I had to move Clayton’s windshield-shattered Honda out of the way to make room to get out of there in Cynthia’s Toyota. She got in the back so she could sit with her arms around Grace for the long drive back south to Milford.
I knew we should probably have called the police, waited there at the top of the quarry for them to arrive, but we thought the most important thing was to get Grace home, where she would feel the most safe, as quickly as possible. Clayton and Enid and Jeremy weren’t going anywhere. They’d still be at the bottom of that lake when we gave Rona Wedmore a call.
Cynthia wanted me to get to a hospital, and there was no doubt in my mind that I needed one. Both my sides were in intense pain, but it was mitigated by an overwhelming sense of relief. Once I had Cynthia and Grace home, I’d head over to Milford Hospital.
We didn’t talk a lot on the drive back. I think Cynthia and I were on the same page-that we didn’t want to go over what had happened, not just today but twenty-five years ago-in front of Grace. Grace had been through enough. She just needed to get home.
But I did manage to get the rough details of what had happened. Cynthia and Grace had driven to Winsted, met Jeremy at the McDonald’s lot. He had a surprise, he told them. He had brought along his mother. The inference being, of course, that he had brought along Patricia Bigge.
Cynthia, dumbstruck, was taken over to the Impala, and once she and Grace were in the car, Enid held her gun on Grace. Told Cynthia to drive the car to the quarry or she’d kill Grace. Jeremy followed in Cynthia’s car.
Once on the precipice, Cynthia and Grace were tied into the front seats in preparation for their trip over the side.
Then Clayton and I arrived.
Almost as briefly, I told Cynthia what I’d learned. About my trip to Youngstown. Finding her father in the hospital. The story of what happened the night her family disappeared.
Vince Fleming getting shot.
I would call, the moment I got home, to see how he was doing. I didn’t want to have to go into school and face Jane Scavullo, tell her that the only man in years who’d been decent to her was dead.
As far as the police were concerned, I hoped to Christ Wedmore believed everything I was going to tell her. I don’t know that I would have, if it hadn’t actually happened to me.
Something still wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t shake the memory of Jeremy standing over me, gun in hand, unable to pull the trigger. He certainly hadn’t shown that kind of hesitation where Tess Berman was concerned. Or Denton Abagnall.
They’d both been murdered in, well, “cold blood” I guess the phrase is.
What was it that Jeremy had said to his mother? While he stood over me? “I’ve never killed anyone before.”
Yeah, that was it.
When we passed through Winsted again, we asked Grace whether she wanted something to eat, but she shook her head no. She wanted to go home. Cynthia and I exchanged worried glances. We would take Grace to see a doctor. She’d been through a traumatic incident. She might be suffering from mild shock. But before long, she was asleep, and gave no indication that she was having nightmares.
A couple of hours later, we were home. As we made the turn into our street, I saw Rona Wedmore’s car in front of our house, parked at the curb, with her behind the wheel. When she spotted our car, she got out, eyeing us sternly with arms folded as we turned in to the driveway. She was waiting for me by the car when I opened my door, ready, I suspected, to start peppering me with questions.
Her expression softened when she saw me wince as I slowly got out of the driver’s seat. I hurt like hell.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “You look awful.”
“That’s pretty much how I feel,” I said, touching one of my wounds gingerly. “I took a few kicks from Jeremy Sloan.”
“Where is he?” Wedmore asked.
I smiled to myself and opened the back door and, even though a couple of my ribs felt as though they were about to snap, took a sleeping Grace into my arms to carry her into the house.
“Let me,” Cynthia said, now out of the car herself.
“It’s okay,” I said, taking Grace to the front door as Cynthia ran ahead to unlock it. Rona Wedmore was trailing us into the house.
“I can’t carry her anymore,” I said, the pain becoming excruciating.
“The couch,” Cynthia said.
I managed to set her down there gently, even though I felt I was going to drop her, and despite all the jostling and talking, she didn’t wake up. Once she was on the couch, Cynthia tucked some throw pillows under her head and found an afghan to throw over her.
Wedmore was still just watching, courteously giving us a moment. Once Cynthia had tucked the afghan around Grace, the three of us rendezvoused in the kitchen.
“You look like you need to see a doctor,” Wedmore said.
