Laura took a step back. Her gun was at her side. Camille knew that with a quick flick of her wrist, she could shoot either one of them. She also knew that Laura was a good shot. Along with so many of the Miller siblings, taking up shooting was something they did not only as a sport, but because the closed society in which they lived took the sport seriously. Being able to shoot and to hunt was something they were expected to do well. Laura was nothing if not competitive. She could do each well.
“Drop the gun, Laura,” Tyler said. “Do what she asked.”
But Laura ignored him. “So, you’re a blonde now, Camille?”
“Obviously, Laura.”
“It doesn’t work for you. It looks cheap. You look butch.”
Camille didn’t respond.
“How did you get in here? Did Michael let you in?”
“He did. And we heard all of it.”
Sam came forward and held up a pen that wasn’t a pen. Camille looked fleetingly up at it as he pressed a button on its side. “And we recorded it,” he said.
She had no idea he recorded it. It was a brilliant move on his part.
“You recorded this?” Laura said.
Sam pressed another button and Laura’s voice, reduced by the pen’s tiny speaker but nevertheless clear due to the digital technology, rang into the room: “All I did was kill these two. They weren’t part of the team. If I let them live, guilt and grief would have taken over, they would have confided in someone about it and that person would have talked to someone else because we’re the Miller family. The Miller family. That Miller family. You can see how it would roll out. Eventually, somebody would go to the police, tip them off and the police would be on our doorsteps. I had to kill Michael and Grace to prevent that from happening. I needed to get in front of this.”
Sam clicked off the pen and put it in his pants pocket. “Where’s my daughter?” he said.
Laura’s eyes widened. Tyler turned to look at Camille.
“Your daughter?” Laura said.
“That’s right. My daughter. Where is she?”
Laura looked at Camille. “So, this is him? After all these years, this is Emma’s father?” She studied him for a moment. “Actually, I see the resemblance. Same eyes. Same skin. And he’s good looking, Camille. A little too masculine for my taste, but I have to say, well done.”
“Where is she, Laura?” Camille said.
Quickly—too quickly for her to react because it was clear in which direction Laura’s arm was going—Laura lifted the gun at her side and pointed it not at them, but through the double doorway to her right. She pressed the trigger and the laser flashed on, thus preventing them from taking her out because both Camille and Sam knew where that laser was pointed. If they shot her now, her reflexes would squeeze that trigger.
“She’s right there, Camille, with a little red dot dancing on her throat. She’s still unconscious after what Grace did to her—she could be drowning on her own blood for all I know—so at least she won’t feel anything should you force me to shoot her.” She leveled her sister with a glance. “Now, how about you put down your gun before I go through with it? You know I can shoot. And she’s right in my sights.”
“And you’re in mine,” Camille said.
“And mine,” Sam said.
“So, at least two of us die,” Laura said. “That’s fine. Tyler and I are screwed anyway. After this, we’ll be tabloid fodder for months, which I’d frankly prefer not to see, face or hear. Socially, this family is now officially ruined, which I can’t bear to witness. So when I kill Emma, at least I’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that I took her away from you, just as you took so much away from us, Camille. Her death will haunt you for the rest of your life because you’ll know it’s not really me who killed her. It was you.”
She looked over at Emma, who was indeed in her sights. She was leaning against the massive dining room table in the next room. Not moving. Couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. Red dot on her throat.
Then, unexpectedly, her shoulders slumped a little. “I can’t do this,” she said.
“Then don’t,” Camille said.
“What am I thinking? That you deserve this?”
Her answer was swift. She pulled the trigger at the same moment five shots blasted from the two other guns trained on her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
With the front door hanging open and the windows smashed, Pamela Decker’s house was filling with smoke so quickly that Marty knew the same was happening in the basement. No windows survived that blast. If he didn’t get his family out now, the smoke would kill them.
As much as he wanted to nail Pamela Decker and Carr, the latter of whom he knew in his gut also was upstairs, he turned around, put his hand on the banister and saw that his arm was bleeding from the glass embedded in it. His neck was moist, as was his back. How badly was he hurt?
Didn’t matter.
He fled down the stairs. Smoke stung his eyes. Glass cracked beneath his shoes. He ran into the kitchen and went to the door that he hoped led to the basement. “It’s me,” he shouted before opening the door. “Don’t shoot. I’m opening the door.”
“Marty!” Gloria said. He could hear coughing. Retching. “The smoke. We don’t have much time. Hurry!”
He looked over his shoulder and into the entryway. In spite of the car alarms and now the arrival of the police, whose sirens had just joined the cacophony of noise outside, he knew that whoever was upstairs just heard him call down to his family. Now they knew he was in the kitchen. They’d either come after him or run out while they could, which would be difficult given the police presence, but not impossible considering the chaos outside. He needed to be prepared for either situation. Anything could happen.
He opened the door. Orange-tinted smoke, illumined by the fires outside, poured into the kitchen. It wafted over him, burned his eyes and seared his throat. He turned his head away from it and when he did, he heard movement on the staircase in the entryway. He held his gun so it was pointed at the staircase and then called down into the basement. “Come on,” he said. “I need you to move. It’s safe.”
