by JG Alva
Daniel didn’t answer.
Light glistened off the sweat on his brow and top lip.
He still had his hands behind his back though, like a good boy.
“Maggie confessed as much, and even Suzanne confirmed it,” Sutton continued. “Which made everything you were doing at odds with how you felt. But that alone wasn’t enough to get you off the hook. After all, a lot of men throughout history have acted contrary to how they felt. That would hardly make you unique.
“Something else that gave me pause was Bobby. He also paid me a visit, although his intentions were a lot more hostile. But when I finally got the truth out of him – and out of his cousin, who supposedly set him on me in the first place – I was surprised to find it was Suzanne’s hand at work in the background, not yours. She’d not said anything directly, mind…but that’s where she is very very sneaky. She’s pulling everyone’s strings, and nobody’s any the wiser. For example: after she came to see me, and I’d spurned her advances and refused to help her, she went straight to Maggie and Angela. She told them I’d tried to seduce her. Talk about putting the cat amongst the pigeons. But you see what she did? She winds people up, and then sets them loose…and then sits back and watches the devastation. Like this deal that you’re doing. The one for Green Light. I bet she knows someone in the consortium. Am I right? That’s how you managed to get a foot in the door. Because of her. This whole thing – this thing with Green Light – is because of her. This whole deal, it’s all her idea. Am I right?”
Daniel smothered his surprise at the mention of the consortium, but Sutton saw it. He chose not to answer.
“I bet I am.”
No response. But his stare was full of hate.
“But all these little things weren’t enough to put me off your scent. After all, you could just as easily have asked your fiancé to talk to her family on your behalf, or talk to Maggie to try and stir things up. It could all still have been you. But all these little things together, all this little inconsistencies…it got me thinking.” He stopped. Now for the hammer blow. “And then of course when I found out your fiancé had been fucking your father, then I knew it couldn’t be you. That it had to be her.”
*
Daniel’s eyes widened, so that Sutton could see the scribbled red veins at the edges.
It was like he was trying to stare through Sutton into tomorrow…
Or perhaps yesterday.
“No,” was all he said.
“Lisa told me he was having both of them, sometimes at the same time,” Sutton said. “Quite a dirty dog, your old man. I hope I’ve got his energy when I’m that age.”
Daniel stared at him as if he wanted to tear him apart with his bare hands.
“You’re making this shit up,” Daniel said. One last attempt to hang on to his world? His life?
“Why would I?”
“To get me to turn on her.”
“That’s true. But why would I want to do that?”
“So you can stop me. So you can have Green Light for yourself.”
Sutton laughed.
“I don’t need Green Light. I never did. Didn’t Suzanne tell you that? After she checked my financials?”
Daniel searched for another answer.
“Alright then. For Maggie. You’re her friend, you want to help her. So you’re trying to rip me and Suzanne apart. Divide and conquer. But it won’t work. I love her.”
“How does that work?” Sutton said. “Seeing as Maggie is dead.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say – had nothing to say.
“Oh Danny,” Sutton said, shaking his head sadly. “Haven’t you worked this out yet? You don’t even know the woman you are going to marry. No one does. And, truth be told, you probably never will.”
Daniel was still trying to hold it together, but he was crumbling. He shook his head, trying to deny it while at the same time checking it against his own list of inconsistencies: unexplained absences; strange looks; mysterious phone calls; the occasional odd comment; just the overall indecipherability of his fiancé.
“No, no, no, no…”
“And worse – if it could possibly be worse – is that your fiancé is a psychopath. A genuine, empathically challenged, self-motivated narcissistic killer. She attacked and killed Maggie. And she put Angela in a coma. It wasn’t Bobby – he’s in the hospital. I know, because I put him there. And it wasn’t Lisa – not enough interest. And it wasn’t you. She did it.”
Daniel shook his head, trying to deny it all.
“She’s played everyone for her own ends…including you, Daniel. Maggie was going to deal direct with the consortium, did you know that?”
Daniel looked shocked all over again.
Sutton said, “I arranged it, after I found out what you were really after. What your end game was. But I bet Suzanne’s friend in the consortium warned her. Maybe she was fucking him too. So she did what she thought she had to do, and she didn’t care who she hurt to get it done. That’s why I’m going to stop her. And that’s why I need your help. I need to find her, and I don’t know where she is. And you do know. Or at least you can guess.”
Daniel didn’t say anything for a moment. A tear trickled down from his right eye, passed his nose, and dangled on his chin. Sutton had to wait him out. This process could not be rushed. It took some time – almost two full minutes – before Daniel made his decision.
“If you’re going to get her,” he said raggedly, “you’ll have to be smarter than her. You’ll have to have a plan.”
Sutton nodded.
“You’re right. But we need to find her first.”
“Lisa’s,” he said. He met Sutton’s eye then, and there was murder in it. Perhaps for him…perhaps for her. “She’ll be at Lisa’s.”
*
CHAPTER 18
They took Sutton’s car; he didn’t trust Daniel to drive.
