by Oak Anderson
Sarah ran to Charlie and Thane ran to Anita, but there was no hope for either of them. Thane collected the guns and walked over to Sarah, who was whispering something over and over in Charlie’s ear. It sounded to Thane like ‘fuck you chickless’, but he couldn’t be sure.
He knelt beside them and checked Charlie’s pulse, just as he had done for Anita, with the same result. Whatever words left unsaid between them would remain forever so, and now Thane was running on pure instinct.
As the sound of sirens rose in the distance, Thane finally tore Sarah from Charlie’s body and put his keys in her hand.
“My car’s out front. Take it around back, in the alley. Wait for me there.”
“What?” Sarah mumbled, confused.
Thane took her face in his hands and forced her to focus. “I know about you and Charlie,” he said. “Leave the motor running. We have a lot to talk about. Go!”
She nodded dumbly and started to leave when there was a moan behind them. Brad was sitting up, leaning against the refrigerator.
Thane raised his gun to finish him off, but this time it was Sarah who pushed him aside, wrenching the gun from his hand in a rage. Before Thane could stop her, she put the muzzle against Brad’s forehead and pulled the trigger.
She turned around and held out the weapon, her blood spattered face shining eerily in the moonlight streaming through the windows.
He took the gun from her and she walked towards the front of the house without another word.
Thane leaned down and kissed Anita, whose lips were still soft and warm.
He stood up and started to tell her how much he loved her, but the sirens, which were now very loud, pulled him from his reverie.
Thane began to leave through the back door, but as he turned for one last look at the grisly scene, he had a thought and walked towards the front of the house, looking for the interior door to the garage.
***
Thane sprinted through the back yard, which was almost a quarter acre, and easily hopped the chain link fence at the rear of the property as the house burst into flames behind him.
Sarah was there, just as he knew she would be, and they drove away in silence as police responders waited out front for the fire department to arrive, guns drawn.
2 YEARS, 3 MONTHS AFTER TOWY WEBSITE
Most Pirated Album of the Year
EPILOGUE
Freddie Flowers, the nom-de guerre of the literary sensation behind the New York Times bestseller detailing the inside story of the TOWY phenomenon, waited patiently at each book signing, eager to talk to his fans and reveling in their adulation. He loved to talk and the buyers of the book never tired of listening, unlike some people he could name at his previous job.
At a bookstore in Santa Barbara, not all that far from one of the earliest and most notorious murder-suicides, he had just finished chatting amiably with some of the last stragglers in line and was beginning to pack up when a father and daughter appeared and plopped down an open book, the final passage highlighted.
No one knows where Sarah ended up and Detective Parks hasn’t spoken a word on the subject since the Grand Jury cleared him to return to work. It has been theorized that Sarah, like so many of her followers, left this mortal coil and ‘took one with her’, as they say. Suicide might seem to many a fitting ending to the strange saga of the grizzled cop and the naïve criminal who crossed paths at such an intimate yet explosive moment of their lives; the perfect coda to the global phenomenon called TOWY.
I, for one, hope not. Were I ever to speak to Sarah, I would tell her where she went wrong, and perhaps advise how she might actually accomplish the original goal; to clean up the filth of society and allow the rest of us to breathe easier for having known the Towys were out there somewhere, acting as judge, jury, and executioner.
I might even have some advice on how to use a guy like Detective Parks.
The man formerly known as Fred Dean looked up. Thane and Sarah weren’t smiling, but neither did they appear threatening.
“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” Thane said.
Sarah nodded. “Lots.”