“Brian was shot,” Gloria said. “He’s dead. We can’t lift him. He’s too heavy. Jack needs your help to get him out of here.”
“We can’t leave him down here,” Barbara Moore said. “We can’t just leave him behind.”
Marty closed his eyes at the news that his friend was dead. He felt sickened by it, enraged by it, but knew that he couldn’t let Brian’s death derail him now. He needed to keep his mind clear. He had to protect those who were alive. He’d deal with his emotions later.
Behind him, he heard them coming down stairs. Slowly. One step at a time. They’d have guns. From where he stood now, they’d see him at the door. If he went down the basement stairs, they could shut the door and lock them inside. The smoke would overcome them. Kill them. Fewer witnesses to tell the truth.
Where are the police?
He looked through the kitchen window and saw exactly where they were and what they were doing. The fire department had arrived. The police were clearing the streets so the trucks could move forward and put out the two cars that were on fire. That was their priority. Soon detectives would be here. They’d find the red door. They’d know the situation because Mike Hines briefed them on it. But would they arrive in time? He couldn’t count on it. Right now, this was all on him.
“Listen to me,” he said. “You need to get Brian up here on your own. I can protect us on this end. If I come down there, I can’t. Anything could happen. They’re still in the house.”
“Dad, we can’t lift him.”
It was Beth. He thanked God she was still alive. “Beth, I need you to try. I need all of you to try. To get us safely out of here, I need to be here. Trust me on this. Jack, step it up and direct them. There are enough of you down there to do this.”
Behind him, a creak on the staircase. Then came the unexpected—Carr’s voice: “It’s not goin
g so well for you, is it, Spellman?”
Marty moved to the stove, crouched low beside it.
“Who would have thought today would have ended like this?” Carr said. “I gave you seventy-two hours to bring in Camille. You had plenty of time, but you were in a rush. When people are in a rush, they make mistakes. If you had listened to me, it would have turned out differently. Your friend would be alive. You would have found Camille. And then we would have left you alone. All we wanted was Camille. Why did you complicate it so?”
“You abducted my family.”
“So we did, but you left us no choice. First, you broke our deal by hiring men to protect your wife. Then, you broke it again by involving your ex-wife, who went to the Moores, one of whom died as a result of their agreeing to help. Don’t you see? None of this had to happen if you had listened to me. You brought this on yourselves.”
Behind him, through the open basement door, a footstep landed heavily on the basement steps. He heard Gloria say, “Lift him higher by the shoulders. Beth, help me with his legs. We go slowly. One step at a time.”
“Resurrecting the dead?” Carr asked.
Marty ignored the comment. Before he acted and took them out, he wanted to stall them a bit longer so everyone could get upstairs. In the meantime, he wanted answers. “You’re having an affair with Pamela Decker, aren’t you, Carr?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“That’s also my answer. Are you interested in how I know?”
“I’m not interested because it’s not true.”
“I’m interested,” Pamela said.
It was the first time he’d heard her voice. She sounded different from what he imagined. Her voice reminded him of Kathleen Turner’s, only somehow deeper. It was husky, had an edge. “I know because when Carr abducted Eliot Baker, he was called home, probably by you. He told his driver to take him there. When he opened the car door, Baker heard a woman on the sidewalk say she was on Ninety-Third Street and on her way to wherever she was going. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out that Carr lives here. So, I have to ask you a question, Pamela. Kenneth Miller was good to you. He gave you more than you ever could have dreamed of. And yet you screwed him? Why? He gave you twenty million dollars. Wasn’t that enough?”
“Frankly, it wasn’t. It was a joke. I deserved more. Twenty million was nothing to Kenneth—it was like twenty dollars to you and me. I found it insulting. I always was there for him, and yet he put me last in his will. For a ten-year relationship, it was unacceptable.”
“It pissed you off.”
“It did.”
“So, who approached who to have him murdered?”
“Laura.”
“And all of you agreed to take him out?”
“Not all of us.”
“Who resisted?”
“Shut up, Pamela.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up, Philip. Ever. And what does it matter anymore, anyway? We’re finished. The police are outside. It’s only a matter of time before they come through that door. Have you even noticed? It’s hanging open. They’re going to run straight through it.”
“We still could get off.”
“Do you really believe that? Let’s just close the books on this. If we go down those stairs, Spellman will kill us. If we don’t, the police will collect us, we’ll be hauled out and our faces and our rotten stories will be media fodder for weeks if not months. You know that. I need you to think about the humiliation that comes with that. On every possible level, it’s over for us. So, let’s set the record straight and get on with it.”
“Anything you say is admissible in court.”
“Philip. Baby. Don’t you get it? We’re cooked. And we don’t have to go to prison or to trial. There are other ways out and I suggest we take them. You know what I’m suggesting. But before we do that, I need to tell the truth because Spellman is right. For the most part, Kenneth was good to me. He gave me this house, bought me my penthouse on Park, told me every day that he loved me. And he meant it. We took fabulous trips together and ate at some of the best restaurants. He was kind to me. He wanted me to practice law again, but I got too complacent being taken care of, so I didn’t. My mistake. I’m the one who fucked up. So, here it is, Marty. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening, Pamela.”