I nodded.
“Where’s Sloan?” she asked again. “If he assaulted you, we’ll have him arrested.”
I leaned up against the counter. “You’re going to need to call in your divers again,” I said.
I told her pretty much all of it. How Vince had spotted what was wrong with that old newspaper clipping, how that had led us to Sloan and Youngstown, my finding Clayton Sloan in the hospital, Jeremy and Enid’s abduction of Cynthia and Grace.
The car going over the cliff and down into the quarry, taking Clayton and Enid and Jeremy along for the ride.
There was only one small part I’d left out, because it was still troubling me, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. Although I had an inkling.
“Well,” Rona Wedmore said, “that’s quite a story.”
“It is,” I said. “If I were going to make something up, trust me, I’d have come up with something more believable.”
“I’ll want to talk to Grace about this, too,” Wedmore said.
“Not now,” Cynthia said. “She’s been through enough. She’s exhausted.”
Wedmore nodded silently. Then, “I’ll make some calls, see about the divers, be back later this afternoon.” To me, “You get over to Milford Hospital. I could drop you off if you like.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go in a little while, call a cab if I have to.”
Wedmore left, and Cynthia said she was heading upstairs to try to make herself look half respectable again. Wedmore’s car had only been gone a minute when I heard another one pull into the drive. I opened the front door as Rolly, wearing a long jacket over a blue plaid shirt and blue slacks, reached the step.
“Terry!” he said.
I put a finger to my lips. “Grace is sleeping,” I said. I motioned for him to follow me into the kitchen.
“So you found them?” he said. “Cynthia too?”
I nodded as I went hunting for Advils in the pantry. I found the container, shook some out into my hand, and ran a glass of cold water from the tap.
“You look hurt,” Rolly said. “Some people will do anything to get a long-term leave.”
I almost laughed, but it hurt too much. I popped three pills into my mouth, had a long drink of water.
“So,” Rolly said. “So.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So you found her father,” he said. “You found Clayton.”
I nodded.
“That’s amazing,” he said. “That you found him. That Clayton’s still around, still alive, after all these years.”
“Isn’t it, though,” I said. I held back telling Rolly that while Clayton had been alive all these years, he was no longer.
“Just amazing.”
“Aren’t you wondering about Patricia, too?” I asked. “Or Todd? Aren’t you curious to know what happened to them?”
Rolly’s eyes danced. “Of course, yes, I am. I mean, I already know they were found in the car, in the quarry.”
“Yeah, that’s true. But everything else, who killed them, I figure you must already know about that,” I said. “Otherwise, you’d have asked.”
Rolly’s look grew grim. “I just, I don’t want to bombard you with questions. You’ve only been home a couple of minutes.”
“Do you want to know how they died? What actually happened to them?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Maybe in a minute.” I took another drink of water. I hoped the Advils would kick in soon. “Rolly,” I said, “were you the one who delivered the money?”
“What?”
“The money. For Tess. To spend on Cynthia. It was you, wasn’t it?”
He licked his lip nervously. “What did Clayton tell you?”
“What do you think he told me?”
Rolly ran his hand over the top of his head, turned away from me. “He’s told you everything, hasn’t he?”
I said nothing. I decided it was better for Rolly to think I knew more than I actually did.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, shaking his head. “The son of a bitch. He swore he’d never tell. He thinks it was me that somehow led you to him, doesn’t he? That’s why he’s reneged on our arrangement.”
“Is that what you call it, Rolly? An arrangement?”
“We had a deal!” He shook his head in anger. “I’m so close. So close to retirement. All I want is some peace, to get out of that fucking school, to get away, to get out of this goddamn town.”
“Why don’t you just tell me about it, Rolly? See if your version matches Clayton’s.”
“He’s told you about Connie Gormley, hasn’t he? About the accident.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We were coming back from a fishing trip,” Rolly said. “It was Clayton’s idea to stop for a beer. I could have done the drive home without stopping, but I said okay. We went into this bar, we were just going to have a beer and go, and this girl, she starts coming on to me, you know?”
“Connie Gormley.”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s sitting with me, and she’s had a few beers, and I ended up having a few more. Clayton, he’s kind of taking it easy, tells me to do the same, but I don’t know what the hell happened. This Connie and I, we both slip out of the bar while Clayton’s taking a leak, end up out back of the bar in the backseat of her car.”
