A Twist of the Knife

by Becky Masterman

  “We done now?” she asked. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Bad sign.” I led her back to the free-weight rack and picked up a fifteen-pounder, did a couple of curls in a silent challenge, and handed it to Laura. She put it back on the frame, picked up a twenty-pounder, and did the same.

  “Show-off,” I said to her. “Now you can talk.”

  Only she couldn’t talk so much while she was curling, and I kind of knew that, so I waited until she finished another ten reps on her left arm and we walked to the bench-press table.

  “I’ll spot first,” I said, and she sat on the table. But she didn’t lie down immediately.

  “Marcus Creighton was a flawed man,” Laura started. She looked at me as if she expected this was the moment I’d go all Wise Old Woman on her.

  “What weight do you want?” I asked.

  She glanced at the rack and lay back on the table. “Oh, let’s go with the seventy-five. I think that’s all I’ve got left in me.”

  With little effort I hefted the weight and slid it onto the bar extending from one side of the table to the other, over her chest. Laura grasped it, took a breath that filled her whole lungs, and released it as she raised the barbell slowly, with good control.

  “You probably knew more about him than anyone did for the past decade,” I said. “I’ll bet you know the name of his boat,” I said, wanting to introduce more peaceful thoughts.

  “He told me once, I don’t remember just now.” Then memory clicked. “Sea Breeze. It wasn’t creative. He never brought it up except to say they had a boat that he had sold when money had gotten … son of a bitch.”

  She sat up.

  “Brigid. Something.” Laura blinked, as if that would help her get to the spot in her mind where something important was hidden just beyond her reach. And then she got there. “The place where the children’s bones were found. The bridge to that place was only built two years ago. Sixteen years ago it was an island. Inaccessible by car.”

  I had done this myself. Thought over and thought over and thought over scenarios until I got one I liked. It could drive you crazy, and I wanted to help her stop, even if it meant incriminating Creighton. “Coleman. He could have gone by boat.”

  “I told you he didn’t own a boat by that time.”

  “He rented one. He planned things in advance and had it waiting at the marina.”

  “Okay, you want to go with that story, let’s go. We both know that Shayna Murry was lying about him being at her place, because of the cell phone call and because Marcus wasn’t stupid enough to take the chance that she would lie for him and be the willing alibi for him murdering his family. So he comes home from her place in the late evening. We know it was late enough, after dark, because the children had all gone to bed and the wife had taken a sleeping pill. He had the wife’s murder planned well in advance of that evening, but hey, if he had planned everything in advance he would have done a much more logical job of getting rid of the kids. No, one of the kids sees him, and now he has to quickly improvise. Somehow, oh never mind how, he kills them all, leaves the wife in the tub, and loads the children into the trunk.”

  I said, “Laura, stop it. It’s over.”

  Laura had got off the bench by this time and was pacing back and forth in the weight room as she spoke. “He drives to the well-lighted marina and manages to put all three bodies into a boat without being seen. No, that’s not it. He drives to the nearest marina and is able to rent a boat in the middle of the night. If anyone had checked the marinas, would they have found a record of the rental? Good question. So then he takes the boat, runs it three miles to the dock at the back of his house, and loads the bodies in there where there’s more privacy. He’s remembered to bring a shovel, too, so he can bury them.”

  I parked my butt on the bench and watched her go back and forth, but said in one of her passes by, “You’re just making up stories, Laura. I promise you there’s no good to come out of doing this to yourself. You have to stop.”

  She barely took notice of my words with “Not stop. He runs the boat out to the island, totally undeveloped land with soft sand close to the water’s edge, but far enough up the bank so the tide won’t uncover the bodies. He can tell the high-tide spot from the lack of vegetation. There’s no place to dock, so he drops anchor and wades to shore. He digs the grave, just one big one, cutting through the grass with the shovel. It has to be deep to bury three bodies. When it’s deep enough, he wades back to the boat.

