Fatal Option

by Chris Beakey

  “None of that means anything.”

  “Maybe not, in the long run. And I don’t really care.”

  “Then why did you bring it up?”

  “Because it points to a pattern of deception. You told me you don’t have any clue what happened to Lori Porter.”

  She blinked nervously; another telling sign.

  He waited a moment and then, as he had planned, he extended the olive branch.

  “Look, I messed up too, April.”

  She gave him a guarded look.

  “Niles and I have been working together for almost a year. We each had different responsibilities on the murder cases. He volunteered to search the databases for any other crimes that were similar to the Danica Morris murder and told me there weren’t. If I’d done that on my own I might have found your sister’s murder, and seen that she was married to Niles and figured it out. But because I left it up to him the connection wasn’t made.”

  “Poor you.”

  “Don’t be sarcastic.”

  She pursed her lips, still looking anxious about what was coming.

  “The point is I’ve got to play catch up now—have to learn everything I should have learned before and have to figure out how to put the squeeze on him. So I’m asking you to please come clean about everything you haven’t told me about Lori Porter, Danica Morris and the woman who was killed yesterday.”

  She looked past him, toward the swinging door that led to the kitchen.

  “Please,” he said. “Just tell me what you know.”

  She sighed, and met his eyes. “I already told you I don’t believe Lori killed herself. I knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Prove it,” he said.

  She pursed her lips again, showing her anger at being pushed.

  He tilted his head slightly, waiting for her to finish.

  “We confided in each other after we got to be friends. She had a troubled marriage. Felt a lot of guilt about an affair she had, and how much it hurt her husband. I told her about my screwed up sister—told her everything in all of its horrible detail. She was the only person I was ever able to talk to about it. The best friend I had.”

  “You told me before you were barely acquainted. Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to talk with you about any of this anymore. I was just as worried as you were about the connection between Lori’s death and that woman—Danica’s—murder. I knew that you’d have a lot more questions if you knew Lori and I were close.”

  And that I’d keep looking at your past, and Joseph’s past, he thought. And that secret deal you worked out—

  “But that’s not the only reason,” she said, as if she’d read his mind.

  “Then why else?”

  Her eyes welled with tears.

  “Shame.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Exactly what I said. I was ashamed, embarrassed about my sister…and what kind of person she was. And I sure as Hell didn’t want to believe Joseph had any connection to the murder of that girl.”

  “Even though it happened shortly after he moved here and took this job.”

  “Yes. I wanted to believe it was just a coincidence.”

  “But now you think otherwise?”

  She nodded.

  “So you know Niles killed Danica Morris…and Cherilynn Jenkins.” He made a point to use their names. “In the same way he killed Sheila—”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “You just said you do.”

  “No, I said I don’t believe it’s a coincidence.”

  He frowned, as if she had to be kidding.

  “I always had an ulterior motive for moving here after Joseph got the job. I wanted to be close to him, so he would always know I was watching him, after what he did to Sheila. I confronted him the day after I heard about the death of that woman, which happened close to my house. He swore he didn’t have anything to do with it—even made a big deal out of the fact that her brother, who also lives up on the mountain, has been arrested for dealing drugs a couple of times, and that her killer was probably one of the low-lifes he dealt with. And then he proved he couldn’t have been there when it happened—showed me a receipt from Billiards and Brews out on the highway…I didn’t want to believe him, but it was time-stamped so I took it for what it was, as physical proof that he was there the night of that murder. But even so I knew he was telling the truth. I hate Joseph but I also understand him. I know what makes him tick. And I knew from his reaction that he didn’t kill that woman, and he didn’t have anything to do with Lori’s

  death.”

  “You really believe that.”

  “It’s not a matter of belief. It’s about what I know, and about the other woman who was killed yesterday.”

  He watched as she took another long, deep breath.

  “What are you saying?”

  She met his eyes with a look of sad resignation. “I saw the story on the noontime news, so I knew about the similarities to my sister’s murder, and the murder of that woman the night Lori died. And then I saw the follow-up stories this morning, and called Joseph right away. I asked him again—did you do it? He denied it but I said if you didn’t, then who did? And that’s when he told me I should know.

  “I didn’t say anything—I was confused. But then he said ‘It all goes back to Sheila, who she was and what she did.’ And then I remembered the victim was a teacher at Langford Secondary. And then it all made sense. Sheila and Joseph. The way he killed her. And the reason.”

  She paused, looking past him once again, as if her mind was drifting.

  “My sister molested her own son. Sexually and repeatedly during the last year of their marriage. She even videotaped some of it, and showed it to Niles.”

  Caruso felt a chill between his shoulder blades. It crept down into his stomach and settled there as the photos of Sheila Devon’s body flickered back through his mind.

  “That’s probably the worst part—that she wanted Joseph to know about it. In her sick and twisted way, it was her way of making him jealous. Pitting the two of them—her husband and her son—against each other. In the end that’s why Joseph did it. That’s why he killed her.”