Sutton pulled to the curb and killed the engine. The house was detached, and was halfway down the street. It was completely dark. No lights on in any of the rooms, no movement, no sound. The street was deserted. The only life Sutton could detect was a distant tune drifting on the wind from some unknown location. Other than that, the night was silent.
“There’s nobody home,” Daniel said, with a faint note of hope in his voice.
“They’re home,” Sutton said.
“How do you know?”
“The curtains are open.”
Daniel checked to see if he was right.
“So?”
“So if you go out at night you close them. Force of habit.”
Daniel looked again.
“Maybe they forgot,” he said.
“Trust me, they didn’t.”
Daniel paused while he digested that.
“So what are we going to do?” He asked, half afraid of what Sutton might suggest.
“I’m going in the front,” he said. “I want you to go round the back. Try and be as quiet as you can. I’ll do the talking. If she knows you’re there, she won’t admit anything, because she still needs you. Me, well…she’ll tell me everything.”
“Why?”
Sutton dragged his attention from the house and turned in his seat slightly to address Daniel.
“Because sometimes you just want to tell someone. Because sometimes you want to impress someone with your work. And she’ll want to enrage me. Make me do something stupid. Remember, she manipulates people – that’s what she does best. And she’s good at it. Don’t underestimate her.”
“I never did,” Daniel said.
Sutton checked him. He looked sad…as if contemplating all that he had lost.
“But you never really knew her. Did you. She put on a face for you…because she wanted something from you. She put on another face for me, because she wanted something from me. The truth is, you’ll never know her. So many faces, for so many different occasions, so many different people…I doubt even she kn
ows which one is the real one anymore. Or if there ever was a real one.” Sutton reached out for the door handle. “Are you ready?”
Daniel tried to forestall him; he didn’t want to go. Sutton could hardly blame him. Whatever he learnt tonight, it wouldn’t be good.
“Why don’t we just call the police?”
“We will. But I want some questions answered first. And I expect you do as well.”
Dumbly, Daniel nodded.
“Okay then. Let’s go.”
They both got out of the car.
*
There had been a time when going into someone’s house uninvited, in the dead of night, might have made Sutton nervous.
But he felt only a sense of anticipation when he pushed open Lisa Rice’s front door.
It was unlocked.
The door gave out its customary bark as wood scraped against wood.
He might just as well have announced himself with a fucking bugle.
The house was a collage of black and grey shadows, cast by the reflected streetlight filtering in through the dirty net curtains hung in the front window. Quietly, he moved down the hall and stopped at the open door to the living room. The landing was above him, and looked down on the hall. The hall itself led to the back door. On his left, the staircase went up to the landing. He saw movement at the end of the hall and tensed himself for action…but it was only Daniel. Sutton put a finger to his lips and Daniel nodded. He waited just inside the door to the hall, a shadow amongst shadows.
“Suzanne!” Sutton called loudly.
Silence.
The muted pop and creak of a house settling for the night.
“I know you’re here!”
More silence.
Then, he heard movement from above.
“Sutton fucking Mills,” a voice said, drifting down from the landing. Suzanne’s voice.
There were soft footsteps, and then she came to the landing bannister. She leant one hand on the bannister; the other hand held a white cloth to the left side of her face.
“Why did you do it?” Sutton asked, looking up.
“Why did I do what?”
“You killed Maggie.”
“Did I?”
“I know it was you.”
“Prove it.”
She was talking too much, but saying nothing. Why?
It was then that he became aware of someone else nearby. He did not know by what sense this knowledge came to him, but he was ready when the shadow came rushing through the living room door. A hand was raised high, with something held in it, some indistinguishable weapon held aloft and aimed at his head. Sutton automatically put an arm up to block it, and in the same moment lashed out at where he thought the person’s head ought to be. In the dark he missed and got the throat instead of the face. It would do just as well. His attacker dropped the weapon, stumbling back, their hands going automatically to the injured throat; Sutton looked down and saw a long steak knife on the floor at his feet.
Lisa.
He couldn’t make out any details, but he knew it was her. Indeed, who else could it be? Suzanne had nobody left to turn to. This time, his aim was better. He hit her square in the face. He caught her on her left cheek bone. She went back and down, like a block of wood, totally inert. She made a loud bang when she hit the floor; she was a heavy woman.
Daniel watched from the back of the house and didn’t make a sound. Good boy.
Sutton looked up at Suzanne and indicated Lisa’s unconscious body at his feet.
“Are you going to deny it now?” He asked.
“So what,” she replied. “You broke into her house. She was defending herself. I’ve called the police. You’re going down.”
“Good. They’ll arrest me. Anything I say won’t mean shit to them. So there’s no reason why you can’t tell my why you killed Maggie. Because I don’t fucking understand it.”
A pause, and then Suzanne shouted angrily, “that bitch was fucking up everything!”
Not a confession, not technically, but as good as.
Sutton saw Daniel’s eyes glinting in the dark.
“The deal with the consortium, you mean,” Sutton said.
Suzanne hesitated.
