It was a weak argument that wouldn’t have stood up in court if not for the T-shirt found in Gwen’s car.
“You dismissed it?” Tessa says. “Just like that? You had a DNA profile, Winters. Didn’t you compare it to Tyson?”
He looks like he might argue, and for a minute, Tessa hopes he does. She needs something other than Margot to focus on, and Winters’s blatant abuse of authority is as good a target as any.
After a moment, he shakes his head. “No. We had our man. Even if the DNA had matched Tyson, it wouldn’t have proven anything except that she left the bar with him. We knew there was an unidentified man. So what if it was Tyson? Barlow killed the Morley girl, and he was locked up. Exactly where he should be. Or so I believed. I didn’t want to hear anything that would throw that into doubt. I buried it, never put the profile in the system.”
His confession leaves Tessa with a desperate sense of loss. Oliver served fourteen years for Gwen Morley’s murder. He might have served even more.
And for a dozen of those years, Winters knew there was another potential suspect, one who’d confessed to the crime, and he simply chose to ignore it.
A dozen years of a man’s life, wasted, all because of another man’s pride.
“Barlow said an ex-con got in touch with him a few weeks ago. An old cellmate of Tyson’s. He’d seen the news reports about Barlow’s lawsuit. Seen that Barlow lost the case.”
Tessa had seen those same reports. The state of New York offered Oliver and his family two hundred fifty thousand dollars in reparations for wrongful conviction.
He sued for more. Thirty million dollars more.
His suit centered around the claim that the Bonham Police Department deliberately and knowingly pursued a prosecution against him without just cause.
The lawsuit was ongoing for months, and extensive interviews were conducted by the attorney general’s office. Everyone even slightly involved in the case was held up to examination.
Oliver’s lawyers had a solid case. And none of it made any difference.
In the end, the judge ruled that despite evidentiary screwups, there was no clear indication that the general thrust against Oliver was made in bad faith. He would not be receiving a thirty-million-dollar payout, but instead the smaller sum the state had already offered.
Tessa doubted it even covered his legal fees.
She saw the news reports too. And she saw his name on her phone when he called her not long after the decision. But Tessa was in the middle of wrapping up the final edits on her latest project.
She told herself she’d call him back. But she never did.
“The former cellmate passed on the claims Tyson had made to Barlow when they spoke. He told him how Tyson had laughed at the cops who couldn’t sort the real stuff from the fake. How he’d laughed about another man taking the rap for Gwen Morley’s rape and murder, even after he’d confessed.”
Winters looks back at Tessa.
“A week later, Barlow called me and told me I had half an hour to record a video confession admitting I knew about Tyson. He said I’d regret it if I didn’t.”
She stares at him, an old man whose arrogance set all this in motion. The anger, the pure unfiltered anger Oliver must be carrying around, is breathtaking to consider.
And now he has her sister.
41
They’re drawing closer to Fallbrook. Tessa can feel the seconds ticking away, each one an eternity.
She checks her phone, watches as another of the bars disappears. Another minute and she’ll lose signal entirely.
Her thumb hovers. Soon she’ll lose her chance.
“Don’t,” Winters warns, the word rough and forceful.
Tessa scrolls, then hits “Call.”
“Not the police,” she tells him, holding the phone to her ear. “I have to call her husband. He needs to know.”
Winters is shaking his head, sure she’s making a mistake, but Tessa can’t live with herself if she doesn’t at least try. Ben might not forgive her for dragging Margot into this mess. Tessa won’t forgive herself, but he still deserves to know.
Winters doesn’t slow the truck. Tessa hears the phone ring once, then the sound of a voice. Ben’s voice, then the call drops.
“Damn,” she mutters, feeling the panic pulsing at the edges of her every thought. “Damn, damn, damn!”
The bars are gone. She’s got no signal.
Quickly, Tessa opens her text messages and types out words to her brother-in-law. She doesn’t even know what she’s typing, and he probably won’t get the message anyway, but it’s the best she can do.
