Dust to Dust (45 page)

“Would you stop calling me
boy
? I’ve always hated that. Yes. They all want to live, with the possible exception of Marsha.” He took another drink of vodka. “But that doesn’t mean Fallon doesn’t have interesting things to say. I’m a lawyer, almost, and I can evaluate it. You’ve never given me any credit. Now shut up.” He coughed.

“Why would Granddad have killed El?” said Tyler, not taking his eyes off Everett. “Not to save me.”

“Did your grandfather tell you why he wanted to kill Marcella Payden or Mary Lassiter? I’m sure you thought his killing Stacy was to hide what the two of you did to frame her brother. Stacy had Ellie Rose’s diary pages and she was beginning to decipher them. But the other two must have mystified you.”

Diane was careful to accuse Everett Walters of the killings, although she thought that it was Tyler who choked Stacy to death. That conclusion was based, weakly perhaps, on the fact that he had done it before, and that his overlapping boot prints were lifted from the spot where Stacy actually died. But right now, she wanted Tyler to believe that he could clear himself.

“Ellie’s diary?” said Marsha. “She had Ellie’s diary?”

“Yes. She was a musician and good at math,” said Diane. Like Frank, she thought. “Stacy was probably translating the parts that told her how Ellie was afraid of Tyler and his grandfather. Did Stacy call you, threaten you?”

“She called Granddad,” said Tyler. “Stupid thing to do.”

“What about Lassiter and Payden?” asked Diane. “Weren’t you curious why they had to die?”

“He said it needed to be done,” said Tyler. “You haven’t answered my question. Why would he kill Ellie Rose?”

Diane eyed Everett. He looked smug. He didn’t know she knew about his sister. Showtime.

“Some killers get off on the terror of their victims,” said Diane, not taking her eyes off Everett. “Sometimes it’s a sexual-control thing. Is that right, Ross?”

“Often,” he said.

“But not you,” said Diane. “It was a god-control thing with you. I imagine as a boy staying over at your big sister’s, playing among all the statues of fauns, gargoyles, and dragons, it was like a little kingdom, a little Olympus. And what you really liked to do, what really made you feel powerful and in control, was to sneak up behind the unsuspecting prey and strike them dead, like a god in his dark realm. They never knew it was coming. You had the power to snuff out their life, and just like that, they were no more.”

Everett’s face slowly dropped its smug expression. He looked worried. Finally.

“What?” said Tyler. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Didn’t he tell you?” said Diane. “Your grandfather is a serial killer from way back. Not the ordinary kind, I don’t think. He had more control than others of his kind. He prided himself in that.”

“Not all serial killers lack control or feel a compulsion to constantly seek out victims,” said Kingsley. “Some are opportunistic killers. I suspect your grandfather is one of those.” Kingsley looked Everett in the eyes. “You can go for years without killing, can’t you? You’re like the smoker who can just stop and not look back and not obsess about having another cigarette.”

“But I’ll bet Everett couldn’t resist the possibility of killing Ellie Rose,” said Diane. “It was an opportunity presented to him, so he brought the hatchet. It’s not that easy for a fourteen-year-old, like you were, to strangle someone. He knew there was a possibility she was still alive. And the pull of nostalgia was just too great, even for a man of his control.”

“Are you serious?” said Tyler. He briefly took his eyes off his grandfather, and Everett started to reach for his ankle gun. “Watch it, old man. Is this true?” he asked him.

Everett straightened up. “Rubbish. Fantasy.”

“Not according to your sister, Maybelle,” said Diane.

Everett looked sharply at Diane, his eyes wide with surprise. He paused for many long moments, staring at Diane.

“Mags has to be a hundred and ten by now,” he whispered.

“Not quite a hundred. Ninety-seven, I believe,” said Diane.

“Senile,” said Everett. Some of his smugness came back into his face.

“Actually, quite lucid,” said Diane. “Creepy as hell, but her story is consistent with what we found in the well.”

The smug look was short-lived. His mouth turned down into a frown.

