Stay of Execution

by K. L. Murphy

  “Did you kill them, too?”

  “No. I could’ve, though.” His tone wistful, he added, “I should’ve.”

  Julia’s heart pounded, thumping so loudly she was afraid Baldwin would hear it. She willed herself to be still and quiet.

  “So, what changed? You used to be squeamish about that sort of thing.” Leo’s voice sounded flat, almost bored.

  Baldwin chuckled. “Yeah, I was, wasn’t I? Leo, let’s sit over at that table where we can talk—­like old times.”

  “No.” And then, “Did you enjoy it?”

  “Enjoy it?” Baldwin said the words slowly as though the idea was new. “Not at first. I was going to do it your way, you know, with the first girl. I was gonna break her neck in one clean stroke, like you, but then someone was coming. I had to improvise.”

  “You hit her.”

  “You could say that. I fucking bashed her head in.” Julia bit down on her lower lip to keep from crying out. “The second one, I did her neck. Wasn’t as clean as yours, but it was good. It was damn good.”

  “So now you think maybe you do enjoy it?”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.” Julia detected a smile in his voice. She swallowed hard, blinking back tears. “Maybe we’re even more alike than you thought, Leo. Maybe I’m the stronger one now.”

  “I never enjoyed it, Teddy. I did what I had to do.”

  “Really, Leo? Are you trying to convince me or yourself? I am so fucking sick of hearing about how you protected me.” Scorn tinged his words. “I can’t let Teddy get caught. Teddy’s gotten himself into a mess again. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let Cheryl or Theresa or Marilyn talk. And there was only one way to keep them quiet, wasn’t there? Poor you. You got to wrap your hands around all those fucking little necks and snap them in half like twigs. You showed ’em, didn’t you? Don’t try to tell me you didn’t get off on it. You got off as much as I did.” His voice grew pensive. “God, I loved putting those stuck-­up girls in their places.”

  Julia held her breath, her eyes wide in the darkness under the bed. She recognized Ted Baldwin’s voice, but she didn’t know him. Was he mad?

  “You’re wrong.” Leo said.

  “What? So, now you’re trying to tell me you felt bad when you killed those bitches? Oh, please.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you I felt nothing. I didn’t feel guilty, but I didn’t enjoy it, either. I just did it.”

  “For me?”

  “I guess.”

  “But not anymore.”

  “No.”

  A minute ticked by. The wind whistled, and the rain thumped. The storm almost drowned out their words. Careful not to make a sound, Julia pushed herself away from the wall a few inches, straining to hear. She held the recorder closer to the voices.

  “Okay, so what happens now?” Baldwin asked.

  “It’s got to end.”

  “Sure. Okay.” He spoke as though he were thinking out loud. “The FBI doesn’t have anything anyway. I’ve been keeping tabs on the whole investigation. There are a ­couple of loose ends I need to tie up, but after that I’ll stop for sure. Then, after a ­couple of weeks, maybe months, everything will go back to normal.” The front shadow shifted, and the chair legs moved. Baldwin stood now. “Sound good?” he asked.

  Leo stood, too. “No, that’s not how it’s going to end.” A click let her know he had cocked the rifle. “Turn yourself in, or you die.”

  Baldwin laughed, braying like a hyena standing over his prey. “You’re out of your fucking mind, Leo.”

  “Don’t do it, Teddy.”

  Julia’s hands and legs shook and she held her breath. The silence gave no clues to what was happening and then, “The jacket stays on, and leave your hands where I can see them.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say.” Julia slid forward until she could see the room and the backs of Baldwin’s legs. He shuffled forward a few steps. “But you’ve gotta know I’m never going to turn myself in. Why the fuck should I? I’ve been the mayor of this town for a long time, and I plan to keep it that way. Believe it or not, I’m pretty damn good at it. Besides, you would never kill me, and we both know it. You might not be willing to protect me anymore, but you won’t kill me. I’m your brother.”

  “I can, and I will.”