  “Three trips, one for each body? Or maybe bring the twins at once to save some time. Then he runs the boat back to the marina, drops it off in its sloop, still without being seen, gets in the car … oh, right, he remembered to bring a plastic tarp to put on the front seat so he wouldn’t get it wet with his clothes. He’s such a cold-hearted killer he even remembered to bring a towel. Then he drives back to the house, calling nine-one-one on the way. No, wait. He’s all wet, and would have to change into a similar shirt and trousers once he got back to the house. He puts the wet things into a plastic garbage bag and hides it somewhere, I don’t know where, figures he’ll destroy the clothes later. They’re never found. He places a dry pair of shoes next to the couch where he had thrown his jacket upon coming into the house. At the last minute he remembers the shovel in the trunk and hangs it up in the garage.

  “Now you tell me, Brigid. How long?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Can’t you see it just doesn’t matter anymore? We lost.”

  “We’ve only lost if we don’t figure out who actually murdered that family. How long?” she demanded.

  I couldn’t know where this would end, but she was right, and I admitted it. “Hours,” I said. “Just hours and hours. I have to clock it myself, but four … five?”

  “Even if he hadn’t gone to Shayna Murry’s house, but done anything else at all after coming back on the five o’clock flight, and arrived home after nine o’clock on a summer’s night when the sun would finally be down, there’s no way Marcus Creighton would have the time to kill his wife, load his children into the car, drive to a marina, get a boat, come out here, bury the bodies, take the boat back—”

  I put a hand up to stop her narrative. “You’re looping. I get it.” My brain was tumbling over on itself, looking for a way for Laura to stop arguing the case for Marcus Creighton, to end this craziness. And if I had to prove Creighton guilty, so be it. She started to speak again, but I interrupted her.

  “Hold on a second, I’m thinking, and I’m not as fast as I used to be. Let’s look at every single angle. What if he did the deed before he ever left on his trip?”

  “Kathleen had only been dead for a few hours when her body was found.”

  “What if he killed Kathleen that night, then the children, then hid the bodies and buried them at a more convenient time?”

  “Let’s say he did that.” She kind of stammered that, and I could tell she was so excited her teeth were chattering. “Even with small bodies, where do you hide all three? Plus, there was no convenient time. First he was questioned. Then the crime scene techs were all over the place. His alibi was blown the same night, and he was taken into custody the next morning. In the meantime he was watched so he couldn’t get away.”

  I almost laughed with the insane feeling that I was getting sucked back in against my will. “Could Murry have been an accomplice who buried the bodies? And then she chickened out?”

  “Even if she had the guts, she’d have the same timing issue that night. And if the bodies were hidden at her house? No, we’ve already agreed that killing the children wasn’t part of the original plan. Something went wrong. And there was no way they could have communicated about it. Creighton was being watched so carefully he couldn’t take a dump without the cops knowing about it.”

  If Laura’s eyes had been like blood yesterday, today they hardened into ice. “The key thing is, if Creighton didn’t kill the children, he didn’t kill the wife. The case falls apart. But no. They wanted to believe the mis
tress so bad because that made the case very easy. They didn’t want to see anything else.”

  “And the contract with a paid killer?”

  “We went over all that, remember? We decided Marcus would have turned him in.” She stopped to think. “And sometime around the murders, up to the day before, there would have been a suspicious number on his phone, maybe someone we couldn’t identify. I don’t remember seeing anything suspicious in the records. All I remember is that he called his wife’s cell from Miami the afternoon of the crime.”

  I watched this woman who had done a one-eighty in front of my eyes, going from immobilized depression to an almost manic state, pacing wildly, talking fast. She had repeated the facts as she saw them for what may have been the third time, and it was tiring me out. But what can you do? It felt to me like even dead Marcus Creighton was still pulling at her, as if he was drowning and clutching on to her.

  She brought my attention back with “I’m all right, Brigid. You can go home now. Go back to…”

  “Carlo,” I said.

