“This time, you need to stay put, Jessica,” Mort told me, sounding genuinely sorry. “That’s the MSP talking, not me.”
“If she’s inside . . .”
“You’ll hear gunfire soon enough. Only way I can see how this ends.”
* * *
* * *
As he walked away, I tried to envision a similar scenario with Amos Tupper in charge back when he was sheriff. In spite of his simple nature and down-home modesty, Amos had been a better sheriff than people realized, though not one who could’ve handled the rigors of the new Cabot Cove. We’d been very lucky to get Mort to replace Amos when he retired, never more so than today.
I waited in his SUV, holding my breath for much of the time. I tried to spot what I could between the blinds, but caught only flashes of motion as the four officers from the MSP and our sheriff’s department, plus Mort, moved about the interior with guns drawn, likely going from room to room. In the end, there was no gunfire, were no any hints of a struggle whatsoever coming from inside the house. I wasn’t surprised. A psychopath like Jen Sweeney, formerly Lisa Joy Reavis, would maintain no true attachments, even to herself. She’d already be gone without a trace, ready to disappear into another identity, after murdering the only two people in the area linked to her past. I believed that past was what she was actually killing once and for all when she shot her sister and stabbed Wilma Tisdale to death. And now she’d wipe the slate clean of Jen Sweeney, too, burying her in the same figurative grave as Lisa Joy Reavis.
I knew they hadn’t found her inside when Mort emerged alone and retraced his path to his SUV. His expression was more dazed than anything else, making me wonder what he’d found inside the house, if not our killer.
“Something you need to see, Jessica,” he said in what sounded like someone else’s voice.
I followed him inside Jen Sweeney’s modest ranch house. It felt sterile and cold, with a strange sense of not having been lived in. Most unusual was the fact that it seemed to have no smells at all. No hint of the previous night’s dinner or lingering air freshener—nothing bad and nothing good. Just nothing at all, something I could never recall encountering before.
My muscles tensed as I trailed Mort into the home’s combination living-and-dining room, which featured an empty space where I would have expected the dining room table to be.
“Oh,” I managed, the rest of my words choked off by what I found myself looking at.
Lighthouses—the room was utterly dominated by them. Paintings and photographs featuring lighthouses hung from the walls. Scale models of various sizes cluttered the coffee table, battling for space. And a big one, almost as tall as I was, rested in front of a curved bay window, dominating the room. As I tried to process what I was seeing, one of the officers accidentally tripped the switch on the big lighthouse, activating the light, which flashed intermittently just like a life-sized version.
I turned toward Mort, knowing he was thinking the same thing I was.
“You wanted to know what clinched it for Ginny Genaway,” I said to him, sweeping my gaze about the room again. “What convinced her that Jen Sweeney was her sister, Lisa Joy. Ginny must have been the one who broke into this house, Mort. Once she saw what we’re seeing, she knew for certain.”
Mort followed my gaze. “I think we know where we can find Jen Sweeney, Mrs. Fletcher.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The storm grew in intensity as our convoy of five police vehicles, with Mort’s SUV in the lead, raced, lights flashing but no sirens screaming yet, down the highway toward Cape Elizabeth, ninety minutes away. The wind blew sheets of rain onto our windshield, the wipers hard-pressed to keep up with the increasing onslaught. Thunder crackled, sometimes loudly enough to shake the SUV. Bolts of lightning flashed regularly, leaving brief bursts of luminescence to brighten the night.
A single car was parked in the Portland Head Lighthouse lot on Cape Elizabeth; the driver had utterly ignored the lot’s lines and markers in favor of just leaving the car in the first convenient place. Although I didn’t know what kind of car Jen Sweeney drove, this vehicle could only be hers, because she had come here to eliminate the last person with whom she bore any connection at all before disappearing again, this time for good.