  Baldwin snickered again. “Goddammit, Leo. Why do you have to be such an asshole? Let me walk outta here, and I promise it will be done. I’ll stop.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “Leo, you’re not fucking listening to me. I’m never turning myself in. I’m not going to prison. That is not fucking happening. Put the rifle down.”

  “No.”

  Rain lashed against the tiny window and roof, popping like firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

  “Okay, Leo. This is how we’re gonna do it. Forget your ideas. This is much better for both of us.” Teddy took one step backward. “I’ll turn around and walk out of here. You let me go back to my life, and I’ll help you go anywhere you want. I’ll set you up, make sure you have money, make it so you can disappear. You’re an innocent man according to the law. You can spend the rest of your life on an island somewhere, living the good life.” He took another step back. He was halfway across the room.

  Lightning cracked over the cabin, throwing a hazy light across the floorboards. Baldwin froze. Thunder boomed, the sound echoing in the small room. When the rumbling faded, Cancini stood in the doorway, gun in hand.

  Chapter Eighty

  “WELL, WOULD YOU look what the cat dragged in. Everyone’s favorite hero, the great detective.” Baldwin raised a finger, pointing toward Spradlin. “It’s about time you got here,” he said, his tone turning serious. “He was about to shoot me.”

  Rain dripped from Cancini’s spiky hair onto his nose. He wiped it away, blinking in the semidarkness. Baldwin stood in the center of the old cabin, his arms hanging at his sides. Leo stood at the back, rifle trained on the mayor.

  Baldwin gestured toward Leo a second time. “Turns out you were right to question his release after all. We were both right.”

  “Oh?” Cancini asked, looking back and forth between the two men.

  “I’ve been doing a little investigating, too. I had to. You know how I feel about my town and all the good folks here. It’s my responsibility to protect them. I had to find out who’d been hurting those girls.”

  “I see.” Cancini scanned the cabin. No sign of Julia, her bag, or her phone. “And this is where your investigation led you?”

  Baldwin nodded. “Exactly. I came out here to confront Spradlin. Good thing you got here when you did. As you can see, he was going to shoot me.”

  Cancini glanced back at Spradlin. He held the rifle up at his shoulder, gripped the barrel with one hand, and touched the trigger with the other. He had not moved since Cancini entered the cabin. “Is that true, Spradlin? Were you going to shoot him?”

  “Yep.”

  “See,” Baldwin said. “I told you. Thank God, you’re here now. It’s police business now. You take care of him, and I’ll wait outside.” He took two steps toward Cancini.

  “Stop.” Leo’s toneless voice interrupted. “I told you there was only one of two ways this could end, Teddy.”

  “You wanted it over, Leo. Now, it’s over. Like last time.”

  “You leave me no choice,” Spradlin said, taking aim at Baldwin’s heart.

  Cancini raised his pistol. “Don’t do it, Spradlin.”

  “He won’t.” Baldwin smiled. “He can’t.” He took another step and then another.

  The explosion shook the cabin, the blast nearly drowning out the second, sharp thwack. When the shots faded, Julia screamed and screamed.

  Chapter Eighty-­One

  “JULIA.” CANCINI RUSHED to the bed and dropped to the floor. “It’s okay. Shhh. It’s okay.” He tried to
calm her, speaking softly, until her screams petered out. Reaching under the bed, he took her hands. They shook in his careful grasp. Slowly, she crawled out, her bandaged wrists still bleeding. Sitting on the floor, her head to her chest, she took deep breaths, exhaling slowly. He stayed crouched next to her, one hand resting on her back, the other holding the pistol, still pointed at Spradlin.

  “Is she okay?” Leo asked. He sounded tired, his voice strained.

  Spradlin sat in the chair, one arm in his lap, the other dangling toward the floor. The rifle lay at his feet.

  “I’m okay,” she said, her voice ragged.

  Cancini stood slowly, staying close to Julia. Baldwin lay crumpled on the ground, his blood spreading across the floor. Cancini shifted his stance to block her view. With his free hand, Cancini pulled out his phone, dialing quickly. He requested an ambulance with backup. Nodding toward Spradlin, he asked, “What about you? Is it bad?”

