Chapter 43
CHAPTER 43
MONDAY, EARLY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 25
T he familiar swoosh of the back slider gave way to the shuffling steps that radiated through the floorboards above us. Someone had arrived. Was it the police? Had Jane finally alerted them? They’d come for a kidnapper, but what they’d get was a killer. The realization sent blood surging through me. I couldn’t stop shaking.
“Down here,” Mary yelled, her voice surprisingly strong for a woman in her eighties who’d been through everything she had in the past few hours.
Something about the ragged pounding of feet on the staircase made me doubt the presence of police officers. When the hazy early-morning light revealed the fit outline and sandy blond hair of the man I’d thought of as Matt, my eyes widened, and my jaw dropped.
“Tyler?” asked Annie, incredulous. “We thought you were dead.”
“Tim told us you drowned,” I added, my voice shaky. I took in his stringy, uncombed hair and soggy, torn sweatshirt.
“Is that the man who attacked me when I got here earlier—the same guy who chased me around the pond and shoved me into a tree? His name is Tim?” He squinted against the sunbeam just edging through the basement window. “I was so dazed, I fell into the pond and nearly drowned. I’m gonna kill him!”
“Too late,” said Mary, looking at the center of the basement floor.
He swiveled his head toward her voice and followed her gaze to where Tim lay motionless, blood pooling around his torso like gravy. “What happened?”
“I was meeting with my client, Caroline, and her neighbor, Mary, when this man, Caroline’s estranged husband, arrived,” said Annie, sitting forward so Tyler could get a clear view of her. “Tim held a gun on us, forced us into Caroline’s car, and drove here, to my old house,” she lied.
“My God,” said Tyler. “Why would he come here?”
“He was angry with me,” I began.
“Yes, he’d discovered he hadn’t been included in Caroline’s dead mother’s will. He thought it unfair,” explained the lawyer.
“Unfair is putting it mildly,” mumbled Mary as though talking to herself.
“Anyway, he lost his mind,” continued Annie, as vocal now as she was silent before. “He threatened to kill us if we didn’t work with him to change the will.” Her face was a mask of professionalism and her voice held none of the whimpering of mere moments ago. I stared at her.
“But here? In the basement?” asked Tyler, shaking his head as if trying to clear his mind to make room for the new information.
“The house is empty, quiet. An easy place to commit a crime,” said Annie smoothly, shooting me a conspiratorial look. “Tim would know. He’d already done something horrendous here, just weeks ago.” She looked back at Tyler. “Maybe I should share this information in front of the police.”
“The police?” Tyler’s face went blank. “But why?—”
“It’s a criminal act that won’t be easy to listen to.”
“Is it about Ava?” Tyler’s voice was barely a whisper.
“Yes,” Annie stood and walked stiffly over to him, trying to stretch her cramped legs as she moved. Reaching out her hands to clasp his, she said, “You need to call 911.”
“Why?” He pulled back. When Annie remained silent, he said, “Just tell me.”
Annie looked at me again, deciding something. My fate. She took a deep breath. “Tim murdered your wife in this house.”
“No!” He collapsed onto the basement steps.
“I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you.” She wedged herself beside him on the lowest step and placed a hand awkwardly on his shoulder. “Based on what Tim said tonight, we think he may have dumped Ava’s... ummm... body in the pond.”
“Oh my God! Not there! I was in that pond, I could have been in there with her, with her corpse,” he rambled, running his hands through his hair. Suddenly he stopped. “You don’t know this is true. You haven’t seen her...?”
I stepped back, let myself slide down the wall as I stared at nothing. My mouth was as dry as dust. I swallowed. I had to speak up, had to admit what I’d done. I was the one who’d killed an innocent woman. I was the very thing Tim had always accused me of being: a monster. And now I’d silenced him too. Why couldn’t I get my mouth to work, or my voice to confess?
“We do have to call the police,” prodded Mary from her dark corner. “Do you have a cell phone, young man?”