She hits “Send” and hopes, somehow, some way, the message reaches him.
The turn for the old house is in front of them, and Winters slows the truck, then pulls onto the side of the road.
“What are you doing?” Tessa demands. They’re so close. She needs to see her sister. Needs to see with her own eyes that Margot is safe.
Tessa can’t give in to the thought that she might be anything else. It would leave her curled into a fetal position on the floor of Winters’s truck.
Winters doesn’t answer. He reaches down to the holster at his hip and pulls out a black pistol. He checks the slide, lets it fall back with a heavy metallic click, then tucks the gun back in place.
Tension ratchets up in every muscle of her body.
“What are you going to do with that?” she asks, her voice barely above a whisper.
The man who meets Tessa’s gaze isn’t a police officer anymore. He’s a father who has had something precious stolen from him.
“Whatever I have to do.”
Tessa’s mantra begins to repeat in her mind. But it won’t help her this time.
She is afraid. And this time, there is danger.
But she can’t give in to the swirling chaos of fear. Margot needs her.
The truck moves forward again, creeping slowly into the woods. Winters scans the trees around them, but Tessa keeps her eyes firmly forward, desperate to see her sister.
Finally, the forest thins, and bits of sunlight dapple the ground in front of them. Tessa leans forward in her seat, gripping the dashboard and peering through the windshield.
The path opens, and Fallbrook stands in the distance, the same way it did when Tessa left it. It’s too far away to make out anything other than the small white shape of Margot’s car parked in front of the big house.
Did Tessa pass the car on the road when she was following Winters back into Snowden? Wouldn’t she have noticed her sister, hands in a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, as a man on the run from the authorities, possibly holding a gun, forced her to drive where he directed her to go?
It’s a useless question. If Tessa did pass them, she didn’t notice. She can blame herself for that later. Right now, she focuses on what’s in front of her.
“Can’t you go any faster?” Tessa asks.
Winters has slowed the truck to a crawl. He doesn’t answer.
They creep closer.
A distinctive sound rings out, and Tessa lets out a short scream. Winters slams on the brakes, and Tessa, already balanced on the front part of the seat, tumbles forward, catching herself before she falls onto the floorboards.
Her eyes swivel to the house, and there, on the balcony of the second floor, behind the crumbling railing, stands Oliver Barlow. He’s holding a rifle in his hands.
Despite that, relief floods through Tessa, nearly bringing her to her knees.
Margot is standing by his side.
“He aimed for the ground in front of us,” Winters says. With one hand on his gun, and the other on the handle of the door, his eyes remain fixed on Oliver.
“Stay in the truck,” he says, then opens his door.
But Tessa can’t allow Winters to steer the direction of this thing. Maybe once he had the objectivity to handle a situation like this. But Tessa saw the hot hatred in his eyes. Lloyd Winters is a man who’s lost his only child.
S
he throws open the passenger-side door and nearly falls in her haste to head Winters off.
“Ollie,” she calls loudly, keeping her hands above her head and earning a glare from Winters. “Ollie, I’m here. We did what you asked. No cops.”
She’s not planning her words but letting them tumble from her mouth. She prays she doesn’t say the wrong thing.
“He’s a cop,” Oliver says, gesturing from the balcony above them to the man at Tessa’s side. His voice is distant, too distant. She needs to get closer.
She risks a glance at Winters. His right hand is splayed, too near his waistband for Tessa’s comfort.
“Not after this,” she yells. Just keep him talking. “He’ll be forced out. Once people know what he’s done, he’ll never have a badge again.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better, Tessa?” Oliver shouts. Tessa keeps her hands up and takes a few slow steps forward.
She’s close enough now to see him more clearly. He doesn’t look angry. Not in the way she’d expect a man holding another person at gunpoint to be.
If anything, he looks tired.
Tessa drinks in the sight of Margot, and her pulse jumps.
Her sister’s wide eyes are focused on the railing in front of her, and she’s backed as far away from the edge as she can while Oliver grips her by the arm.
