Body of Evidence

by Stella Cameron

  She couldn’t speak. This was brilliant. John Sims and Angela were the same person. Emma looked at the human bundle on the floor. So who…?

  “Don’t worry about that,” John said. He went to the refrigerator and took out two vials. He filled the hypodermic, held the needle up and depressed the plunger the smallest amount, expelling a bead of fluid.

  Emma couldn’t move, couldn’t utter a sound.

  Lethal injection. He’d decided to kill her like the others.

  “Where’s Sandy?” she asked before she could stop herself.

  “You should mind your own business,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning down sharply. “If you knew what Sandy Viator’s been doing to help me, you wouldn’t care what happened to her. I’ll make sure she doesn’t trouble us again.”

  Sweat in her eyes blurred Emma’s vision. “Who is that? Please, I’ve got to know.”

  “Then you shall, sweet,” John said. He knelt, ripped duct tape from the person’s neck and freed the head.

  Emma pressed her cuffed hands together. Mrs. Merryfield blinked into the glaring light.

  “Get the tape off her mouth,” Emma said when she could speak. “What has she ever done to you?”

  “She wanted me to get caught. She couldn’t turn me in herself, but after all these years, she wanted to watch me suffer.”

  Mrs. Merryfield closed her eyes. John took her by the hair and pushed her head back and forth. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”

  “Why shouldn’t you know everything?” he said to Emma. “I want you to share my treasures, and my triumphs. Let me show you what your Mrs. Merryfield showed Denise, and then I had to kill her, too so she wouldn’t turn me in or write about it in the paper.” He took another drawer all the way out, reached behind and pulled out a brown paper sack.

  Emma realized Mrs. Merryfield was crying without sound, the tears running across the bridge of her nose, slipping to the floor.

  Still holding the needle aloft, John got on his knees in front of the woman and emptied the bag with one hand. A second, chamois bag fell out, and he unsnapped a closure. From this he slid a little assortment that choked Emma.

  He held up a ring. “Remember seeing this? It’s not fancy, but when Harold put it on Holly, she must have thought he would make her happy. See the three little rubies? Most men don’t get anything different, but Harold got this. Once he cared, but she emasculated him, didn’t she? We know that.”

  Memories crowded in, all the times they’d gathered by Angela’s pool, naked, playing with lotions and potions, swimming, laughing. Only Angela had been John, and he’d watched them in their most vulnerable states, watched their bodies, lusted after them.

  She shivered and couldn’t stop shivering.

  He held up a bracelet made of rose quartz. “For peace,” he said. “She asked me not to throw it away because it brought her peace. I told her she would have all the peace she needed.”

  “That’s Denise’s,” Emma whispered.

  He tucked it back into the chamois bag and worked out something larger. “This was the hardest one. And the best.” He showed her a police badge, and she didn’t have to ask whose it had been. “He was on to me. That night it was him or me. If he hadn’t slipped, it would have been me. It was his fault Denise knew too much.”

  Please, God, let this stop. He seemed to have forgotten the police. His voice, full but dreamy, wasn’t the husky, grating whisper of Angela, who had “burned her vocal chords in the evil fire.” John’s voice sounded wrong coming from Angela’s mouth, the mouth that looked like Angela’s. What she’d thought was Angela.

  “Look at this,” John said. “This was the second one. Belinda, beautiful, stupid Belinda. All she had to do was look at me and see me and let me have her. But she looked elsewhere. She made moon eyes at some nothing, hayseed photographer.” On a silver chain hung a finely engraved silver bottle. “If you unscrew the cap, you see a little bubble blower attached underneath, so she could carry bubbles in the bottle around her neck and blow them. The hayseed gave it to her. I took it away. And I had her.”

  Hiding in plain sight wasn’t a new concept to Finn, though his size made it harder than it might have been for a smaller man. Dressed in white coveralls, with a crime team hood he’d casually lifted from the back of a van obscuring everything but his face, he had walked past three patrolmen at the opposite end of the alley from the place where Billy and his buddies were.