Tyler looked at her, his expression dazed in the tentative glow of a new day. He didn’t seem to understand what Mary was asking him.
Is this happening or am I imagining the whole scene?
“Tyler,” prompted Annie, rubbing his arm. “Could I borrow your cell phone?”
He reached into the pocket of his slouchy shorts and produced the phone, his actions mechanical and jerky as an automaton.
Annie spoke into the phone, but her words were too soft to hear. I tried again to speak but my jaw tightened around my silence.
“Tyler?” A woman’s voice at the top of the basement staircase, accompanied by light footsteps. “Did you get my text to meet me here?”
A strangled cry issued from the man’s lips as he leaned his head forward, dropping it into his hands.
“Is that you down there?” came the voice I now knew so well: Jane Brockton. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You weren’t next door. And that crazy bitch who stalks the neighborhood tried to get in my house. Can you believe it? She said she’d been kidnapped and brought here. And then she ran off.” Jane had been talking so fast she had to pause to catch her breath. “I came right over and found the house empty, but I didn’t look down there. It was so dark.” She paused. “Can you come up here?”
“Just come down,” called Mary, her tone tinged with irritation. Jane clearly annoyed everyone.
“I don’t... Who are you?” Jane faltered.
“Come down and find out,” said Mary. “Or better still, wait up there and direct the police to us.”
“But I didn’t call the?—”
“I can’t talk, Jane,” interrupted Tyler. “Not now, not...”
I couldn’t stop looking at him, at the way he hung his head. I’d done this to him. I loathed myself with an intensity that made my stomach knot and churn.
“Could you untie my hands?” asked Mary from a few feet away. I looked at her—at the awkward position she was forced to sit in with her hands bound behind her. Guilt added to the toxic brew bubbling in my gut. Why hadn’t I untied her?
I got up and stumbled over to her. This is a dream. Only a dream . A nightmare I’d awaken from and chastise myself for my hideous imagination. After all, how could I kill a woman I’d never met—and not even remember I’d done it? But I had recalled parts of it. I knelt beside the old lady and began tugging at the knotted rope binding her wrists.
“When the police come, don’t say a word,” Mary whispered. “Let Annie and me do all the talking.”
“But I can’t, I?—”
“Just stay quiet,” she warned.
Noise above us cut off our discussion. Jane’s high pitch echoed down the basement steps, followed by deeper male voices. The police had arrived.
The footsteps on the basement staircase were measured, precise. Tyler scrambled off the lowest one and stood, spotlighted in an officer’s flashlight beam, even though sunshine had fully engulfed the dismal interior of our makeshift dungeon. Two officers stood looking around as Jane hovered on the staircase behind them like a moth trying to get closer to a lit lantern. I stared at the men in their blue uniforms: Skinny and Chubby from the fateful day I’d encountered Ava Hansen. I opened my mouth to confess the truth, but stiffness engulfed my neck and jaw, freezing the bones in place. Taking each of us in, Skinny introduced himself and his partner, but, as before, I couldn’t get my mind to focus on their names. He then crossed to Tim and placed a finger against the pulpy mass that was once my husband’s neck. His eyes met Chubby’s and he shook his head.
“What happened here?” asked Chubby, angling his light beam on Tim’s pathetic corpse, weighed down by massive amounts of blood. I looked away from the man I’d vowed to honor until “death us do part” as Annie launched into her altered tale of events, adding embellishments this time around.
The officers listened quietly as the lawyer produced testimony worthy of a court defense: the abduction, Tim’s confession, and the life-and-death struggle between my estranged husband and myself.
Chubby looked at me, a quizzical expression on his face.
“Is this true, Mrs. Case?”
I stared back, unable to say a word.
“She’s in shock,” piped up Mary from her corner. “She doesn’t even realize she’s been shot. You really need to call for an ambulance.”
I was afraid to look at my neighbor. Mary’s tall tale was bound to unravel Annie’s carefully plotted storyline. I looked down at my arms. Blood coated my hands, forearms, and chest. Tim’s blood .
The police would discover the truth. I wanted them to.
