Brennan nodded. “I thought you might say that.”
Swish.
chapter
thirty-one
running
Eighty-eight miles to Austin. Eighty-eight miles to Levi. Eighty-eight miles between me and my mother.
“I’m not running away.” That’s what I’d told Levi on the phone last night, listening to my mother humming in the kitchen like nothing had changed. And it hadn’t. Not really. That was the unnerving part. Clare Bronwyn acted as if she hadn’t unzipped her small-town mom costume and emerged as someone entirely new—Clare Keely. Someone a little whacked and very broken. That much I knew.
“Are you sure about that?” he’d asked. “I want to see you, Sam—you know I do—but don’t you think you should work things out with your mom before you leave for college in September? You’ve only got a couple weeks left.” Less, really, since I had to report early for fall practice, but I kept that to myself.
“It’s gonna take more than a week, Levi. Or two. Or three. It’s a long-term project.” I joked, but it hurt. “And she’s sort of in denial about it all. I guess she always was. She wouldn’t let me watch the news—not even when they interviewed Ginny.” Of course Ginny emailed me a link to the video, evidence of her newfound stardom. With my mom asleep in the next room, I’d watched under the covers as Ginny fielded questions about her brush with death that started in an airport bathroom, when Marco rendered her unconscious with a mouthful of ether and wheeled her out with the trash to Cullen’s waiting arms. The camera loved Ginny, even with the scar on her cheek. And she loved it back.
Levi chuckled. “Leave it to Ginny to make kidnapping sound glamorous.”
But I didn’t laugh. “Cullen’s still out there, you know.” They’d found the big rig abandoned a few miles from Green River Trucking. Empty, of course.
“I know. But you can’t live your life looking over your shoulder. I learned that the hard way. It almost cost me my freedom … my sister’s freedom … everything.” With all his inadvertent heroics, Levi had gotten off with a slap on the wrist—community service, and his sister exchanged jail time for a drug diversion program.
“Exactly. It’s all about the windshield. No rearview.” I’d stolen the line from one of my graduation cards, and my delivery sounded pretty convincing. But Cutthroat knew how to tug at me, how to whisper in my ear. Time to meet dear old dad.
“Alright,” Levi relented. “Get your cute butt down here then.”
As I drove, I peeked at my reflection, reassuring myself. Still Samantha. I’d been doing that lately. Studying the blue in my eyes, the way it changed sometimes. From blue to gray, depending on the light. Those eyes were his. But what else?
Up ahead of me, the road laid out like a blank canvas, stretched to the horizon. Past it, turns and hills and dead ends I couldn’t see. Not from here. But I didn’t stop. Didn’t slow down. I drove toward it.
august 24, 2016
Clare ran fast, kicking up dust behind her, relishing the breathlessness that came with the hard push up the hill just past their house. Her lungs burned, but she liked it. She felt alive. Strong. Maybe even fierce. Not bad for her mid-forties. She stopped at the top to watch the sun dip just below the horizon, the Texas summer dying its usual prolonged death. On the way back down, she let her tired mind wander. Like an old dog, it always stopped at the same places—Samantha, Rodney, Cullen—and sniffed around a little before coming back home.
Just after dawn that morning, Sam had hustled out the door, a backpack slung over her shoulder. A quick rendezvous with Levi before her big first day at Baylor. But Sam scoffed at that word. It’s not a rendezvous, Mom. Rendezvous happen in Paris, not Austin. And we’re not even officially dating. “Yet,” Clare added, and Sam laughed, overwhelming her with relief—her daughter still loved her in spite of all her colossal screw-ups—marveling as she watched her go. Of all the things she’d gotten wrong, this one thing, the most important one, she’d done right.
Then she thought of the last day at San Quentin. A well-worn memory from a lifetime ago. Outfitted in that army-green officer’s jumpsuit, his hand on the door, Cullen had turned to her with urgency. “There’s something I have to tell you,” he’d said. “It’s important.” Even now, her panic felt fresh, as if it only just happened. Like seeing him tied to the tracks while they shook with the weight of an oncoming train.
“I haven’t been totally honest with you about my family.” She could see the train now, hear it too. “And whatever comes after this, I don’t want to start it with a lie.”
She’d silenced him then with a finger to his lips. “Tell me after. Later.” Because it wouldn’t change anything. That train would come whether she liked it or not, severing him in two, and knowing would only make it harder to let him go.
Shaking off her regret, Clare slowed her stride, the house in view. Lit from within, the windows winked at her, inviting her back to the life she’d created from scratch. A good life. Hers. But another memory, a new memory flooded in. One she turned and turned like a stone in the garden. Underneath it, worms and rot and reckoning. But good things too. Signs of life.
Before Torres’ men had arrived, before the EME had unleashed the wrath of hell, before she’d fired the shot that ended McKinnon, Cullen had smirked at her. Yeah, well that’s obvious. She looks just like me, he’d said. Pushing the hair back from her face, he’d stopped being angry, twirling one tendril and setting her heart spinning like a child’s top. Lacing his fingers with hers. Red on red with the blood they’d spilled together. The cord to the past severed by her own hand, setting her loose in a world without Rodney Taylor.
