Gathering Lies

by Meg O'Brien

  We didn’t tell him about our plan. Nor did we tell Timmy and Amelia. They thought we were heading out in search of more wood to build a bonfire, in case a plane or helicopter flew overhead.

  Gathering firewood was the perfect excuse for us all to leave together that early in the day. We thought we knew where Gabe might have gone the night before—to the other cabin, the one that stood vacant down the shore from his. He would want a roof over his head, we reasoned, in case of a storm. If, as we suspected, he had killed Angel and knew that we had found her, he might hide out in that cabin overnight. It was nearly a mile from his, more isolated, and a couple of miles from Thornberry. If we got there early enough, we might catch him there before he moved on.

  One thing we were certain of—he would not return to Thornberry. Not after I’d walked in on his little rendezvous with Kim.

  Dana, Grace and Kim stood at a distance from the cabin, hidden by trees, while I went to the door. If Gabe was there, I was certain I could lure him away, I had told them.

  After they saw me enter, they were supposed to go to a spot in the woods we had agreed upon beforehand, a small clearing by the Ghost Tree. Luke and I had hidden the Allegra case with the stockings in it the night before, in the hollow of the tree. It would be a perfect spot for our plan.

  I knocked, waited, and knocked again. My muscles tensed. What if this did not go the way we all hoped it would?

  What if he wasn’t there?

  After a full minute, the door opened a crack. I felt my breath release. But only a bit. Then the door opened wider, allowing me in.

  “Sarah!” Gabe exclaimed, as I entered the small room. “I’ve been hoping to see you. I wanted to explain about yesterday.” His smile was as engaging as ever.

  “Drop it, Gabe,” I said tiredly. “I know you’re not who you say you are.”

  He looked startled. “What do you mean—”

  “Look, let me cut to the chase. I’ve talked to Kim, and to Dana, too. If you want to keep playing this game, then fine. I’ll leave. I just came here to give you what you’ve been looking for.” I threw up my hands. “But if you don’t want it…”

  I turned toward the door.

  “Wait a minute,” he said.

  I glanced back at him and saw the look of indecision on his face, the need to trust but the inability to do so. It felt good.

  He rubbed his chin. “Are you talking about your evidence against the Seattle Five?”

  I nodded.

  “Why would you want to give it to me now?” he asked suspiciously.

  I let my shoulders sag suddenly, and looked at the floor. After a few moments, I said softly, “Because I can’t take this anymore. And because I don’t want anyone else getting hurt over the mess I’ve gotten myself into.”

  I looked up at him then, my eyes pleading. “Please, Gabe. It’s got to stop. People have to stop getting hurt. It’s not worth it. You can do whatever you want with me. Just leave everyone else alone.”

  I was certain Kim would have been proud of my performance. In truth, it wasn’t that difficult to act out such despair—I had felt just that way, as if I didn’t care anymore, after finding J.P. dead. All I had to do was say it out loud.

  Gabe appeared to be studying me, weighing what I’d said.

  Finally, he held out his hand. “Okay. Let’s have it.”

  I hesitated. “If I give it to you, you won’t have any reason to hurt anyone else, right?”

  He shrugged. “No reason at all.”

  I spoke in a hopeful tone. “You’ll leave them alone? Even Kim?”

  He laughed. “Lady, I couldn’t care less about that bimbo. She was just a tool, and not a very good one at that. Soon as I get what I want, I’m making a call from your boyfriend’s cell phone and I’m out of here. Nobody will ever hear from me again.”

  I nodded and gestured toward the door. “It’s outside, then. I’ve hidden it in a tree. I’ll take you to it.”

  The triumph in his eyes was clear. “It’s your show, Sarah. Lead the way.”

  We walked out of the cabin and down the path to the Ghost Tree.

  When we arrived there, I reached into the hollow, pulled out the Allegra case and handed it to Gabe.

  “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Who are you working for, Gabe? It’s pretty obvious you aren’t some cop with the Seattle PD that Ian sent to protect me.”

