Remember Murder

by Linda Ladd

  “So will you.”

  “So be it.”

  Claire decided to beg and thereby pick up a few minutes for Black to realize she was taking too much time. “Thomas, she’s just a little girl. Let her go, and I’ll walk out of here with you. I swear I will. I won’t even try to get away.”

  “Yeah, just like last time, huh? But I won’t hurt her. Or you. But I’ll kill that bastard lover of yours out there. I’ll shoot him, if you make a peep. And I’ll finish the job this time. All I’ve got to do is wait for him to come back inside looking for you and then I’ll shoot him in the head. He’ll never know what hit him.”

  “I said I’d go with you. Just don’t hurt anybody else.”

  “Okay, you first, down the steps, quick before he comes back. And don’t try anything.”

  Lizzie was whining pitiably. Claire’s mind raced to come up with a way to warn Black.

  “Open the back door. Hurry it up.”

  Claire did what she was told. Landers followed her outside with Lizzie stiff and terrified in his arms, his weapon still embedded in her cheek.

  Outside, he prodded Claire up through the thick stand of trees lining the back of the house and into denser woods choked with bushes and dead leaves. After about five minutes of climbing, she saw the glint of a car’s hood in the moonlight filtering through the branches above them. She was not going to get in that car. If she did, they both would end up dead or worse. The trunk was already standing open, the interior light on, and he dropped Lizzie into it. The child grunted as she hit the floor of the trunk.

  “Now, get down on your knees, Annie.” That was uttered harshly, but then his voice went back to the high, gentle tone. “Sweetheart, I’m so sorry about all this. Hold out your hands. I’ve got to tape you up and make sure you don’t get away. I don’t want you to get hurt, please believe me. So don’t fight, just trust me.”

  Thomas was facing Claire, his gun trained on her chest now. She obeyed, and as she waited there on her knees, she took one bracing breath, doubled both her fists, and drove them up underneath his chin as quick and hard as she could. Screaming in agony, he went down under the force of the blow, but he managed to keep his grip on the gun. It went off, barely missing her. Claire ducked, and then grabbed the sobbing child out of the trunk as he writhed around and spit blood where his teeth had cut deep gouges into his lips. He fired at her again, and Claire didn’t waste time but ran into the cover of the dark trees, yelling for Black and holding the child tightly against her chest with both arms.

  Thrashing through the tangled brush and briars, she couldn’t see where she was going in the darkness. She just knew she had to get as far away from Landers as she could and as fast as she could. Thomas fired more shots after her, but she didn’t think he really wanted to kill her, so she kept yelling Black’s name and running, hoping to God that Thomas couldn’t see her trail. Black would’ve heard the shots and her cries for help in the stillness; he would be on his way up the hill to find them by now, and he wouldn’t be a sitting duck like he would’ve been in the house.

  The woods were so thick with undergrowth and clinging vines and great sticky spiderwebs stretched between the trees that it was hard to push through without falling. Claire knew she was making too much noise as she struggled through the deep layers of dead leaves and fallen branches that littered the ground. But she couldn’t stop, not yet. Five minutes later, she drew up and leaned her back against a tree trunk, out of his line of vision if he was behind her, panting hard, listening for sounds of his pursuit. She could hear him coming after them then, his footfalls breaking sticks, shuffling through leaves, and cursing wildly. Farther away, she heard Black yelling her name. Oh, God, she couldn’t call out to him again. Thomas was right behind them.

  Frantic to get Lizzie to safety, Claire took off again and finally burst into a clearing in the woods where the bright moonlight filtered some illumination in the black night. She made better time there, trying to angle down and back around to her house and her weapons, but Lizzie was getting heavy and now she was struggling against Claire’s tight grip. Once out of the clearing, she yelled for Black to help him pinpoint their location, and then quickly darted in the other direction so Thomas couldn’t get a bead on her. She heard the sharp crack of a gunshot between her and her house. She changed directions again and headed for the old dock out on the point. Harve used to keep a rowboat there, unless he’d gotten rid of it. She hoped to God he hadn’t.