“You know,” said Diane, “I’ll bet when you had your fingerprints taken at the time you were bonded for your business, you worried. You worried if they were on the items you dropped in the well when your father was coming to take your sister away. It was a long shot that they would ever be found, but it had to give you pause. And then came Dr. Marcella Payden, archaeologist and curious homeowner. She was looking for the artist who had created the broken pottery that she discovered in the fire pit in her yard and painted the portraits she found hidden in the walls. What if Marcella found your sister, Maybelle, and she told about the well? There goes your reputation. And here your son is about to run for U.S. congressman. You couldn’t do anything when your father sold the property—you couldn’t tell him it should stay in the family because of what was in the well, but you could do something now to keep the current owner quiet. Had you planned to try and buy it back? Maybe clean out the well?”

Everett said nothing. He stared at Diane so hard, she thought he was trying to will her to shut up.

“What well? What’s this about?” said Tyler.

“It’s about why you are innocent,” said Diane.

That kept his attention on her story. Tyler was looking for a way out. When he first came into the room, he didn’t think there was a way out without more murder, and his having to leave behind everything he knew. He had hope now, and Diane was counting on his hope to get them out of this alive.

“At first I wondered about Mary Lassiter,” said Diane. “How did she figure in this? Of course, when we found out that she worked at the historical society where Marcella Payden was asking questions about who lived in the house in Pigeon Ridge, I realized that Mary Lassiter was your age. You both were contemporaries in Rosewood. Marcella sparked a memory in Mary Lassiter. She knew something about an artist who disappeared when she was a girl. The artist had a brother, Everett. She remembered you. She probably looked you up on the Internet. People do that a lot these days, trying to get in touch with people they used to know. For her it was probably a lark, maybe a chance for a little romance late in life. She didn’t know you would consider her to be a loose end to be tied up, along with Marcella Payden. That’s why Mary Lassiter’s purse was stolen when she was killed. You wanted her cell phone, but didn’t want the police to focus on the phone. You didn’t want them looking at her call records. But Sheriff Braden is very thorough, and he’ll check the call records as well as the Internet history records where she worked at the historical society.” Diane paused a moment, letting it sink in.

“You see, Everett Gauthier,” Diane continued, “we’ve been really busy at the crime lab.”

“Gauthier?” said Wendy and Tyler together.

“That was Everett’s family name before they moved from Rosewood, before it was changed to Walters—the Anglicized version of Gauthier. Everett’s father’s attempt to hide the family skeletons, as it were, by changing his family’s last name. Everett’s sister, Maybelle, did to him what he did to your son. She hated her father and his new wife, and she decided to ruin her half brother, Everett. She turned him into a killer.”

“No,” whispered Everett. “No. My sister loved me. She wouldn’t have said those things.”

“Well, when she discovered that you lived in luxury while she lived as an indigent in insane asylums and nursing homes for almost sixty years, what did you expect?”

Diane looked at the others, then at Tyler.

“Everett’s sister, Maybelle Agnes Gauthier, your great-aunt, had a unique way of making her pottery. She used human bone from people she enticed Everett to kill. The sixteen-year-old Everett chopped them up and boiled the parts so she could render the bones into dust to temper the clay for her pottery. Nice little family, huh?” said Diane. “We found some of the bodies in the well, along with Everett’s bloody fingerprints on the tools and in the clay.”

Everett Walters was shaking now. Diane couldn’t tell if it was from anger or from the fear that came with revelation.

“That’s what you brought into your house, Wendy,” said Diane, “a monster who had access to your son. And he brought him to this. This is why I have sympathy with Tyler, Marsha. He didn’t have a chance, under the influence of someone like Everett.”

“Shut up. Shut your damn hole, you bitch. Shut your damn mouth.” Everett was shaking his fist at Diane.

“You,” said Wendy, “have the nerve to tell her to shut up, you monster. Look what you’ve done.”

Everett ignored Wendy, but continued to stare at Diane. “I’ll kill you, if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll kill you and you’ll know it’s coming. I’ll chop you up while you are still alive. You’ll feel everything. You bitch. You bitch. You’ll feel every cut.”

“See, Tyler, this isn’t you,” said Diane.

But Tyler had passed out.