  Marco Niles gripped the banister with both hands as he climbed the stairs. The vision in his right eye was blurred and the whole right side of his face felt as if it was on fire. Minutes earlier, when he had come-to on the basement floor, he had reached up and felt a knot rising on the right side of his forehead, just above his eye. He remembered his stepfather jerking him around and wrenching his arms around his back and slamming him into the concrete wall. The inside of his cheek was bleeding and he felt a loosened tooth with the tip of his tongue as he reached the top of the stairs…and made the mistake of turning around, and looking down.

  The foyer below him rolled unevenly in his vision. He grabbed the handrail again and just barely stopped himself from falling backwards as he regained his balance and made his way to his bedroom and then into his own bathroom and saw his face in the mirror. His right eye was nearly swollen shut and the skin around the knot on his forehead was mottled and purplish-black. He opened his mouth and saw blood between his teeth, then leaned over and retched. A string of reddened saliva dropped into the sink. He stared dazedly at it for a long moment before stepping back into the bedroom.

  The cracked full-length mirror rested against the wall. There were spots of blood on the light blue flannel shirt that he had put on just after the text message from Madison. He gazed at the blood stains, remembering…then felt for his cell phone in the pocket of his jeans.

  The text was there, and the photo. Madison’s nipples were erect and her hand was inside her underwear. He remembered taking the photo and then handing the phone back to her and fucking her with her arms pinned to the wall behind her.
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br />   His cock responded to the memory, becoming rock-hard and constricted in his jeans. His head grew light and he had to put his hand on the wall for balance as he made his way over to his desk.

  His computer was as he had left it, with all of the windows closed and the history of Web sites deleted. He unzipped the fly of his jeans and sat down and opened the browser. He sucked lightly on the loosened tooth, and felt a fresh pulse of pain as he typed in the address of the Web site and watched as the screen came to life. Time stopped as he stared at the images of the women, the curves and the flesh, the wares on display. There was no end to the photos and videos; there were thousands, beckoning, pulling him along. He watched for several minutes before going to the “search” box and entering his terms and then waiting for the mix of responses that came back to him, then typed in a few more terms and saw the options narrowing. Most of the profiles were familiar, the photos embedded in his mind to be called up at will, but three new ones had been added within the last day. He saw the flashing green lights that indicated which women were online at that same moment—gazing at his own profile, the descriptions of what he liked.

  A live chat box floated onto the page.

  He squinted and looked closer at the profile photo and read through the things she had written about herself—

  And started typing into the box.

  She responded almost immediately and he responded back, just as he had to the teacher, Cherilynn Jenkins, who he had also connected with through the site. She had been cautious at first, believing from the bogus profile that he had created that he was a guy who worked construction, and had insisted on meeting him in person. She had arrived, as promised, at the Starbucks at Patriot Mall, and had waited an hour for her mystery man to show, unaware that he was watching her from a distance, an inconspicuous teenager who bore no resemblance to the thirty-year-old she had expected.

  Eventually she had driven home, unaware that he had followed, in preparation for the surprise visit with the stun gun two nights ago.

  It hadn’t worked that way with Danica Morris, the sister of the guy who sold weed up on the mountain where April lived. Her car had broken down in the rainstorm. She had recognized him as one of her brother’s customers as he had pulled over, her hair plastered to her face from the rain, smiling with relief, as if she had no doubt that he was going to help her. He had returned the smile, keeping her completely at ease. It had already been dark but she had not noticed when he turned off his headlights and emerged without a flashlight; had simply said hello and made a joke about knowing she should have known a little more about cars as she handed him the tire iron.

  He swung it fast and hard just as she turned to get out of his way, shattering the left side of her face and knocking her sideways into the underbrush, out of sight of the road. She swatted clumsily at the air, blinded by the blood in her eyes as he dragged her ten feet into the woods. He hit her once more—a hard punch against her sternum that shocked her into silence—and then held her down with the tire iron against her throat while he fucked and choked the life out of her just seconds before the Lexus came around the bend in the road.

  The driver had slowed down at the sight of the disabled car, and then she had stopped and stepped out, her umbrella turning inside out with a gust of wind as she stooped down to pick up the flashlight that had rolled into the center of the road, and seen him, at the edge of the woods.

  She had reacted quickly—dropping the flashlight and running back to the idling car and speeding away. It had taken only a minute to catch up to her. The hairpin curve had taken her completely by surprise.

  He learned it was Sara and Kenneth Porter’s mother the next day, first through hallway rumors and later through the stories on the news.

  And now the game was starting again. He watched as words appeared in the chat box at a rapid, uninhibited pace; tell me what you like; imagine I’m fucking you, right now—

  The words blurred in his vision. He realized he had typed them subconsciously.

  He pulled his hands away and dropped them to his sides.

  You can’t.

  He knows.