  He’d heard the cops say that hammering on John’s door hadn’t produced an answer.

  John Sims was considered armed and dangerous, and if he was in his home—which the cops and FBI seemed to doubt—he couldn’t be confronted without precautions.

  Finn entered Angela’s house with ease. Some skills never failed a man. He felt the emptiness before he confirmed there was no one there.

  But Emma’s vehicle was in the drive.

  He went outside again. Skirting the house, his face trained on the ground as if searching for evidence, he worked his way along the back until a wall of bamboo stopped him. Beating his way through would draw the attention he didn’t want.

  He turned the next corner of the house and went slowly along the side closest to John Sims’s house.

  A narrow path opened through the bamboo. Finn paused to gauge if the density of the vegetation would be enough to hide him from the alley. He walked quickly, reached John’s house and couldn’t believe he was looking at an open door.

  He brought his Beretta into the daylight and, with a single finger on his other hand, pushed the door. It swung wide on a kitchen where a woman lay on the floor, fresh blood trickling across her face from a wound to the side of her head.

  He felt for a pulse and found one. Sandy Viator was down and deeply unconscious, but not dead. He recalled that she drove a Mercedes.

  “Stop it.” Faintly, he heard Emma’s voice and moved silently toward it.

  “John, no more, please. Let her go,” Emma said. She screamed.

  Skimming across the floor on the soles of his shoes, Finn reached two more doors. Emma’s voice had come from one of these. One handle had no keyhole but the other did. Using intuition, he chose the door that could be locked and turned the handle with exquisite care. The hinges were well oiled and didn’t make a sound.

  A short passageway turned to the left, and from that direction bright light shone.

  “They’re trying to get in here,” a man said. John Sims. “You heard them at the door. They’ll break in shortly. We’re going out the way you came in. Then through the other house and into the van. If I have to use you as a hostage, I will. Trust me.”

  “You won’t get away,” Emma said, and Finn willed her to keep her mouth shut and avoid antagonizing her captor.

  “I told you to trust me. Quiet, or the gag goes back. I have to do this. She knows too much, and she doesn’t care what it costs her to hurt me now.”

  Finn had his center. He had pushed back the emotion, and all was calm and very quiet inside. He felt nothing.

  A single fluid step took him into the passageway, a second to the corner, a third put him in the wash of light from the left.

  He didn’t see anyone, but the movement he heard came from his right, the right side of the room he looked into.

  “John,” Emma said. “What happened isn’t her fault.”

  “Everything’s her fault. She loved Connie best. She said she didn’t, but I knew, and so did Connie.”

  Emma didn’t answer him.

  “That woman down there,” he said. “You don’t know who she is, do you? I let her live this long because she’s my mother, but she loved my sister best.”

  “I’m sure you only thought that,” Emma said, and the way she made herself sound consoling impressed Finn. He knew every muscle he moved had to be with total control if he was to avoid triggering whatever John Sims planned.

  “Don’t do this. Just walk out and leave her.”

  “I want her to see it coming,” John
Sims said. “I warned her. See this.”

  Finn wished he could see, wished there was less light, wished a lot of things, mostly that he didn’t have two civilians in the way of hitting his mark.

  “A dreamcatcher,” Emma said. “It’s pretty. I used to have one.”

  “Would you like this one, sweetheart? You can have as many as you like. You’ll hang them above our bed to catch our dreams. This one was Connie’s.”

  A beat passed, and another, before Emma said, her voice strangled, “You killed your sister?”

  “She slipped,” John said at once. He sounded petulant now. “Into the bayou she went, and she couldn’t get out. She kept trying, but she fell back again every time. It was tragic. She couldn’t swim, you see, so she drowned. And she was only fifteen. Then I had to be son and daughter to mama, you see, and I was. Only she kept on crying for Connie. That’s because she loved Connie best.”

  Finn swung around the final corner, took in the area fast.

  He frowned and raised his gun a fraction—but only for a moment.

