“That is a damned lie!” Ned snarled. “You—you got Vivian pregnant and then you deserted her. And after your own brother saved her from disgrace, you had a soul rotten
enough to betray your brother and start up with her again. I remember the first time I saw you two together. I came home early from school. I heard noises in the guest room and I peeked in and there you were, you and your brother’s wife, heaving and sweating, riding each other, grunting like a couple of animals—”
“Shut up!” Chyna realized she’d screamed at Ned. Michelle had nearly entwined herself around Chyna’s legs and she could feel the heat of the dog’s fear, a fear that almost equaled her own. She’d had no idea Vivian and Rex had carried on an affair, but the reality hadn’t hit her yet and she couldn’t make herself be quiet. “Just stop talking, Ned!” Her voice cut through the air like a knife. “What Mom and Rex did was wrong, but it’s over. I don’t want to hear any more about their affair. I don’t want to hear about how Dad hated you. He didn’t, but even if he had, it doesn’t matter anymore. Dad’s been gone a long time. And now Mom is gone, too.” She paused, feeling as if lights were flashing behind her eyes. She could see Vivian standing at the top of the stairs. She saw Ned standing only a couple of feet away from her. And she could see Vivian’s face—flushed and horrified but absolutely determined and relentless as she threatened her son.
Chyna held her breath for a moment as all three of them stood as if frozen. Meanwhile, evening fell early without the benefit of daylight saving time. The only light came from a small lamp on the desk, a lamp that sent wavering shadows crawling up the walls and across the ceiling. Chyna felt as if a ball of ice had settled in her stomach. At the same time, sweat slithered from her hairline to the neck of her sweater like a slender, treacherous snake. Still, she managed to find her voice, even though it emerged thin and raspy. “You admitted to pushing me off that boat when I was seven, Ned. You know that / know you’re responsible for the deaths of Zoey, and Heather, and Edie. Probably Nancy, too.” She paused. “Now tell me what happened to Mom.”
“She had a heart attack,” Ned said flatly, his gaze never leaving Chyna’s.
“The medical examiner says Mom did have a heart attack. But I can see you with her, Ned. I can see the two of you at the top of the stairs. What happened that morning, Ned? You might as well tell us. You have nothing to lose now.”
“Nothing to lose?” Ned repeated. He glanced at Rex, then back at Chyna, and started to laugh. “Well, I guess I don’t. I was always afraid you’d figure it out one day, little sister, although I thought your so-called visions were just the result of intense scrutiny. You were constantly observant, never missed a trick, even when you were young. I wasn’t absolutely sure, though. That’s why I’ve avoided touching you ever since you came home. Did you notice that?”
Chyna quickly cast through her memories. The night she arrived he hadn’t hugged her when he and Bev came over. He hadn’t even laid a hand on Chyna’s shoulder after the crowd had gathered on the lawn. He seemed to see the dawning comprehension in her gaze and smiled ruefully. “I didn’t count on having to tell Rex everything, but maybe it’ll be entertaining to describe to him exactly how his paramour, or more aptly his whore, died.”
Rex winced and briefly closed his eyes. It had hurt him to hear Vivian called a whore, Chyna thought. Even though he’d turned his back on Vivian when she needed him before Ned was born, even though Rex had only dallied with her when he came to visit between wives, he had cared for Vivian. Somehow, as disappointed as she was in her mother, knowing Rex had at least cared made the pain a bit less sharp for Chyna.
“Sometimes I noticed Mom looking at me like she didn’t know me,” Ned began. “There was all this speculation in her gaze. I don’t know if she said anything to Edward or he just started to wonder about me, too, but I saw the same look in his eyes.” Ned grinned. “I’ll tell you, it freaked me out. Scared me. And I don’t like being scared. So, I thought that if they were on the scent, if they thought their Edward Junior might be the killer of young girls, what better way to make them think I was just a normal guy than by getting married
to a sweet, pretty girl from a nice family, a gentle girl they knew and loved, a girl they would have picked for a daughter-in-law? So I proposed to Beverly.”
“You used Beverly as a cover?” Chyna asked, appalled.
