Unspeakable

by Sandra Brown

  Ezzy remembered talking to Johnny Sawyer a couple days following the incident. The boy had told him the same story he had heard from other bar patrons. He’d had no reason to doubt him. “Go on. What happened after y’all left?”

  It was as Ezzy had surmised the morning he saw her body. Patsy and the two men went to the river and had a sex party.

  Anna’s face didn’t reveal what she was thinking, although Sawyer appeared to be in pain when he admitted to his participation. “I took my turn with Patsy because I was a little drunk myself and didn’t want to get Daddy riled again by saying no thanks. Then they went at it a couple of times while I just sat there drinking, getting drunker. I wasn’t even alarmed when she got on her knees and he entered her from behind because he’d told me she liked it that way.”

  Ezzy’s cheeks flamed, not because he was embarrassed, but because he was embarrassed for Anna. To her credit she sat stoically, her features composed. But Ezzy knew she was catching every word because tears shimmered in her eyes.

  Jack stared into near space for a moment. “They were… involved in what they were doing. She as much as my dad. He had her by the hair, sort of whipping her head around.

  Then, just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers, “her neck snapped. Like a twig. I heard it. I don’t think Daddy did. In any event he didn’t stop till… well, you know.” After another short silence, he blinked Ezzy into focus. “I swear to you, he didn’t intend to kill her.”

  “Then why in God’s name didn’t you tell me that?” Ezzy demanded angrily. “Goddamn it, Johnny, do you realize how many hours I have anguished—”

  “I’m more aware of the cost than you,” Jack said, raising his voice to match Ezzy’s.

  Ezzy tamped down his temper and took several deep breaths. “When I came to your house to question you, why in hell did you lie about leaving with her that night? Why didn’t you clear up the matter then? If I recall, you covered for your daddy. You told me he was working out of town. God help me, I believed you and never even checked it out. I had no reason not to believe you. John Sawyer was a scoundrel, a drunk, and a womanizer, but he was no killer. If it was an accident, he would’ve been charged with involuntary manslaughter and probably gotten probation. No jury from Blewer County, Texas, would have sympathized with a reputed slut who engaged in anal sex with an older man while his underage son watched. Why didn’t he come forward and explain what happened?”

  “He couldn’t.”

  “Nonsense. You said he didn’t intentionally kill her.”

  “He didn’t. But I intentionally killed him.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Anna’s quick intake of breath was audible. But she remained perfectly still and stared at Jack with the same stunned, unblinking dismay with which Ezzy was gaping at him.

  Jack Sawyer’s features worked emotionally. “I said to him everything you’ve just said to me, Ezzy. Patsy was beyond the age of consent. It wasn’t rape. She was willing. She participated. It was an accident. I begged him to do the right thing.

  “He wouldn’t listen. Refused to even talk about it. Said he wasn’t going to get tangled up in a legal mess over a piece of tail. Words to that effect. We got into an argument that turned violent.

  “After exchanging several blows, I pushed him into the river in the hope of cooling him off, sobering him up, restoring his common sense. But he dragged me into the water with him and held me under. I fought and fought. He wouldn’t let up. He held me under. His own son. I thought, My daddy’s killing me. He’s going to drown me unless I do something to stop it.

  “My lungs were burning, ready to burst, and he wouldn’t let me up,” he said, his voice cracking. “I was clutching at anything. My hand connected with his scabbard. In seconds I had the knife in my hand and used it to cut his arm. He let go of me and I surfaced. But my cutting him only made him angrier. He called my mother and me every vile thing he could think of. Said he’d never wanted any part of either of us. Said we’d ruined his life and he was sick of being shackled to a sniveling little dick weed like me. Then he charged me again, put his hands around my throat, and pushed me under. So I killed him.”

  No one moved or spoke for a long time. Like strangers in an elevator, they avoided eye contact and conversation. Anything said now would have sounded banal, but perhaps the silence was even more uncomfortable.