  Fighting through wild, clinging, endless vegetation, sharp stickers gouging her face and bare arms at every turn, she felt blood running down her cheek. But she was pretty sure she was well ahead of Thomas now. Maybe he’d stopped or given up and was fleeing back to his car, afraid Black was too close. Breathless, chest aching with exertion, she stopped again and crouched down behind a thick tree trunk. She tried to whisper to the child, comfort her, but the gnats and mosquitoes were swarming all over them, and Lizzie was screaming under the tape.

  Gulping in air, trying to catch her breath, Claire tried to speak soothingly, tried to calm the child, but she sounded scared and desperate herself. Maybe she could hide Lizzie in the leaves and try to lead Thomas away from her. But she couldn’t; she was terrified to leave Lizzie alone. What if Thomas found her, shot her out of anger, or used her as a hostage again? Oh, God, she couldn’t leave the traumatized little baby out in the dark woods alone. She couldn’t do it.

  Claire loosened the tape over Lizzie’s mouth and breathed hushed words into her ear. “Please, Lizzie, don’t cry. I’m getting you out of here. He’s not going to catch us, but you have to be quiet. You can’t make a sound, or he’ll hear us.”

  “I scared, I scared,” was all Lizzie could say, over and over, but God love her and despite her terror, she was whispering, too.

  “I’m gonna take you down to the lake and put you in a boat, baby, okay? I’m gonna hide you there for a while so he can’t find you. Promise me that you’ll stay there and not say a word. You can’t get out, can’t get in the water. Okay, do you understand me, Lizzie?”

  Lizzie nodded and pressed her face hard against Claire’s chest. Then Claire heard the crashing through the brush again, getting closer, and she took off again, clutching the child and hoping Black was closing in on them, wishing she could guide him to her some way. When she finally got to the bottom of the hill and burst out of the trees and onto the beach, she saw the dock’s dusk-to-dawn light and blinking blue signal off to her right. Jutting rocks hid her house a good way down the beach. She ran down the rock-strewn bank and out onto the old rickety dock. Harve’s rowboat was still in the water, tied to the pilings, and she splashed out into the shallow water and lifted Lizzie up and over the side into the boat. She fumbled at the rope securing it, wanting to push it out in the water, offshore where Thomas couldn’t get to it, all the while watching the tree line behind her. Finally, she got the rope to fall free just as Thomas Landers burst out on the beach and ran straight at her.

  Frantic to get Lizzie away from him, she pushed the rowboat underneath the dock, hoping to hide it, and then began to swim out away from the shore. She screamed Black’s name again, trying to lure Landers away from the boat and give Black her bearings. She still didn’t think Thomas would kill her. If he wanted to kill her, he’d had plenty of chances. All of this, everything he did, was to get Claire back under his control. Then she heard Black yell her name, somewhere close by, and she yelled back as loud as she could and then dove beneath the surface as a bullet cut into the water close beside her. Oh, God, she was wrong; he did intend to shoot her. She swam underwater as far as she could, out farther, away from Lizzie and the dock. Toward the direction of Black’s voice. Then, finally unable to hold her breath any longer, she shot back up and broke the surface, gasping for air.

  But Landers was not following her. He was walking out on the old dock. While she watched, he reached down and pulled the boat out of its hiding place. Then he jerked Lizzie out of the boat and held her out in front of h
im by the back of her pink nightgown. He put his gun to her head and laughed, the crazed, shrill sound echoing out over the lake. Claire started to swim back toward them, horrified now that he would just kill the little girl and be done with it. Black had no leverage, either, not now that Thomas had Lizzie at his mercy.

  She stopped as soon as her feet touched bottom and stood up, ready to plead for their lives. “Please, Thomas, please, I’m right here. I’ll go with you.”

  Thomas was smiling. He was facing her, his features detectable in the bright dusk-to-dawn light. The blue signal blinking on and off beside him gave him a surreal, maniacal look. He looked like the devil—deadly, smiling, evil. Lizzie hung there against him, mute and silent. “Yes, you are going with me, Annie, but not Lizzie here. She’s a dead little girl now, and you can blame yourself that I have to blow her sweet little head off.”

