by Gregg Olsen
Ruby ignored him. She took the small coffee grinder off the counter and tried to yank off the cord.
“Give me the gun,” she said.
Micah handed it over. “Here.”
“Rip this power cord off this grinder and tie him up,” she said.
“Hands and feet?”
Ruby let out a sigh of exasperation. “No, Sherlock, hands. They have to walk, don’t they?”
“Where are we going?” Elan asked.
“After you tie him up, I want you to go across the road and see if you can start up one of those boats.”
Micah seemed agitated and confused, but he didn’t argue. “Okay,” he said, trying to pull the cord, but it wouldn’t give. So he cut it with a knife from the knife block on the counter.
Birdy wished she had been positioned closer to the knife block. A knife would be handy just then. She had never been prone to violence. She’d hunted as a girl, but that was because she needed to help feed her family when her father was away and food was scarce. When she killed her first deer at fourteen, she cried for two days.
“You’re kind of hurting me, Micah,” Elan said.
“You’re such a pussy, Elan. Your aunt didn’t complain,” Micah said, “and I tied her even tighter.”
Elan felt stupid just then. Scared and stupid.
Ruby slid a chair into the space next to Birdy and her brother hurried out the front door.
“Sit there,” she said. Elan did what he was told.
“Let’s go back to whatever it is that you think you are doing,” Birdy said. “Do you have any clue that you’re making a colossal mistake right now?”
Ruby didn’t see it that way. “It isn’t going to be a mistake. I’m going to get the money from my stepfather’s life insurance policy.”
“Not if you killed him,” she said.
“My mom’s going down for that. Your trip to Scottsdale sealed the deal there. You might not have proved anything by digging up my father, but you sure made my mom look like the world’s worst wife. That’s a bell that the jury will hear for sure. And when I get on the stand and tell my story—what I saw her do, my mom’s going to death row. I mean, I hope that’s what happens because I would feel bad knowing she was in prison for the rest of her life. I mean, she is my mom and I don’t want her to suffer.”
Micah, breathing heavily from a sprint across the road to the beach and back, returned.
“I got one going,” he said. “What are we going to do now, Ruby?”
Ruby let out another sigh. Apparently, she had a lot of practice being irritated by everyone.
“Dummy, we’re going on the boat,” she said. “We’re going to walk calmly across the road. We’re not going to scream. We’re not going to run. We’re not going to make any sudden moves, because if anyone does they’re dead.”
Jinx, the cat, ran over to be petted as they went outside, but there were no takers among that group.
“Glad it’s a cat,” Ruby said. “If it was a yappy dog I’d kill it. I’ve done that before too.”
Micah looked confused. “What are you talking about, Ruby?”
Ruby let a cruel smile come to her face. She loved the power that came with hurting other people. Her brother processed what she was saying.
“Cocoa,” she finally said. “I had to see how long the antifreeze would take to kill someone. So I fed it to Cocoa.”
Micah looked hard at his sister. “Cocoa? That was my dog.”
“You can buy another,” she said. “You can buy a kennel full.”
“I loved that dog, Ruby.”
“You’ll love another,” she said. The word love coming out of her mouth seemed to have no meaning.
The four of them waited in the dim light until a car passed.
“Okay, now we go,” Ruby said. “Anyone who speaks, moves funny, gets a bullet in the head.”
The four of them silently, and awkwardly, walked across Beach Drive and down four cement steps to the pebble beach that ringed that side of the road. A small boat, with an outboard motor and named the Little Mighty, had been beached there. Birdy knew the boat. She’d been on it once, crabbing off Bainbridge Island with the neighbors.
“Untie the boat and push it out a little into the water. You get on last,” Ruby said to Micah. She got in the boat and kept the gun directed at Elan. She took a seat at the bow.
Micah unhooked the line, shoved the craft hard, and it floated.
Next, she directed her instructions to Birdy. “You sit there,” she said. Without saying a word, Birdy took the middle seat. As she sat down, the boat rocked a little. Ruby met Birdy’s gaze and seemed to know that the forensic pathologist—just a doctor—was thinking about something.