  It stretched on interminably until Jack finally spoke after loudly clearing his throat. “I was afraid to drop the knife in the river, afraid that it would be dragged for evidence. So I kept it. At first from fear of getting caught. Later as a talisman. It was a constant reminder of what I was capable of, and it frightened me. I couldn’t number the times since that night that I wanted to throw it away, but, in a twisted sort of way, keeping it protected me from ever having to use it again. I couldn’t even use it yesterday against Herbold until I absolutely had no choice.”

  “You had no choice that night, either, Johnny,” Ezzy said quietly. “You acted in self-defense.”

  “Did I?” he asked on a bitter laugh. “I’d like to think so, but I’m not sure. I was younger and stronger than him. Maybe I could have eventually worn him down and talked sense into him. Or outrun him. Could I have done anything else? Honestly, I don’t know.

  “But not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself if it was necessary to kill him. All I know with certainty is that when I drove that blade into him, I wanted him to die.”

  “So would anybody who was fighting for his life.”

  Jack looked at him a moment, then lowered his eyes noncommittally.

  “What did you do with him?”

  “Dragged him downstream. I waded for hours, towing him. When it was almost daylight, I pulled him ashore and dug a hole in the woods, using my bare hands. I covered it with boulders. I guess he’s still there. It took me all the next day to make it back home. Then I slept for almost twenty-four hours. I was packing to leave when you showed up at our door asking questions about Patsy McCorkle. I was so scared I’m surprised you couldn’t hear my knees knocking.”

  “You were only a boy, Johnny.”

  “I was old enough. Old enough to know I needed to get the hell out of Blewer before somebody started missing my daddy. I settled all our accounts in town, dropped off our rent with the landlord, told him we were moving and didn’t know where, and hopped a freight train that night.

  “I haven’t stopped, not really, until now. Always looking over my shoulder. Never let myself stay in one place too long. Never formed any attachments I couldn’t walk away from on short notice.” He looked at Anna, then glanced away as though he dreaded seeing the effect his story had had on her. “When I heard Carl had escaped, I knew it was time to pay the piper. I risked my freedom coming back, but I wasn’t really free, anyway.”

  Ezzy sat for a long time, contemplating the pattern in the linoleum, before painfully coming to his feet. “Well, you got Carl Herbold, and that’s made you a hero. As for the other, I’m not a law officer anymore. This was strictly off the record. You’ve done more for me than you know, Johnny. Sorry… Jack. I’m satisfied just knowing what happened. It was a long time ago. In the grand scheme of things, I guess it doesn’t matter how it happened.”

  “It matters to me,” Jack declared, surprising him. “That night changed my life, but not forever. Not unless I choose to let it, and I no longer do. If I’d told the truth, neither you nor Delray would have held his stepsons responsible for that girl’s death. Things might have been different between them.”

  “They were bad boys, Jack. Nothing would have made things right between them.”

  “In any case, he wouldn’t have lived under Carl’s death threat,” he argued. “Anna and David’s lives wouldn’t have been in jeopardy yesterday.” He shook his head stubbornly. “No, Ezzy, I caused a lot of people a great deal of pain—you included—because of what I did and didn’t do.

  “Any way you label it, I killed my father. I want the guilt off my back once and for
all. This half-baked confession to you isn’t going to do it. Put it into the system. Run it through all the proper legal channels, whatever that entails. Arrest. Jail. Grand jury. Trial. Whatever. I want it finished.”

  * * *

  “What do you mean you don’t know where he is? Are you in the habit of losing patients? Who’s in charge? I want my husband found, and I want him found now.”

  Down the hall at the nurses’ station, Cora was giving them hell. The timid young nurse who knew about Ezzy’s escape from his room was pretending to be engrossed in a file.

  “Cora?”

  At the sound of his voice, she turned. Despite the blistering lecture she was giving the hospital staff, she looked on the verge of cracking. When she saw him, her chin began to tremble. She clamped her lips together to keep them still, although the tears standing in her eyes were a dead giveaway that she was about to cry, and not for the first time.