  “Drop the gun, Landers. I’ve got you dead center.” Black’s voice, from a good distance down the narrow beach. Claire sagged with relief.

  Thomas Landers laughed again, his gun barrel pressed into Lizzie’s cheek. “You’re not gonna shoot me, not with this gun at dear little Lizzie’s head… .”

  While Claire stood there, waist deep in the water, terrified for Lizzie, she saw a small black hole suddenly open up on Thomas’s forehead, and then the sharp report of Black’s rifle shattered the still night. Thomas let go of Lizzie and the child fell into the water, and two more holes opened up in the middle of his chest, the double crack of the rifle sounding again. Blam, blam. And then Landers went backwards hard, hit the planks of the dock, and didn’t move. As Claire struggled desperately through the water to get to Lizzie, she heard Black running hard down the beach and splashing out into the water, grabbing Lizzie out of the water.

  Black turned toward Claire, holding the child with his good arm and the rifle in his other hand. Claire half splashed, half waded toward them. Black boosted Lizzie onto the dock and then grabbed Claire and pushed her up beside her. Claire grabbed Lizzie and pulled her close and held her head tightly against her shoulder so she couldn’t see Thomas Landers’s lifeless corpse lying on the dock behind them. Black’s shoulder was bleeding. She could see the red seeping out on his white shirt, but he put down the rifle and pulled them both into his arms.

  “It’s over,” he said, his voice low, tightly controlled. “He’s never gonna come after you again, Claire. Never.”

  Lizzie was crying and pressing herself closer to Black, and Claire buried her face in his bloodstained shirt and collapsed against him, too. It was really over. She didn’t have to fear Thomas Landers ever again. She tried to get her mind around it, but couldn’t seem to do it for a minute or two.

  But then she sat up, “We gotta call McKay. Now. Let him know that Lizzie’s safe.”

  Black got out his phone and punched in the number while she struggled up and shielded Lizzie from Thomas Landers’s body. She didn’t look at him again as she unbound the child and carried her off the dock. Lizzie clung to her neck with both arms, and Claire hoped she would be able to survive this awful night. Black hung up and took hold of her arm, and they headed back down the beach to her house to wait for Joe McKay.

  Epilogue

  There was a court hearing the week following their harrowing flight from the murderous and devious Thomas Landers. Black’s wound had opened up again, front and back, but Dr. Atwater had done a second surgery to repair the damage. He was sore as hell and in a bad mood, but he was not incapacitated and was hell-bent to deliver his eyewitness testimony against Landers.

  As the facts came to light, Black was not charged for the death of Landers or Monica, of course, and the other murders were attributed to Thomas Landers by both DNA and fingerprint evidence gathered at the various crime scenes. Joe McKay had Lizzie back again, safe and sound, but shaken up more than any child should ever have to be. The doctor said it didn’t appear that she’d been sexually molested, thank God, and father and daughter were soon headed off to Disney World to take the little girl’s mind off the nightmare she’d been through. Black had already had a counseling session with Lizzie, too, just to make sure she was psychologically sound and not suffering delayed trauma from her ordeal. Unfortunately, Claire was the one who seemed to be suffering that kind of thing and was having a lot of trouble believing she was finally free of the monster who had stalked her since she was not much older than Lizzie.

  Black decided they deserved one helluva vacation after what they had just endured. Charlie agreed wholeheartedly, and off they went on Black’s Learjet to New Orleans and a beautiful old home that he just happened to own in the French Quarter. One that happened to have its own inner courtyard with its own small lap pool and lots of tinkling fountains and red bougainvillea and a giant magnolia tree that shaded it all from the Louisiana sun. They lazed there in that private, quiet sanctuary and swam and talked and made love and he treated her like he loved her the way she now knew that she loved him.

  And that’s how Claire felt on a night almost ten days after he had put that bullet in Thomas Landers’s head in that creepy, blinking blue light. She sat on a long outdoor wicker sofa in the courtyard, surrounded by banana trees, and palmetto trees, and red, spicy-smelling geraniums and those lovely splashing fountains. Wearing his sling again, Black came out of the tall and open French doors with crystal goblets of icy cold champagne in both hands. He pulled up a chair directly in front of her.