I noticed the entire facility and lighthouse itself had gone dark, likely due to a power failure in the raging storm that was just reaching its peak. The Cabot Cove sheriff’s deputies and Maine State policemen had all donned rain slickers, something neither Mort nor I had handy, so he and I got soaked as we followed a path illuminated by flashes of lightning to reach the front door.
The door was open, blown by the wind backward against the adjoining wall. Mort entered first, his flashlight beam illuminating the path up the stairs toward Maddie Demerest’s apartment. A ship’s foghorn began to blare desperately in the waters beyond, sounding dangerously close to the rocky shore, since the power failure had knocked out the massive flashing light that would have otherwise steered it from harm.
The foghorn blared again, more loudly, which meant the ship had strayed yet closer to the deadly rocks that composed the shoreline. This as Mort reached the door at the top of the narrow stairs, a tight cluster of uniforms grouped behind him, while I held my ground maybe halfway up. Mort squeezed himself as much as he could to the side of the closed door before rapping hard on the wood.
“Police, Mrs. Demerest! Please open the door!”
No response followed, so Mort rapped again, louder and harder. And this time, when no response came, Mort nodded to the officers behind him before throwing his shoulder into the closed door and knocking it inward. I held my breath against the possibility of gunfire, as the uniformed officers from both Cabot Cove and the MSP filed forward in Mort’s wake.
I could barely lift my legs up to follow, because the world had gone heavy and sluggish around me, as if the air was soaked in molasses. I finally pushed myself on when the last cop disappeared through the door, with still no gunfire coming from inside.
I glimpsed a dark figure. Then the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, and the figure seemed to soar downward, crashing into me and knocking me to the side. I staggered but managed to avoid falling and swung all the way around to find Jen Sweeney, born Lisa Joy Reavis, illuminated at the foot of the stairs by a flash of lightning from the storm beyond. She followed the path we’d taken and vanished into the blackness of the night.
* * *
* * *
Someone—it sounded like Mort—was banging on the door at the top of the stairs from the inside. Jen must have jammed it somehow, trapping Mort and the other officers within.
“Jessica!” I heard him cry out as I rattled the knob.
“What happened to ‘Mrs. F.’?”
“Just open the door!”
I rattled it again. “I can’t. It’s locked. And since you’re currently indisposed—”
“Don’t say it, Jessica!”
“—I’m going after Jen Sweeney.”
* * *
* * *
She’d left the heavy door to the lighthouse open, as if she wanted me to follow her up the narrow, spiraling steel staircase. I could see that the door at the top accessing the lantern room itself was open, too, and in the distance, I heard the oncoming ship’s foghorn blaring in a more rapid and desperate fashion than moments earlier.
I spiraled up the steep stairs until I came to the lantern room, where Maddie Demerest, formerly Reavis, was strung to the massive Fresnel lens with some kind of wire, and was irradiated by the flashes of lightning that pierced the night. Her daughter Lisa Joy, the woman I knew as Jen Sweeney, stood just to her side, a squarish pistol of some kind pressed against the side of Maddie’s head.
“I guess this means you’re not coming for Career Day, Mrs. Fletcher,” she managed, flashing a smile bred of pure evil and hatred.
“You don’t have to do this,
Lisa Joy,” I said. “Your secret’s out. There’s no reason to take another life.”
“Let her,” her mother rasped. “Doesn’t make any difference anyway. She’ll be doing me a favor.”
The ship’s foghorn blared louder still, sounding as if it was virtually upon us.
“You must’ve been to my house,” Lisa Joy Reavis said, her eyes wide but empty. “Did you like my lighthouse collection?”
“I don’t think this one would fit on your coffee table,” I told her. “Now let your mother go.”
“I can’t, Mrs. Fletcher. I have to complete the circle. People will be talking about the tragedy of the Reavis family for years, how they were all murdered. Guess my brother was the lucky one, since he got to die in the war.”
“You need help, Lisa Joy. Let me help you.”
“Would you ever use such a lame line in your books?”
“I suppose not, but this isn’t one of them.”