  He rolled his squeaky IV stand along, wishing he looked and felt more like a man and less like a relic. Seeing her for the first time since she left, he would have preferred to be clean-shaven, fully dressed, and looking like a stud. Instead his legs looked like hairy, bleached toothpicks. His feet were pale and veiny and his toenails probably needed cutting. In this silly ass-baring gown he didn’t cut a very dashing figure.

  In spite of all that, she seemed damn glad to see him. She hurried down the hall toward him but pulled up just short of touching him. “They called me last night and told me what happened.” That was all she could manage before she lost control of her lower lip again.

  “You back?” he asked.

  “If you want me.”

  “I always did.”

  He opened his arms and she stepped into them. She would learn all about the Herbolds from the media blitz the story was getting, especially since the bodies of Cecil and Connie had been discovered. There would be time later to fill her in on Jack Sawyer’s story, and to impress upon her how different their life would be now that the mystery of that summer night had been solved for him.

  He would file the confession as Sawyer had requested. But if he knew Cora, she would argue that John Sawyer, Jr., had been merely a boy in an extremely unfortunate situation, and that he deserved mercy, not punishment, especially since he had killed public enemy number one and saved Ezzy’s life, and that if there was an inquest, Ezzy should testify on Sawyer’s behalf, and that they should invite him and Anna Corbett to their house for dinner to demonstrate their unwavering support.

  She would probably be surprised when he agreed with her.

  But all that could wait. For now, he simply hugged her tightly, loving her, and loving the feeling of being whole again.

  * * *

  With dread, Jack dragged his eyes up to Anna’s face. He smiled sadly and raised one shoulder in a sheepish shrug. “You once asked me for my story. Now you know why I was reluctant to tell it. And I just want to say, well, that it meant a hell of a lot to me that my history didn’t seem to matter to you when, you know… when we were together. That you were so accepting of me. That for a little while you loved me.” He nodded toward the door. “But you’re under no obligation to me, Anna. You walk out, I’ll understand. You’ll never see me again.”

  Anna responded in the language she was most comfortable with. She began to sign. “I asked what your story was because I wanted to know you, Jack, not judge you. It’s an unhappy story, and I hate that for you. But it doesn’t change how I feel about you. In fact, it makes me love you more. It makes me want to give you unlimited happiness because you’ve had so little.

  “I don’t believe that you’ll be charged with the death of your father. Not after saving all our lives yesterday. But if you are, I’ll be right there with you every step of the way. I’ll stand by you no matter what happens because… because you love me. Me,” she repeated, pressing her chest.

  “My parents’ love was tinged with guilt. Two hearing people had a deaf child. They blamed themselves. They wondered what sin they had committed that was so bad their child was punished with deafness.

  “I know Dean loved me. If he had lived we would have had a wonderful life together. But he looked upon my handicap as an enemy we must battle. He was willing to fight it, but because he felt it was something that needed to be fought, I knew he hated it.

  “Delray loved me, too. At least in his own mind he did. But his love was… was choking. No, not choking. A word like that. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t be what I wanted to be.

  “My parents felt responsible for my deafness. Dean wanted to defeat it. Delray took advantage of it. But with you, Jack, it has made no difference. None. You accept it as part of me. That’s why I love you.

  “That’s the main reason. There are others. I love you for caring about David. That’s no small thing. I could never fall in love with a man who didn’t also love my son. I know your affection for him is real and honest.

  “I also desire you. Every hour of the day I think about making love to you. My fantasies make me hot. I had them before… but certainly now that I know what it’s like to be with you. I tingle. Here.” She touched her breasts, her lower tummy.

  “I look at you, and my heart beats faster. I think about you, and I can’t catch my breath. You touch me, and this… this wonderful feeling bubbles up inside me and I want to laugh and cry at the same time. I can’t contain the feeling. I think it’s joy. Joy. Because even though we’re facing difficult times, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. You’ve made me happy because you love me.

