Aftermath

by George Weinstein

  Ears buzzing again, I somehow kept my balance. Cade sprawled on the hardwood nearby, left hand pressing against the blood-spattered leather covering his right shoulder. As I dropped to my knees, David swung his pistol in my direction but held his fire. I laid my broken forearm in my lap, hissing at the pain, and put my left hand on top of his to push down harder.

  David hurried over and snatched up Cade’s weapon. “Okay,” he said to me, “I think I can use this. You were anticipating his outrage and waiting here with my gun. He comes at you, and you wing him before he disarms you, breaking bones in the process. Still, you reach for my fallen pistol, but he draws his first and kills you and then Bebe, who heard all the gunfire and came running. Now he’s murdered not just one of his lovers but both of them, so he kills himself.” He gave me a self-satisfied smile and asked, “What do you—”

  The sound of wood sliding on wood interrupted him. Someone had found the switch for the pocket door. The author aimed both pistols toward the hall. “Christ, now what?”

  “It’s my deputies,” Cade said through clenched teeth.

  “Bullshit.”

  An electronic hum sounded from the writing room, which gradually darkened as blinds slid into place over the huge panels of glass. Still applying pressure to Cade’s wound, I thought about poor, conflicted Bebe. She’d tried a couple of things to help us, and I was betting there had been a third and final gambit. If it failed as well, we’d soon be dead. I swiveled my gaze to focus on the sunlight streaming through the office windows and then caught David’s eye.

  David said, “Yeah, two can play at that game.” He looked toward the hall, and I knew what he was thinking: to make our room dark as well and even the odds, he’d have to cross the line of fire. “Janet, pull the shades.”

  “But Cade needs—”

  He aimed at Cade’s head. “Do it or he won’t be needing anything but a eulogy.”

  I struggled to get to my feet without jostling my broken arm. Cradling it again with my left, I mentally said a “Please don’t shoot me” prayer as I crossed in front of the open doorway. It was impossible to ignore Bebe’s body, face down, at the threshold to the writing space. One blue shoe lay in the hall, and the sight of her pale, bare foot broke my heart all over again.

  At the windows, I drew one shade, which dimmed the room somewhat. The shotgun was propped upright against the exterior door. Certain David was watching me, I made a big show of studying it.

  He drawled, “Don’t even try, darling. Remember, it’s the chief here who’ll catch the first bullet, square in the face, and then I’ll gut-shoot you so I still have a bargaining chip. With you wailing like a banshee from the pain, it’ll be a fast negotiation.”

  I made a wide arc around the shotgun. For the second shade, I pulled it down slowly, allowing the office to get darker by degrees. Trying for maximum drama, I kept glancing between David and the nearby weapon.

  As the room was cast into gloom, he shouted, “Okay, get away from there.” I didn’t, and he took a couple of steps toward me, pistol aimed. “Do it, goddammit.”

  Then I saw something even better than I’d hoped for, what Bebe had made possible with her last bit of deceit. A shimmering laser dot of red appeared on David’s plaid jacket at stomach-level and moved rapidly toward his chest.

  At that moment, he seemed to remember the threat in the other room and turned that way as a pistol crack resounded from the writing space. A bloody, quarter-sized hole appeared in his coat, below his heart. He toppled backward into a filing cabinet and crumpled to the floor.

  “You got him, Tara,” I shouted. “Hold your fire.”

  “No problem,” came the reply from the next room. I imagined her watching me through her father’s night vision goggles, still clutching the laser-sighted pistol she must’ve taken from my gun vault. Which meant she’d lied about not having my keys. Tough to hold it against her. Bebe had done an even better job of lying—though she would’ve called it acting—to convince all of us that Tara was dead. Her final gambit had paid off.

  David peered at me. His narrow, iconic glasses were askew, and blood bubbled on his lips. He looked like he wanted to make a final pronouncement, some famous last words, while he clawed the hardwood. His gloved fingers closed around one of the dropped pistols.

  I snatched up the other pistol with my left hand and swung it around as he aimed at me. Mad, sad, glad, scared. Somehow, I felt all of them at the same time when I pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 25

  “Aren’t we a pair?” I asked Cade in the patient lounge of the county hospital late that night. Along with Tim and Tara, we slouched in a ring of upholstered chairs, which surrounded a low table where vending-machine coffee steamed in paper cups. Cade and I both wore our right arms in slings. My fingers had been stitched and taped, and a splint held my forearm in place. Fortunately, I’d just broken the ulna, not the radius as well. Cade had undergone surgery to patch the wound to his shoulder.

  “We could be,” he replied. He looked like he meant it.

  “Whoa, Chief,” Tim said in a louder, more confident voice than usual. “I thought this was a place for holding a vigil, not a pick-up spot.”

  “Yeah, no, totally,” Tara said, twining a raspberry-dyed lock of hair around her finger as she gazed at Tim. “So, they’ve been operating, like, forever on Bebe. You think they’re doing other things to her, you know, sort of getting it all out of the way at once? A boob reduction maybe? What? The girl’s really top-heavy. I’m just saying.”