She recounted the way Cullen leaned toward her and she to him, until the space between them had felt combustible. Until he’d threatened to reignite that ancient part of herself that went cold when she’d sworn off men, sworn off this feeling. So close she’d seen her own reflection in those gray-blue pools. And somewhere in the eyes that claimed her, she’d found a revelation to rival any of Doctor Keely’s mediocre insights. Love and murder. Two sides of the same bent penny, both a kind of possession. But Clare couldn’t let herself be possessed. Not anymore.
She picked out fireflies in the semi-darkness, as she headed up the gravel driveway, punch-drunk with a newfound freedom. The same kind of freedom Cullen had now. Wherever he was. She’d given him that much at least. No more, no less than what she’d taken for herself. The delicate kind of freedom that’s as easily snapped as a wishbone. As false as that old dog collared to a long chain. No matter how fast it ran, it would always end up the same, throttled by the neck. A sad and sudden ache bloomed in her chest, slowing her steps until she realized and stopped cold.
The front door was cracked open—not the way she’d left it—just the screen rattling in the breeze. On the step, a yellow chrysanthemum and a note. She picked up the flower and brought it to her face, inhaling the crisp scent of it. A shiver, delicious and terrifying, slithered down her back. Her hands trembled. Blood rushed to her head like the swell of the ocean, and she held on for fear she might fall. With no one to hear her, she read the note in a hushed whisper anyway.
Clare, come find me.
Now that you’ve finished Daddy Darkest, please consider leaving a review. Reviews and star-ratings may not seem that important, but to an up-and-coming author, they are essential. They help readers like you discover my books! And they give an author a little “street cred” for those browsing for their next read. So what’s the best way to feed an author?
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acknowledgments
Daddy Darkest would not be so deliciously dark without the talents of the amazing AnnCastro Studio team—Ann Castro and Emily Dings—who provided all editing services for the book, including developmental editing, manuscript evaluation, line editing, co
pyediting, and proofing, and Giovanni Auriemma—who gave life to my imaginings and created a cover that nightmares are made of.
We all have a space inside us that we keep hidden from the world, a space we protect at all costs. So many people have allowed me a glimpse inside theirs—dark deeds, memories best unrecalled, pain that cracks from the inside out—without expectation of anything in return. I couldn’t have written this book without them.
And to all the shrewd, empathic, and insightful psychologists I know, the redeeming parts of Dr. Keely come from you.
THE
HANGING
TREE
THE HANGING TREE © 2018, Ellery A. Kane. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage/database system and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without prior permission in writing from the author, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.
Cover Design:
Giovanni Auriemma
Book Developmental Editing/Manuscript Evaluation:
Ann Castro
Line Editing/Proofing:
AnnCastro Studio with Ann Castro and Emily Dings
Interior Design:
Mallory Rock and Melissa Stevens with Rock Solid Book Design
This book is a work of fiction. Places, events, and situations in this book are purely fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The Hanging Tree contains adult themes and is recommended for a mature audience.
For Gar
My partner in crime
“Try to touch the past. Try to deal with the past. It’s not real. It’s just a dream.”
—Ted Bundy
Chapter
One
Evie
January 13, 2017
Friday
From the window in office 23B, I have a perfect view of the hanging tree. That’s what I call it—only to myself, never out loud—even though I’m fairly certain no one ever hung themselves or anybody else from the oak’s gnarled limbs. They stretch up and out like an old man’s arthritic fingers, thin and gray at the tips. Surely, they’d snap like bird bones under the weight of a body.
Every morning before my 9 a.m. group arrives, I put myself in the exact place, rolling my chair to the well-worn indentions in the carpet that offer me the best, unobstructed view of the tree. From this spot, my clients can never tell I’m looking just over their shoulders at the place where those dark branches scrape the sky. And beyond, to the small, sad patch of weedy grass where it grows.
“Did you hear what happened there?” I’d asked the realtor, pointing with accusation at the tree when she’d shown me the office space years ago. Perfect for an upstart professional, according to the ad on Craigslist. That was me then—upstart, professional. Now, I was fast-tracking it to forty. Four more years and I’d have outlived my mother by a decade. I’d already lived nearly three times that without my dad. To be expected, I suppose, when your parents meet outside a methadone clinic in the Tenderloin.
“No. What happened?” Underneath her not-so-blonde roots and Botoxed wrinkles, the realtor had the face of a teenage girl stricken with morbid curiosity. The kind of girl I’d spent my entire adolescence simultaneously worshipping and loathing. The kind of girl who wouldn’t have been caught dead talking to Evil Evie (that’s me). She leaned in so close I caught a whiff of minty toothpaste. “Tell me.” Her voice breathy, almost aroused.
