Dead Past dffi-4

by Beverly Connor

  Diane saw it in her eyes, the sudden flash of guilt. She is the one who killed Stanton. And Archie killed McNair. McNair was probably guilty, but Stanton didn’t have anything to do with her daughter’s death.

  “No, you’re lying,” she said.

  But Diane knew Catherine believed her.

  “If he…”

  There was a pop, like a lightbulb being stepped on, and Catherine stopped talking and stared; a dot of red dripped in the center of her forehead and she fell to the floor.

  “What?” said Archie.

  Another lightbulb bursting, and he went down, too, the back of his head blown out.

  Chapter 54

  Diane stared at the two dead bodies for a second before she dove from the chair and skidded across the linoleum. Get away from the windows, her brain told her. She crawled across to the door into another room. It was a dining room that opened onto a deck. She saw a shadow on the deck from the moonlight. She crawled on her belly from the dining room into the carpeted living room.

  What is this, she thought? Payback for McNair or Stanton? Drug dealers looking for revenge? SWAT team? Adler loose from his bonds? She crawled across the floor looking for a place to hide. She saw a partially open door and a stairway. She slithered through the door and ran up the carpeted stairs. OK, now what. The gunman would be coming in, she knew it. Why hadn’t she gotten at least one of the guns that Catherine and Archie had? She always yelled at the people in movies who didn’t pick up dropped guns in situations just like this one. Damn.

  She ran into a bedroom and looked out the window onto the deck below. Someone was there. A hulking guy, not a ninja type. He was in a shadow. She eased over to the dresser, pulling out the drawers and looking for any kind of weapon. Foolish, the owners would have taken their guns with them. No. She felt the barrel of a gun. Pure joy. She grabbed it and pulled it out. It was a vibrator. Shit.

  She went into the bathroom, looking for something. Nothing but shampoo, conditioner, and Band-Aids. Come on, there’s got to be a razor blade-something. Nothing. She heard whoever it was trying to break in. Archie must have locked the doors behind him. Thank God for that. Her heart was pounding out of her chest. She ran to the nightstands and looked for anything.

  There was a photograph on the night table. She grabbed it and fumbling, took out the glass. She went to the bathroom and put a towel around it and broke it into several long pieces. She put three together, found some tape bandage, and wrapped it around one end of the pieces. She took a washcloth and wrapped and bandaged it up so that she had a soft handle. OK, now she had a piss poor weapon. But it was better than no weapon.

  Diane went back in the bedroom and started to rummage through the other nightstand. Suddenly it struck her. She was in the parents’ room. She needed to go to the kids’ room where there would be all kinds of sharp and dangerous things. She slipped out of the bedroom. She heard a downstairs door crash. Damn, he was in the house. She slipped into another room. Bingo. A kid’s room. She looked in the closet for a weapon, hockey stick, baseball bat, rocket, anything. Baseball bat. Wonderful. A metal baseball bat was leaning against the wall. Now she was armed and dangerous.

  Diane was about to come out of the closet when she noticed that the bedroom had a slanted roof. Her eyes were accustomed to the dark now, and she took time to examine the room and the inside of the closet. In the back of the closet under stacks of sports gear was a small access door into the extra space made by the eaves. She bet the kids used it all the time. It should be easy to open.

  She shut the closet door and slid the small access door open and crawled in, carrying her glass knife and dragging her bat. The kids had put a latch on the inside of the door. Not a strong one, but a latch. She locked it. It was a tiny room. Nice for kids, but definitely cramped for adults. The room was partially lit by a small round window. She looked out into the front yard, watching for movement. The snow reflected varying shades of blue under the moonlight. It was pretty. How odd that it was pretty.

  There beside a tree, a flicker of movement. A shadow figure sheltered itself against the trunk of the tree. It was a slim figure, not hulking like the other one she heard walking from room to room below. There were two of them. She knew who was after her now. They must have been watching her, waiting. Why didn’t they get her when she came out of the house, or through the woods? Didn’t see her in time? A car passed? She tried to think back to what she saw when she left her apartment. She was amazingly unobservant. She resolved from this day forth to be more observant.

  There was a creak on the stairs. Diane’s heart hammered harder. Her throat burned from the bile that came up from her stomach. She was praying that he’d look for her and decide she had left the house, found a way out, and run for cover in the woods. She could outrun them. She was younger. And she was willing to bet she was in better shape. Why hadn’t she picked up the gun and why hadn’t she run out of the house? Because you were scared shitless, she told herself. Two people were just shot in front of you and you thought you were next and you just panicked.