“Yeah. Why not? She loved me. She was thrilled when I asked her to marry me. Vivian’s eyes lost that strange look right about the time of the wedding. But Edward’s didn’t.” Chyna remembered how withdrawn her father had seemed during the wedding festivities. She’d thought he was troubled, but she hadn’t known why. Now she did. “Boy, was I relieved when he kicked off two weeks later,” Ned ended casually.
“Please tell me you didn’t kill him,” Rex said in an old man’s voice.
“I’d planned to if he didn’t quit looking at me like he suspected something. But luckily, I didn’t have to. He just went on his own. Or almost on his own.” Ned raised his eyebrows. “Don’t look so relieved, Rex. He found out about you and Vivian. When my wedding didn’t seem to settle his mind about me, he learned about the two of you in an anonymous letter complete with photos.” Ned stretched his mouth in that awful grin again. “He found out his brother and his wife had been sweatin’ up the sheets, banging away for years, right under his nose. The shock, the hurt, threw him right into a stroke.”
“Oh God,” Rex moaned. “I never meant…”
“You never meant for him to find out?” Ned asked. “Well, I guess you didn’t. You didn’t mind screwing your own sister-in-law; you just didn’t want him to know it. Very noble, Rex. Shows how much you loved your brother.”
“And you were the anonymous informant,” Chyna said dully.
Ned nodded. “Sure was. I was particularly proud of the photos. When those two were going at it, they didn’t notice me opening the door just wide enough to get a few excellent shots of them. Anyway, you asked about Vivian, not Edward. Well, of all the damn luck, we had that big windstorm when I was in Pennsylvania at Bev’s sister’s wedding. It wrecked
my old clubhouse—the place I’d always kept padlocked. Vivian had always been suspicious of how protective I was of the place, and with one side of it blown out, she went tearing out there to nose around. That’s when she found my memorabilia tucked carefully away in the old chest.”
Chyna felt sick. “Your mementos of the girls you’d killed.”
“Yeah. When I got home, I was furious that she’d had the place torn down and carted away. She tried to act blas6 about it, but I wasn’t convinced. I came back the next day and confronted her. She’d been in bed and she met me at the top of the stairs. She looked weak and sick and she completely broke down. She said she’d found all my ’grotesque treasures.’ She told me she’d suspected for years that I’d killed those girls, but she’d kept her mouth shut because I was her son, as if she ever gave a damn about me!”
“She did, Ned,” Chyna ventured.
“Shut… your . . . mouth,” he returned coldly. “She and Edward cared about you. Only you. But we’ve been over that and I hate having to repeat myself. Anyway, she gave me this ghastly hollow-eyed look and said, ’For once in my life, I’m going to do the right thing before you kill another girl, or Beverly, or your own children. I kept those things that belonged to the dead girls, and don’t bother looking for them because you’ll never find them. I’m going to show them to the police and say where I found them. Then I’m going to tell the authorities everything I know about you. I don’t know a lot, but I know enough to get them started on an investigation. I’ve already called Rex. He’s going to help me.’”
The extra food in the refrigerator the night she’d gotten home, Chyna thought. Her mother had been expecting Rex, but he’d been delayed by the flu.
“Vivian pushed past me and started down the stairs,” Ned continued. “All at once she gasped and grabbed at her chest. I already knew she had heart troubl
e. She was having a heart attack. So, since opportunity was right in front of me, I just gave her a nice, hard push down the stairs. Then I went down
and studied her closely to make sure she was dead. Her neck was twisted at this god-awful angle and—”
“Stop!” Chyna cried. “For the love of God, don’t describe it!”
“For the love of God?” Ned asked. “I don’t love God and he doesn’t love me, but in honor of your sensitive nature, I won’t go into details. I hung around the house for a half hour or so, then called nine-one-one. I wanted them to think she’d been lying there for a while before I found her. And lucky for me, the autopsy showed she’d had a heart attack. The conclusion was simple. She was at the top of the stairs, had the attack, and fell to the bottom, where she broke her neck, which finished her off. I did a fine job of sounding like the stricken son when the Emergency Service got here. Then I called you, Chyna. Don’t you agree my grief sounded genuine?”
