Chapter 41 #3
“What do you think I want, Einstein?” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “My mom was found mute in the woods where her best friend’s husband was murdered. And she was blamed for it.”
My gaze locked onto his.
“You’re the only person who knows what really happened that night.”
My eyes dropped to his stomach wound. Blood kept seeping through his fingers. “A shot like that needs surgery. So you can be smart and talk, or play dumb and waste time. And time is something you don’t really have, buddy.”
Myers whimpered.
I leaned back in the chair. “Do the right thing for once in your life.”
He bit down on his lip so hard I thought he might draw blood. His body trembled. Teeth chattering.
“Uh-oh,” I said, cocking my head. “Starting to feel cold?”
His hands pressed harder against the wound.
“That’s not a good sign. But what do I know? I’m only a doctor. Who, funny enough, could actually save your life.”
A broken sound left him then. Maybe the weight of all the years had finally caught up. Or maybe it was just the pain of the bullet.
“Fine.” He sobbed. “I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
“Good. Let’s start with what happened that night. And don’t leave anything out. Time’s ticking.”
He opened his mouth.
“Wait.” I grabbed the edge of his ski mask and pulled it off in one sharp motion. “I want to see your filthy face.”
And it was filthy.
Dear God.
His scar ran across his entire forehead, thick and raised, cutting through his eyebrow. His hair was greasy and flat, clumped together with white dandruff flakes. His skin looked dirty, and he was unshaven.
Such a nasty man ruined my mother’s life. And hurt many others. His police report said he raped women and was a pedophile. He also almost killed my grandma.
“Now talk,” I ordered.
Tears kept sliding down his face. His mouth opened and closed. But no words came.
“You still don’t get that you’ll die here if you don’t start ta—”
“Fucking fine!” he snapped, coughing as pain cut through him. “I … I was there that night. Fucking happy?”
“No shit.” My head shook slowly. “You better get to the important parts, or I’ll leave.”
His body flinched as another wave of pain hit him.
“You gonna call an ambulance if I talk?” he begged.
“It’s probably already too late for that,” I said. “We’re too far from the hospital.”
I crouched slightly, studying the wound again.
“But if you tell me the truth, I’ll look at it myself.”
“You will?” he whimpered.
“Yes. And I never break my promises.”
Myers stared at me for a long moment. Then he flinched.
“I was there,” he murmured.
“Rot in hell,” I muttered under my breath and rose. Calmly, I walked toward the door.
“No, wait!” he shouted. “Please! Wait!”
I kept walking. “Piss off.”
“I waited for them!” he blurted out.
That made me stop.
Slowly, I turned and looked at him lying there, blood pooling beneath him.
“On the country road to the lake,” he said quickly. “It was already late. Nobody ever drives on that road that late. I waited there for them. For the fancy car.”
I walked back to the chair and sat again. I flicked my hand, telling him to continue.
“I opened my hood,” he said. “Pretended my car was broken down. When I saw the Mercedes drive down the road, I waved it over and asked for help.”
He coughed.
“First, the man got out.”
“You mean Zach?” I clarified.
“Yes, that guy. I walked up to him and told him my car wouldn’t start. Said I might need help. But that asshole didn’t want to help me.”
“And the woman?” I asked.
“You mean your mother?”
My jaw tightened. “Yes. My mother.”
“She offered to help,” he said. “She said they couldn’t just leave someone stranded.”
That sounded like my kind mother.
“And then?”
“Then”—Myers’ breathing turned rough again—“I pulled out a gun. I told the guy to get back in the car, or I’d shoot him.
He did, and I got in the backseat behind them and told him to start driving down a gravel road not far from there.
He did everything I told him to. Even pissed himself when we stopped at the end of the gravel road in the woods. ”
“And my mother was there with you?” I asked quietly.
The image cut through me. Her in that car. Trapped. Terrified.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, she was.”
“What then?”
He hesitated. Started crying again. Harder this time.
“What then, Myers!” I shouted.
He flinched, and a groan escaped him as he clutched his bleeding stomach tighter.
“Then … I raised my gun to the back of the guy’s head, right here.” His shaking finger pointed to the back of his own skull. “And … and …”
The words wouldn’t come. A dark stain spread across his crotch.
Jesus.
He’d actually peed himself. Just like Zach did back then. The irony.
I stood up. Ready to leave.
“No, please,” he begged. “Please.”
“Then fucking talk!” I leaned over him, close enough to smell the sour mix of sweat, blood, and urine. “Talk, or I’ll leave you here to bleed out like the pig you are!”