  “It hurts.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right. I’m not. I’d do it again. You shot a man in the back.” Cancini looked down at Julia. She still sat against the bed, her body shaking. He touched her shoulder with his hand and squeezed. His eyes swept over the dead man and back to the Spradlin. “Why? Why’d you do it?”

  Spradlin shrugged. “I had no choice.”

  “That’s a load of crap. You always have a choice, Spradlin, like Baldwin had a choice. If he hadn’t started up with the college girls again, you’d both be free men. He had a choice, too.”

  “He made the wrong choice.” Spradlin grunted, his breath raspy. Red drops dotted the wooden floor underneath his arm. “When did you know?” he asked.

  “I didn’t for sure, until today.” Cancini hesitated before admitting, “The old case kept bothering me. In spite of the DNA evidence, I knew you were involved. It finally came to me. You didn’t rape those girls. That was someone who couldn’t control their emotions. You only killed them. Once the idea got in my head, I knew there was only one person who could’ve been the rapist, but I didn’t have any proof.”

  “Baldwin.”

  “Right. You guys were always together back then. And his testifying at your trial . . . that never sat right with me. I came across some stories about his old man. The tendencies were there.” Julia got to her feet; Cancini steadied her, taking her arm. Her face pale and her legs unsure, she stood only a moment, then sat on the bed. “He made a mistake this time. He attacked a girl this morning, but she didn’t die.” Julia gasped. “She identified Baldwin. You didn’t need to shoot him. He was going away anyway.”

  Spradlin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. It needed to end.”

  Cancini sighed. “Look, I’m not gonna say I like it, but you were a free man. You couldn’t have been retried on the first series of murders. But now?” He turned his palm upward. “You shot an unarmed man in the back—­a man who would have gone to prison anyway. You could have walked away. Why?”

  “You said it yourself. I killed those girls. I don’t deserve to walk away.”

  Cancini frowned. “C’mon, Spradlin. Since when did you start having a conscience? You just killed your best friend. Hell, for a while, he was your only friend. You had the same choices any of us have.” When Spradlin said nothing, Cancini felt the urge to cross the room, grab the man, and shake him. “Whatever,” he muttered, repressing the urge. Distant sirens broke the heavy silence hanging between the two men. Cancini steadied his gun. “Okay, when they get here, I’m going to arrest you for the murder of Teddy Baldwin. They’ll take you to the hospital, and then it’ll be up to the locals and the FBI.”

  “That’s fine.” Spradlin nodded at the cabinets against the wall. “Julia has some documents for you and some audiotape. There’s a tablet in my backpack I took from Baldwin. All of that may help.” She drew in her breath. “You can use them however you want.”

  Spradlin was helping him? He’d shot the one man who could have guaranteed his freedom. He might’ve been an unwanted man in Little Springs, but he would’ve been free. The sirens came closer. His fingers tightened on the pistol. Spradlin hadn’t moved since the shooting, but he couldn’t take any chances. Not with Julia.

  “There’s something wrong with me, Mike,” Spradlin said, breaking the silence. “You’re right. Nothing means anything to me. Life. Death. Meaningless. It wasn’t hard to kill those girls. It meant nothing. I felt nothing.” Cancini looked into the empty eyes of the man in front of him. He’d recognized the deadness even when they were young. It was one of the reasons he’d initially suspected him. “Feeling nothing. That’s not normal. I didn’t know it at first, but, later, I did. I couldn’t change it, so I accepted it.” The sirens blared louder, only a few miles from the cabin. “Teddy. He was the opposite. Whatever I lacked in emotion, he had, and then some. When we were young, he couldn’t control them. I think he got better at it maybe. But he was sometimes manic. It wasn’t his fault.”

  Cancini’s eyes narrowed. What the hell was Spradlin talking about? “It wasn’t his fault? The rapes? Is that why you killed those girls? You were protecting him because it wasn’t his fault?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t protect him this time?”

