Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted (13 page)

D
arla paced
the corridor for a while, but finally she returned to her office and remained there, trying to force her left leg into submission as it jiggled up and down with nervous anticipation.

It was early in the morning and the station was almost empty. Darla had been there since five-thirty and had managed to bribe Kath Hilson, the Features Editor, to get out of bed and read over her piece before it landed in Popeye’s inbox. Now it was a waiting game. Darla hated waiting. Shortly after eight, the door to her office opened and Kath’s tousled head appeared.

‘Well?’ Darla stretched.

‘You checked out all the sources?’

‘Yep.’

‘Verified all the accounts? Including the police and hospital reports?’

‘All that could be, yeah. Any that I couldn’t I left out.’

Kath pushed her glasses up onto her head and leaned on the door, her expression one of mild disapproval. She was a stern-faced woman in her forties, but fair and well liked by everyone in the office.

‘What’s the matter? Why the face? You don’t think it’s good?’

‘It’s red hot, but are you sure the angle is one you want to run with, Darla?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This piece,’ Kath jerked her head towards Darla’s computer. ‘Are you prepared for the shitstorm this is going to cause when it gets published? 
If
 it gets published.’

‘Why wouldn’t it be published?’

‘There are a lot of people in this town who think Jessie Conway walks on water.’

‘I know that,’ Darla said, nodding. ‘So what? She lied about who she is. She shot and killed her husband. She hid her identity. You don’t think that’s relevant to what happened here in Rockville?’

‘I don’t see how.’

‘
Really?
’

‘You know my nephew goes to that school.’

‘So?’

‘If it wasn’t for Jessie Conway he might very well be dead now.’

‘Speculation. You don’t know that.’

‘What has that poor woman ever done to you?’

‘Nothing,’ Darla threw her hands up in exasperation, ‘this is a genuine public interest story.’

‘This looks like a hatchet job, Darla.’

‘There’s nothing personal in this. I’m reporting the facts and that 
is
 my job.’

‘On your head be it, girl,’ Kath said, and closed the door.

After another quick rewrite, Darla emailed the entire file to Popeye and went to the cafeteria for coffee. Her stomach felt upset and she was more than a little aggrieved by what Kath had said. Yeah, fine, it was no secret that she was ambitious and that Jessie Conway and her family had been of interest to her, but to accuse her of 
personalising
 a story was way out of line.

Darla carried the coffee to the bathroom. She washed her hands and dabbed the back of her neck with cooling water before she reapplied her lipstick. When she returned to her office she was a little surprised to find Popeye sitting in her chair.

‘Morning Lee.’

‘Come in.’

She did not remind him that he was, in fact, in 
her
 office; something in his expression made any word that crossed her mind evaporate. She closed the door, and, being left with no option, took the chair normally reserved for Chippy.

‘Something the matter, Lee?’

Popeye eyed her from across the desk. ‘I don’t know, is there?’

Darla spread her hands. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’ve got a few reservations.’

‘About what?’

‘This story.’

‘Oh no,’ Darla shot out of her chair, ‘this story is rock solid. I’ve confirmed every assertion made with different sources. I’ve got the legal documents to back up everything I’ve written. I’ve—’

‘I know all that. ‘

‘Then what?’

‘It’s … there’s a lot of emotion tied into this situation, with the Conway woman.’

‘Oh really?’ Darla put both hands on the desk and leaned across it. ‘
You
 were the one who told me that emotion had nothing to do with the news.’

‘She’s a local hero.’

‘She’s also a liar. I checked with Carmichael, the Principal; she had no idea about Jessie’s past.’

‘So she omitted a few details. That doesn’t change the fact that the people of this town regard her as a goddamn hero.’

‘That’s because they don’t know her! She could be a complete sociopath.’

‘Shit, don’t say that.’

‘You know how she was able to do what she did? Because killing comes easy to her.’

Popeye sighed. ‘Even going by what you found, it’s not killing that comes easy is it?

‘No?’

‘No, defending herself is what she’s good at.’

‘To-
may
-to, to-
mah-
to.’

‘I’m serious, Darla. You open this can you need to be prepared for the worms that come out.’

‘I’m ready, Lee. I’m prepared to stand by what I say; my cards are on the table. You don’t run this story, then, by God, I’m going to take it elsewhere.’

Popeye linked his stubby fingers together. He puffed air from his cheeks.

‘Are you prepared to stand by me and my story?’

Finally, he looked her square in the eye. ‘Run it.’

J
essie lay
in the shuttered bedroom, watching the shadows cross the ceiling. Despite the multitude of tablets she had taken, sleep eluded her. Her thoughts were jumbled, confused. She could not escape them, even with narcotics. Shortly before dawn she gave up trying. She rose quietly, put on shorts and a t-shirt and left the house, pausing only to collect a sleepy but excited Rudy.

