I turned to ask him about the vans and saw a gun in his hand.
“You are a smart attorney, Kali. Too smart for your own good.”
Chapter 33
I tried swallowing but my mouth was dry. My pulse was pounding at my temples, my chest tight. My stomach felt as if it were playing hopscotch.
Fleetingly, I considered jumping out of the car and attempting to escape on foot. I knew I’d never make it. The surrounding area was wide open and empty. If I could just stay calm, maybe I’d be able to attract attention later when we weren’t so isolated.
But Jake had me turn right at the exit instead of left.
We weren’t going out for drinks, after all. We weren’t even going in the direction of town.
“Where are we headed?” The words came unevenly, as though I were speaking an unfamiliar foreign language.
“You’ll see. Just do what I say and don’t try anything funny.”
I nodded, gripped the wheel tighter and took a breath. “It was you who killed Lisa Cornell and Amy, wasn’t it?”
His jaw twitched. After a moment he said, “I didn’t want to.”
“Why did you, then?”
“It’s a long story.”
Jake kept the gun pointed at my head. His eyes were cool, but his voice was slightly frayed. “I didn’t want to kill them. I really didn’t. Just like I didn’t want to kill Donna Markley.” He paused. “Or you either.”
Good. That made two of us.
“And I doubly didn’t want to kill Sam. Hopefully I won’t have to.”
The words took a moment to register. “You caused Sam’s heart problem?” My voice rose till it scratched in my throat.”You did that to him on purpose?”
I remembered the pleading look in Sam’s eyes the first day I’d visited. How he’d pulled at the ventilator tube, struggling to speak. A prisoner in his own body. “How could you do that to him? He’s your friend.”
“He’s alive,” Jake said.
“But why? Why any of this? Just so you can get your hands on the Cornell property?”
Jake shook his head. “It’s not that simple.”
“You’re Simmons’ mystery client, aren’t you?”
He sighed. “I wanted the Cornell property, but only to keep it from falling into other hands.”
“So you killed Lisa?”
“That wasn’t the reason why I had to kill Lisa.”
“You didn’t have to kill anyone.”
“But I did, you see. I’m not happy about it.”
“Why?”
“Why doesn’t matter. You won’t be around long enough to care.”
“Then it wouldn’t hurt to tell me.”
Jake licked his lips.”Turn here,” he said. We climbed higher into the hills. The road was narrow and winding. I could think of no plan for escape.
“I never wanted any of this to happen,” Jake remarked with only a trace of emotion in his voice. “If I could only go back and change things, change that one moment . . .”
“What moment?”
“It’s been more than twenty years, and I remember it like it was yesterday. When Annie said she wished she’d never laid eyes on him—”
“Annie?”
“Anne Drummond.”
“You knew Anne Drummond?”
“I was in love with her.” Jake paused. “Years ago, before I married Grace. I was just out of medical school, just setting up practice here in Silver Creek. I thought the feeling was mutual.”
“It wasn’t?”
“Oh, it was. For a while. That’s the irony of the whole thing. She was married to a first-class jerk. He knocked her around, treated her like dirt. Always so full of himself. She complained about him constantly.”
“Why didn’t she leave?”
“At the time I thought she was afraid to.”
“And now?”
“I guess on some level she also loved him.” Jake shook his head in bewilderment. “I only wanted to help. I was trying to protect her. Trying to protect the woman I loved.”
“Protect her how?”
Jake’s voice was growing softer. I had to listen hard in order to make out the words.
“He must have been following us,” Jake said. “He found us together at my place and dragged Annie home. I was afraid of what he might do to her. I went over later to have it out with him. We got into a fight. He was big and strong, and drunk. I pulled a gun, thinking that would make him back off. It didn’t.”
I held my breath. “You killed him?”
Jake nodded.
I’d been driving slowly, trying to buy time. Now I almost came to a complete stop. “Barry Drummond didn’t run off, then?”
“No. We buried him in the barn. Later Annie poured concrete over the spot and built some shelves there. She told people he’d run off and left her. Even fabricated stories about some postcards she’d received from him. All the while he’s been right there, under the barn.”
I glanced at the gun in Jake’s hand. He still had a firm grip, still had it pointed in my direction. “Couldn’t you have claimed self-defense?”
“It wouldn’t have worked. I came looking for a fight. I brought a gun with me.”
“What about you and Anne?”
A bitter, sardonic laugh. “I thought that once she was free of him everything would be okay, but it wasn’t. Maybe it was the horror of what we’d done, or maybe she was never serious about me to begin with. Whatever the reason, it didn’t work out.”
Jake had killed Barry Drummond years ago. I couldn’t understand why he was so worried. “All that happened so long ago,” I said. “Even if the body was discovered now, who would suspect you had anything to do with it?”
“My watch. It was engraved with my name. Annie buried it with the body, along with a sealed account of what had happened. She’d agreed to keep quiet and to bury the body on her property, but she wanted some assurance that she wasn’t going to be charged with his murder if everything came undone.”
We came to a fork in the road and Jake motioned for me to take the left branch. It was a dirt and gravel road, heavily rutted.