“She went to them direct,” she said. “She was cutting me out of the deal.” She took the white cloth away from her face. There was blood on it. A dark line ran across Suzanne’s cheek. “Cut me out of the deal…and now she’s fucking cut my face.”
“Money,” Sutton said scornfully. “Is that what this is all about?”
“You stupid fucking cunt, you don’t –“ She had lost it momentarily, and now she tried to reign it in. She wiped her mouth; she had been spitting. She took a deep breath. “You don’t understand what it’s like to do without. You especially. With your penthouse apartment and your nice clothes. You have no fucking idea what it’s like.”
“I’m disappointed, Suzanne.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you think of me.”
“And Angela?”
Suzanne made a noise of disgust.
“So tell me why you killed Terry,” he called up to her.
She did not reply.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sutton saw Daniel start.
This was the real crux of the problem…and what had influenced his determination of the real guilty party, in all of it. The affair with Terry made everything Suzanne had done to secure her future vulnerable…and she couldn’t have that. Lisa had said he’d almost told Maggie. She stood to lose it all if he talked.
And if that person could kill once, then they could kill again.
“Let me guess,” Sutton said. “He didn’t want all of Green Light. He wanted to leave Maggie something for her old age. After all, he had his properties, a steady income…he probably thought stripping her of everything was too much. And they’d been married. Despite everything, he probably still had some affection for her. Is that it?”
He wasn’t sure that she would reply. There was a moment of silence. She shifted, putting the cloth back against her injured face.
She said, “he was such an idiot. God. He couldn’t see what we could do, all of us, where we could go, what we could become, if he just had Green Light in his portfolio.”
“No fool like an old fool, huh? Fucking him didn’t change his mind?”
Suzanne was reticent on this point too for the time being.
But Sutton couldn’t let up. Daniel needed to hear this, because he needed Daniel. If he was going to get this to end. Not for Maggie anymore, but for Angela. If she woke up. If she could have a life.
“I heard you and Lisa were taking turns,” Sutton said. “Or not. Sometimes it was at the same time. Isn’t that right?”
Suzanne stared at him in the dark. He couldn’t see her expression. All he saw was her raise her head slightly.
“He was a proper man,” she said. “A real man. There’s not many that could satisfy me…I had trouble staying away.”
“All your influence was for nought though. How that must have pissed you off.”
“Yeah, well…” She shrugged again. “Who gives a fuck. He’s dead now.”
Daniel gave a great bellow then, both a war cry and an exclamation of grief; it came all the way up from the bottom of his injured soul. He could contain himself no longer. Frankly, Sutton was surprised he had lasted this long. He had finally seen his fiancé’s true face…and it was not a pretty sight.
He ran for the stairs.
“Daniel!” Sutton shouted, to stop him, but by then he was on the stairs, moving fast.
As Daniel went up, Suzanne moved to the head of the stairs. There was a wooden display cabinet against the wall not far from them. She bent down and put both hands under it and tipped it toward the stairs. It looked to be a heavy piece of furniture, but she managed to move it with relative ease. Now he understood how she had killed Maggie, how she had managed to beat Angela so comprehensively, and h
ow she had managed to overpower Terry. She was uncommonly strong, for her size and stature.
Daniel saw the cabinet and reacted admirably. He dove over the bannister, just in time to avoid the cumbersome and heavy furniture that bumped impressively down the stairs. It made a lot of noise, and flipped over twice – the glass front smashed – before landing on the smaller landing halfway down and ripping through part of the bannister there.
Daniel dangled from the bannister on one hand for a moment, and then dropped to the hall floor. He immediately began his ascent again. He was fuelled by rage. And betrayal. He clambered over what remained of the cabinet as if it wasn’t there. Sutton looked up, but Suzanne was gone. As Daniel went after her, he heard the dim sound of a window being raised…and then someone cried out.
A muffled thump from outside.
Sutton turned around, and opened the front door.
Suzanne lay on the front patio, one leg and one arm twisted into an unnatural position. And something else…her neck bulged obtrusively.
Broken.
Sutton walked out to stand in front of her. He looked up in time to see Daniel staring down from the open bedroom window. He looked down at his fiancé, saw what had happened, and then quickly disappeared back inside.
Sutton looked back down at the body of Suzanne Rice. She had tried to run, had climbed out of the window, had possibly slipped…
And now this.
But she wasn’t dead. She was struggling to breathe, but she was breathing. She was trying to move, but her body seemed to have difficulty responding, so all she was able to achieve was a system wide series of tremors in her muscles.
Sutton was surprised to see that there was no blood. Not anywhere. Not even a drop.
All the damage must be internal then.
He knelt down beside her.
She was aware of him. Her head was turned away, and because of the damage to her neck, she could not turn to look at him. But her eyes moved.
“Fucking die, bitch,” he said, and spat in her face. It hit her left eyebrow. Her eyelids fluttered; a faltering reaction. She was going.
Footsteps in the house behind him alerted Sutton to Daniel’s progress, and then he was shouldering Sutton out of the way to get to his fiancé. He went down on his knees and held out his hands as if presenting her to an audience.