Marco emerged from the back hallway and went to the counter, where he received the rest of his valuables in clear plastic bags. Marco had grown up fast and big and was now tall enough to meet Joseph eye to eye, although that rarely happened. The sight of his stepson was barely tolerable on the best of days. Today it got him thinking of murder as Marco turned and gave him a defiant look.

  “You useless fuck…” Joseph muttered under his breath,

  For an infinite moment there was nothing but the compressed tunnel of vision between them as Marco stood completely still. Joseph stared back at him, conveying every bit of the rage he felt, thinking for the hundredth time what it might be like to simply abandon the boy, to escape the charade of being a normal suburban father with nothing to hide.

  After several seconds, Marco shifted his weight from one foot to the next, and then stepped out into the waiting area. Joseph said nothing as he turned toward the main doors. Marco followed, several steps behind, well out of range of the sudden, debilitating punch that Joseph wanted to throw at him.

  Not here.

  Not until you can do it right.

  His Hummer was parked at the curb, within open view of people coming in and out of the station. With measured breaths, he affected a downtrodden set of his shoulders as he unlocked the doors and waited for Marco to get into the passenger side. Then for the sake of anyone watching he made a backhand swipe at his eyes—the motion of a big, strong cop grappling with shame—then opened the driver’s side door and slid in behind the wheel.

  He pushed the button that locked all the doors with a soft click.

  Marco flinched as if he’d been slapped.

  He let him sit for half a minute and started the car.

  “Looks like you’re in the middle of a real shit storm, son.”

  He felt Marco tense, and prolonged the moment by resting his right arm on his knee, flexing his fingers and then forming a fist. Marco saw the motion in his peripheral vision and sucked in a quick, audible breath, as if he was already bracing for what he would face in the hour to come.

  “You need to tell me exactly what you told him,” Joseph said. “Every fucking word.”

  Madison had waited for over an hour for Marco to come to her back door. Despite his “on my way” response to her text message, every minute made her more certain that it wasn’t going to happen.

  After three more texts and an attempt to get him on the phone, she had been forced to accept that he had found something else to occupy his time. Something better, obviously. What made it all so much worse was her attempt to ensure the visit would have been worth his while. She had taken a short, hot shower and pulled on a pair of tight jeans, without underwear, and a clingy silk T-shirt. Then to take the edge off of her thoughts she had downed two more Stoli shots and stood at the door that led from the laundry room to the backyard and smoked half of a joint, shivering in the cold and swatting the aromatic fumes into the outside air.

  The buzz was more intense than she had expected it to be. There were yawning gaps from one thought to the next, and images flashing in an annoying, random way in her mind. Memories of how she had been the night before, her makeup mussed by Darrell’s slobbering, open-mouthed kisses, the skin on her breasts blotched by his pawing hands; flickering mental snapshots of her clumsy trudge through the snow as she made her way back home and stared at her phone when she got there, desperate to see a text from Marco suddenly pop up on the screen. The images had made her feel pathetically lonely earlier but they were triggering something else now as she looked into the mirror in the powder room, her mind working through the mechanizations she had gone through—mechanizations Marco had put her through. All to end up alone. The feeling made her want to slide down the wall and weep into her hands.

  She gazed out through the narrow window alongside the door and waited for the moment to pass. The yard was buried in several feet of snow, but the driveway that led to the garage behind the house had been shoveled by the neighborhood boy who did all of their yard work. He was only twelve, and she had often enjoyed standing just a little too close to him when they talked, watching him blush and stammer as he tried to carry on his end of the conversation. Her mother was still asleep and Madison doubted she had had the wherewithal to call the boy and request his services. More likely he had just jumped into action, knowing that he would be paid. She hated the idea of him knocking on the door to collect his money now, seeing the way she was dressed; hated the idea that he might somehow be able to look at her and know that she had gone to such lengths only to be ignored.

  She stepped away from the window and went through the family room to the kitchen. The keys to the Rover were on the counter. She grabbed them and reached for her coat, which was draped over the barstool where she had left it the night before. She imagined Marco texting that he was on his way to her house and then blithely changing his mind.


  You can’t keep this up, she thought. You need to deal with it now.