Tipping the boat over?
“And by the way,” Ruby went on, “don’t even think about doing anything once we’re out in the water. For one thing, if you force me into shooting you and Elan, then I’ll be super pissed off. Then I’ll shoot Micah.”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Micah said, knowing that his sister probably would.
“Just get on,” she said to Elan. “Next to your aunt.”
The teen who’d come to get away from the trouble he’d been facing at home had now landed in something far worse.
With everyone on board, Ruby told her brother to restart the engine.
“Head toward Blake Island,” she said.
“What are we going to do there?” Birdy asked, as the small boat wobbled through the water.
Ruby looked forward and turned to speak over her shoulder. “We’re not going to watch the tribal dancers and have salmon,” she said.
Blake Island was a state park in the middle of Puget Sound. The only commercial enterprise on the island was a tourist trap called Tillicum Village, a restaurant and an auditorium that promised vacationers and out-of-towners an authentic Northwest experience.
As the wind blew across the water and the little boat cut through the wake of a Seattle-to-Bremerton ferry, Birdy turned to Micah.
“Eventually she’ll kill you,” she said.
“Shut up,” he snapped back.
“What happened with Darby?” Birdy said.
“That’s on Micah,” Ruby said. “I’ll take the blame for Ted and you guys, but that one’s on him.”
Birdy faced Micah, who was operating the outboard motor. “I thought you liked her, Micah. I saw the drawing you made for her.”
“I think I loved her,” he said over the sound of the engine. “It isn’t on me. It’s on her.”
Ruby feigned surprise. She opened her mouth to make the shape of an O.
“Really?” she asked. “You told her about Teddy, didn’t you?”
It was now a Ping-Pong match between siblings. Birdy liked that. Some dissension could be good. It could give her time to figure out what to do. “I did because I had to tell someone, Ruby. It made me sick that you and Mom had cooked this up and tried to put the blame on the neighbor. Ted was a decent guy. You killed him. All for a bunch of money.”
Ruby shrugged it off. “Money is the only thing that matters, dumb shit,” she said. “We caught a lucky break with that lesbian janitor and you’ve totally and royally screwed it up.”
Micah was emotional. It was real. It wasn’t pretend. Birdy could see it in his eyes. There was something lurking there that his sister didn’t have.
A soul.
“You didn’t have to kill Darby, Ruby,” he said. “You didn’t have to do that!”
“I wouldn’t have had to kill her if you’d kept your mouth shut and your dick in your pants. What an idiot you are! I’d kill you too, but family is important.”
“What happened to Darby?” Birdy asked, trying to keep the conversation going toward some kind of a meltdown. A meltdown, an argument, anything other than a gun-wielding teenage girl.
The wind whipped through Ruby’s hair. She was stunning. That was her problem. She almost looked like one of those beautifully carved bow figures facing into the wind
with her blond locks blowing back. She had as much life in her blue eyes as one of those painted figures too.
“He told her about what I’d done,” she said in a near sneer. “She told him that it was wrong. And that I was a psycho. She was just jealous of me. I get that. It happens to me all the time. Being sure of yourself and knowing that you’re better than other people doesn’t make you a psycho.”
It was nearly dark and no one was dressed for the chill of Puget Sound. Birdy was freezing and she could feel Elan shaking too. It could have been fear or the cold. Maybe both.
“What happened?” Elan asked. “I don’t get it. I mean, I get that you’re a psycho.”
Ruby ignored the psycho comment. Or it didn’t bother her at all to be called that.
“He told her,” she said. “Then stupid Micah told me what he’d said to her and what she thought of it. He was having sex with her and thought he could trust her. But we couldn’t. So we killed her.”
“We? You did,” Micah said. “And we hadn’t had sex yet. I think we were going to, but you messed that up for me, big time.”
“Whatever. We killed her together. You held her down while I kept that beanbag chair on her face.”
