by Amy Stuart
“Jesus,” Clare says.
“The worst thing was, he wasn’t dead. He was unconscious, he was in bad shape. His skull was fractured, he probably had bleeding on the brain. But he was breathing. We dragged him to the car. What do you want to do? Sally asked me. She had this look on her face. Not fear. It was like exhilaration. I told her to drive. I’m giving her directions. It took us about half an hour to get to this place where my father used to take me. Deep in the woods. There’s this abandoned cabin with an old well. My dad and I would go there so he could hunt.”
Clare studies the details of Raylene’s face, her stare fixed absently as she sips the water Clare gave her, the slight quiver in her lip the only sign of distress.
“Just tell me, please,” Raylene says. “What would you have done if you were in the same situation? If it was him or you. Would you kill your husband? If it came to that?”
What a revealing question, Clare thinks. But Raylene’s expression is so pained, pleading, that Clare answers.
“I would have shot him,” Clare says. “I’m a good shot. I would have killed him in your shoes. But with a gun. To be certain.”
“Guns aren’t certain.” Raylene points to Clare’s shoulder. “Look at you. I learned that many times over in the ER. It’s too easy to miss.”
“I wouldn’t miss,” Clare says.
Raylene breathes fast to scuttle the tears.
“In her bag Sally had a sheet and some rope she’d seen in a closet at High River. Like some kind of well-trained mafioso. She asked me what I wanted her to do. And you know, I wanted a witness. I wanted someone to watch him die.”
“I get it,” Clare says, swallowing.
“He was lying there, and I was fumbling. Panicking. But then his eyes opened. He was groggy and weak, but he knew what was happening. He tried to stand up but couldn’t get up past his knees. He touched the back of his head and felt the blood. ‘Bitch,’ he said. ‘You dumb bitch.’ His words were slurred. I pushed him back to the ground. Sally handed me the rope. At first I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. But I swear, I saw my kids. Something happened. Some kind of instinct took over. I wrapped the rope around his neck and pulled as hard as I could. Sally stood over me and watched. After he was dead we wrapped him up and threw his body down the well. Like a pair of psychopaths.”
Raylene peels back the collar of her T-shirt to reveal faded scratch marks.
“I’m not a killer,” she says. “Neither is Sally.”
But you are, Clare thinks.
“You killed someone who you believed deserved to die,” Clare says.
A silence falls between them. Clare knows Raylene is watching her. She imagines Jason in the woods, enfeebled by a blow to the head, lunging at Clare, calling her a bitch. In that scene Clare would have done it. She would have lifted her gun at him. The only uncertainty would be where to aim. His head or his heart.
“What did you do after you’d put him . . .” Clare can’t think of the words.
Raylene sighs and looks to the ceiling. “We wiped down the car. His car. We drove it fifty miles in the wrong direction, away from the graves, from anywhere anyone would expect him to be. Parked it on an old road and walked to the nearest town. Bought tickets for a milk-run bus back to the city. At the bus station I remember feeling this weird energy, like I was high. But Sally couldn’t stop crying. She was making a scene. That was the thing about Sally. It’s like she was two different people. The one who could spur me to kill him, and the one weeping in the bus station. Over what? Maybe it’s because she was pregnant. I wish she’d told me that. I wish I’d caught on.”
“What happened when you got back to the city?” Clare asks.
“We bought new clothes, put our old stuff in a bag, and found a Dumpster. Like a pair of criminals. Sally called Jordan and he picked us up and drove us back to High River.” Raylene chokes on her sobs. “We were home in time for Sally to read William bedtime stories.”
And then Raylene falls back on the bed, curling to a fetal position, fists in balls, weeping. Clare doesn’t move. She doesn’t have it in her to comfort this woman. Clare feels a strange mix of disgust, pity, relief. Even jealousy.
“You could turn yourself in,” Clare says finally. “I could talk to Somers for you. With you. She’ll help you.”
Raylene rocks back to sitting and uses her shirt to wipe her tears. “No,” she says. “No.”
“You tell me all this and now you’re just going to disappear? What about Sally?”
“Sally’s gone. She’s days ahead of me.”
“You don’t know that. Her son is dead. She could be alive. You’re abandoning her. Somers is a pro cop. She’ll figure this all out.” Clare goes to the door and grips the knob. Malcolm will be here soon. She needs Raylene to leave. “Tell Somers. I’m telling you. She’ll do her best to help you if you confess.”
“I don’t want her help.” Raylene hoists herself up and kneels to open her suitcase. She unzips the inside flap and lifts a handgun from the bag. “I want to give you this.”
“Jesus,” Clare says. “Where did you get that?”
“It was Sally’s. I’ve kept it. I was hiding it. I don’t even know how to work it. But you do, right?”
“Yes,” Clare says.
“I think she would want you to have it.”