  “I don’t need her anymore.” John’s voice came from Angela, Angela in pink, her blond hair awry. No, not Angela. John.

  John saw him, John on his knees over the woman he said was his mother. Swathed in a blanket, she kept her eyes closed. In the loving son’s right hand, poised to plunge into the woman, a syringe caught the light.

  “Finn,” Emma said.

  He didn’t let himself look at her.

  John’s hand descended—and dissolved into a bloody mass. His unearthly howl bounced from mirrored walls. The single bullet Finn fired destroyed the drug-filled hypodermic and the hand that had held it.

  Drops of fluid glittered. A piece of the shattered syringe stuck from the stump of a finger.

  Finn held out an arm, and Emma stumbled from the counter, her hands cuffed together, to come to him.

  His face contorted, saliva running from his mouth, John held his wrist, his mangled hand aloft, and staggered toward Finn and Emma. They stepped out of his way.

  Voices came from the kitchen. The cops were in, and they’d found Sandy.

  Billy barked orders. They were ready to fan out and search for John.

  Only John fell through the door into the kitchen and sprawled on his face with his hand cradled.

  “Finn,” Emma said, as they followed John, “the stuff, the poison, it must have gone in his hand.”

  “Not so much that they won’t be able to save him, unfortunately,” Finn said. To Billy, he added, “He needs treatment and fast—unless you want to save a whole lot of public money and let him die right there.”

  40

  When they had finally been allowed to go home, he and Emma left the police station side by side but about a mile apart.

  They walked as if they were either afraid to get too close or were acquaintances leaving the same party, late at night, and going their separate ways.

  And they had gone separate ways, in separate vehicles to separate houses.

  An hour had passed, and Finn sat on the gallery out back of his place and lifted his face to a warm wind. Stars loaded the skies. He had taken long enough starting the truck to let Emma leave the parking lot well ahead of him. That way they didn’t have to look at each other’s lights all the way back.

  She’d hesitated when they walked out of the building, cleared her throat as if she would say something. And she had. “Good night, Finn. Thanks for everythin’.”

  Shee-it.

  Well, of course they’d both felt a bit like they’d just survived a hurricane by hanging on to the same tree and now they could stand alone—without the tree—and walk on their own two feet. Separate pairs of feet. But…thanks for everything? It wasn’t as if he’d just helped her change a flat tire, for hell’s sake.

  And what did I say? How did I help get us past feeling awkward once the pressure was off? I said, You’re welcome. Good night, Emma.

  He swung his legs off the swing lounger and pulled his shirt over his head. The air felt good on his skin. All the final pieces had fallen into place. Mrs. Merryfield had admitted to putting the documents in Rusty’s TV for Emma to find. The woman wanted to purge herself of what she knew about her son, but she had tried to make sure there was no way John would ever connect the betrayal to her.

  Mrs. Merryfield apologized again and again, and, mad as he had been, Finn felt sorry for her. The details John had thought of continued to amaze him, even such things as having all the flowers delivered to Secrets. Everything had been intended to unnerve Emma, and it had worked.

  Something, or someone, moved. Rustled. There were things other than humans that crept through the night out here. Still, he situated his hand where it would find the butt of his gun real easy and turned in the direction of the subtle whispering through brush at the side of the house.

  Emma walked into view, only her head and shoulders showing above the level of the gallery floor. She glanced sideways as she came, and he figured she saw him just fine by the light of the moon—and a bug candle burning in a bucket.

  “It’s awful dark back here,” she said. “I almost went away when you didn’t answer the door.”

  Finn got to his feet. “I’ve warned you not to come creep-in’ up on me.” He couldn’t stop himself from smiling.

  “That’s why I’m makin’ all this noise, Finn. I’m stampin’ my feet, but you can’t hear them on account of the grass is growin’ out of everywhere. Did you ever consider usin’ a lawn mower and pullin’ a few weeds?”

  “You wouldn’t be naggin’, would you?”