“From the start, Grace and Michael wanted nothing to do with this, but Laura is Laura. What she wanted, she got. So, she led the charge. She’s the one who organized it and saw it through. Tyler was behind her. Sophia and Scott helped, but not with the same urgency as Laura. They sort of just went along for the ride, not that that excuses them from any of it. I was brought in because I had connections with Philip, who you know as Carr. His real name is Philip Carp, by the way, just to wrap this mother in a bow for you.”
There was a moment when she didn’t speak. Marty heard something that sounded like a slap, then a struggle, then the click of a gun, a footfall on the staircase. “Stand the hell down, Philip. I’m finishing this.”
“You’re a fool.”
“No, I’m not. If I was a fool at any point, it’s when Laura talked me into this. Can you hear me, Marty?”
“I can hear you.”
“Philip guaranteed me that through you, we could bring in Camille and her daughter. I brought that promise to Laura in exchange for a healthy cut of their inheritance. Plans were put into place, which you’re now familiar with. Should I have done it? No. Did I make a mistake? Yes. A terrible one. Kenneth treated me well throughout our time together and yet I was screwing someone else behind his back. Now this. I don’t know what I was thinking. I regret it. It was pure greed. And it’s greed that ruins so many of us in the end. I’m a shining example of it.”
Marty could hear his family behind him. Heaving. Struggling. Using everything they had within them to get Brian Moore to the first floor. They were almost to the door, which was open. He looked behind him and could see Jack’s back. It wouldn’t be long now before all of them were in the kitchen. What worried him is that he knew that Pamela, Philip and whoever else was with them—if anyone was left—also could hear it. Were Jack and the others still armed or did they need to drop those arms to get Brian up here? Marty wasn’t sure. If they came unarmed and if Pamela and Philip tried anything, he alone would have to protect them.
“Are the canaries free, Spellman? We can hear them fluttering.”
“Free and armed,” Marty said. “If you come down those stairs, Philip, I will shoot you. I have a feeling a few others would like to join me. In fact, I know they will.”
“I wonder how skilled they are with a gun?”
“They killed two of your men. I’d say they’re very skilled. As for me, you won’t find much better.”
Marty looked over his shoulder as they brought Brian Moore through the door. He looked at his old friend, whose head was hanging slack. His skin was turning blue and his tongue was purple and bulging out of the right side of his mouth. His eyes were open and fixed. He was covered in blood. It was as troubling a sight as Marty could remember. They’d been close friends since college, when Gloria and Barbara brought them together. For the past two decades, they shared a beer each Sunday at dive bars throughout the city. They shot the shit. Had a laugh. Talked about life. Talked about women. Their kids. What was he to do without his friend now?
He closed his eyes. Rage was an animal that raced through him, and with it came clarity. He directed everyone behind him, so they couldn’t be seen from the staircase in the entryway. As they went past him, everyone hugged him but Jack and Barbara Moore, the latter of whom knelt beside her husband of over twenty years and held his hand while she whispered to him.
Where are the police?
“Here,” Pamela said. “Take the gun. Shoot me. Then shoot yourself. That’s our only way out of this. You know it as well as I do.”
“I’m not shooting you.”
“Then I’ll shoot myself. You can do whatever the hell you want. Give m
e back the gun.”
“No.”
“Give me the fucking gun, Philip.”
“I won’t.”
“Fine. I’ll see you in hell.”
And Marty heard her heels on the stairs. They weren’t coming slowly and quietly. Instead, they were coming aggressively, as if they were on a suicide mission. With his back to the stove, he looked over his shoulder and waited for her to come into view. First, he saw her hand on the banister. Then her legs—she was wearing fitted dark blue jeans. Red heels.
Then he saw all of her.
White silk blouse tucked into her jeans. Her right hand lifted high so he could see she wasn’t carrying. She was shorter than he imagined, but beautiful. Raven-colored hair pulled back into a neat ponytail that bounced as she descended the stairs. Pale skin. Dark red lips that enhanced the disappointment on her face.
She turned to look at him and when she did, a shot rang out into the room. Her blouse puffed open at her breasts and she staggered forward. Her legs sagged beneath her and she reached out to hug the newel post for support. Blood blossomed on her blouse. She turned to look accusingly up the stairs.
There was another shot.
Marty heard a gasp come from behind him.
He turned and found Beth standing in the open, a gun poised in front of her and pointed at Decker.
He tried to push her back so she was in the clear but then came another shot, only it wasn’t Beth doing the shooting. It was Philip. He started to come down the stairs and as he did, he continued to shoot Pamela Decker until she slipped off the newel post, fell over the last few stairs and hit the floor. Dead.
When he was finished, he stood there for a moment, a crazed look on his face as he stared down at her. Then he placed the gun to his own head and fired.
Tried to fire.
Instead, the gun clicked hollowly in the room.
He pulled the trigger again, but the gun was out of bullets. He spent the lot of them on Decker, who was folded at his feet, her body lying in a way that was unnatural. He looked across the room at Marty and Beth just as Beth lifted her gun and took aim.
A Rush to Violence (A Spellman Thriller) Page 27