He cried harder but didn't say a word.
“I swear to God,” I shouted, my rage breaking free. “This is your last—”
“Then I got out of the car!” he shouted back at me.
I stared at him.
His forehead glistened under the weak yellow light. Tears cut dirty tracks through the grime on his face. His lips trembled.
“You what?” I asked.
“I got out!” he repeated. “I got out of the fucking car.”
“To get the knife?” I asked.
“No! To fucking run!”
I straightened slowly, still staring at him.
“I couldn’t do it,” he rambled on, words spilling out fast now. “I just couldn’t. She’d offered so much money, but I couldn’t do it. So I got out.”
I heard him say the words. I really did. But my mind refused to let them in. As if they were so utterly ridiculous that they would be a waste of space in my brain.
“You’re lying.”
“I swear it’s the truth!” he sobbed. “I told her I couldn’t go through with it.
I … I never killed anybody before. I just needed the money.
My friend Billy told me about some woman he knew from his AA meetings years back.
She knew about Billy’s record and contacted him all these years later.
She asked if he knew somebody who could help her take care of some bad dude.
Billy never told me we’d actually kill this guy.
I thought we were just gonna hurt him a little. Scare him.”
It was like reality and some other dimension blurred together right in front of me. The walls felt closer all of a sudden. Then farther. Then closer again.
Every instinct in me screamed that Myers was lying.
I tried to sit on the chair but missed it. My legs folded, and I hit the floor hard. My shoulder knocked against the table’s leg. The wood scraped across the floor.
“After I got out of the car and told her I couldn’t do it,” he went on, “she got so mad. Started yelling at everybody. Then they got into it. The dude and your mom. In the car. Everything happened so fast. The shouting. The shoving. And then, all of a sudden, the dude screamed. He screamed so fucking loud!” Myers’ head shook as if it were happening in front of him all over again.
“That’s when I realized what she was doing.
She was fucking stabbing him. Two times.
Three. Four. He fought back. Got on top of her.
But she screamed for me to help her. Said if he survived, we’d both go down.
So I pulled him off of her, and she stabbed him again.
Over and over. There was so much blood. His guts fell out of him right in front of us … ”
I just sat there on the floor.
Feeling so fucking empty.
I couldn’t tell anymore who was dying in this hut. Him or me.
Memories flooded me, like a tsunami hitting the shore with full force.
My mom brushing chocolate smears off my cheek with her thumb.
The way she warmed my clothes with her hairdryer in the winter.
All those times she checked if I was breathing when she thought I was asleep.
The warmth of her arms around me whenever I needed a hug.
I could almost feel its warmth again, sitting here on this cold, nasty floor.
My mother was so full of love. Always had my back. No matter what. She was superwoman.
Not a monster.
“Then after she was done with him, she suddenly charged at me,” Myers whimpered. “I stumbled backward and fell, and she cut me with the knife right here on my forehead.”
“Stop,” I ordered.
My eyes were fixed on the dirty floor in front of me. Its empty beer cans suddenly merged with the memory of my mom and Zach fighting in the bowling parking lot. I saw it now right in front of me. At first, the flashback felt distant. Fuzzy. Their words blurred together.
Then something shifted. And the scene sharpened.
“That guy was already dead,” Myers continued somewhere in the background. “But she just kept stabbing him.”
“I said stop,” I warned Myers as the conversation between Mom and Zach in my flashback now became crystal clear:
“You can’t force her to come with you!” my mom yelled at Zach.
“This isn’t the 1500s. Amanda wants to stay with the kids.
My family needs her. Brian won’t be able to keep it together, and my mom has heart problems. My death will kill her.
Please, just wait with the move for a few years. I’m freaking dying. Please.”
“That’s not my problem,” Zach shot back, shrugging like it meant nothing.
“We’re moving to California. She’s my wife.
She’s coming with me, or I’ll divorce her and sue her into financial ruin.
And after I’m done with her, I’ll come for your family.
I’ll drag your useless husband and mother through the courts for years.
Tie them up in hearings and motions until every last penny they have is wasted on lawyers. ”
“If you hurt them, I’ll kill you!” my mom threatened.
“Just die faster, you stupid bitch!” Zach yelled back.
The flashback stopped abruptly, and I was back in the hut with Myers.
“I was able to grab a rock and hit her on the head,” Myers continued, now sobbing uncontrollably. “She fell, and I took the knife and ran. It wasn’t me who gutted that dude. I didn’t kill him. It was your m—”