  “Carlo. Listen. I need to go home and ice myself.” She forced herself to look at me and smile reassuringly.

  I looked at her, trying to get under the smile. Thought about the colleague who ate his gun. “And when you say ‘ice yourself,’ you mean…”

  “Soak my ankles in a bucket of ice water, for Pete’s sake! And I’m not going to murder Alison Samuels, either. Go home. Or take care of your parents or whatever you need to do.”

  “Are you sure?” I said. Of all the qualities I might have inherited from my mother, I’ve hated that one the most. What is someone going to say, after all? No, I’m not sure? Laura answered my question with a small sigh, and I backed down.

  “Speaking of parents,” I said, “I do need to get over to the hospital again.”

  With some doubts, I dropped Laura off to spend the rest of the day with an ice pack and her continuing obsession, preparing her prosecution of someone she didn’t know and her defense for the trial of a man who was already dead.

  Thirty-one

  I walked down the hall and into Dad’s room, still composing my excuse for not being there first thing in the morning and finding it insufficiently compelling. So I was faintly relieved to see that Mom wasn’t there either. Then I remembered she was at home, that I had driven her home myself, the evening before. I wondered where my brain was. And why she hadn’t bothered to call me.

  I’d call her and go get her, but for now I watched Dad, sleeping, his same limp-puppy look that I’d seen the day before, but maybe a little better color, or it was just my wishing. This was the first time I remembered being alone with him in the hospital. Hospital, hell, this was the first time I remembered being alone with him. I studied his face closer, trying to see a man rather than the image of the father, and wondering if I would like him better that way.

  His eyes opened so he was starting back at me.

  “Is your mother in the room?” he asked.

  “No. She’s at home right now. Are you in pain?” He reached out for me, and I held his hand with its nails thick like an animal’s claws.

  His body may have been weakened, but all his life was still in his eyes. “No,” he said. “I wanted to tell you when she wasn’t around. Your mother. She’s unnatural.”

  I had no idea what was going on inside that mind of his, but I responded the way anyone would, whether or not they were talking to their father. “Aw, Dad. No she’s not. She’s natural.”

  “I never hurt any of you, did I? Tell me that.”

  I remembered all the ways that a child can be hurt. I was glad I could answer honestly, “Well, there was that time Todd was wetting his bed and you—”

  “Besides that.”

  “Then, no. You yelled a lot, you threw things, but I don’t think you ever hurt us. Per se.”

  “What the hell does persay mean?”

  “Dad, is there anything you’d like to tell me? Anything at all?”

  He looked concerned. “Why? What have they told you?”

  “Nothing. Just that you’re responding to the new antibiotic.”

  Dad breathed a sigh, but it sounded like it came from the very top of his lungs. I wondered if they’d told me the truth at the nurses’ station or just had instructions to say whatever they thought would get rid of me. I stroked his arm, and wondered when I had ever touched him so much as I was touching him now.

  Dad said, his difficulty breathing chopping up his words, making me remember Marcus Creighton after his asthma attack, “It’s just that. When people start asking. You questions it feels like they. Think you’re going to die and. This is their last chance for. Answers.”

  That was kind of a thoughtful thing. Was I doing Dad an injustice by thinking of him as only a two-dimensional cartoon character? Was there some depth in him that I hadn’t seen? Something of wisdom, of a small good? Or even great bad?

  “You’re not going to die,” I said.

  But he was drifting back to another point. “I wasn’t a. Bad father, was I?”

  “You were an excellent father,” I said, thinking of Marcus again, and wishing I could stop that little tug in my heart. “Better than most.”

  That didn’t seem to satisfy him, though, and I tried to think of something more comforting. But then I wondered if he was totally off his rocker, because he followed up with “The devil in his might. He couldn’t catch a bite.”