“You and Millicent, you were married then,” I said. It wasn’t really a judgment, I simply wasn’t sure. But Rolly’s scowl made clear how he’d taken it.
“Once in a while,” he said, “I’d slip.”
“So you slipped with Connie Gormley. How’d she end up going from that backseat to that ditch?”
“When we…when we were done, and I was heading back to the bar, she asked me for fifty bucks. I told her if she was a hooker she should have made that clear from the outset, but I don’t know if she even was a hooker. Maybe she just needed the fifty. Anyway, I wouldn’t pay her, and she said maybe she’d look me up sometime, at my home, get the money from my wife.”
“Oh.”
“She started scrapping with me by the car, and I guess I shoved back, a little too hard, and she tripped and her head came down right on the bumper, and that was it.”
“She was dead,” I said.
Rolly swallowed. “People had seen us, right? In the bar? They might remember me and Clayton. I figured, if she got hit by a car instead, the police would think it was some sort of accident, that she’d gone walking, that she was drunk, they wouldn’t be looking for some guy she picked up in the bar.”
I was shaking my head.
“Terry,” he said, “if you’d been in that situation, you’d have been panicking, too. I got Clayton, told him what I’d done, and there was something in his face, like he felt he was as trapped by the situation as I was, he didn’t want to be talking to any cops. I didn’t know then, about the kind of life he was living, that he wasn’t who he claimed to be, that he was living a double life. So we put her in the car, took her down the highway, then Clayton held her up at the side of the road, tossed her in front of the car as I drove past. Then we put her in the ditch.”
“My God,” I said.
“Isn’t a night goes by I don’t think about it, Terry. It was a horrible thing. But sometimes, you have to be in a situation to appreciate what has to be done.” He shook his head again. “Clayton swore he’d never tell. The son of a bitch.”
“He didn’t,” I said. “I tried to get him to, but he didn’t give you up. But let me see if I can guess how the rest of this goes. One night, Clayton and Patricia and Todd, they disappear off the face of the earth, nobody knows what happened to them, not even you. Then one day, a year later, maybe a few years later, you get a call. It’s Clayton. Quid pro quo time. He covered up for you, for killing Connie Gormley, now he wanted you to do something for him. Be a courier, basically. Deliver money. He’d send it to you, maybe to a postal box or something. And then you’d slip it to Tess, drop it in her car, hide it in her newspaper, whatever.”
Rolly stared at me.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s more or less what happened.”
“And then, like an idiot,” I said, “I told you what Tess had revealed to me. When we had lunch. About getting the money. About how she still had the envelopes and the letter, the one warning her never to try to find out where the money came from, to never tell anyone about it. How, after all these years, she’d saved them.”
Now Rolly had nothing to say.
I came at him from another direction. “Do you think a man who was prepared to murder two people to please his mother would lie to her about whether he’d ever killed anyone before?”
“What? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m kind of thinking out loud here. I don’t think he would. I think a man who was about to kill for his mother, I don’t think he’d mind admitting to her if he’d already killed before.” I paused. “And the thing is, up until the moment the man said it, I was convinced that he’d already killed two people.”
“I have no idea what you’re driving at,” Rolly said.
“I’m talking about Jeremy Sloan. Clayton’s son, from the other marriage, with the other woman, Enid. But I suspect you know about them. Clayton would have probably explained it when he started sending you money to deliver to Tess. I figured Jeremy had killed Tess. And I figured he’d killed Abagnall. But now, I’m not so sure about that anymore.”
Rolly swallowed.
“Did you go see Tess after I told you what she had told me?” I asked. “Were you afraid that maybe she’d figured it out? Were you worried that maybe the letter she still had, the envelopes, that maybe they might still carry some forensic evidence linking them to you? And that if that happened, then you’d be linked to Clayton, and he wouldn’t be obliged to keep your secret any longer?”
“I didn’t want to kill her,” Rolly said.
“You did a pretty good job of it, though,” I said.
“But I thought she was dying anyway. It wasn’t like I’d be stealing that much time from her. And then, later, after I’d done it, you told me about the new tests. About how she wasn’t dying after all.”
