Downfall (37 page)

W
E COULD JUST KNOCK
on the door,” Holly said.

“If Wade Rawlings is connected to Lazard and Scott and he knows they’re dead, then he’ll be skittish,” Janice said.

“But Belias will have told him to wait here for us.”

“We can’t know Rawlings’s state of mind. I prefer to leave nothing to chance.”

Of course you don’t
, Holly thought.
If you hadn’t made that video, my husband would still be alive.
That thought had wriggled into her brain ever since Janice confessed to making the video; her sympathy for Janice because of Diana’s death kept weakening, charring.

“He’ll be more worried and freaked if we break into the house and surprise him,” Holly pointed out.

“Fine,” Janice said. “You knock on the door and tell him Belias sent you to help him. And I’ll sneak around the back. That way we still have an advantage.”

Holly frowned but said, “Fine.”

She kicked the snow from her shoes and waited until Janice vanished from sight around the house.

Holly stepped onto the porch and knocked. In her coat jacket was one of the guns, the suppressor removed. Out here in the countryside it didn’t matter much if the gun made noise.

She knocked again. No answer. She thought she could hear the quiet buzz of a television and she walked down to the bay window. It opened up onto a den, and in the room sat a man, his face turned away from her. SportsCenter was on ESPN and next to the table was a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, half-empty, a glass next to it. His head sagged.

Scared and drunk
, she thought.
Men.
She rapped slightly on the glass and the man’s head moved upward but he didn’t open the eye that she could see. He sat in a dark upholstered chair, dark suit jacket.

Holly went back to the front door and twisted. The knob was unlocked.

It made her uneasy because she never left the house unlocked. But maybe it was a country habit, no other house for a mile.

She pulled the gun from her jacket. She thought of the Russian woman, the shock on her face as Holly fired.

She stepped inside. She could hear the soft drone of the TV commentators and she waited and she listened and she didn’t hear another noise.

She went back outside and found Janice.

“He’s inside. Drunk and asleep and has SportsCenter on. The front door’s open.”

“Good,” Janice said. “I’ve had enough drama.”

They went back onto the porch and Janice followed Holly into the den. An odd smell, like a distasteful food, lingered in the air. Wade Rawlings looked like his picture, the side of him they could see, and it was only when they stepped close that Holly saw the heavy black masking tape binding Rawlings to the chair.

He seemed to become aware of them, and he turned toward them, the hidden half of his face seared and burnt horribly.

“Janice…” Holly turned toward the other woman, but she registered Felix standing there, a cloud of pepper spray hitting her face and then her world crisped into agony. She was dimly aware of a heavy weight hitting her hard in the stomach, fingers seizing her hair and dragging her along, Janice screaming, and then steps. Falling down steps.

Water. Cool, merciful water pouring over her eyes from a bottle. The agony began to subside, and she could see Janice, her eyes rimmed in red, pouring water over her face. Janice’s lip and nose were bloodied.

“Holly, it’s okay, you’re okay,” Janice croaked.

“Oh, it hurts, it hurts.”

“I know. He left us water. Here.” She pressed a fresh water bottle into Holly’s hands and Holly upended it over her face. The sensation of needles in the eyes began to subside, and for a moment she just lay on the hard, cold concrete, shuddering in her breath.

Felix. He’d hit them with the spray and then beaten them with something heavy. Her face and her stomach ached. She groped in her jacket; her gun was gone.

Slowly she sat up. There was a twelve-pack of bottled water at the base of the stairs, and Janice was pouring another bottle over her own eyes in a trickle. The fronts of their coats and blouses were soaked and a shiver took Holly. She blinked her vision clear and began to glance around.

A basement. They lay at the bottom of the stairs, where Felix had apparently thrown them, and she saw the junk that accumulates in tucked-away spaces: an old typewriter, stacks of boxes, a table with a tottering tower of picture frames laying on their backs.

Unsteadily Holly got to her feet. She clambered up the stairs and tried the door. Locked. A dead bolt appeared to be freshly installed.