Skinny removed a cell phone from his pocket and pressed the surface. A dispatcher’s voice blared out of the phone speaker. He paused, listening, then started speaking into it. I caught very little of what he said other than, “We have two victims, one deceased and one shot in the left shoulder.”
As soon as he said it, intense pain radiated down my left arm. I looked at my shoulder where the dark hoodie was ripped and torn, blood and tatters of the pink T-shirt beneath spilling through the gouge.
The room began to spin. I let my head drop against the wall and closed my eyes. With any luck, I’d die of blood loss before the ambulance arrived.
“Why are you here?” asked Chubby. I didn’t know whom he was addressing until Tyler’s tenor answered the question, relaying his role in our drama.
“But why would you show up in the middle of the night?” pressed Chubby.
“Ava’s family is wealthy and powerful. They own the house we live in,” said Tyler. “They kicked me out after Ava went missing and threatened my life. Her brothers have people looking for me. They think I did something to her.”
“Did you?” asked Skinny, point-blank.
“No, of course not! I’ve stayed away because this is the first place they’d look for me. I thought this Tim, who I met earlier tonight, was one of those hunting me. I ran when he approached me in the dark kitchen upstairs.”
“Why?” asked Skinny.
“Wouldn’t you run if a man came out of the shadows and started yelling at you?”
I raised my forehead and opened my eyes, which were level with Tyler’s droopy shorts. The baggy drawers began to quiver. The officers said nothing more.
“I’m staying over on Woodmint at a client’s house.” Tyler’s voice notched up and he began talking faster. “He got transferred across the country for a year and he asked me to keep an eye on the place. But he doesn’t know I’ve been living there, camped out in the back bedroom, where I disabled his monitoring camera. Only that room and the garage are free from surveillance.”
“What does that have to do with your visit to this house tonight?” Chubby interjected.
“Ava’s brothers found me at the other house. Blasted me with a flashlight when I was sleeping. I’m lucky they didn’t shoot me, but I wasn’t going to wait around until they changed their minds. This is the only other empty house in the neighborhood that I know of. I figured I’d wait until well after midnight when all was quiet before letting myself in. My plan was to crash for a few hours and leave before dawn.”
My arm throbbed, and my gut twisted in remorse. Not only had I killed Ava, but I’d devastated her family and terrorized her husband.
“But this other man—Tim Case—harmed Ava?” asked Chubby.
Tyler nodded. “And dumped her body in the pond across the street.”
“How do you know that?” asked Skinny.
“Tim told us.” Annie’s voice.
“You don’t know that’s true,” cut in Jane. “You can’t rely on what these women tell you.”
“And you are... who?” Chubby asked.
“Jane Brockton,” she announced, straightening her spine, and stepping onto the concrete floor. “I live in the neighborhood, and I can tell you that woman is crazy.” She pointed at me. “She could have attacked Tyler’s wife. She walks the streets pushing an empty baby carriage and spies on the residents.”
My eyes connected with Jane’s. I was speechless in the face of her narrowed eyes, pursed lips, and bunched eyebrows. Jane Brockton hated me. She was also more astute than I’d realized.
“That’s not exactly true,” Annie chimed in. “Caroline went undercover, so to speak, monitoring her estranged husband’s activities. She knew Tim was creeping around the neighborhood and inserting himself into the lives of the residents.”
“What better way to investigate than by pretending to soothe a colicky child with a nightly stroll?” Mary added.
“We’re familiar with Mrs. Case,” said Skinny. “Ava Hansen’s disappearance correlates with the night and time she reported seeing Mrs. Hansen, clearly hurt, fall into an upstairs window of her home.”
“Why didn’t you take me seriously?” I asked, my voice husky from disuse. “You might have caught...” me .
Skinny sighed. “We had no evidence other than?—”
“An eyewitness account,” finished Annie.
“You mean she—this woman has been working with you?” Jane flushed. “All this time, she’s been working with the police?”
“She’s been trying to,” said Mary. “But nobody would believe her.”