  “Me? No way. This isn’t my place. Grow the ugly grass and weeds till you can’t see the house for all I care.” She made it to the steps. “There’s somethin’ I just can’t get over, Finn. That old Cadillac that hit the Honey Bucket right before we found Denise.”

  “I know. We said somethin’ about bein’ too obvious, and it was. John made his own mother help him. Did you hear the way he carried on at me for ‘ruining’ his plans because I didn’t belong there? Nothin’ was supposed to get in the way of his expectations.”

  “Sicko.”

  “Cher, I think he’s more than sicko. You were supposed to be there alone. He was goin’ to scare you out of your mind when you didn’t have a soul to turn to. I wonder how he intended to be the shoulder you cried on? I’m sure he had that worked out.”

  “I’m glad he isn’t going to get off by dyin’ before he can stand trial.” Emma shivered. “I don’t want to think about it, not now.”

  “Then we won’t. Suits me.”

  He heard her sigh before she said, “Would you rather I stay down here and keep shoutin’ at you, or am I allowed to come up?”

  He walked down to meet her, stood so close their feet all but touched. “How come you’re so much smarter than me?” he said.

  “That would be because I’m a woman.”

  Finn thought about it. “You’re only smarter now because you knew we blew it when we left town today and you were the first to figure out what to do next. You weren’t smarter in town. You didn’t do any better than I did.”

  “Maybe I thought you should make the first move,” Emma said. She wasn’t sure what she thought, except that she couldn’t stay away from him unless he made her.

  “I feel terrible,” Finn said.

  She tilted her head to the side and looked up at him. Moonlight suited his face. “So do I,” she told him.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Huh?” Sometimes he said the darnedest things. “How do you know how I feel?”

  “You’re grinnin’.”

  “So are you.” She had barely enough room between them to rub her sore wrists.

  “Son of a bitch,” Finn muttered. He took her wrists in his hands, and, as light as a butterfly, kissed the inside of each one.

  Emma’s legs turned to water. “We should be decorous,” she said.

  “We… What?”

  “Decorous.”

  “I kno
w the word. I’m tryin’ to figure out how it fits here, is all.”

  Emma worked at straightening her face. “It’s a good thing to set an example. I’m a married woman, and it’s time I mended my ways.”

  “Who are we setting an example for?”

  She pushed out her lips and looked around, then up. “The stars.”

  “If you say so.” He lifted her into his arms and carried her up the steps to the gallery. She landed sideways on the big old swing harder than she would have chosen. “I was just goin’ to come up there for you, y’know,” he said.

  “Sure you were.” They were doing a good job of being flip. What did it mean? That this was all there was for them, a fun-loving, sexy interlude? “That’s why you were sittin’ out here stargazin’?”

  “Stargazin’ and kickin’ myself for bein’ all kinds of a fool when we were headin’ home.”

  “I felt awkward,” she said honestly.

  “Mmm-hmm, me, too.” He sat beside her knees. “Know what? I understand what that was about. How about that?”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “It’s over, Emmy, the hard times. That’s what felt so strange.” He felt lighter inside, euphoric. “The load is off. No more weird stuff, and you know what?”

  “You’ll tell me.”

  “You’re on your way to gettin’ a divorce.”

  She was quiet.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t expect to be where I am tonight, is all. Almost single. And I surely didn’t expect to be with you.”

  “I’m grateful you are. Darn, why didn’t I get up the road before you could come down? Now you can feel superior.”

  She felt a lot of things, but superior wasn’t among them. “I’m glad I’m here, too.”

  “What are you wearin’?”

  “My mother’s old chenille bathrobe.”

  He looked closer. “Not sexy. Were you cold?”

  “Nope. And now I’m hot. Didn’t want to come down in my nightie with nothin’ on top, is all.”

  Finn put a hand behind one of her calves, and she jumped. “Good,” he said. “Nighties are good. They save time.”

  She sat straighter and crossed her arms. “I was talkin’ about bein’ decorous.”