  Diane heard the floor squeak. He was in the kid’s bedroom. Stay still, don’t cough, don’t sneeze, just breathe slowly. She wanted to scream. Her heart was pounding in her ears now. Damn, why was she such a coward? She was braver than this when she was hanging by her fingernails off a ledge in a cave.

  OK, pretend you are in a cave. A nice cool dark cave. Take slow breaths. She gripped her knife tight in her hand as she heard him open the closet door. Don’t make any noise. An eternity passed. What was taking him so long? Close the door and go look someplace else, damn you. She waited. The door closed. She waited. She heard him leave the room. Just stay here until morning, she told herself. Stay until morning.

  She listened to him go into another room. Thank God for creaky floors. He searched the entire upstairs. She heard him go downstairs. She peeked out the window. The shadow was gone, moved someplace else. Or she came inside to help search.

  Diane listened and heard low garbled voices. She couldn’t make out the words. They grew louder. Why? Were they arguing? Or were they talking to her?

  They mounted the stairs again, but she didn’t hear any more creaking. They had stopped in the hallway.

  “Diane.”

  So they knew her name.

  “We know you’re in here.”

  It was a woman’s voice. The voice from the library, the jogger of twenty years ago, and Diane was willing to bet her name was Oralia Lee Parrish Rawson.

  “Diane, we know you’re somewhere in the house, and we will take it apart to find you. We don’t want to kill you. We need information from you.”

  They were silent. Waiting for an answer, she supposed.

  “Diane Fallon. We know who you are. We know where you stashed Juliet. We can’t get to her now, but we will. We know you saw the code. You have resources that we don’t. You have computers. We just want to know what it says. It belongs to us. It belongs to my family. We won’t kill you, because we want the information from you. Come out. Don’t make this any harder.”

  Diane wasn’t even tempted to answer. She stayed where she was and prayed they wouldn’t find her. She listened as they searched the other rooms, the closets. They called out to her several times. Then they came back to the kid’s room. She gripped her bat in one hand and her knife in the other as she heard the closet door open again. The sports equipment and toys banged against the wall as they rummaged through the closet.

  “Here’s a little door,” said the female. “I think we’ve found her. Diane, are you in there? I betcha are.”

  Diane heard them trying to get the door open. “It’s stuck.” This was a man’s voice. There was a loud pop; the wood splintered around the door and floor. Diane screamed.

  “Burke, you fool, we need her alive.”

  Diane heard them rip away the rest of the door. She was rolled up in a ball as they reached in, grabbed her legs, and began pulling her from her hiding place into the closet. Diane screamed a
gain.

  “Shit, Burke, you’ve killed her.”

  “She ain’t dead, screaming like that.”

  While they argued, Diane summoned all her strength and hit Oralia Lee in the nose with the heel of her hand and stuck at Burke with the glass knife. He hit her hand away. She dropped her makeshift knife and it shattered. Useless weapon. In the confusion, she lost her grip on the bat.

  “Damn you, woman. You could’ve cut me.” Burke dug his fingers into Diane’s leg and pulled her out into the bedroom. Diane kicked at him and he twisted her leg. “Oralia Lee, get up off the floor and help me if you want this bitch alive.”

  Oralia Lee didn’t answer. One down, thought, Diane. She kicked hard at Burke and hit him in the knee. He howled and fired his gun, splintering the floor near Diane’s head. Diane scrambled toward the door. He caught her around the waist and pulled her back into the room.

  “I’m gonna kill you, you keep giving me trouble. The hell with the treasure. I’m gonna kill you.” He shoved Diane down and her head hit the floor with a thump. Burke aimed his gun at her. “Now, give me one reason why I shouldn’t just kill you right here and now.”

  Diane didn’t move, feigning unconsciousness, trying to think. A moan came from the closet and Burke looked away from Diane.

  “Oralia Lee, you…”

  Diane didn’t hesitate: As he spoke she rolled toward him and grabbed both his legs and pulled. He hit the floor hard and lost his gun. Diane scrambled for it, but he reached it first and fired at her. Click. He fired again. Click.

  Diane jumped to her feet and ran for the door, down the hall and down the stairs, and to the living room to Archie. His gun was just under his body. She pulled it out just as Burke came down the stairs.

  “I got bullets now,” he said as Diane fired, hitting him in the neck.

  She jumped up and ran out the door, leaving the two of them behind her. She thought she killed Burke, she didn’t know, but Oralia Lee could possibly be coming to by now. Diane sprinted through the woods toward her house as fast as she could run. It was dawn and the light was welcome. She was tired of the dark.