“Yes, you son of a bitch,” she ground out.
“Son of a bitch. Well, that would be accurate.”
“Why, Ned?” Chyna and Ned both looked surprised to hear Rex speak. He’d come down the rest of the stairs and now stood in the shadowy living room. “Why did you kill those girls?”
“Why, why, why?” Ned chanted. “Why does a serial killer want to kill? Well, usually they have a type in mind. In my case, I always chose young, pretty, smart girls, girls everyone knew would do something beyond the usual with their lives, girls who were special….”
“Girls like your sister,” Rex said flatly.
“Exactly. I admit, I failed to get rid of her a long time ago, but I was only ten at the time and my desire for admiration outweighed my better sense. Then Zoey came along. She was cute, sort of smart, would surely go to a good school because her parents had money, but she wasn’t special except for one thing—she was Chyna’s best friend. If I couldn’t get at Chyna directly, I’d do it indirectly, through Zoey. And I did it, didn’t I, Sis? I tore your emotions to shreds when I killed Zoey.”
“Yes, you did,” Chyna said brokenly. “And the girls after Zoey—I didn’t even know them, but to you, they were like me. Symbolically you were killing me over and over.”
Ned cocked his head. “Well, I never thought about it like that—you’re the deep thinker in the family—but I guess you’re right.” His gaze drifted from Chyna as if another thought was dragging away his attention. Then he looked at the gold-plated urn sitting on a cherry end table. “Well, Mom’s home again.” He looked at Rex. “I don’t think there will be any fun and games in the bedroom this time, though.”
Rex stood by the wall, looking as if he were made of stone. His once-brilliant blue eyes moved from Ned to the urn, though.
“Vivian called me and told me what she suspected about you, Ned,” Rex said in an odd, detached voice. “She told me about the ’trophies’ she’d found in the clubhouse—the velvet ribbon, a pair of panties, a copy of the playbook for Our Town, other tilings. She told me how you looked the night Heather Phelps vanished. She said she was going to turn you in to the police and she begged me to come, to help her. I couldn’t accept what she wanted me to do and I delayed a day, for which I’ll never forgive myself. Then I realized I had a duty—you’re my son—and I forced myself on a plane. I rented a car at the airport, drove here, and just as I got to the house, I saw an ambulance in the driveway. I saw someone being carried out on a gurney, and even though the face was covered, I knew it was Vivian.”
Rex looked coldly at Ned. “And I saw you, trailing along behind it with that hangdog expression on your face. Maybe you fooled the cops and the paramedics, but you didn’t fool me. I knew Vivian was dead and I knew you had something to do with her death. I couldn’t prove anything, though, so I didn’t stop at the house. I followed you around for a couple of days, hoping I could catch you at something. But I couldn’t. I also couldn’t put off Chyna any longer. So I finally showed up and made an excuse about being delayed because I was sick. But I didn’t stop following you, Ned. I haven’t stopped for days. That’s why I was never here, Chyna.”
“Well, I can’t say much for your skill as a private investigator, Rex,” Ned sneered. “Look what happened to Deirdre Mayhew and Rusty Burtram.”
Chyna looked in despair at the man she’d loved as a brother her whole life. “When I got home, you were limping and Bev said you strained a muscle in your leg by tripping over a water hose at the car dealership. But you actually strained it chasing Nancy down that path. She tripped and hit her head before you caught her, but not before you saw Rusty watching. That’s why you killed him.”
“I don’t think he saw me.” Ned shrugged. “But I wasn’t absolutely sure and I wasn’t going to take any chances. Besides, I did him a favor. That pitiful guy wasn’t destined to have one happy day in his whole goddamned life.”
“You weren’t even here when Rusty told me he’d seen Nancy running down that path and he thought someone was chasing her,” Chyna said.
“No, but Gage was, and he made the mistake of telling me about the whole scene—Rusty pouring his heart out to you, trying to convince you he wasn’t some kind of pervert, his father overhearing him and ready to explode like Mount Vesuvius. The funny thing was, Gage didn’t know whether to believe Rusty was innocent. He told me because he was pondering the whole thing, trying to figure it out.”