She’s frozen in fear.
Not of the man next to her. Not of the gun in his hand.
Margot is terrified of heights.
Eyes firmly on her sister, Tessa takes a few more steps forward.
“That’s far enough,” Ollie shouts, adjusting the rifle to point in Tessa’s direction.
She stops, hardly daring to move a muscle. “Why are you doing this, Ollie?” she asks, fighting for a casual tone.
Something moves in Tessa’s peripheral vision, and Oliver swivels the barrel of the gun to point to Winters this time. He’s standing a few paces behind her, staring holes into Barlow’s form. Glancing at him, Tessa sees in Winters all the anger she expected to see in Oliver. The police chief is a tightly coiled spring, his fingers twitching with the urge to get to Barlow.
“We’re both here. Winters stole your life, and I abandoned you after you got it back. We’re right here, right in front of you,” Tessa says. Anything, anything to keep him talking. If Winters has his way, he’ll rush the house, gun blazing. There’s no predicting what might happen after that.
Margot is holding on by a thread. Tessa has only one goal. To get her sister’s feet safely on solid ground. Nothing else matters. Not Barlow or the injustices he’s been dealt. Not Valerie Winters. And, least of all, Lloyd Winters’s desire for blood.
Margot. Feet. Ground.
Tessa’s new mantra.
“But Ollie, my sister has nothing to do with any of this. You know that.”
He grips Margot’s arm tighter. Tessa’s hands clench as Margot’s face blanches and she struggles to move farther back. Ollie won’t let her.
“You wouldn’t take my calls, Tessa,” he says, sounding exhausted, as if that should excuse kidnapping her twin sister. “I thought you were my friend.”
Margot whimpers, and Tessa can feel the heat of Winters’s impatience growing at her back.
“I’m sorry, Ollie. I’ve been a terrible friend. I know that.” She holds her palms out wider.
“I was never anything but a story to you, was I? I made you famous, and you had no more use for me after that.”
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “So sorry, Oliver. And you’re right. I did the story, then I closed the book and moved on. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me. Let me fix that.”
He barks out a harsh laugh. “Fix it? How are you gonna do that, Tessa? Are you going to bring my mother back from the dead? Are you going to turn back time and stop my father from putting a gun in his mouth?”
Tessa’s jaw drops.
“They didn’t release that little piece of information to the press, did they? They took everything from me, Tessa. Everything! You don’t know how that feels. How it feels to lose the only thing in your life that matters. Until now.”
He’s panting and Tessa can’t take her eyes off the barrel of the gun. How much more pressure would it take for Oliver to squeeze the trigger? How much more pressure can one man handle?
“You’re right, Oliver,” she says. “You’re right about everything. What they did to you . . . what we did to you . . . it was wrong. I’m not a good friend. I’m not a good sister either. I’m not good at sticking it out when things get hard.”
He stares at her. He still has Margot by the arm, but he’s listening.
“Look at her, Ollie. Really look.” Tessa’s voice is calm, a calm she’s manufactured from some unknown reservoir of desperation. “You remember, don’t you? I told you about my sister, Margot. About the fall. Look at her face. She’s petrified, Oliver, and not of you. Let her come down. You don’t have to come down with her. I’ll take her place if you want, but let my sister come down from there.”
Time stops. Tessa watches, her heart in her throat, and for the briefest of moments, she thinks it’s going to work.
Then the sound of an engine roaring up behind them pulls everyone’s attention to the path that leads to the road.
Oliver raises the gun, and Margot begins to cry.
Tessa panics.
“No!” she cries. “No, Oliver, it’s not the police, it’s not! It’s her husband, Ollie! Don’t shoot!”
But he’s raised the rifle to his shoulder. He’s taking aim.
“No! Look at me!”
Ben’s SUV is still barreling toward them. Tessa runs toward it, waving her arms at Ben.
“Stop!” she shouts. “Stop!”