  Seconds later she was behind the wheel, backing out into the driveway, the Rover’s tires finding loose traction on the icy street as she headed for the confrontation that was bound to come.

  Kenneth managed to eat a few spoonfuls of corn flakes before his stomach cramped. He sucked in a deep breath and hoped the food would stay down as he thought of Aidan O’Shea being hit by a car.

  Last night, he thought. During the blizzard.

  His father had sounded strange in the conversation before he left, as if he was acting, speaking lines he had rehearsed. The hug had been strange too. A bit too tight. Too long.

  Desperate, he thought, with a sense of foreboding as he looked out into the family room. The French doors were covered up to the midpoint by gray-white snow, making the room feel like a tomb. He headed up the stairs, suddenly yearning for the brighter light on the house’s second floor and the comforting colors of his room.

  He went back to his unmade bed, his mind weary from the few hours of fitful sleep but wired from the coffee. He turned his head toward the dormered window, remembering the sight of Sara getting into Mr. O’Shea’s truck, at seven in the morning, looking as if she was sneaking away. But it had to be all right, because Sara had been tutoring Aidan for months, and making it a point to walk alongside him to his classes and sitting with him at lunch, always pretending she didn’t notice the stares of other kids who didn’t want to have anything to do with either one of them.

  “Misfits.”

  The voice came from the back of his mind as he looked at the fabric and paint swatches that were still laid out on the dresser and thought of the many conversations with his mother during the first two months in the house. After she had quit her job, and become a different person. The alteration of her personality seemed even more sudden, and more troubling in light of the way she confided in him, telling him she had done something “terrible” and was “atoning.”

  Telling him enough to make him worry, despite all her feeble attempts to laugh off her unhappiness. “Don’t worry—I’ll be all right. In the meantime, you, me, and Miss April will decorate this McMansion together,” making it sound like some kind of subversive adventure.

  Which it was for awhile, at the end of summer and during the first couple of weeks of fall, despite his depression at not fitting in at the new school. There were trips up to April Devon’s house on the mountain, where they looked at fabrics and catalogues and April’s bizarrely impressionistic paintings—all laid out in the amazing workspace and gallery that overlooked the valley below. And there were other trips, to the museum in Baltimore on a school day, and to the antique stores in the historic part of town— “Getaways to your destiny,” as April had put it, after seeing his own work.

  Now more than ever he wanted to remember those good times—to pretend they completely overshadowed the depression that seemed to cling to his mother. But again and again she had assured him she was fine.

  “Don’t worry baby. There are people with far bigger problems than mine. People with secrets that’ll damn near kill them.”

  He remembered that conversation vividly, it had taken place after she had spent a long afternoon at April Devon’s house.

  He went back to the window. The neighborhood had been emptied of trees before the houses had been built. His house sat on a slight rise that gave him a view of the main avenue. From a distance of two blocks he saw Madison Reidy’s midnight blue Range Rover pull up to the stop sign. He felt a familiar twinge in his chest as he thought of their first meeting in the front yard the week they moved in; Madison introducing herself and Marco Niles, bright-eyed and smiling with her promises of how much he and Sara were going to love life at Langford Secondary. Her casual stroking of his upper arm as she spoke to him; the earnest way she seemed to be listening as he took her and Marco through the house and showed them one of his portfolios of work.

  And then came the change—the night-and-day difference the first week of school, when he came toward her in the hallway, assuming her face would light up again; anticipating that she would introduce him to her friends. He had been shocked at the blank look in her eyes and then the way she glanced beyond him, as if she was looking for an escape, and then the barest acknowledgment as she passed by with a muttered “Hey Kenneth—busy day.”

  The change was staggeringly unexpected—like being doused with ice-cold water as he stood alone in the hall—and made all the worse by the feeling that everyone around them had seen the snub.

  Months later the whole exchange remained a mystery. He had absolutely no idea what he might have said or done to bring it on. His reaction was also a mystery. He knew that he should have been angry—knew that he would have been stronger in the long run by simply writing Madison Reidy off as a shallow, self-centered enemy.

  Instead he simply struggled with the hurt, still imagined day after day that she would somehow change back; that the distance in her eyes would suddenly vanish and she would smile at him again.