  “You’ll try and talk me out of staying with you. I know you. You’ll say that you’ve brought David and me nothing but trouble. You’re wrong. I knew there was much missing from our lives, but I didn’t know what it was until I saw you. And then I knew. We need you even more than you need us. Let us be your family, the one you never had.

  “If you want us, we want you. If you want me, I want you. Flaws and all, if you take me, I take you. I love you, Jack.”

  Holding his eyes with hers, she lowered her hands to her lap and was still.

  Jack hadn’t taken his eyes off her face. He had read the words as her lips formed them, searched her eyes for meaning, evaluated inflections by her changing expressions.

  To him her speech had looked like a graceful ballet, rife with emotion, conveying her innermost thoughts and emotions, her fingertips acting as an extension of her soul. He had no idea what she had said, but he knew what she had communicated.

  He reached for her hands, kissed them in turn, then pressed them tightly between his.

  He didn’t speak.

  After her eloquent profession of love, any spoken language would have been superfluous.

  About the Author

  Sandra Brown is the author of over sixty New York Times bestsellers, including most recently Low Pressure; Lethal; Rainwater; Tough Customer; Smash Cut; Smoke Screen; Play Dirty; Ricochet; Chill Factor; White Hot; Hello, Darkness; The Crush; Envy; The Switch; The Alibi; Unspeakable; and Fat Tuesday, all of which jumped onto the New York Times list in the numbers one to five spots. There are over eighty million copies of Sandra Brown’s books in print worldwide and her work has been translated into thirty-four languages. In 2008, Brown was named Thriller Master by the International Thriller Writers Association, the organization’s top honor. She currently lives in Texas. For more information you can visit SandraBrown.net.

  Journalist Dawson Scott knows well the horrors of war.

  But when he investigates a pair of domestic terrorists, his true ordeal begins…

  * * *

  Please turn this page for a preview of Deadline.

  Prologue

  Branch, Oregon—1976

  The first hail of bullets was fired from the house shortly after daybreak at 6:57.

  The gunfire erupted in response to the surrender demand issued by a team of law enforcement agents.

  It was a gloomy morning. The sky was heavily overcast and there was dense fog. Despite the limited visibility
, one of the fugitives inside the house got off a lucky shot that took out a deputy U.S. marshal whom everybody called Turk.

  Gary Headly had met the marshal only the day before, shortly after the law enforcement team comprised of ATF and FBI agents, sheriff’s deputies, and U.S. marshals met for the first time to discuss the operation. They’d congregated around a map of the area known as Golden Branch, reviewing obstacles they might encounter. Headly remembered another marshal saying, “Hey, Turk, grab me a Coke while you’re over there, will ya?”

  Headly didn’t learn Turk’s actual name until later, much later, when they were mopping up. The bullet struck half an inch above his Kevlar vest, tearing out most of his throat. He dropped without uttering a sound, dead before landing in the pile of wet leaves at his feet. There was nothing Headly could do for him except offer up a brief prayer and remain behind cover. To move was inviting death or injury, because, once the gunfire started, the open windows of the house spat bullets relentlessly.

  The Rangers of Righteousness had an inexhaustible arsenal. Or so it seemed that wet and dreary morning. The second casualty was a redheaded, twenty-four-year-old deputy sheriff. A puff of his breath in the cold air gave away his position. Six shots were fired. Five found the target. Any one of three would have killed him.

  The team had planned to take the group by surprise, serve their arrest warrants for a laundry list of felonies, and take them into custody, engaging in a firefight only if necessary. But the vehemence with which they were fired upon indicated that the criminals had taken a fight-to-the-death stance.

  After all, they had nothing to lose except their lives. Capture meant imprisonment for life or the death penalty for each of the seven members of the domestic terrorist group. Collectively the six men and one woman had chalked up twelve murders and millions of dollars’ worth of destruction, most of it inflicted on federal government buildings or military installations. Despite the religious overtone of their name, they were wholly without conscience or constraint. Over the relatively short period of two years, they had made themselves notorious, a scourge to law enforcement agencies at every level.