The beanbag chair was one of the things that Connie Mitchell had taken to her car the day she left school after being put on administrative leave.
Darby’s cause of death had been impossible to determine. Her body was decomposed and there were no overt signs of trauma. Smothering had always been a possibility, but until they’d learned where the crime had occurred and some of the circumstances surrounding it, there had been no exact theory. It was a homicide because of the body dump, but in the back of Birdy’s mind she had thought it could have been an accidental death and a body dump. That happened on a case early in her career. The perpetrator hadn’t killed the victim, but was fearful people would think he had.
“I held her down because you made me,” Micah said.
“You wanted the money too,” Ruby shot back. “You told me you wanted a brand-new mountain bike.”
“Then what did you do?” Elan asked.
Micah answered in a shaky voice. “My sister got into the janitorial supply closet and got one of those big trash bags. We put Darby in the bag and put her on an AV cart and just pushed her out the door. I was scared shitless. A couple of kids from track asked us what we were doing and I told them we were on the Green Team doing some recycling.”
Ruby laughed. “You actually showed a little flair there, Micah. Totally. One of the first times ever. I was almost a little proud of you.”
“We took Darby’s body and dumped her in Banner Forest,” Micah said. “Ruby made me! I hate her for that! It was dark and I thought we found a good spot, but I guess not. The bag tore a little.”
“Again your fault,” Ruby said.
“I had to carry most of the weight, Ruby.”
“I wish you would have been on steroids. You have weak shoulders.”
Keep fighting, Birdy thought. Fighting between each other is good.
“You really poisoned Cocoa?” he screamed across the boat.
Ruby put her hand out as if to stop him from moving forward, when he wasn’t moving at all. “Forget the damn dog.”
“If you shoot us and dump us out here they’ll trace the gun back to you,” Birdy said, as the boat moved farther and farther from shore. “I’m assuming that’s Ted’s gun.”
Ruby rolled her eyes like Birdy’s pronouncement was beyond the obvious. “It is. And who says I’m going to shoot you?”
“What are you going to do?” Birdy asked.
“Not me. You two. You’re going to drown. It will look like an accident.”
“With a coffee grinder cord around my wrists?” Elan asked. “That won’t look like much of an accident.”
“Good point,” Micah said, now backing his sister. “I’ll take that off.”
“I can swim,” Elan said.
Ruby laughed. “No, you can’t,” she said. “Not out in that water. It’s really cold. I know for a fact that you can last about ninety seconds out there. I can wait. And maybe you can swim. So maybe you have a chance.”
By then they were in the middle of nowhere. Shore with its twinkly lights of waterfront homes was too far to swim. It was dark and though sound travels over water like electricity through a power cord, there was no vessel nearby to hear them call for help.
“Cut the engine,” Ruby said.
Micah, still mad about his dog, did what he was told. The Little Mighty sputtered into quietness. The boat rolled a little in the waves of the water.
“You’re going to have to shoot me,” Birdy said. “I’m not going to just jump in.”
“That’s why you’re going into the water first,” Ruby said. “I’ll shoot Elan in the head right here and now if you don’t. I’ve already killed two people, so I think I know how to do it, in case you’re wondering.”
“I’m a good swimmer,” Birdy said, looking at Elan. “Elan, you are too.”
He looked at his aunt. “Not that good, Aunt Birdy. Ruby, don’t do this to us,” he said. “We won’t tell on you.”
The girl was a boulder. Unshakable. She was completely undeterred. It was like whatever was happening right then was nothing to her. She might as well be checking in some pale-skinned tanners at Desert Enchantment.
“Like how am I going to get away with this if you’re still alive?” she asked. “Micah told me about the drawing he made for Darby and the list of questions you had about that lesbian’s involvement in the crime. What am I supposed to do? Just pretend like you haven’t figured it out? Go to prison? Not move back to Arizona? I mean, really, for an educated woman, I’d say you are pretty stupid.”