  The two thoughts melded in his mind as he thought about yesterday’s text message—get home now—from his stepfather. And the sight of Joseph standing at the foot of the stairs as he walked through the door, holding the wallet that had fallen out of his pocket outside the teacher’s apartment the night before.

  The violence that followed had been the worst of his life, but it was nothing compared to the beating that came this morning, after Caruso arrested him for the DUI.

  His phone chirped. He absently reached for it, intending to ignore it until he saw it was from April, the aunt who treated him like a stranger. He let the call go into voice mail, then listened to the message; his rage surging back as she told him she knew about the dead women, and telling him she had to see him, now, at her house on the mountain.

  Madison was still grappling with the idea of Sara Porter comforting Kieran and the ironic fact that she and Kenneth were checking on Sara together as she turned off the interstate and onto Route 15. Aidan’s death felt like a justifiable reason to try and patch things up, despite the text message Sara had sent her the previous morning: You really are a whore Madison. I never even wanted to be your friend.

  Like she knew exactly how to get under your skin, she thought.

  A ding came from the dashboard. She looked down, saw the gas gauge hovering near empty.

  “Goddamn it,” she muttered.

  “What’s wrong?” Kenneth asked.

  She felt embarrassed. She had known yesterday that she needed to buy gas but the drama with Marco had superseded everything else.

  She remembered a mini-mart at the base of the mountain, with two self-serve pumps and a small store, which might have been closed because of the storm. She had to make a decision. Playing it safe meant turning around to avoid the chance of being stranded on the mountain, in the snow.

  But it also meant going home without knowing what had drawn Sara up there, with Kieran.

  Finally, the neon antique Exxon logo appeared in the near distance. She tapped the brakes and heard the warning sound again. She was practically coasting by the time she reached the station.

  She sighed with relief and pulled in.

  Kenneth got out as soon as she stopped. “I’ll pump it for you.”

  “Okay but—take this.” She pulled one of her mother’s credit cards from her wallet and handed it to him and watched him as he got out and came around the front of the Rover. His coat was too light for the freezing air and she could tell he was shivering as he reached for the hose.

  His hands dropped to his sides as he turned and glanced toward the store.

  She opened the driver’s side door. “Everything okay?”

  “The credit card thing on the pump isn’t working,” he said. “I have to pay inside.”

  He moved quickly toward the store, his ruddy hair blowing wildly across his forehead in the cold wind, looking so earnest in his concern that something bad was going to happen to his sister. The thought gave her a twinge of melancholy as she gazed out at the empty road that lay in front of them, and then into the side mirror as she heard the sound of an approaching car. It was a small white SUV. She turned her head as it passed, noting the slogan—a stitch in time—on the side and the driver, a slim, blonde woman with both hands gripping the top of the wheel, leaning forward in an anxious posture as the vehicle sped past and disappeared over the cresting rise in the road ahead.

  Joseph Niles slowed as he neared April Dyson’s house at the top of the mountain, watching the road ahead and the rearview mirror for any other vehicles.

  He then looked toward the driveway. April’s Sorrento wasn’t there.

  Not good, he thought, but made a quick decision to proceed. He shifted into reverse and went back a few hundred yards and pul
led onto a shoulder that formed the entrance to one of the few logging roads that had been cut through the forest the summer before. The Taurus was partially visible to passing traffic but the need to keep her driveway free of tire tracks gave him no choice but to leave it. He then slipped deeper into the woods so he would stay concealed as he approached the house, and made his way through the knee-high snow between the trees.

  He knocked twice at the side door that led to the kitchen, and after half a minute with no response he slipped on a pair of latex gloves and turned the knob. As expected, it was locked. April had added deadbolts to every exterior door shortly after moving into the place, telling him, “I have to protect myself from you.” She had her gun pointed at him as she said it, adding to his humiliation after being summoned up to the mountain so she could dictate, in person, her terms for what she called a “truce.”

  He stepped away from the door, hoping that she hadn’t yet added the electronic alarm system that he knew was coming, and then moved swiftly down to the back of the house. There was another door that led to the basement, concealed from view by a row of tall pine trees on the sloping back yard that overlooked the valley.

  He punched out the glass directly over the knob, then reached in and unlocked it, then stood for a long moment at the threshold, holding his breath as he waited for the sound of a siren.

  When it didn’t happen he stepped inside. The light in the basement was faint but significant enough for him to make his way past the shelves of paints and the stacks of canvasses and bolts of fabric April stocked there. He mounted the stairs slowly, keeping his footsteps at the edges of the treads to minimize the noise on the off-chance that she was inside despite the absence of her car.

  He took the gun from his pocket and stepped through the next door and into the kitchen.

  The house was silent but for the sound of the mantel clock ticking in the back room that overlooked the valley. On a normal day there would have been a panoramic view, but with the heavily falling snow his sight was limited to a short stretch of road around the sharp bend that killed Lori Porter, visible through a clearing of trees at the edge of the gorge.