“Rolly…”
“She’d given the letter and the envelopes to the detective,” he said.
“And you took his business card from the bulletin board,” I said.
“I called him, arranged a meeting, in the parking garage.”
“You killed him and took his briefcase with the papers inside,” I said.
Rolly cocked his head a bit to the left. “What do you think? Do you think my fingerprints would still have been on those envelopes after all these years? Saliva traces, maybe, when I sealed them?”
I shrugged. “Who knows,” I said. “I’m just an English teacher.”
“I got rid of them just the same,” Rolly said.
I looked down at the floor. I wasn’t just in pain. I felt a tremendous sadness. “Rolly,” I said, “you’ve been such a good friend for so many years. I don’t know, maybe even I’d be willing to keep my mouth shut about a horrible lapse in judgment more than twenty-five years ago. You probably never meant to kill Connie Gormley, it was just one of those things. It’d be hard to live with, covering that up for you, but for a friend, maybe.”
He eyed me warily.
“But Tess. You killed my wife’s aunt. Wonderful, sweet Tess. And you didn’t stop with her. There’s no way I can let that go.”
He reached into the pocket of the long coat and pulled out a gun. I wondered if it could be the one he’d found in the schoolyard, among the beer bottles and crack pipes.
“For crying out loud, Rolly.”
“Go upstairs, Terry,” he said.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
“I’ve already bought my trailer,” he said. “It’s all set. I’ve picked out a boat. I’ve only got a few weeks to go. I deserve a decent retirement.”
He motioned me toward the stairs, followed me up them. Halfway up, I turned suddenly, tried to kick at him, but I was too slow. He jumped back a step, kept the gun trained on me.
“What’s going on?” Cynthia called from Grace’s room.
I stepped into the room, followed by Rolly. Cynthia, over by Grace’s desk, opened her mouth when she saw the gun, but no words came out.
“It was Rolly,” I said to Cynthia. “He killed Tess.”
“What?”
“And Abagnall.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Ask him.”
“Shut up,” Rolly said.
“What are you going to do, Rolly?” I asked him, turning around slowly by Grace’s bed. “Kill both of us, and Grace, too? You think you can kill that many people, and the police won’t figure it out?”
“I have to do something,” he said.
“Does Millicent know? Does she know she’s living with a monster?”
“I’m not a monster. I made a mistake. I had a bit too much to drink, that woman provoked me, demanding money that way. It just happened.”
Cynthia was flushed, her eyes wide. She must not have been able to believe what she was hearing. Too many shocks for one day. She lost it, not unlike she did when the phony psychic had dropped by. She screamed and charged at him, but Rolly was ready, swinging the gun into her face, catching her across the cheek, knocking her to the floor by Grace’s desk.
“I’m sorry, Cynthia,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
I thought I could take him at that moment, but he had the gun back on me. “God, Terry, I hate to have to do this. I really do. Sit down. Sit on the bed there.”
He took a step forward, and I moved back a foot, sat down on the edge of Grace’s bed. Cynthia was still on the floor, blood running down toward her neck from the gash in her cheek.
“Toss me a pillow,” he said.
So that was the plan. Put a pillow over the muzzle of the gun, cut down on the noise.
I glanced over at Cynthia. She had one hand slightly under Grace’s desk. She looked at me, and she nodded ever so slightly. There was something in her eyes. Not fear. Something else. She was saying, Trust me. I reached for a pillow at the top of Grace’s bed. It was a special one, with a design of the moon and the stars on the pillowcase.
I tossed it to Rolly, but I made my throw just a bit short, and he had to take half a step forward to catch it.
That’s when Cynthia got to her feet. “Sprung” would be a better word. She had something in her hand. Something long and black.
Grace’s piece-of-crap telescope.
Cynthia first swung it back over her own shoulder, giving her a chance to build up some speed, then she came at Rolly’s head with her famous backhand, putting everything she had into it, and a little bit more.
He turned, saw it coming, but he never had a chance to react. She caught him across the side of his skull and it didn’t sound much like something you’d hear at a tennis match. It was more like the crack of a bat hitting a fastball.
It was a home run.
Rolly Carruthers dropped like a stone. It was a wonder Cynthia didn’t kill him.