“Just a little farther,” he said. “There, up ahead; pull off onto the shoulder. My car’s behind that row of trees.”
The moon was full, the route almost as well lit as if it were day. The gun glimmered with reflected light. I took my time inching to that spot ahead. I was now certain Jake Harding intended to kill me.
“I don’t understand how Lisa Cornell and Amy fit into this.”
“Lisa was living with Annie that summer,” Jake explained. “She saw me shoot Barry Drummond. Annie sent her back to bed, told her it was an accident and that we were going to take Barry to the doctor. But later, when we were burying him in the barn, we found Lisa standing at the door, watching.
“Annie made up some story about burying a dead cow and sent Lisa home to her mother a few days later. We were worried about what Lisa might say, but she was only four and we hoped no one would believe her. In fact, she seemed to forget all about it. Even later, when she was fourteen and came to spend a week with Annie following her mother’s remarriage, she seemed to have no memory of the event at all.”
No conscious memory, maybe. But I remembered what Ron Swanson had told me about Lisa’s abrupt change in behavior following his and Reena’s marriage. Maybe something about the visit with her aunt had triggered a memory. Maybe even some of the fear and confusion she’d felt about Jake had been transferred to Ron. They were both doctors, both about the same age and build. It was understandable that Lisa’s feelings about her new stepfather were mixed.
“If she had no memory of the event, why kill her?” I asked, bringing my thoughts back to the present.
“The return to Silver Creek, living in her aunt’s house — she was beginning to remember. I ran into her one day when she was on her way to see Dr. Dobbs about her headaches. Apparently our encounter caused a violent reaction.”
I remembered Dr. Dobbs
mentioning the sudden, blinding headache that had come on in his office.
“Lisa called me one day.” Jake sighed. “Said she was trying to piece together parts of her past, and hadn’t I been a friend of her aunt’s? She’d checked the property records for the house where Wes lives. After she went home with him one evening she remembered she’d been there as a child. I knew it wouldn’t take long before she worked out the whole thing, especially with Donna Markley’s help.”
“So you killed her,” I said, pulling off the road where Jake had indicated.
“I had to.”
“And Amy?”
He sighed again, deeply. “That tore at me. It was like deja vu. When I’d finished with Lisa I turned to see another little girl standing at the door, watching. I couldn’t take the chance again. If I’d let Amy go, it would be the same as before, never knowing when the truth might come out.”
I parked the car where Jake indicated and turned off the engine. “And Dr. Markley? Had she figured it out?”
“She was close. Donna Markley was very good at what she did, intuitive as well as smart. She’d figured out that the house, my old place, had triggered Lisa’s anxiety about being with Wes. It brought back some of her earlier memories. And under hypnosis Lisa had apparently remembered bits and pieces of the evening Drummond was killed.”
“And now it’s me and Sam. You’re making it worse the more people you kill.”
“I never wanted any of it. It kept sucking me in like a whirlpool, pulling me under.”
I shook my head. “There were other choices. Even after you’d killed Barry Drummond. You didn’t have to keep on killing.”
Jake’s face was tight, his body rigid. He held the gun steady, pointing it directly at me. “I did. I couldn’t let that one reckless deed so many years ago bring down everything I’d built for myself.”
“So you decided to let Wes take the blame.”
“I never wanted that either. It was a fluke that he was arrested. I didn’t know he’d been out there that night. When they arrested Wes I felt as if the weight of the world had been dropped on my shoulders.”
“But you still didn’t come forward with the truth.”
“I hired Sam, and then you. I gave you carte blanche with expenses.”
“You planted the underclothes in the dumpster,” I said. “Seems to me you wanted to make sure the jury found Wes guilty.”
Jake shook his head. “I had nothing to do with that. I did everything in my power to see to it that Wes would go free.”
Everything short of taking responsibility.
“I’m sorry, Kali. I tried to warn you, tried to get you to leave town.”
“That gorilla who attacked me was a friend of yours?”
“I didn’t want it to come to this.” Jake was breathing hard now. His forehead glistened with sweat and I could see damp spots on his shirt.
“I want you to get out of the car now, slowly and with your hands in the air where I can see them.”
I opened the car door, raised my hands.
“I promise, you won’t suffer. I’ll make it quick. I wanted to make Lisa’s death quick and painless too, but she kept fighting me.” Jake got out of the car. “Let’s go into the woods a bit. You first.”
Even with the moonlight it was difficult to make my way across the uneven ground. I went slowly, eyes darting in all directions, waiting for the right moment. I could outrun Jake. I couldn’t outrun a bullet. My hope was that, at night, his aim would be off enough that I’d have a fighting chance.
Maybe twenty yards from the road we came to a slight drop-off. There appeared to be a spot of dense vegetation toward the bottom of the grade. It wasn’t perfect, but time was running out.
When I was even with the steepest part of the embankment I dropped quickly, crouched behind a tree, then jumped to my feet and took off for the shrubbery.
There was a gun blast. Then another.
I felt something tug at my shoulder. When I tried to shake free, the tugging grew heavier. I could feel dampness begin to soak into my shirt. One of Jake’s bullets had found its mark.