  When she got to her apartment, she fumbled with the keys in her pocket. Her hand was bleeding where the glass shards of her knife had cut her. She managed to get the door open and closed it behind her. She ran up the stairs to the safety of her apartment and called the police.

  Garnett sat in her living room on the couch with her while a paramedic bandaged her hand.

  “Did you find them?” asked Diane.

  Garnett nodded. “Archie and his sister are dead. I guess you know that. I know both of them. I would never have guessed it.”

  “We all have our breaking points. Archie was sitting in the tent while we processed the charred remains. They turned out to be people he knew-Bobby Coleman, Izzy’s son, his own niece, for God’s sake. That’s hard. His sister lost her daughter-and grandchild-for what? Nothing. I understand their desire for revenge. I could have been there. What about the Rawsons?”

  “Burke Rawson is dead. You were true with that shot. It hit the jugular and he bled out. Oralia… is that her name? She’s in a coma.”

  Diane was afraid of that; she almost hesitated when she hit her. She had broken her nasal bone and had probably rammed a piece of bone up into her brain. She felt sick.

  “You can wait and give your statement later this morning,” he said. “Get some rest.”

  “I guess we’ll never know what they did with the bodies of the Sebestyen family-if they were the killers, if the Sebestyens were even killed.”

  “Maybe the woman’ll come out of the coma-who knows,” said Garnett.

  “How is Adler?” she asked.

  “We looked in the basement. No sign of him. We’re thinking he got himself free and escaped,” said Garnett.

  Diane nodded, leaned back, and closed her eyes. She sat back up so suddenly that Garnett jumped.

  “What basement?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “Which basement did you look in?” said Diane.

  “The basement of the house.” he said.

  “The meth house?” asked Diane.

  “The meth house? No, the one last night… where Archie and Catherine were killed,” said Garnett.

  “No. He was in the burned-out basement of the meth house next door.”

  “Holy…” Garnett jumped to his feet.

  Damn, she hadn’t been clear when she spoke with the 911 operator, and when the police arrived there was too much daylight to see the light in the basement of the meth house.

  “My God, he was there all night in this weather. He’ll be frozen to death,” she said, rising from her sofa.

  She grabbed her coat and rode with Garnett back to the scene of the crime. The paramedics were close behind.

  They all ran from their vehicles to the edge of the gaping burned-out hole in the earth. Adler was still sitting with the ghosts of the dead students.

  Epilogue

  Diane ran along the nature trail behind the museum. She stopped when she got to the bridge and walked out on the small dock to watch the swans gliding in the water. The sun felt good on her bare arms. It had been a hard winter-too many funerals to attend, too many broken lives, too many unanswered questions.

  Adler hadn’t died. But in the cold he lost two fingers, three toes, and his spirit. He resigned his council post and quit politics. His family wanted to blame Diane for his being left out in the cold, but the 911 tapes cleared her. Garnett never got to the bottom of the mix-up in directions.

  The Indiana cold case squad traced the lives of the Rawsons. They were in Florida at the time the Sebestyens disappeared. There was evidence the Sebestyens rented a house on the beach near Ruby Torkel in the summer of 1987. But the detectives never got even a hint of where the bodies might be buried. Diane believed they were taken out to sea and dumped into the deep. Jin hoped that Juliet’s memories involved only dolls and that the Sebestyens found the treasure and were living happily and quietly somewhere mysterious.

  The treasure. Diane shook her head and continued her run. To Diane, the treasure had been one of the most malignant aspects surrounding the tragedies.

  It had taken months to work out all the legal details. At first, the State of Florida didn’t want to relinquish any rights to a possible treasure-which they believed likely to be Spanish gold. They tried legal maneuvers to force Diane to give them the code, but the doll and the code belonged to Juliet Price and Ruby Torkel and they couldn’t be forced to give it up.

  Finally Florida made the deal with Juliet and her grandmother and after using ground-penetrating radar and three stout grave diggers, they discovered nothing but the remains of Leander Llewellyn.

  Whether there had ever been a treasure, or a new code had been substituted much the same way Diane had done, or someone had already found the treasure years ago, or Leo Parrish was simply a prankster, no one knew. All those people-the Sebestyens, Archie Donahue, Catherine Riverton, Burke Rawson-died for nothing. Just like the thirty-four people in the house with the meth lab. They all died for nothing. Diane ran faster, trying to outdistance all the ghosts. She hoped Jin was right.

  Dead End

  The bite of the black widow can be deadly. Diane Fallon discovers just how far a particularly cunning black widow will go to get her revenge on Diane for putting her in prison. When she escapes from the lair of her prison cell, the black widow leaves Diane entangled in a web of deception and deadly consequences.

  Coming from Onyx in February 2008

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