She went back down the stairs. There had to be a window. She saw two, both small and narrow and bricked over. She ran back to the middle of the basement as Janice got to her feet. There was a laundry chute but it was a clear drop. She tested the chute’s bottom. It was plastic framing and fabric; it wouldn’t hold her weight. Maybe they could climb on boxes.

Janice joined her. “Maybe,” she said, but doubt in her voice.

“Or maybe there’s something to use as a weapon. An old gun, a knife. He’ll have to open the door to feed us.”

“You’re an optimist. Who says he’s still here or we’re getting fed?”

“He wanted us alive. He could have just shot us dead while we were down,” Holly said, and as she realized it, a chill took her. Not for death. For separation from her kids. She had to get out of here for them.

A gentle knock on the door. “Ladies? Have you freshened up?” Felix.

Holly felt a bolt along her spine at the sound of his voice.
Felix knows I killed Diana. What if he says something to Janice?
She started glancing around for a weapon. Janice was a killer. Fear pricked her tongue with a taste of brass and blood.

“Ladies?” the voice called again.

“Felix?” Janice went up the steps and Holly hung back.

“Hi, Janice. How are you? Have you been taking care of yourself the past few days? Getting your medications?”

“Felix, I thought you were my friend.”

“I am sure you did. I’m not. And I don’t have cancer. I just pretended to so I could get close to you. So I could ask you to come have a drink with me after the support group meetings. Shame, really, because I liked you. When I didn’t think about you being such a dirty rotten cheater.”

“Cheater?” Janice asked.

“Like all of you. Gaming the system so only you can win. Destroying lives of innocent people so you get the promotion or the hot investment or the right woman. Cheaters.” He said it like someone long ago might have said
lepers
or a cold warrior might have said
Communists
, Holly thought. “I got cheated once. You’ll all pay the piper for your past crimes.”

“Felix, let us out. You didn’t really hurt us so I know you don’t want to hurt me. We had so many nice talks…”

“You bore me,” Felix said. “It was so boring listening to you talk at the support group and then at the bar. Having to listen to you talk about how worried you were about your spoiled rotten daughter, your business. Your all-consuming business. I know what you do. I saw the
DOWNFALL
file, Janice. Ruined lives. You must be so proud. But that’s all right. I used you, too.”

“Felix, please. We can reach an agreement…”

Janice started to speak and Holly touched her arm, shook her head.

“I mean, have you ever thought once about the lives your boss ruins so you can do better? Do you ever think about what it’s like for them? To feel like they’ve played fair, they’ve been honest, they’ve been good, and then some freaking hand of fate reaches down—or rather up, from hell, where Belias belongs—and ruins everything?”

Janice and Holly looked at each other, and then Holly looked at the ground.

“You didn’t keep that
DOWNFALL
file out of guilt for what you’d done, Janice. You left it so Diana would understand what would be required of her. So she could be just like you.” He managed to spit out the last three words.

“And Holly? I heard what you told Sam. That you did this for your kids. So they could have a better life. What a load. You did this for no one but yourself and that jerk husband of yours. So you could have the nice big house and the finer things and never know want or need or hardship. Not through work, but through deception.”

“No,” Holly said. “I did it for my husband. I did it because he made the pact…”

“And you lacked the courage to leave him,” Felix said. “You two are the sorriest excuses for mothers that I’ve ever seen.”

“Shut up! Did you leave us alive just to give us a lecture?” Janice snapped.

“Yes, I mostly just wanted you to know I’d fooled you, Janice, because you always looked down on me just a bit. The exec, deigning to be friends with a bar manager. I know it warmed the cinder of whatever’s left of your heart.”

“Let us out,” Janice said, “and say that to my face, tough man.”

Holly began to shiver.

“It’s more fun if you stay locked up. I want you to listen to me closely, Janice.”

Oh no
, Holly thought.

“Janice, Diana is dead.”

“You’re lying,” Janice said after a moment.

“No. And two people killed her. You are one of them.”

Janice made a noise; she hit her fist against the wall, a blow of rage.

“Do you want to know what’s happened or not, Janice? Every mother should want to know.”

“You’re lying!”

“You made that video, and Diana found it and watched it. She had no way to contact you. She found the video, and she called your personal phone, and Belias heard the voice mails she left for you.”