Clare takes the gun and breaks it open. It is loaded. She opens the top drawer to the dresser and sets it at the back. Raylene’s movements are hurried now. She zips her suitcase and edges past Clare to the door. In the hotel hallway she stops and turns back. They stand in silence, Raylene’s arms dropped at her sides, a zombie. Clare feels it, how she distances herself from this woman and her pain. She cannot take it on. It is not Clare’s job to take it on.
“Just so you know,” Raylene says, her voice dull, “I was Sally’s friend too.”
Too, Clare thinks. Raylene will never know of the lies Clare told to reel her in, to gain her trust. Before Clare can respond Raylene spins on her heel and turns the corner to the elevator bank. It suited you to disappear into thin air, Grace had said in the café. You didn’t think about us. And perhaps she’d been right, Clare thinks as she hears the ding of the elevator carrying Raylene. Sally might still be alive, but Raylene is leaving anyway, abandoning the friend who’d stood with her as she did the unthinkable.
Malcolm Boon sits on one bed, Clare facing him on the other. At exactly eight o’clock he’d knocked and this time, she’d let him in. When the door closed behind him, they did a small dance, before settling in front of each other, knees nearly touching in the space between the beds.
“Where do I begin?” Clare says. “Colin Rourke? The cop you were telling me to stay away from? The dangerous one? He told me about you. About your trust fund. Your family and the plane crash. Your wife who vanished. The case that has you as the prime suspect. You’re Malcolm Hayes. Your wife is Zoe.”
Clare pauses but Malcolm only returns her stare, unblinking. How familiar he’s become to her in the last month, his features, his hair grown out, his skin a hint darker from the summer sun. The scar.
“He lured you here,” Clare says. “Did you know that? Lured us here.”
A wave of understanding passes over Malcolm’s face. He presses his hand to his forehead, a gesture Clare now understands as his way of shielding whatever rage or fear or sadness is passing through him.
“You’ve been lying to me this whole time,” Clare says.
Malcolm shakes his head. No.
“About your wife. About why you do this work. About your childhood friend the cop?” Clare feels her voice rise, tremble. “He has a file on me too, you know. He knows my real name. He knows all about Jason.”
Still Malcolm can only shake his head, his lips parting then closing as if the words won’t come. Through the hotel room wall Clare hears the din of cartoons. The boy and his family.
“But,” Clare continues, tapping her forehead with a finger. “But! He says he’s trying to
help. And you know what? I’ve been thinking about it. What if he actually is trying to help? I know it’s a big what-if. So there’s the question. Who am I supposed to believe? You? The man who basically entrapped me and has been lying to me ever since? The man who might have killed his wife? Or Rourke? A bona fide police officer who seems like he wants to solve cases?”
“Clare,” Malcolm says, his voice a whisper.
“It’s not a question of trust, really. It’s a question of which of you do I distrust the least.”
“You know nothing about him,” Malcolm says.
“I know nothing about you! By your design, I know nothing about you.”
“You know more than you think. Maybe you don’t remember—”
“You keep saying that. See? But I do. I remember the gun in the motel room. I remember pointing it at you, okay? Like some junkie needing her fix. But Malcolm, I’m past that. I think I am. And I’m tired of people telling me what I do and don’t remember. You were trying to control me. I’m done being controlled.”
“No. I was trying to help you. Because I—”
“Right. Men say that all the time. But you don’t know what it actually means to help.”
“I had the best of intentions.”
“You changed my bandages and gave me food,” Clare says. “Like a guard might for his prisoner.”
“I was trying to help,” Malcolm repeats.
“And maybe Rourke’s trying to help you. If you’re not guilty of killing your wife, what are you worried about? He’s your friend, isn’t he?”
“You of all people should know how little that means.”
The words are meant to pierce, and they do. A knot forms instantly in her throat.
“Maybe you did kill her and this is your way of dealing with the remorse.”
Finally it alights in Malcolm, the temper she always suspected was there. He stands and paces before slamming a fist into the wall, the drywall buckling. He retracts his hand and rubs at his knuckles, pacing again. His eyes lock with Clare’s. Through the wall, the TV sounds are gone.
“I would never, ever hurt her.”
“You don’t get to be angry with me,” Clare says. “Is she dead?”
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s sending me messages.”
“What kind of messages?”
“Letters. Not letters. E-mails.”
“Can’t you trace them?”
“I’ve tried. She’s very smart. Smarter than me.”
“Why is she sending you e-mails?”
“Because. You don’t know her. She’s . . .” Malcolm breathes deeply and sits on the corner of the bed. “Her family. There’s this whole side to her I knew nothing about when we got married. Five years ago her father was shot to death while eating dinner at a local bistro. There were these ties. These dealings. She was always good at keeping terrible secrets. Good at behaving as if my money was irrelevant to her. She and Colin knew each other before I even met her. They dated all through high school. He was in love with her. Did you know that? Did he tell you that? They have a long history.”