  The problem with Tara was she did enough brave, brilliant things to force me to forgive the antics that were just plain wrong. Tim grinned and shook his head. He seemed to find everything about her to be guileless and charming—the guy was falling hard. They both were.

  After Tara had called 911 at David’s house, I’d recited Tim’s number to her from memory so he and Mr. Pearson would know what had happened. They arrived at the hospital ahead of us, Tim stayed on, and he and Tara had bonded during the long hours while Cade and I were getting fixed up. She’d even talked him into taking a cab with her back to Graylee, hiking to the slushy pine grove, and retrieving my things from the stranded Jaguar. He ruined his dress shoes, but came back to the hospital a new man, chattering away as they held hands.

  They’d found me resting in the lounge and deposited an armload of items beside me. There were no electrical outlets nearby, so I’d plugged my phone into the emergency charger, more out of habit than a desire to reconnect with the outside world. My interior world had been in turmoil since I pulled the trigger.

  I’d killed a man. While I’d been careful to avoid looking directly at David’s body, I could still feel the recoil through my left arm and conjure the explosive boom. His dried blood flecked my slacks and boots. At the time, I thought I was defending myself and even avenging my brother, but afterward I felt as if he’d forced me to do it, so I would corrupt a piece of my soul.

  Cade’s soft drawl drew me back to the present. “It gets easier to live with. Time heals.”

  Somehow he knew. I wondered if my face reflected the same haunted look I’d seen in his when he’d driven me to my father’s house that first time. There should’ve been something glorious when you not only confronted evil but destroyed it. However, I now realized what Cade had told me was true: no matter how complete your victory, some of the darkness will touch you. And leave scars. Maybe the three people seated there would always remind me of that darkness; maybe all of Graylee would affect me that way until I followed my mother’s course of action and fled.

  In answer to the police chief, I said only, “I hope so.”

  Tim and Tara had been staring at their phones during the slightest conversational lull for hours now. It seemed like a good distraction, but I couldn’t lose myself in my New York friends’ Christmas Eve postings and texts. While I cared about their lives, I was too far removed from them
emotionally now, as well as physically.

  I wondered how many of those old friends I would bother to trade pleasantries with in a year’s time. My life already had taken such a radically different trajectory. Despite their sophistication and witty banter, their knowledge of wines and fashion, the countless times we had laughed together and shared in each other’s triumphs and disasters, I realized I felt a much deeper bond with my brand new Graylee friends. We were survivors of the same war.

  When I looked at Tim, Tara, and Cade, I saw three courageous people who had my back. Rather than merely remind me of the darkness, they could help me keep it at bay. Together, we could make Graylee a special place to live.

  Squeaky wheels in the hallway announced the arrival of an orderly. He stuck his head through the doorway. “Y’all ain’t supposed to be in here. Visiting hours—”

  In unison, Tara, Tim, and I pointed at Cade, who raised his badge high in his left hand.

  Immediately the guy put up his arms, as if surrendering. “Hey, it’s cool. Second shift didn’t tell me the five-oh was on a stakeout.” In a solemn voice he said, “Y’all have a blessed day and a merry Christmas.” The squeak of wheels diminished as he pushed his cart down the hall.

  Tim checked his phone. “The dude’s right—it’s officially Christmas morning.” He asked me, “Got any plans?”

  “All my spare clothes are at the crime scene, so I guess I’m going to spend the day in my own bed for a change.” I realized how that sounded out of context and blushed. Adding “alone” to clarify things wouldn’t help, especially with Cade staring at me and Tara whispering in singsong, “Awkward,” so I simply drank some coffee and looked at the police chief. “You?”

  “New case file to work on, obviously. If Bebe pulls through, I’ll have to charge her as an accessory to the murders of your daddy and Wallace Landry and have the sheriff put a guard on her door here. The county prosecutor might go easy, given her last-minute help, but you never know.”

  He rubbed his baggy, bloodshot eyes. “Also, I’ve got to come up with a story to feed the media. The world will want to know what happened to one of their favorite writers. B.J. and J.D. have been giving out the usual ‘investigation in progress’ line, but that’s not going to work much longer. Anytime now, some reporter’s going to get word about Bebe and show up here with a cameraman.” Making a circle with his left hand to encompass all of us, he said, “We’re going to be in the spotlight for a while.”

  “Not only that,” Tim said, “but somebody like Cindy Dwyer will start talking to the press, and then the whole story will get out. I can see the headline in People: ‘A Small Town’s Shame.’”

  He was right—the victims and their families soon would be thrust into the glare, no matter what I did now. However, if I didn’t try to do anything more but just let the feeding frenzy run its course, I wouldn’t be responsible merely for killing David Stark—I would kill all of Graylee. I told Cade, “When I launch a truth and reconciliation commission to help people start to come together, the media will make it especially ugly for you. Lots of finger-pointing and questions to answer.”

  “I deserve it,” he said. He brought his left wrist close to the sling so he could use the fingers of his right hand to remove the sleek, expensive watch. Then he dropped it onto the linoleum and stomped down, crushing it under his boot heel. The sudden violence made me jump, and I anticipated an embarrassed apology from him, but he kept his face lowered and rocked his foot side to side, grinding the pieces into ever-smaller bits. Maybe he finally was coming to grips with how much he’d allowed himself to be corrupted and the pain he’d now have to endure to make amends. Taking a bullet might prove to be the least of it.