She pressed the barrel tighter against her mother’s temple, giving me the opportunity to draw inside the doorway. “Ever create a villain like me?”
“Not quite, no. My villains tend not to be psychopaths. They don’t enjoy killing nearly as much as you do.”
Lisa Joy Reavis narrowed her gaze. “Trying to get a rise out of me, Mrs. Fletcher?”
“Let your mother go, Lisa Joy. You and I can finish this alone.”
She aimed the gun my way. “You want me to shoot you instead? You can make that deal if you want.”
“I don’t have to. You need me to live to tell the story of all this—a story far more incredible than anything I’ve ever made up.”
“Going all the way back twenty-five years to my father’s murder. I might have killed him if Alma Potts hadn’t beaten me to it. She saved me the trouble.”
“Where’d you come up with the butane idea?”
Her eyes narrowed, looking almost playful. “What, you think that was my first? You underestimate me, Mrs. Fletcher.”
A chill coursed up my spine. “Why do you do it, Lisa Joy?”
“Why do you write?”
“Because I enjoy it.”
“There you go.”
I looked toward Maddie Demerest and met her milky gaze, which looked sharper than it had just a moment earlier. I finally noticed her upper body was lashed to the huge light, but her legs were free. She wiggled her slippered feet as if to draw my attention to that fact, her presence seemingly forgotten by her daughter, who now focused solely on me.
“How many more murders were there?”
She winked. “I’ll never tell. Ask my sister. Oh, that’s right. You can’t, because I killed her, along with that snoop Wilma Tisdale. Once you and my mother are both dead, too, I can go on my way and become somebody else again.”
“Kill me and who’s going to tell your story?”
“Think you can do me justice?”
“I doubt anyone can,” I said.
That’s when Maddie kicked out with both legs, dual thuds landing on her daughter’s back, which pitched Lisa Joy forward. The pistol, gone from her grasp, skittered across the floor, glinting briefly in a fresh flash of lightning that illuminated the massive ship bearing down on the coastline, still desperately blaring its foghorn. Lisa went for the gun, forgetting about me in that moment, which allowed me to pounce.
She was about the same height as me, but younger and stronger. She shoved me backward as she tried to kick my legs out. I managed to avoid the sweep of her legs, backpedaling through the door onto the landing beyond as we continued to struggle. Lisa Joy spotted the pistol within easy range, but as she went for it, I twisted her around toward the stairs and shoved myself against her. I tensed for the impact I knew was coming as we pitched over onto the iron stairwell, and tumbled down with our positions alternately reversing. I felt each thump and bump on my back, legs, and head; some sharp edges tore at my clothes and skin.
At the bottom, our momentum carried us through the door and out into the storm. Lisa got the better of me, regaining her feet ahead of me and striking me hard on the shoulder and the stomach, the latter blow stealing my wind. I felt myself hit the rocky ground, smelled the wet undergrowth, and twisted around on my back to see Lisa Joy with a huge rock held overhead in both hands.
“Too bad, Mrs. Fletcher. My story would’ve been a bestseller for sure.”
The foghorn blared again in a deafening fashion, and Lisa Joy Reavis twisted to see a massive freighter crashing over the rocks and mounting the shoreline, heading straight for us. I just managed to roll aside as its dented bow crested the shore and surged forward, as if the ship were on wheels. The woman I knew as Jen Sweeney tried to dive aside, her hateful eyes rooted on me when she stumbled and nearly lost her balance.
The ship rose over Lisa Joy Reavis, dwarfing her in its shadow before swallowing her altogether en route to crashing into the Portland Head Lighthouse and sending a shower of rubble into the air to mix with the pelting rain. The entire structure seemed to waver before breaking apart. I rolled and then scampered away, barely managing to avoid the biggest chunks of the crumbling structure.
The ship finally ground to a squealing, earth-ripping halt smack-dab in the middle of the lighthouse structure. I saw no sign of Lisa Joy Reavis, aka Jen Sweeney, and pictured her entombed by the rubble. But enough of the stairwell was intact for me to mount the stairs, which quaked under my weight, and climb them as quickly as I dared.