“No…No…” Janice collapsed against the stairs and Holly grabbed her shoulders, an instinctive response.

“Of course, being a good daughter, Diana didn’t go to the police. She didn’t want Mama getting in trouble and she wanted to confront you with it. But Belias knew she was a danger. So. He sent people after her. She came to the bar; she left you a note begging you to call her. She thought maybe you were still in town because she knew you weren’t at that retreat, she called. She needed her mama so bad and you weren’t there. You were busy planning the murders of another mother in Barbara Scott, and a dad in Lucky Lazard, and well, Wade Rawlings doesn’t have kids but you get the idea.”

Now Janice was keening, sobbing, the awful weight of it hitting her.

“So. You sent Diana to her death. I will tell you who killed her if you’ll tell me where that video is. You must have a copy of it hidden. Where is it?”

“This is a trick!” Janice screamed.

“Is it?”

Janice shuddered.

“You made a video, but Belias couldn’t find a trace of it on your home computer. Or on your phone or camera. Where was the copy that Diana found?”

After a moment, Janice said, “On a USB flash drive. A hidden one. It looks like a lipstick case. Who killed her?”

“Thanks, Janice. Huh, a lipstick case. That’s a good one.”

“Felix, okay, I told you. Let us out.”

“No, you two are staying here and I guess we’ll determine who the better parent is via trial by combat.”

No
, Holly thought.

“Holly. Holly killed your daughter.”

Janice’s wail choked off. Holly froze and in the dim light of the cold basement she could see a wisp of her own breath.

“Holly killed her. Broke her neck, I think, against the bar railing at The Select.”

“He’s lying,” Holly said. “He’s lying. He wants to turn us against each other.”

“Belias sent the Marchbankses after her. Diana came back to the bar, hoping you were there, and they tried to ambush her and that was when Sam Capra got involved. Diana called me for help on Saturday and wanted to come back to the bar to see me, and since we were closed, I told her yes. I just wanted the video; I wouldn’t have hurt her. She was innocent. Not like you. She came back to the bar but Holly was waiting for her. Holly Tasered me and locked me in a storeroom. And then she broke your daughter’s neck.”

Janice turned a teary, angry face toward Holly, who shook her head.

“Good luck, Holly. Janice is a trained killer. Good luck, Janice. Holly is younger and stronger and still has children to live for. Oh, and there are no guns or weapons in the basement. And Belias isn’t here to make it all easier for you.” He gave the door a farewell tap. They stared at each other in silence for ten seconds, the quiet shattered by the distant sound of a gun firing.

“He’s lying,” Holly tried, but she knew it was futile, too much specificity in his words. Janice shoved her and Holly thought,
She’s got cancer, she’s weak.

But rage can be a fuel for the heart.

It was as though whatever life was left, whatever months remained for Janice Keene surged into her body all at once. She powered a fist hard into Holly’s chest and Holly staggered back one step and then Janice clocked another punch into Holly’s stomach. She fell backward down the steps.

“Don’t! Please, Janice! Stop!” Holly screamed. She slammed into the concrete, started scrabbling backward. Janice roared down the stairs, rage contorting her face. She threw a fist at Holly; Holly blocked it, tried to shove Janice to the ground.

You can’t reason with her
, Holly thought. Then her mind went blank, into survival, and the two of them fought like women have fought for centuries to save their babies, to hide their children from the marauders and the rapists, to fight for the morsel of food that staves off starvation, to fight for a space on the boat during the wartime evacuation. Reason died.

Janice hammered a fist into Holly’s jaw. Holly collapsed against the table stacked with framed, forgotten photos and she grabbed one of the pictures, an eight by ten. She swung the frame hard into Janice’s throat. The older woman staggered back and Holly hit her again with the frame, hard in the chest. Janice screamed; she retreated, grabbed a heavy glass vase on a bench that was crowded with ugly, dusty decor. She shattered the top against the wall. Jagged glass remained.

“You killed my baby,” Janice said. “You killed my baby.”

“Please, he’s lying.” Holly didn’t know what else to say. She wanted it to all be a lie.