  Ignoring my question, he opened the case and inspected what was inside. Smiling, he pulled out the bag with the stockings, holding it up to the light. “Sperm? You were going to match DNA?”

  I nodded.

  “My, my. I thought it must be something like that. And you’re wrong about one thing—I am a cop with the Seattle PD. At least, I was. After I get this in the right hands, I may have to leave the area. Lie low for a while.”

  “You are a cop? Then you’re working for the Seattle Five?”

  “The Five?” His laugh was scornful. “You think just because there were five cops on that particular shift, that’s all there are?”

  He put the stockings back into the case, then looked up at me. “Well, that’s it, then. You realize, of course, that I can’t just leave here with you alive.”

  “Well, I guess that remains to be seen,” I said, folding my arms.

  He laughed. “I’ve got to hand it to you, you’ve got spunk. But you know, you got off easy. That day when I knocked you out at your cottage? I was planning to take you over and show you Angel’s grave. I figured maybe I could break you that way.”

  The blood rushed to my head when Angel’s name slipped so easily off his tongue. Then I realized what he’d said. He hadn’t even known I had the Allegra case tucked in my shirt when he hit me. When he was dragging me onto the path, he must have been surprised in the act by Luke and Grace and not noticed the case falling out.

  “You killed Angel?” I said, trying to sound surprised.

  “In point of fact, no. She hit her head—” He broke off, as if irritated at having to even think about it. “It was an accident.”

  “What do you mean, an accident?”

  “Never mind that now. Let’s go back to the cabin.”

  “The cabin?” I asked, wondering what unspeakable things this madman had in mind for me. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what happened to Angel.”

  His smile was cruel, the charm a mere memory. He seemed confident in the power he had over me.

  Turning the Allegra case over in his hands, he said, “I suppose there’s time. The truth is, Angel and I had been seeing each other. I struck up a conversation with her in a bar in Seattle. McCoy’s. She was looking, you know? On the prowl.” He laughed. “Angel was easy pickings. She’d been alone for a long time, I guess. So long, she’d closed all up. Shit, I couldn’t even pry her legs apart at first.”

  Rage filled me. “So Angel came on to you,” I barely managed to say.

  “You don’t believe it?” Gabe’s voice was almost taunting. “She was all over me. Wanted to meet my family, my friends—like we really had something going. Stupid bitch.”

  I wanted to kill him. My hands were itching to be around his throat and it was all I could do to restrain myself. “How did you know she had something to do with this?” I said.

  “She was with you in McCoy’s when you told Mike Murty and the others that you had something on them. It would figure you’d tell her more than you told us. It just became a matter, then, of getting it out of her.”

  “How did that lead to finding me at Thornberry?”

  “Think about it. You called Angel’s office and left a message and the number for Thornberry with her secretary. When I picked up Angel for lunch that day, I saw the message on her desk. I made up some excuse why I wouldn’t be around for a few days, so I could come to the island to find you. When I got here I found a cabin with a For Sale sign on it, and decided it would be a good cover to pretend I had bought it. Not ten minutes after I got here, though, Angel showed up on the doorstep. She had se
en through my excuse to be away and had followed me here. Stupid bitch was on to me all the time.”

  Poor Angel. She’d put her life in this monster’s hands, to help me. “What happened? What did you do to her?” I asked softly.

  “I decided that since she knew why I was here, I might as well try to make her tell me where the evidence was.”

  “But you killed her, for God’s sake! How could she tell you anything, dead?”

  “I told you, it was an accident. She kicked me, and I hit her. I didn’t mean to, believe me. I wanted her alive. She’d have told me where that damn evidence was before the night was out. But when I hit her, the chair fell over and she struck her head.”

  “What do you mean the chair fell over?”

  “God, you are dumb! I had tied her to a chair to ask her some questions.”

  “You tied Angel to a chair?” Images of my friend suffering that way burned into my brain. “For how long?”

  “I don’t know, a few hours. A day, maybe.”

  “A day. And all this time you were doing what to her?”

  “Nothing. I told you, just trying to get her—” He shook his head. “Like I said, the woman was a stupid bitch.”