Chyna said evenly, “Yes, that must have been hilarious to you.” She hesitated. “Ned, where is Gage Ridgeway?”
“Why, he took off, little sister, when you found Deirdre in the cemetery so close to his house. After all, you found the blanket she’d been wrapped in on his property.”
“Stop playing games. You planted the blanket at Gage’s. Even when I found it, I knew something was wrong. It was dirty. It had pieces of grit and grime on it. But the floor of Gage’s storage building, where you planned to have the police believe he was keeping Deirdre prisoner, was spotless.” Ned merely smiled at her. “You put the blanket in that building and I’m sure a couple of other items that belonged to Deirdre will turn up 4t Gage’s, too. As soon as you heard on your police scanner—the scanner you listen to constantly
that drives Beverly up the wall—you were out of your house like a flash. You went to Gage’s and you planted evidence. But what did you do with him?”
“What would you expect me to do with him?”
“You want me to think you killed him, Ned, but you didn’t.” Chyna tapped her temple. “ESP, remember? I know he’s alive.”
“You’re guessing.”
“Oh no, I am not guessing.” Although everything inside Chyna felt as if it were quivering, she maintained a strong, steady voice. “Gage Ridgeway is alive, Ned. You have plans for him.”
Ned’s gaze wavered slightly. Then he looked at her with eyes as cold and emotionless as a snake’s. “You’re right. I have plans for Gage.” He paused. “But I also have plans for you, Chyna dear. Plans I’m afraid will end in your tragic demise.”
“You’re going to kill your own sister?” Rex asked in his old man’s voice.
“Yes. Don’t sound so shocked. I’ve tried it before, remember? Only this time I’ll be successful.”
“The hell you will,” Rex snarled, and charged at Ned. But Rex was slow and Ned was not. So fast it almost seemed a blur, Ned pulled a gun from beneath his jacket. Chyna screamed as the gun went off. Rex went completely still. Then, slowly, he looked down at the blood spreading across his abdomen. His glance met Chyna’s one last time before he fell with a crash onto the glass-topped coffee table.
“Gut shot,” Ned said. “It’s a painful way to die.”
“Oh my God!” Chyna screamed. “What have you done?”
“Looks obvious to me.”
She started to run to Rex, but Ned turned the gun toward her. “Stay where you are.” Rex moaned and Chyna moved again. This time Ned shot. The bullet hit the wall not a foot from her head. “I missed on purpose, but I won’t the next time, so
it’ll be in your best interest to stop being so sentimental. I told you getting gut shot was a painful way to die. It’s also a slow way to die. Old Rex here will be moaning
for quite a while, but you can’t do anything for him. Nothing, Chyna. The only way you can save your life is to do what I say.”
She met his eerily inhuman gaze. “You intend to kill me, too. Why don’t you just get it over with?”
“Because this is not the way I planned it. It’s perfectly obvious there isn’t one thing you can do to save yourself now. But…” Ned lowered the gun and pointed it at the trembling Michelle. “You can go along with me and save your dog. Most people wouldn’t think that was much of a trade, but I know how you love that dog.”
“Come on, Ned. You’d kill her; then you’d kill me, too.”
He shrugged. “You’re right. So think of it this way instead. If I shoot you now, it’s all over. If you give yourself some time, that big brain of yours might provide you with a much-needed inspiration.” He kept the gun pointed at Michelle but never took his eyes from Chyna’s. “So what’ll it be, Chyna doll?”
She swallowed convulsively, pressing herself against the desk, keeping her hands behind her so she wouldn’t make some instinctive move that might startle Ned into shooting her. “I’ll do what you say.” Her hands, slippery with sweat, slid along the top of the desk. Stop it, she commanded them silently. Don’t move. But her hands kept sliding. They were moving against her will, she suddenly realized. It was almost as if something, or someone, were moving them for her. And then they touched it. Zoey’s four-leaf-clover necklace. Chyna clutched it in her left hand and continued to look steadily at Ned. “I said I’ll do what you want. Just don’t shoot me. Or the dog. Please.”
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