Birdy felt stupid. She’d never considered that Jennifer had been set up by her own daughter. That Micah had been involved with Darby and that somehow the crimes were connected. Never in a zillion years had she thought of that, but all along it had been staring right at her face.
“Aunt Birdy, I want to say something. You know, while I still can.”
“Elan, I love you too,” she said.
“I know that. And I do love you. But are you my mom?”
Birdy was stunned by the question.
“Oh, honey, no.”
“I did the math. You could be. I heard my mom talking about some stuff.”
Ruby was annoyed by then. “Oh God, are we going to settle something here on the . . .”
“The Little Mighty,” her brother said.
“Right. On the goddamn Little Mighty?”
Birdy glared at Ruby. She turned to Elan. “I’m not your mother.”
“Don’t lie to me. Not now.”
“Honey, I’m not lying.”
“I heard my mom and dad arguing about me and how they wished they’d never raised me. That Mom wasn’t my mom.”
“Elan, this isn’t the time for this,” Birdy said, her eyes misting a little.
“We don’t have any time,” he answered back.
Ruby looked at Elan. “He’s right. You don’t. Now, Doctor, get in the water before I blow his brains out into Puget Sound for crab bait.”
It was hard to see. Birdy could feel tears rolling down her cheeks.
“You’re my brother,” she said. “Not my nephew.”
Elan had tears in his eyes. “I don’t understand,” he said.
Birdy didn’t cry, but her heart was broken. It had been ever since Elan was born.
“Our mother didn’t want any more kids.”
“Grandma?” he asked.
Birdy looked over the black water. “She wanted to give you up for adoption but Summer wouldn’t let her. She didn’t think it was right. She didn’t want that for you.”
Elan was overwhelmed. If her hands were free just then, Birdy would have held him and never let go.
Ruby cut in. “Okay now that the drama is figured out, get in the water, Doctor. Or watch your brother die.”
“I’m sorry,
Elan,” Birdy said. “It was never mine to tell.”
Elan was in shock.
“I hate Grandma,” he said, trying to pull himself together. “Or our mother.”
“Me too. But she’s the only one I’ve got. You have your mom. And she loves you. Always has and always will.”
“Who is my father then?”
Birdy could barely face Elan. “I don’t know. None of us knows.”
Micah untied her.
“Get up,” he said.
“I’m not going in,” she said. “This is not going to happen.”
“Yes, it is,” Micah said.
Birdy spread her legs apart and tried to rock the boat. She thought that if she could upset the craft, flip it over, they’d all have a fighting chance. Elan was still tied, but she could save him. It was the only thing she could do.
“Push her in!” Ruby yelled.
As the Little Mighty nearly listed, Micah shoved Birdy into the inky black of Puget Sound. Birdy went down fast, under the water, out of sight.
“Aunt Birdy!” Elan called out.
“She can’t hear you,” Ruby said. “And she’s not your aunt.”
“Aunt Birdy!” he tried again.
“Shut him up!”
Micah swung an oar and smacked Elan in the head. He slumped onto the deck of the boat.
“Untie him. We’ll push him in and get out of here.”
Micah did as he was instructed.
“I’ll help you,” Ruby said. The two of them hoisted Elan up to the edge of the boat and pushed him over. Elan fell into the water.
“Now you get in,” she said.
“Me?” he asked.
“Yes, you. You didn’t think that I’d let you live? All you wanted was a goddamn mountain bike. You don’t dream big enough, Micah. Never have. You’re not like me and Mom.”
“What are you going to do? How are you going to explain this?”
Ruby smiled. “I took a video of you pushing Darby’s body on that cart. I’ll say that you forced all of us out here and that I could only save myself. Remember, I’m pretty and I’m believable. Video never lies.”
In the blackness of the water, Birdy clawed her way to the surface. On her way up, Elan was coming down. Her body already felt numb from the cold water. It was that fast. Like an icy quicksand. He was semiconscious, but somehow she managed to bring him to the surface on the opposite side of the boat. She could hear brother and sister arguing.