When Diane looked back at Everett Walters, he was pointing a gun at her.

Well, hell
.

“Now it’s time to pay the piper,” he said.

“Oh God, Tyler,” yelled Wendy.

She stood up and started toward her unconscious son. As she crossed in front of Everett, she didn’t see the blow from the pistol butt coming to the back of her head. Wendy reeled forward and fell, crashing into the table, rolling off it onto the floor at Marsha’s feet. For a moment, Diane thought Marsha was going to kick her. Wendy struggled to get to her feet. She looked seriously hurt.

“Just lie there,” said Diane. “Until you get your breath.”

Ross Kingsley stood and faced Everett. “This may seem like a good idea to you now, but you’re very angry. I understand that. Take a moment and think about this. It will do you no good to cut off your nose to spite your face,” he said.

“It won’t be
my
nose I’ll be cutting off,” he said. “You and the woman are do-gooders. I know your type. You take care of people too yellow to take care of themselves. So this is why I’m going to tell you, I’ll be shooting these other folks first. I’ll shoot my worthless daughter-in-law right now unless you sit down. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

Kingsley hesitated a moment, then sat down. Diane guessed he was trying to think of something else to say. Right now, Everett wasn’t in the mood to listen.

All the guns were across the room with Tyler, except the one in Everett’s hand and the one under the sofa. Diane tried to think of a plan to get her hands on one of them. She didn’t see how she could do it fast enough.

But maybe Wendy could. She was still on the floor and Diane could see her looking under the couch. She saw the gun; Diane was sure. But the coffee table was between her and the sofa. Everett would cut her down if she tried. Maybe if there was a diversion.

“Apparently, it’s me you want to, how did you put it, chop up in little pieces? Why don’t you leave these people alone?” Diane said, standing up and facing him.

“All full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you? Think you can make your move once we get away from these people here? I know how your mind’s working.” He tapped his finger on his temple. “It’s not going to go like that. No, I’m not going to drop my guard. You aren’t going to get off, not after what you’ve done.”

“Don’t like being outed as a serial killer?” said Diane. She stepped toward him.

“Shut up. When I tell you to shut that damn hole of yours, I mean it,” he said.

He started backing slowly toward the entrance to the living room, pointing his gun at Diane’s head.

“Any one of you so much as looks like you’re going to stand up is going to get it. I can shoot her and any one of you before you dive for the guns. Now, we are going out. You try and follow, she’s dead and I’ll take my chances. Are we all on the same page?”

He looked back at Diane, who stood a few feet away from him.

“Still got that mind working, don’t you, girlie? Thinking about doing a dive like Wendy?” he said.

Diane was thinking of something like that. Diving at him quickly, knocking him off his feet before he could shoot. But he was too alert to a move like that now. If he was taking her to another location, he had to get her out of the house, across the yard, and into a vehicle. He would have to let his guard down at some point.

“Don’t do it,” said Everett. “It won’t work. Now, very slowly, I want you to step—”

Everett fell to the floor, a pink guitar careening away from the spot where his head had been a moment before.

“That’s for my sister,” said Samantha.

She hit him again on the head with the solid hardwood guitar.

“That’s for making me ruin my Fender Stratocaster guitar. I’ll send you the bill.”

She kicked him in the back.

“That’s for ruining my family.”

Diane grabbed the gun that had fallen from his hand.

“Play much baseball?” Diane asked Samantha.

“No, but I have a mean golf swing,” she said, and hugged Diane.

Diane turned in time to see Kingsley on his feet, hitting Samuel Carruthers in the jaw with his fist. Kingsley knocked him against a hutch filled with china that crashed on the shelves. He picked up the guns and turned to face Carruthers, who was struggling to his feet.

“What happened?” asked Diane, keeping an eye on Everett Walters as she spoke.

“He was going after the gun,” said Kingsley. “He was planning on shooting one of them. I’ve been watching him.”

“You’re crazy. I’m going to sue,” Carruthers said. He stood, scowling at Kingsley, his bathrobe askew, showing his gray boxer shorts and T-shirt. He rubbed his jaw and ran a hand through his uncombed hair.