I pulled to the left, around a stand of small firs, then dove into the mound of vegetation, discovering too late that I’d landed in the midst of poison oak. But there near the center, close to the ground, was a hollow space large enough to hide me. I pulled my knees to my chest and held my breath.
The tugging sensation in my shoulder had given way to shooting pain. I bit my lip and tried to ignore it.
“I can outwait you,”Jake called. “You might as well come out now.”
I could hear his footsteps. The snap of a twig, the barest vibration of the earth’s surface as he stepped.
Another shot, and then another. There was a ping near the far edge of the poison oak.
The pain from my shoulder screamed inside my head as well. My throat tickled. I needed to pee.
I was afraid to do anything. Afraid even to breathe.
Another shot.
I closed my eyes, picked the word yellow at random and repeated it over and over, trying to override all other thoughts.
After awhile I became aware of the quiet. Nothing around me stirred. I opened my eyes and waited.
The moon moved slowly across the sky. The evening passed to night and then to early morning. Far off I could hear the howl of coyotes.
Another shot rang out.
I pulled my cramped muscles tighter, willing myself to be transformed to a statue.
<><><>
Dawn came slowly. A fading of black, a sweep of gray and finally the muted colors born of the rising sun. Around me, life began to stir.
Was Jake gone?
Or was he waiting?
I felt along the ground for a hard clump of dirt and tossed it.
Nothing.
Jake had to be waiting for me to make a move. He’d told me too much. There was no going back for him now.
I held off until the sun was high in the sky and the day hot. My mouth was parched and my head felt as though it were filled with cotton. My shoulder throbbed. I tossed another dirt clump. And then another.
A blue jay squawked overhead.
But there were no gunshots. No footsteps or cracking twigs.
Finally I inched myself forward. Looked to the right and the left. In the distance I could see my Subaru parked alongside the road where we’d left it. Jake’s car was still off to the right.
Where was he hiding?
I couldn’t outrun him now. I knew that. But if I could make it to the car before he saw me . . . and if the key was in the ignition . . .
My options were limited. I decided to go for it.
I tried springing to my feet and found that my muscles had frozen. My mind had made it to the car while my body was still extracting itself from the brambles.
No shots, though.
I hobbled as quickly as I could, staying low to the ground, seeking the shelter of rocks and bushes when I could. I reached the road and opened the car door.
Jake was in the passenger seat. A gun in his hand.
And a bullet through his head.
Chapter 34
Tom’s hands worked the muscles of my neck and shoulders. I could feel the relaxation spread throughout my body, like liquid sunshine filling my veins. Of course, the margarita helped. It was icy cold, not too sweet and very strong. I sipped it slowly.
“It’s still hard to imagine Jake Harding as a killer,” he said.
I murmured agreement. Barry Drummond’s death I could maybe understand, but not the subsequent ones. Not Lisa, and Amy. Not Donna Markley. And not me and Sam, if things had gone differently.
“The way Jake saw it,” I told Tom, “he had no choice. Each murder dug him in deeper.”
“Do you think Lisa would really have been able to remember what happened?”
I leaned forward so Tom could reach my lower back. “Apparently she was remembering more and more all the time. After she went home with Wes that night she s
uffered a terrible anxiety attack. Wes was renovating the kitchen and he’d stripped the walls down to the old paper from Lisa’s childhood. I don’t know whether it was that or something else, but being back in the house where she’d gone with her aunt, the house of a man she knew as a killer — it seemed to trigger a flood of memories.”
“It’s kind of spooky to think your mind knows things it hides from you. We might all have terrible secrets in our pasts.”
“Except that in Lisa’s case there were some fairly strong outward indications of trouble.”
Tom’s fingers worked a knot near my left shoulder. “Does that hurt?”
“No, it feels nice.”
He worked carefully, taking care not to disturb the bandaged wound on my right arm. I’d been lucky; the bullet had only grazed the surface. Six inches to the left and I might be dead.
Sam had been lucky, too. He was still hospitalized but improving. I had my doubts that he’d ever regain his full strength, or his zest for life. He’d saved a client but lost a friend — and, I imagined, a good bit of faith in his fellow man.
“Wes called while you were asleep,” Tom said. “He wanted to see how you were doing.”
“Probably better than he is.”
“He walked out of jail a free man. He ought to be happy.”
As with Sam, I was sure there were shadows cast on Wes’s inventory of things to be grateful for. “It must be hard knowing that the man you think of as a father, one of the few people in your life who’s treated you decently, was not only a killer but willing to let you take the blame for it.”
I reached for my drink and took another swallow. The icy cold liquid soothed my throat, loosened the stiffness in my muscles. “You know those porno films Wes was keeping for a friend? They were Jake’s. Wes was willing to damage his own credibility to protect his stepfather. And look what he got in return.”
“Do you think Jake would have let Wes be convicted without admitting his guilt?”
“I don’t know. Neither does Wes.”
Tom sighed. “Between his father and Willis, Wes really got shafted.” The undergarments in the compost bin had been Willis’s doing. Complete with his own type B blood.
Evidence of Guilt (A Kali O'Brien legal mystery) Page 29