by David Banner
“Must have been nice . . .” Virginia slowly skulked through the home thinking about her own adolescence and how she’d struggled to make ends meet. “Having a place of your own like this, set apart from the main house. I’m sure he had no trouble getting girls.”
“Not sure he wanted them,” she said. “I hear tell he was more apt to bring his buddies home than any girls.”
“You don’t have to hide,” said the detective.
“I’m not hiding. I’m staying still.”
She made her way through the small house, in and out of both of the small bedrooms and finally, into the kitchen, though it seemed she never managed to get any closer to or further from Connie’s voice.
“I used to come here all the time,” Connie started, her voice lingering in the darkness. “When my momma and I would fight or when I was just feeling low. I’d come here and pretend I was somewhere else. Somewhere far away, living my adventures. Sometimes, it was France, and other times it was a tropical paradise with nothing but white sands and blue waters. I wanted so badly to be away from all of this. From coming-out parties and midnight suppers, from all the things that made me who I was.”
“I thought you loved this house, this plantation.”
“I do, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t have dreams once. I see now how silly they were.”
“Why?” Virginia finally took a seat on a small rickety chair. “What made them so silly?”
The detective listened closely to the silence. There was nothing but stillness in the thick, humid air that night, nothing but a slight breeze that seemed to come and go with the woman’s voice. She found it at once unnerving and eerily comfortable. She closed her eyes, not afraid of what might happen next but comforted by the conversation.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I just grew up. I realized how much this place meant to my mother. I realized how hard she’d worked to make it perfect for me. I couldn’t throw all of that away. It meant too much to her, and she meant too much to me.” Slow footsteps began to echo out, becoming slower and closer to Virginia. “I thought I’d grow old here. I thought I’d found everything I needed in Michael. After we married, I stopped coming out here. There was just something so sad about the thought of sending your son to live alone just because he’d gotten a little older.”
“Really?” Virginia replied, watching Connie Miller step into the light and meet her gaze.
Though she was sweaty, tired, and obviously frayed, there was still something beautiful about the woman. Her skin was a little looser than it appeared in the earlier photos of her life, her hair a little greyer than she probably would have liked. Still, she possessed a quality Virginia Nixon never had. The ability to calm the room with just her words.
It happened slowly, so much so that the detective hadn’t even felt it. But now, only a few minutes after smashing a gun to the side of her face, Connie Miller spoke like an old friend.
“It doesn’t seem sad to me. I’d have given anything for my own space,” Vee began. “It was just me and my mom in this little house. I always felt like I never had any privacy, like my thoughts weren’t my own or something.”
“What about now?” Connie asked.
“I live alone,” said the detective, wondering for the first time in her life if that was a choice she’d unconsciously made in order to save herself from repeating her mother’s mistakes. “I like it that way.”
Virginia smiled, though she wasn’t sure if that was the truth.
“I don’t believe you,” Connie answered.
“I don’t know that I believe me, either.”
“Maybe we’ve both made mistakes.” Connie lifted a gun into the air. “But maybe I need to make one more. Put down the gun.”
Virginia’s heart sank into her stomach. She’d let herself be fooled. She’d allowed a murderer to disarm her with nothing more than a soft tone and easy words, and now she was going to pay the price. She steadied herself, setting her gun on the floor and then standing to her feet.
It must have been the chaos of the moment, but somehow, Connie Miller had left the house with a weapon.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said, taking a slight step back. “Drop the gun.”
“This was my husband’s gun.” She looked it over. “He gave it to me when we got to the house. He said he wanted to feel the knife plunge into Maynor’s chest. That he wanted to feel the warm blood on his hands. Look at him now.”
“Just tell me what you want.”
“The truth is, Detective, that I don’t know what I want anymore. I think maybe . . . I don’t want anything.”
“Just put down the gun,” Vee answered.
“I can’t do that.” Her lips began to quiver. “I’ve made mistakes, Detective. Too many mistakes to recover from. I let a man guide me. I went against my heart and my faith. I took judgement and revenge into my own hands, and the truth is . . . I’m tired.”
She was breaking down again right in front of Virginia’s face, and there was nothing the detective could do to stop it. Virginia stepped back, ready to defend herself.
“I’m done making mistakes.” Connie turned the barrel toward her head and began squeezing the trigger.
“No!” Virginia leapt forward as a thunderous clap tore through the still night air.
Virginia struggled to find the gun as the women crashed to the floor in a pile of pain and confusion. The world fell quiet as Virginia listened for anything, her hands searching the woman’s body for any sign of movement until finally, she released a soft huff.
Virginia grabbed the gun, and running outside, fired off a series of shots into the air. Instantly, the loud wail of sirens could be heard barreling toward her.
She’d saved Patrick Maynor and solved the nationwide mystery of a killer couple, but perhaps best of all, Connie Miller was still alive.
Chapter Forty-Nine
WEDNESDAY, 1 PM
VIRGINIA
“I’m sorry . . .” Virginia said, unsure why she’d even come to the funeral.
The large and extremely ornate casket caught her attention, and she knew immediately who was responsible for buying it. Large golden flourishes surrounded white marble, or at least what looked like marble. The truth was that Virginia Nixon didn’t know much about caskets or funerals in general, having only ever been to one.
“Me too,” Patrick Maynor said, staring at his former best friend. “He wouldn’t have cared about the casket or the flowers or anything, but Connie would, and it’s the least I can do.”
“That’s an understatement.” She kept her eyes fixed on the service.