But he doesn’t stop. Not until the rifle rings out and bullets puncture Ben’s front tires. The SUV swerves dangerously near Tessa and skids to a stop, its passenger side facing Fallbrook.
Tessa runs around the vehicle to Ben, who’s already climbing out of the driver’s side.
“Ben, no!” She grabs hold of his arm. He barely looks at her, his eyes trained on his wife.
“Let go of me,” he growls and shakes her off.
She steps in front of him, trying to hold him back, as another shot rings out. The bullet hits the ground just yards away from them. Tessa and Ben both duck and take cover behind the passenger’s side of the vehicle.
“Stay back!” Oliver shouts.
More shots fire, but they’re different. Closer.
Tessa peeks over the hood of the SUV and sees Winters aiming in the direction of the balcony, pulling the trigger and taking large steps backward all the while.
Oliver ducks instinctively, but Margot is frozen in place. To Tessa’s surprise, he reaches up for her hand and pulls her down next to him.
Winters is still firing.
“No!” Tessa shouts, running out from behind the cover of Ben’s car. “Winters, don’t shoot!”
Oliver is crouched in front of Margot, making the pair of them small.
Winters ignores Tessa and throws himself behind the wheel of his truck, then slams the door.
“What are you doing?” Tessa shouts as she pounds on his driver’s-side window, but Winters doesn’t look at her. His face is set in hard, determined lines, and he throws the truck into gear as Oliver’s rifle comes up again.
Bullets slice through the air, spraying the ground around them. They puncture the hood of the moving truck. One of them shatters the windshield, but Tessa can only watch, aghast, as Lloyd Winters guns the vehicle and heads straight for Fallbrook.
Ben runs past her, and Tessa’s frozen legs finally move. But neither of them can outrun a vehicle with the gas pedal on the floor.
Tessa watches in horror as Winters’s truck slams into the corner of the front porch, annihilating one of the already crumbling columns and coming to rest against the other.
The entire house seems to shudder, then, in slow motion, to creak and groan. Something crashes inside the
house, and the engine steams and hisses. The balcony floor that Oliver and Margot are standing on begins to tilt and slide.
“No!” Tessa shouts again, running full speed for the house.
Realizing what’s about to happen, Oliver runs to the far side of the failing balcony and grasps the edge of the roof, struggles for a moment, and pulls himself up.
But Margot, Margot hesitates, and the floor beneath her continues to tilt and pull away from the exterior of the house.
“Hold on, Margot!” Tessa hears Ben shout.
Somewhere, somehow, his voice must have penetrated the haze of terror that has Margot in its grip. Seconds before the balcony tears away from the main house, she launches herself toward the gabled roof and wraps her hands around a decorative corbel.
The balcony gives way. Margot’s feet dangle. Twenty feet of air separates her from the pile of rotting boards jutting out at odd angles below.
“Oliver!” Tessa shouts, running in Margot’s direction. “Oliver, she’s falling. Grab her hands, Ollie, please!”
Tessa struggles to clamber over the pile of deteriorated porch and balcony, her feet sliding from beneath her.
One of Margot’s hands slips and falls away. The corbel begins to pull away from the house.
“Margot, just hold on!” Ben shouts, but his voice is coming from the wrong direction. Tessa looks wildly around. He’s running away.
“Ben!” she shouts, but a cry from her sister pulls her attention back to the roof.
Suddenly, the corbel moves again, separating itself from the house by a good six inches. Margot screams. She’s going to fall. She’s going to fall, and Tessa can’t stop it this time either.
Tessa crawls over boards and old plaster and nails, cutting her hands and opening a large gash on her leg, but she doesn’t feel anything.
The corbel gives way.
But Margot stays where she is, screaming and sobbing, her legs swinging in the air. Oliver has one of her arms gripped in his, grasping it all the way to her elbow.
His face is straining, but he has her.
“Pull her up, Ollie,” Tessa yells. “Please!”
Tessa’s heart is in her throat. She can’t move, she can’t help. All she can do is hope he’ll do the right thing.
The Caretakers Page 20