And I did. The thing she couldn’t possibly have known, the thing I’d never told anyone else. Because I had the inexplicable urge to please her. And silence her. This woman I’d met once and hadn’t known at all. “Someone died there. A murder.” I’d watched her face contort at the word. Listened to her gasp. It had satisfied me like I’d been waiting my whole life to say it.
“Who?” she’d asked, and my insides curdled. “When?”
I should’ve known there would be questions. Questions I didn’t want to answer. Questions that loomed so large over my whole life, they cast a shadow I couldn’t shake.
“I’ll take it,” I’d said, suddenly wishing I could snatch the keys from her and run.
“Huh?”
“The office. I’ll take it.”
“Oh. Are you sure? There are some other spaces I can show you.” Her eyes had seemed to judge me, making me feel twelve again.
Evil Evie stares right through me. Her eyes could kill with just one lookie. Evil Evie, please don’t touch me. You are creepy, creepy, CREEPY!
“That tree is a little spooky. I’d understand if you—”
“I like it.” And with that, she didn’t say anything else. A good thing, because I might’ve told her the whole truth about that night at the hanging tree. That I had been there. That I’d watched it happen. That it had been my fault. And that I need to see it every day to remind myself what’s at stake if I get it wrong again.
****
Today, the tree looks positively nightmarish. It stares back at me from the dead of winter and the gloom of a cold, steady rain. Below its canopy, blowing in the wind, one of its brittle fingers amputated. A gust carries the small branch across the grass until I can no longer see it. At 9:01 a.m., New Guy clears his throat while the others watch him, territorial, sniffing him out like a pack of dogs. I print a word on the whiteboard behind me and face the circle, the men there.
“Intimacy,” I say.
New Guy twitters, then puts a hand over his mouth, embarrassed. His bleary eyes flit up at me. Then down again. Someone hasn’t been sleeping. I notice, because that’s my job. To notice everything. To notice and make meaning.
“That’s our topic for today. Healthy intimacy. What is it? And how do we get there? But first, introductions. We have a new member joining our group.” I gesture to George, the veteran among them, and the only one who’s here because he wants to be. He’s been coming to my Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays since I hung the sign on my door, claiming it as my own. Doctor Evelyn Maddox. “Go ahead. You know the drill.”
George nods, solemn. He reminds me of a grandfather. Not mine, per se, because I never met either one of them. But someone’s. With a kind face that’s been softened by time. He’d let you eat all the candy you wanted and get away with anything, and he’d play with you. Hide and seek. Piggyback rides. You name it. Like a big kid himself. And he was. That was his weapon. “Well, alright. I’ll go first, Dr. Evie. My name is George, and I’m here because I molested my neighbor’s little girl. She was six.”
“And?”
George has the look of a scolded puppy, and I almost feel sorry for him. Another one of his weapons, and I can’t forget that. Remembering—that’s my job too. “And I touched three other little girls, two I didn’t get caught for. I served ten years in the pen, and I’ve been coming to this group since—”
“We don’t need your whole goddamn life story,” Vince interrupts. “Can’t we just get on with it?”
Not for the first time and not likely the last, I feel the urge to throttle him. Or at the very least, to hurl the marker, cap off, at the lapel of his fancy suit. “Canali,” he’d bragged to us last week. “Cost me…well, your weekly salary. Sorry, Doc.”
I’d squeezed the marker between my fingers until my knuckles whitened. Using my feelings is another part of my job. But you can’t use what you can’t control. When I look up, New Guy is watching me. He turns his head so quickly, I know I’ve caught him. “If you can’t be respectful to the other members of the group, Vince, I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“Ha!” Scorn drips from Vince’s lips, down his per
fectly trimmed goatee, his blue eyes equal parts ice and heat. “I should be so lucky. I’m Vince Kincaid. And the only reason I’m here is some wannabe Chris Hansen moron in IT found porn on my work laptop when I took it in for service. He probably thought they were gonna give him a medal. Or at least a promotion. Those guys in IT don’t make half—”
“What kind of porn?” It’s necessary, my interruption, but it feels good too. To jab him like that. New Guy smirks, barely, but I notice. Of course, I do. And I start to feel uneasy. Like he knows what I’m thinking.
“C’mon,” Vince groans. “I had no idea that was on there. It’s not like I went looking for it. Do you really think I’m stupid enough to type sex with teen girls into Google? Puh-lease. Give me some credit. I’ve got a freakin’ MBA. Magna cum laude too.”
Who’s telling his life story now? I don’t say that though. I just nod. Vince’s distortions are nothing new. Nothing I haven’t seen before. And when you get right down to it, reality is debatable, elusive. It’s all a matter of perspective, even for a jerk like Vince. “Tony, go ahead.”
Tony barely looks up, eyes fixed on his work boots. The words, when they finally come, seem to drain something essential from him. It’s always this way. “Antonio Estrada. I’m innocent.”
“What were you convicted of?” I ask, trying to hide my mental teeth grinding.
“PC 288. Lewd and Lascivious.”
“And your victim?”
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 33