As he speaks Malcolm runs his finger up and down the length of his scar. It might seem implausible, Clare knows, the notion that deep secrets could be held in the confines of a marriage, that you could marry one person, then watch them turn into another before your eyes.
“If she’s reaching out to you, why don’t you just show Rourke the e-mails?”
“Because I think he’s part of it. I think they . . .”
“You think they what?”
“Clare,” Malcolm says, looking up at her. “Do you really not trust me?”
“You don’t get to ask for my trust when you’ve never offered me yours.”
Malcolm stands and takes a step towards Clare.
“You don’t know him,” Malcolm says, his tone pleading. “You don’t know Colin. What he’s capable of. He’s got a vendetta against me. Always has. Blames me for things I had no control over. My family’s business was sold when we were young. I know it wasn’t good for his family, but it wasn’t my fault. He turned to ice. Eventually he came back into my life. He got a dozen scholarship offers but ended up at the same college as me? He was like a shadow. Especially after Zoe and I got married. I’m telling you, he covers it well, but Colin Rourke is made of something different. You have no idea. You have no idea what he might have done to lure us both here.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Sally Proulx.”
“What about her?”
“Why would she disappear? Have you found any good reason?”
“She has enemies. She has a husband she left behind. She has a dead son. She had a lot of reasons to run away. More than you can possibly know. Malcolm, you’re being paranoid.”
“Don’t say that,” Malcolm says. “Have I ever said that to you? Have I ever called you paranoid?”
“Yes,” Clare says. “You have.”
There is a knock at the door that startles them both. They stand frozen. A voice drifts through. Is everything okay in there? Clare points at Malcolm to stay back before she fiddles with the chain to unlock it. A man stands at a safe distance from the door, angled so that only Clare can see him, his hands raised defensively. By his looks Clare can tell at once that he is the father from the room next door.
“Sorry,” he says. “We just heard a bang. Some . . . loud voices.”
“Yes,” Clare says. “Sorry about that. I knocked over a lamp. We’re just, we got a little hotheaded . . . it’s fine.”
The man stares directly at Clare, eyes narrowing.
Are you okay? He mouths the words.
In a flash Clare sees Christopher in her kitchen at home, hand on her back. Are you okay? I don’t think you’re okay. The way she’d snatched herself out from under his touch, the exasperation she’d felt at his concern. Clare feigns her gentlest smile and gives the man a thumbs-up. He doesn’t retreat. She looks him square in the eyes.
Thank you, she mouths back.
When she closes the door and turns back, Malcolm hovers close.
“Colin paid me up front,” he says. “Wired me the money. For this case. Obviously I didn’t know it was from him. He was clearly trying to guarantee I’d come.” Malcolm points to an envelope on the bed. “It’s all there. I have to go.”
“Go where?” Clare says.
“I can’t stay here any longer,” he says.
“At some point don’t you think it’s better to stop running?”
“You confused everything,” Malcolm says. “We confused everything. I did. That was never my intention.”
“And now you’re leaving,” Clare says.
“I don’t have a choice. I shouldn’t have come here.”
When Malcolm bends to rest his cheek on Clare’s shoulder, she freezes. On her inhale she can smell him, a musk. His face buries into her neck and he shakes. She can feel his beard, the wet of his tears on her skin. Clare lifts her hand and combs her fingers into his hair. Malcolm raises his head and puts a palm to her cheek, his thumb tracing her lips. He hovers, about to kiss her. But when he leans to close the final space between them, Clare presses her hand to his chest.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Clare.”
But now she can’t look at him.
“Am I in danger?” Clare asks.
“He’s not after you. He’s after me.”
“Then you need to go. You should go.”
Clare moves to the door and holds it open, eyes averted, steadfast.
“I want to say . . . I don’t know—”
“Malcolm,” Clare says. “You need to go.”
Without a word he sweeps past her into the hall. Clare hears the ping of the elevator and the doors open and close, swallowing him. Just like that, Malcolm Boon is gone.
FRIDAY
The hospice looks like a home, the branches of a large maple tree on the lawn sweeping against th
e windows of its second floor. Clare presses the buzzer and waits, the exhaustion deep in her bones. She had stayed awake in the hotel room all night, recounting everything, the contents of the folder spread across the bed, Clare searching for missing clues. She understood that it wasn’t just Sally she was searching for anymore. She understood that this somehow connected back to Malcolm. But how? By dawn Clare had charted a path, made a plan. She’d wrapped the gun Raylene gave her in a hand towel and set it at the bottom of her backpack.
First stop: St. Jude’s. A hospice, Clare discovered in her research. PALLIATIVE CARE CENTER, a plaque on the door reads. Janice Twining is dying.
The woman who answers the door wears scrubs with a badge pinned on her breast. SUZANNE. CLIENT CARE COORDINATOR.
“I’m here to see Janice Twining,” Clare says.
The woman leads Clare into a large foyer that feels as warm as it is outside.