  I remembered that poem, if you can give it so highfalutin a name, from when we went crabbing. We wound string around raw chicken necks and, holding on to the string, threw the chicken far out into the canal. When we felt a little tug, we’d pull in the chicken slowly, luring the crab after it into a fishing net. He’d say that poem softly as the crab came closer and closer.

  Going wherever his mind was, I held his hand in mine and finished for him, “So he fished and he fished the whole feckin’ night. He fished so hard that his arse got sore, and that’s why the devil don’t fish no more.”

  Dad’s eyes shifted then, and I suspected that the whole poem had come out to disguise what we had been talking about, because he had the same Mom Radar the rest of us had. Aware of her at the door of his room, I looked up to catch her face sad, unspeakably sad.

  I felt like I’d been caught. “Mom,” I said, a little too loudly. “I was just about to come get you. How did you get here without your car?”

  “So many Weeping Willow residents come here, there’s a shuttle,” she said.

  “Dad seems better today,” I said.

  “The doctor called me at home. They’re moving him out of the ICU today. They’ll keep him for another seventy-two hours, then they’re going to send him home.” She kept it together until the word “home” that came out like “ho-oh.” Then she pressed her lips together for the “mm” and started to cry. It was the first time I could remember seeing my mother cry.

  Thirty-two

  I had told Carlo I was tired of driving, yet after leaving the hospital there I was, heading north along the beach road. I didn’t want to go back to the hotel, cold and lonely. I couldn’t go to Laura for solace because she was dealing with a pain greater than my own.

  I tilted my head to one side, imagining Carlo’s big hand on the side of my face, but he was twenty-five hundred miles away, and no technology could produce the comfort of his touch. For most of my life I hadn’t missed this, and now the thought of going without was unthinkable. Maybe I drove to punish myself. And to think over and over what I could have done differently. Is there any relationship with more potential for cruelty than that of a mother and daughter? Men don’t remember what was said yesterday, but then you get two women who remember every nuance of every conversation of a lifetime and don’t hesitate to throw them into the argument.

  The one thing I could always count on was that Mom would be Mom. That role was somewhat varied. I could take Passive-Aggressive Mom. I could take Quietly Critical Mom. I could take Mom as Pious Saint. I might not have particularl
y liked any of those characters, but she adhered to them in a script that both of us had known since I was at least ten years old. Dad and the rest of us, we could spin out of control at the drop of a hat, and hats dropped daily. But not Mom. No matter what the character she played, Mom was always the one in control.

  Now, in the midst of everything, Mom was crying. It was the one thing I couldn’t take. Sounds small of me, doesn’t it? Well, I’ve promised to tell the truth in these stories as much as I’m able even if it makes me look bad. Recently I’d had plenty of experience with people emoting all over the place. Not Mom. I’ll tell you, I hadn’t had any experience in handling this Mom.

  I had made an effort, tried asking questions: Are you stressed? Are you just relieved that Dad is out of danger now? When she didn’t answer, I tried putting my arms around her. She pushed me away, her tears getting angrier. I patted her shoulder, and she brushed my hand away, too. She sagged against the wall, threw her eyeglasses on the unoccupied bed close by, and rubbed her face hard with both hands, spending a little more time drawing her fingers out over her eyelids, a last-ditch attempt to rid herself of the tears. Then she looked at me the same way Laura Coleman had after Creighton’s execution, with something too close to hate. She said, “Would you please go away now? Would you all just go away?”

  Besides Dad, I was aware of being the only other person in the room. I understood that she meant the whole of us, Dad and Todd and Ariel and me, so different from her. I thought of how she had heard Dad and me reciting that silly poem together, and in a flash it came to me, what I thought this was. So this is what I heard myself say: “Sure, Mom. I’ll get out of your hair. You take it easy. You know what I bet this is about? You’ve just always been a little jealous that all of us got along with Dad better than with you.”

  That dried her up before I could realize what I’d said, and say I was sorry. I apologized. She told me that was all right, but I could tell from the hardening of her expression that I had struck too great a blow, and there are those words you can’t ever unsay.