  “Smart enough to follow you here,” I couldn’t help saying. “Smart enough to be on to you all the time you thought you were playing her for a fool. But if it hadn’t happened that way, you’d have killed her anyway, right? You couldn’t set her free to file charges against you back in Seattle. Any more than you can leave me alive now.”

  He shrugged.

  “So you buried her in the woods by your cabin, thinking she’d never be found. But then the quake last night uncovered her.”

  “So you did find that. I figured as much.”

  “And Jane? Was she an accident, too?”

  “No, but I didn’t plan to kill her. I had found the cell phone in Luke’s cabin. Since mine had been ruined in the quake, I hadn’t been able to call the mainland to check in. I didn’t want to tip my hand yet, so I planned to use his phone, then put it back. I took it into the woods to make sure Luke wouldn’t catch me using it in his cabin, but Jane came around the bend just as I was dialing out. Man, you should have seen her face when she realized I had a cell phone! That woman freaked—she fought me for it, but since I hadn’t found the evidence yet, I couldn’t have her calling someone to rescue us.”

  “So you killed her.”

  “It was more like we had a scuffle.”

  He lifted the Allegra case up and showed it to me. “And now, my little Sarah, speaking of finding the evidence…I’ve got things to do, like getting off this shitty island.” He reached for me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. Stepping back, I said clearly, “It’s time.”

  Dana and Kim stepped out into the clearing. Gabe turned to look at them, surprise on his face. Grace moved quickly behind him and, using the same walking stick that I’d hit him with the night he’d first appeared at the farmhouse kitchen door, swung without hesitation, connecting to the side of his skull. Dazed, Gabe raised his hands to his head and fell to his knees.

  In a second, we were on him.

  Grace knelt on his back and pulled his arms above his head, grinding them into the earth. The women had hidden our backpacks in the Ghost Tree, and I reached for mine and dumped it out. Kim pulled a length of garden wire from the pile; she cuffed Gabe’s wrists with it. Dana and I took his legs, and the four of us flipped him over onto his back.

  Kim sat on him, holding the point of an ice pick at his neck. I dumped the contents of the other two backpacks, and from the pile we picked up wooden garden stakes and two hammers. With the hammers, Grace and I pounded the stakes deep into the ground at three-foot intervals, two above Gabe for his hands, two at his feet. Grace uncuffed his wrists while we all held him down. Then she tied each wrist to a stake, while I tied his ankles to the other two.

  It took less than two minutes to have him secured, spread-eagled on the ground.

  It had been Grace’s idea, but Dana had added the details. An old Indian trick, she said—aloud, now, for Gabe’s benefit. “Except that they staked their enemy out on the desert in the hot sun and left him to be feasted on by ants and hawks. It’ll be different for you, Gabe. Eventually, hunger will eat away at your insides, and thirst will close up your throat so much, you won’t even be able to talk anymore.”

  She laughed. “Imagine—Gabe without the silver tongue. You might lose that charming grin, too.”

  “It’s supposed to be a nice day, today,” Kim said, as if commenting to a friend on the weather. “Sunny and hot. That should help.”

  Gabe had been too stunned in the first moments to fight us off. That had given us the advantage. Now, as understanding set in, he began to struggle to get free.

  “For God’s sake, stop this!” he yelled. “Let me up! Have you all gone mad?”

  He was probably closer to the truth than he realized.

  I, for one, wanted to drive one of those stakes through his heart. And when I looked at Grace, the expression on her face terrified even me. I didn’t give Gabe Rossi a snowball’s chance in hell of coming out of this alive. And he knew it.

  Which was all to the good. We wanted him to suffer fear. A loss of power. The same kinds of torture Angel and Jane must have suffered—and Ramon, Grace’s brother.

  Beyond that, he had used us. He had played us, conned us into trusting him. We felt foolish and angry. We wanted revenge.

  But only a minor revenge. A full day in the woods when he couldn’t move in any direction, when he would lie there naked and vulnerable, with time to think about his sins. A day with the turkey vultures overhead.