  My initial impulse was to reassure him, connect with him physically, make myself indispensable in his journey back to honor and righteousness. Here’s a guy who wants you, said the scared voice that had been my constant guide on all matters related to the opposite sex. Make sure he doesn’t get away. It was that or face the Horsewomen again with their condemnations and prophecies. Lonely. Abandoned. Unattractive. Unloved. Right?

  Wrong.

  I’d gone six months without a man and thought I could go six years or sixteen if I wanted to. In the past few days, I’d finally come into my own. I had embarked on a quest that turned into a purpose, a reason for being. Not only had I made a difference, but now I could do even more that mattered.

  Perhaps Cade continued his hospital vigil in part because he still had feelings for Bebe. Or, possibly, he only was interested in me romantically. Until I decided I was genuinely interested in him, though—and not merely giving in to my fears—I didn’t care either way. There was real freedom in vowing never to be needy again.

  Cade cleaned up his mess as best he could with one arm in a sling, dumped the watch fragments into a trashcan, and slumped again beside me. Since he was on my right, I couldn’t pat his knee, so I nudged his boot with the toe of mine. That was as much contact as I wanted to commit to for the moment, and his smile told me he was grateful to get it.

  Obviously trying to lighten the mood, Tim said, “Hey, Janet, after you’ve got everybody in Graylee healed through the power of story and shared tears, and we’re all singing ‘Kumbaya’ together, what are you going to do? Run your businesses? Run for mayor? Wander from town to town fixing their problems like some kind of TV hero?”

  His snarky “power of story” comment reminded me of David Stark’s quip that I would never know the satisfaction of creating the ideal end to a tale, “that bit of writing bliss.” The natural follow-up to my truth and reconciliation commission would be something that connected my mother and brother’s tragic journeys with the scandal of the so-called scholarships—and how the knots of a seemingly perfect crime came undone.

  “I’m going to write a book about all this,” I said, “seeing as how Graylee now has an opening for the job of best-selling author.”

  Tara asked, “Seriously? What are you going to, like, call it?”

  “Aftermath.”

  SPECIAL OFFER TO READERS OF AFTERMATH

  I find it impossible to adequately express my gratitude to readers of my books. There are so many other ways you can spend your precious time and money, so I am humbled whenever anyone selects my work for entertainment and hopefully—borrowing from David Stark—to feel genuine, deep-down, real emotions.

  Without readers, writers are superfluous. Without readers’ reactions, writers can’t know whether they succeeded in their purpose, and other readers won’t have guidance about whether a book is likely to suit their tastes. To encourage you to share your reaction to Aftermath with me and fellow readers, I propose a two-for-one trade: two more pieces of Janet’s story (before and after Aftermath) in return for your public feedback about the novel.

  If you will post your review of Aftermath on Amazon.com or Goodreads.com and e-mail the URL (web link) of your review to me at GeorgeWeinstein@Gmail.com, I will send you electronic versions of the Prologue—when Janet is five years old and her mother chooses to flee Graylee with Janet and Brady Jr.—and the Epilogue, set a year after the conclusion of the novel, with Cade, Tim, Tara, Bebe, and a new mystery for Janet to solve.

  Thank you in advance for sharing your comments with other book lovers and with me. I hope you also will enjoy the adventures of Janet Wright at ages five and forty-one!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Feedback from my critique partners helped me to improve the prose, develop the characters, better define the settings, and (hopefully) correct any errors. It’s a privilege and an honor to share my work with such talented writers and insightful readers.

  The reason Aftermath exists again in new-book form—and not merely as a tattered used book in its lurid old version—is because of the top-notch team at SFK Press. Thanks for resurrecting my backlist, y’all!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  George Weinstein is the aut
hor of an eclectic array of novels, including the Southern mystery Aftermath and the Southern historical novel Hardscrabble Road. A popular speaker with book clubs and at literary events, George is fond of telling readers the stories behind the stories and providing writers with advice he wished he had received when he embarked on his so-called writing career in 2000. Information about his books, novel excerpts, endorsements and reviews, book club questions, and more ephemera than you could conceivably care about are available on: www.GeorgeWeinstein.com.

  His work has been published in the Atlanta press and in regional and national anthologies, including A Cup of Comfort for Writers. He is the former President of the Atlanta Writers Club (AWC)—www.AtlantaWritersClub.org—and former everything-else there, too. Having run out of term-limited positions for him, the AWC Board in 2012 bestowed on George the lifetime title of Officer Emeritus, which means he can never leave. Not that he would, but it’s nice to be wanted. George also holds the lifetime title of Atlanta Writers Conference Director and manages two conferences each year for the AWC, to give writers access to acquisition editors, top literary agents, and other industry professionals. For details about these conferences, go to www.AtlantaWritersConference.com.

  George lives with his wife—whom he courted with love letters, natch—and their furry, four-legged children in Roswell, GA.

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