While she’d never been part of a funeral, she had watched a few from the opposite end of the cemetery a time or two, waiting to speak with someone or often just watching their reactions. It was a necessary part of her job, one she’d gotten more used to over time. Still, being this close to the action made the whole thing seem a little too real.
Michael Miller deserved what he’d gotten, of course. Laws are there for a reason. They keep people in line and dispense fair and swift justice. Or at least, they’re supposed to. It wasn’t so much Michael that weighed on her mind but his wife.
Connie Miller now sat behind bars, awaiting her punishment. Neither the judge nor anyone else involved would go easy on her, Virginia was sure. Especially given the media attention the couple’s killing spree had gotten as they made their way through Savannah and its surrounding boroughs.
“Who brings coffee to a funeral?” Patrick asked, watching the detective sip her piping hot coffee.
“Who schedules a funeral at nine o’clock in the morning?” She took a slow swallow.
“Fair enough,” Patrick replied. “I just wanted to thank you for getting me out of that basement.”
He spoke softly, almost as though he were a different person from the one she’d interviewed only days ago. Gone was the constant scowl on his face and the venom in his tone.
“I know what you must think of me . . .”
he continued.
“I don’t think of you,” Vee replied. “The case is closed, and you got off far too easily for my comfort.”
“That seems to be a pretty popular opinion around here.”
“Really?” the detective deadpanned. “You mean to tell me your friends didn’t stand beside you after it all went public? How surprising.”
“You don’t have to find so much joy in my distress, Detective. Besides, I didn’t get off nearly as easy as you think. I may have avoided jail time, but I’ve basically lost every client I had. I’ve received more termination letters in the last two days than most other businesses probably would in a lifetime.”
“How about that?” Virginia quipped. “People with way too much money don’t want to be involved with a police investigation.”
“I’m done . . .” he continued. “If I had a hometown, this would be when I’d go back to it.”
“Yes, I read your file. An army brat through and through. What about your parents?”
“They stopped speaking to me a long time ago. They didn’t much care for where I was headed. I guess they were more correct than they even realized.”
“Looks like it,” she replied as the casket began to lower into the ground.
Virginia looked around at the nearly empty cemetery and sighed. She thought of Connie, how she must be feeling sitting behind bars while her husband was being laid to rest only a few miles away. How truly alone she must have felt.
“Goodbye.” She raised her head, her eyes finally meeting Patrick’s.
“Where are you headed?” he asked, almost as though he were hoping for an invitation.
“I hope things get easier for you one day, Mr. Maynor.”
Chapter Fifty
WEDNESDAY, 8 PM
VIRGINIA
“Hold it upright like this.” Virginia stood behind him, grasping his thick, toned arms. “Squeeze the trigger—”
“Don’t pull it.” He smiled, cutting his eyes toward her. “I told you, I know how to shoot.”
“All right.” She pulled back. “Go on, then. Show me what you’ve got.”
It wasn’t often the detective found herself surprised by someone, but Taylor Clarke seemed to be able make her second-guess herself more than most. She took of note of his nearly perfect form as he raised his gun into the air and fired five back-to-back shots, each one hitting the target nearly perfectly.
”I like this place.” He grinned. “Do you come here a lot?”
“It’s a shooting range and I’m a detective. What do you think?” She stared into the deep blue of his sweet Kentucky eyes. “Besides, I find it soothing.”
“It’s not bad, that’s for sure.”
“I like the darkness,” she began. “I like the defined space. It’s like when you’re here, you’re here. You know?”
“I do.”
“No distractions, no thinking about failed relationships or cases you just can’t put together. None of that exists here. It’s just you, the gun, and the target. I like it that way.”
Taylor stopped, and locking his eyes onto hers, he took her hand. A quick shiver ran up the detective’s arm and down her back. It felt nice, familiar, and easy. She pulled away.
“No . . .” she muttered.
“You don’t want to get with a famous journalist?” He gave a wicked smile, the kind that would undoubtedly melt the heart of any Southern girl. “I’m gonna be big.”
“It’s one article,” she answered.
“One very in-depth and well-written exposé. Not just an article. I’ve even gotten an offer to join a journalism panel in Las Vegas next month.”
“Really? That’s great.”
“I was actually hoping you’d—”
“Don’t,” Virginia interrupted. “I like being around you, and you’re obviously very attractive, but I don’t . . . we need to reestablish trust.”
“Trust?”
“After the stunt you pulled with the article. You told me you wouldn’t release it, and you did, anyway. You broke confidence by publishing all of that.”
“But it all turned out okay . . .”
“Yeah, in the end, it turned out okay. But what if it hadn’t? I could have easily lost my job. I shared private information with you, and you made it public, Taylor. It isn’t cool. Far from it.”
It wasn’t until she began to speak that Virginia realized how angry she was about the way things had played out. She’d trusted him. She’d opened up to him in a way she normally wouldn’t, and it had nearly cost her a career she loved.
“I’m sorry, but for now, things have to stay this way.”
“What about later?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t speak for the future. I can only talk about right now, about today. And today . . . we’re friends. If that doesn’t work for you, then—”
“It works for me,” he answered, stepping closer to her.
She took a long, slow breath, breathing in the now all too familiar scent of the Kentucky boy. Her eyes focused on the small dimples dancing across his cheeks.
“All right.” She lifted her gun from the bar. “How’d you get to be such a good shot, anyway?”
“I’m from Montgomery County. Everyone’s a good shot.” He grinned. “But yeah, I see what you’re getting at. Must be hard to not be the best one in the room, for once.”
“That sounds like a challenge.” Virginia raised an eyebrow. “Good.”
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