At the top, Maddie Demerest lay on the floor of the lantern room, her frame perched over the top edge of the wavering stairwell, which had been torn loose from its mounts. She was only semiconscious when I reached her.
“Maddie, Maddie!” I cried, shaking her lightly, but she barely stirred.
I had no choice but to take her in my grasp atop the precarious perch outside the lantern room, because the lighthouse structure seemed to be disintegrating around us. A quick glance downward through the spray of the freighter’s deck lamps revealed the front-most portion of its bow literally inside the lower levels of the structure, having embedded itself there after crashing through, its now barely recognizable name stretched across the near side of the bow. I heard panicked voices intermixed with the now scratchy, deafening blare of the foghorn, which had stubbornly clung to life.
I started down the spiraling stairs, leaving it to sway one way and back the other. It came to rest at an awkward angle beneath the lantern room and the watch room immediately beneath it, where fuel, supplies, and replacement bulbs had been stored in previous eras. Today the room was empty, save for what looked like a heavy, coiled rope that I assumed must have been the old-time version of an escape ladder.
With the iron stairs no longer secure enough to trust, I realized that rope might be my only chance to escape before the entire Portland Head Lighthouse collapsed around us. I couldn’t go without Maddie Demerest, though; nor could I risk her deadweight causing both of us to fall to our deaths. So I slapped her across the face.
“Listen to me!” I blared, holding her by the shoulders when her eyes snapped alert. “If you want to die here, tell me now so you don’t kill me, too. What’s it gonna be, Maddie?”
“Help me,” she managed, pleading. “Please.”
“You need to hold on yourself so I can get that rope in there. Can you do that, Maddie?”
She nodded and eased out of my grasp. Then Maddie wrapped her arms around the nearest step of the teetering iron stairs, freeing me to push myself far enough into the watch room to grab hold of the rope. With the storm and the freighter’s deck lamps cutting through the night and providing all the light I needed, I reached up and looped the rope through a hole in the mount where the stairs had broken free and tied it tight, using a nautical knot I’d learned from research for a book whose title escaped me at that moment. Then I dropped the rope downward and watched it scrape the freighter’s sharply angled bow and then
dangle all the way to the rubble now composing the lighthouse floor.
If I’d thought any further about what I needed to do next, I might not have done it at all.
“Hold on, Maddie,” I told the woman, who now seemed desperately to want to live. “Hold on tight!”
She clung to me, closing her eyes. I doubt she weighed more than a hundred pounds—a godsend in this case, since I was able to hold fast to the rope and start our descent while she dug her fingers so tightly into me, I thought my skin might tear. Rubble from the lighthouse’s circular roof was falling, grazing me and leaving the residue of stinging pain in its wake. I felt I could handle anything other than a direct blow to the head. I was also fearful that that kind of impact to Maddie would force her to let go of me and likely plunge to her death.
Around the halfway point, I thought I heard the entire structure creak, seeming to sway around me. The rope started to swing from side to side, driving us up against one side of the lighthouse and then the other; each impact was more stunning than the last. I looked up to see the mount through which I’d fastened the rope starting to break free. Not fancying the idea of a thirty-foot drop, I glanced down, chancing the queasy flutter that passed through my stomach.
The sway of the rope carried us over the peak of the freighter’s deck, not much of a target but all Maddie and I had right now if we were going to survive this intact.
“Get ready to let go, Maddie!” I told her. “Get ready to let go when I tell you!”
She nodded her understanding. I could feel the rope beginning to break free above, and I knew we had just seconds left before we plunged downward. I struggled to manipulate the rope’s sway, turning it so it carried us over the ship’s deck before rocking us back in the other direction. The timing of what I needed to do next had to be perfect; there was no margin for error at all.
Murder, She Wrote--A Time for Murder Page 24