  “What’s this for?”

  “We have a lot to celebrate, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes, sir, that we do, thanks to you.”

  “So you’re grateful to me, right?”

  “Oh, you bet. Far more than I can ever tell you. You killed the boogie man and set me free.”

  “Then do something for me, Claire.”

  Thinking that he was talking about the big, round, canopied bed upstairs in their equally big round bedroom, she said, “Anything you want. Just name it.”

  Black’s handsome face was somber in the candlelight, and Claire knew then that his mind was not in the bedroom. This was serious stuff. Whatever he was about to say, he was not joking around.

  She sat up straighter and gave him her undivided attention. Carefully, she placed her goblet on the glass-topped table. “You’re scaring me, Black. What’s wrong? Are you okay? Is your shoulder okay?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I have a proposition to make you.”

  “Okay, I’m listening. Your propositions are usually pretty good.” She smiled. He didn’t. Serious as sin, yes, he was.

  “Okay, brace yourself, Claire, this is going to be a big one.”

  So she braced herself for the big one. Was he going to ask her to marry him? She had a distinct feeling he was and fought all the conflicting emotions that shivered alive inside her heart.

  “I know how much you love your job,” was how he started out, which gave her a big red-lettered, underlined clue about where he was going with his proposition. But also, it was the one place that she didn’t want him to go.

  Claire sat very still, almost afraid to move now. But she had to ask him. “You want to break up if I don’t quit my job, that it?”

  Apparently surprised, Black’s expression quickly changed to annoyance. “I ought to want to, after that insulting remark. Give me a break, Claire.”

  Claire was not deterred. “I’m not quitting my job, Black. Please don’t ask me to.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  Okay, now that was a relief. She waited expectantly; nothing else could be that bad.

  Black picked up her hand, kissed the back of it, and then the palm, in that completely tender way he did on occasion. The gesture showed her how much he cared about her, more than all the lovely gifts he liked to shower on her.

  “Will you just hear me out, Claire? Without walking away or refusing right off the bat?”

  “Are you asking me to marry you?” Nope, she was not one to pussyfoot around stuff.

  That surprised him, she could te
ll. His eyes lit up. “No, but if you’ll say yes, I’m all for it.”

  Claire didn’t know whether she would, or not. So she said, “What is this, Black? Like I said, you’re making me uneasy.”

  “I want to set you up in your own business as a private investigator, make you the boss. Anywhere you want to live, anything you want is yours. Booker’s already on board with this, if you want him to be a part of it. I have contacts all over the country. I can get you all the work you’d ever want or need. You’ll be completely in charge, on what cases you take, where you go, who you hire. Bud, too, if you want him. We can offer him any amount of money you want.”

  Okay, now he had managed to shock the hell out of her. This was the last thing on earth she had ever expected him to say. She was speechless, which wasn’t like her at all. “Why? Why do you want to do this for me?”

  Black’s eyes were intense in the candlelight, blue as a sunlit sea, sober, searching her face, holding her gaze. “Because I’m tired of seeing you get hurt. I sat there for weeks and weeks and watched you linger in that coma, thinking I was going to lose you, that you might never open your eyes again. You can’t imagine what that’s like, Claire, what that did to me. I felt dead inside. And it’s not just that time. It’s every time you’ve been hurt or shot or clubbed in the head by some monster you’re after.”

  Then she saw the pain in his face, and his voice, all so very clearly, pain he didn’t try to disguise. She put a gentle palm against his cheek. “I’m sorry, Black. I’m sorry I put you through so much.”

  Black shook his head. “I’m not worried about me. I’d feel safer if you lived with me, if you worked side by side with Booker, or Bud, or both of them. You wouldn’t just handle murders; probably would never have to face a serial killer again. You’re a great detective. I would never want to take that away from you. I would never ask you to quit something you love so much. But I want you to do this, Claire. For me, for both of us. You mentioned marriage. I do want to get married someday. Soon. I want to have children with you. I want to have a normal life, where we’re happy and you are safe and don’t get hurt every other day. I want to give that to you.”