  Stupid, stupid, he thought, feeling like a voyeur now as he watched the Rover turn the corner. Madison was driving too fast, as if she didn’t realize how slick the pavement was. From the distance he saw her hands on the wheel and then the familiar shape of her face as she came closer. He was about to step back when he saw the slight upward tilt of her head and knew that she saw him, standing at the window, watching her. There was a sudden change in the Rover’s speed—as if she reflexively hit the brake—followed by a sideways shift in the back end as she hit the brake again.

  And then the Rover was spinning, missing the parked cars by inches as it smacked the curb, bounced and came down in a hard stop across the sidewalk.

  He stood still, his breath trapped in his throat, the curtain wadded tightly in his hand. After several seconds he saw the front wheels turning backward, the SUV shuddering slightly but staying in place, then heard the muffled gunning of the engine, as if Madison, out of frustration, had the accelerator pushed all the way to the floor. But it wasn’t working. The back wheels were lodged in the deep snow that had been pushed aside by the first run of the plows.

  He stepped back from the window, feeling embarrassed for her predicament; embarrassed because he had seen it happen. Then he pulled the curtain aside and looked down at the Rover again, watching as she stepped out and walked unsteadily toward the front of the vehicle, looking for whatever was keeping the wheels from turning. Her skin had a grayish hue. She looked exhausted, beaten down as she brushed back her soft blonde hair with a bright red gloved hand, then glanced upward, as if she knew he would still be staring at her from his bedroom window.

  “Misfits.”

  The word was stuck in his mind now, and with it the image of Sara and Aidan walking to class, and himself, knocked to the floor at school.

  His mood lifted instantly as Madison met his eyes, and didn’t look away.

  Another chance, he thought, and after a quick wave and a nervous smile he turned and moved very quickly down to the entry hall closet to grab his coat and then into the garage for the shovel, stepping lightly with the prospect of coming to her rescue.

  Kieran stood in front of the desk in his bedroom. He was still wearing his wet coat and boots; still feeling the icy outside air on his ears as he stared down at the laptop.

  He touched the keyboard. The screen came to life with the stories about the murders and with a still image of Lori Porter’s car in the gorge. He remembered sitting in the same place the night before, obsessing over Caruso’s suspicions as he waited for Sara to arrive, and thinking about being charged with murder and sent away from Aidan, who would never have survived without him.

  He sat down and stared at the screen; imagined Caruso seeing it and realizing that years of normality as Aidan’s guardian were nothing more than a mask for the sickness in his mind.

  He did what he had
intended to do the night before, deleting his history of the online stories on the murders, knowing that it was probably useless if Caruso arranged to have his computer confiscated.

  Only one way to destroy the trail for good.

  He turned the laptop over. The compartment that held the hard drive was clearly marked, and secured with four small screws. He paused, his thoughts slowed by fatigue, and then got up and went to the room’s small closet. He had secured the door with a combination lock around the pulls that opened it. Inside, he kept ammunition for his gun and a small box that contained the tools with sharp points and edges that he had to keep away from Aidan.

  The tiny screws that held the panel dropped to the floor as he loosened them. The hard drive slid easily out of the side of the computer. He held it in his palm and imagined pounding it to bits against the cement step in front of the house, but shivered at the thought of going back outside so soon.

  He stepped into the hallway and stood at the door to Aidan’s room, which was still secured by the deadbolt, and listened for sounds of Sara moving about. He heard nothing, and wasn’t surprised. He had given her a capsule of Rohypnol, enough to keep her dazed for hours.

  He went to the living room and kneeled in front of the stove and slipped the hard drive into a space between the grate and a small piece of charred but still-burnable wood. He pulled two pages from the stack of newspapers in the basket next to the stove, wadded them up and stuck them under the wood and lit them. The flames shot up around the edges of the hard drive, and the black plastic around it began to crackle and melt.

  He went to the desk where Aidan had done his homework. Aidan’s schoolbooks from the night before were still stacked in the corner. He sat down and pulled a lined sheet of paper from a notebook and started writing, describing Aidan’s death, and the sight of Stephen Porter’s SUV, driving away.

  The piece from Porter’s broken taillight cover came next, a jagged shard of hard red glass that he had found in the snow beside Aidan’s body and slipped into his pocket just as Caruso had arrived.