  “No.”

  Cancini stared, then shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  The bumping of cars on the narrow, dirt road rumbled the cabin’s windows. The sirens were almost upon them.

  “I think I can explain,” Julia said, looking between Cancini and Leo. Spradlin nodded at her. She turned to Cancini. “When Leo went away to prison, he was worried about Ted, but Ted promised he’d get help. He promised he wouldn’t attack any more girls.” She spoke louder over the sirens. “As far as Leo knew, he’d kept those promises. The rapes stopped. But at some point, he realized Ted hadn’t stopped. He’d only gotten more careful.”

  Julia stood. She was nearly shouting now. “Ted had snapped. He was mad. Leo warned Ted he was coming back and that he wasn’t going to pretend anymore. Ted begged him to leave the past alone. Leo agreed if Ted promised to stop. But Ted lied. He used Leo’s release to start again. All Leo wanted was for everything to stop—­all of it. They had to end the line with them. It was the only way.”

  Cancini watched Spradlin. Outside of the piercing eyes, his face was impassive, his features as set as those in a mask. “What do you mean ‘end the line’?”

  Julia moved close. She placed her hand on his arm and her lips near his ear. Brakes and slammed doors nearly drowned out her words. “Bloodline,” she said, her breath warm. “End the bloodline. Leo and Ted were brothers.”

  Chapter Eighty-­Two

  CANCINI PUT THE newspaper down and reached for his coffee. He glanced out the diner window. The sun barely over the horizon, folks streamed out from the subway station on the corner. Women and men, young and old, political types and bankers, all starting another day in downtown D.C.

  “Julia did a good job on the articles,” Talbot said, scooping up a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

  Cancini returned to the paper he’d set aside. Baldwin, wearing a suit and a smile, stared out from the front page. His picture was that of an average man, not unlike many of the men plodding from the subway to their offices. He might have a two-­story house in the suburbs, a wife, and 2.4 kids. He looked normal, not like a rapist or killer. Then again, what did one look like? They didn’t all come with warning signs or tics or strange behavior. Maybe that’s what made the truth so hard to see.

  He had read the other two articles Julia wrote in a three-­part series about the Blue Hill crimes. She had pulled from Mrs. Spradlin’s journals and from the tapes she had made in the cabin. The rest came from interviews and old files. She deserved the three days of front-­page coverage. The newspaper brass must have thought it had prize-­winning potential. He agreed.

  “Yeah,�
� Cancini said, and took another swig of coffee.

  “Are you gonna see her?”

  He set the cup on the table. It was the same question his father had asked him the night before.

  “You like her, don’t you?” the old man had asked. “I’m not trying to push you, but I don’t want to see you end up alone, like me. Your mother wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  “Dad,” he’d said, swallowing a lump in his throat. “There’s no rush. It’s not like you’re going anywhere.” His father was alive, but the doctors were only prolonging the inevitable. His breathing was better, but a nurse would now come in every day to take care of meals and baths. The old man hated it. Cancini felt sorry for the nurse.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. Are you going to ask her out or not?”

  “Not right now,” he’d said, sighing. “She needs to figure things out. Her husband wants to reconcile. And everything that happened in Little Springs was a lot for anyone. She needs some time.”

  He repeated the same answer to Talbot. He did like her, though. A lot. But chances were, she didn’t have room in her life for a cranky, hardheaded detective. He understood. Probably better than most. Besides, he’d been alone a long time. He wasn’t sure he knew how to be anything else.

  Cancini changed the subject. “What happens next?”

  Talbot pushed away his breakfast. He wiped at his mouth and tossed the crumpled napkin onto the plate. “The evidence, such as it was, has been recovered, logged, and filed. Baldwin’s car contained quite a bit of usable DNA evidence. Presumably, Baldwin was planning to plant that evidence in Spradlin’s house. We were also able to confirm the men were brothers; they shared the same father. Apparently, Mrs. Spradlin was one of President Baldwin’s victims. She married William Spradlin when she found out she was pregnant.”