  In the morning we would let him up, then hold him prisoner in Luke’s cabin until a rescue team arrived. We’d turn him over to the law.

  But we weren’t finished with him yet.

  Grace began the ritual. Taking a sharp, gleaming pair of kitchen shears from the pile of objects we’d brought with us, she knelt on Gabe’s chest again and held them to his face—taunting him with her power to do anything she wanted with them. Then, in a swift sudden motion, she raised them and swung them down toward his chest.

  His scream gave me chills, and along with that, a cool, clear sense of satisfaction at seeing his terror. The only problem, for me, was that it didn’t last long enough.

  When Gabe realized the scissors had paused an inch above his chest, he looked down to see what Grace was doing. She laughed in his face. “You didn’t think you’d get off all that easy, did you? Shit, we want you alive.”

  She began to cut his shirt away. Dana shoved it aside so that his entire chest was naked. Her face was bland, expressionless, as his skin pumped and jerked with fright beneath her fingers. She looked as she had when playing the drums the other night, as if she’d gone to another plane.

  Grace cut the sleeves of Gabe’s shirt, and Dana shoved them aside, too. Grace then handed the scissors to me, and I began on his jeans. I stopped when his groin area was uncovered, and handed the scissors to Kim—who held them a moment too long over Gabe’s penis. If we all hadn’t been there, I had a feeling she might have cut it off.

  Gabe thought she was going to. His naked stomach clutched, the muscles cramping. His face turned white. “No, no, please don’t! Don’t do that,” he whimpered.

  I took even more satisfaction in the whimper than I had in the scream, wishing only that I’d caused it myself.

  Kim laughed. “Funny,” she said to him, “that’s exactly what I said when you were touching me in the cabin yesterday, remember?” She moved the scissors closer, until the blades were touching him.

  “Go ahead,” Grace said. “Do it.”

  Kim looked at her. “Should I?”

  Grace nodded. “Do it! Or I will.” She grabbed for the shears.

  “No!” Gabe screamed.

  Grace laughed. Kim did, too.

  By this time every stitch of his clothing had been snipped away. Gabe had little power left, a
nd what he tried to use in his struggles evaporated with one look at his withering manhood.

  I wished for the nerve to kill him. I wanted to. But when I really thought about it, he just didn’t seem worth it. Instead, I picked up the Allegra case from the ground and stuffed it into the belt of my jeans, turning my back on his disgusting face.

  We left him there, staked to the ground. We told him to have a “nice night”—provided he survived the night, we added.

  Mad witches, we were, over a bubbling cauldron of hate. If I were defending the four of us in court, I thought at one point, I’d probably win hands down with an insanity plea.

  20

  Later that night, I woke and thought I’d heard something—a distant popping noise. I even thought sleepily that it sounded like a gunshot, but since none of us had a gun, or at least that’s what I believed at the time, I shrugged it off as a clap of thunder and went back to sleep. Lightning had been streaking the sky all night, and before turning in I had discussed with Grace, Dana and Kim how that might be affecting Gabe. Kim had laughed bitterly and said maybe he’d be struck dead. But none of us believed it. Not in our hearts.

  That’s the thought I cling to, even now. We didn’t believe it in our hearts. And though that may not carry much weight with the cold, hard rule of law, it comforted us to think we were doing nothing really wrong. That it was just a bit of emotional payback, and we’d release Gabe the next morning, lock him up until the authorities arrived, and all would be well.

  It was sometime before dawn that I woke and heard someone open the kitchen door and slip silently into the room. I didn’t move, except to pull my blanket down just enough to see who it was.

  Grace stood over the woodstove. The embers had partly died down, but there was enough reddish hue left to show that her face was pale and distraught. Her hands, as she held them over the heat, were shaking.

  “Grace?” I whispered. “What’s wrong?”

  She gave me a look through eyes that were wide and black in their sockets, like coals. I asked her again what was wrong, but she didn’t answer. Instead she went to her blanket on the other side of the stove and crawled into it, pulling it over her head.