She walked up the drive and stepped onto the road. The air was heavy and warm, but tolerable. She walked a mile until she reached a trailhead and slipped into the woods, feeling strangely calm and removed from her surroundings. Jessie began to run, slowly at first, and then gathering pace as her muscles remembered their previous role in life.

Twenty-five minutes later she crested the ridge behind her house with her heart hammering in her ears. There were a number of routes to take, but she had deliberately chosen the most difficult and least used. She was not sure why she was hitting the trail so hard, but she wanted nothing more than to run. She wanted to run away from her quiet house, to leave behind the husband with the watchful, doleful eyes. She wanted to run away from calls and visitors, from enquiries and questions. She wanted to run away from her own mind, from her own thoughts, from her guilt and her despair.

‘Come on, Rudy.’

She attacked the next hill with gusto. The terrain was steep and thick with scrub bushes and shoulder-high ferns, the earth underfoot compacted hard from the summer heat. She pitched forward and used her weight to stabilise her ascent. Her muscles ached and the sweat ran freely now. She felt light-headed and breathless, but still she ran.

She would keep running.

She would not stop.

If she could run she could leave it behind. She needed only to figure out where her foot went next, which section of slope would hold her weight, which root could she grasp. This was easy. This was primal.

Jessie glanced up. The crest of the hill was within reach, two hundred yards above her. The path grew steeper and the clay began to crumble underfoot. Rudy fell behind. She dug her feet in and swung her elbows. 
Keep going
. 
Please don’t stop
.

She slipped, grabbed some crabgrass and pulled. The sweat ran down her back, into the waistband of her shorts. Her lungs screamed for air. Her muscles sang in protest. She was slowing, exhausted. She dug deep; her feet scrabbled as loose pebbles rolled away down the bank to the trees below. There was less to grab here, she was out in no man’s land, between the last few scrubby yards and the thickly covered ledge. The soil here was no longer red, it was paler, sun bleached. Dust. Earth. Dead.

She threw everything she had into the last few feet, up one long agonising stride at a time, another, then another, and then, finally, with a partial scream, she made it to the ridge, where she collapsed onto the parched grass, her chest heaving.

Jessie rolled onto her back and watched a cloud move lazily across the washed-out blue of the morning sky. It never stops, she thought. If I live, if I die, the clouds still go by, the sun still rises. Life will go on with or without me. It was a revelation of sorts; one she tested again.

I am not special.

I am not unique.

I am here.

After a few minutes, she sat up, wiped the dust from her t-shirt and looked down the valley. Dawn had fully broken now and although there remained some pockets of darkness in distant corners, the sun’s rays stretched across the valley floor. She searched but could not locate her house. For some reason this pleased her.

Rudy thundered up the hill behind her, his tongue lolling out of the corner of his mouth. She watched the old dog scramble his way towards her, thinking that there was a time he would have been under her feet the whole way. When had he grown so old? He reached her, puffing and blowing like crazy, and threw himself down at her feet. Jessie let him rest. She sat with her hand on his ruff, gazing at the valley, thinking. For the first time in weeks she felt something within her lift.

She felt present. Not worrying about the future, not burning from the past. She was here, on a ledge overlooking the valley with her dog. The sun was overhead and she was here, alive. Present. No earth moved; no crack of celestial thunder passed overhead. There was nothing to mark the occasion, but in that moment Jessie Conway suddenly felt that maybe, just maybe, she might make it out the other side after all.

M
ike was helping
Ace dismantle the interior of an original Mini Cooper when Emma appeared at the passenger door and cleared her throat. ‘Hey, Mike. Listen, I got a call from my mom a short while back.’

‘What is it?’ Mike asked.

She stuck her thumb in her mouth and chewed on the nail. She looked nervous and uncomfortable.

‘Spit it out, Emma, I don’t have all day.’

‘She said there was a, um, thing … in the paper. She said it was about your wife. So I went out and got one.’

Mike climbed out of the Mini and towered over her. Ace put down his screwdriver and watched them silently.

‘And? What about her?’

‘Um … I … it was about Jessie. How she, um … has been married before and stuff.’

‘What in the blue blazes are you going on about?’

Emma’s cheeks flushed pink under the weight of Mike’s gaze. Her other hand whipped around from behind her back. ‘Well don’t get mad at me, I thought you should know is all. Here.’ She rammed a copy of 
The Rockville Gazette
 into his hands and started back towards the office.

Mike stared at the front page. The headline read, ‘Tragic history of hero’. Under it was the photo of Jessie in the hospital bed but beside that was another larger photo of a youthful-looking Jessie with blonde hair, smiling goofily into the camera. She was holding hands with another man. The man was young too; he had a bad haircut and hard eyes.

‘What’s going on?’ Ace asked.

Mike ignored him. He opened the newspaper and began to read. At each line he heard the sound in his ears deepen; felt a rising sensation from his guts. ‘Son of a bitch.’ He walked into the office, with Ace following hot on his heels. Emma was in the street outside, smoking and pacing in a circle. She was on her cell phone and looked rattled. The phone in the office began to ring. Warily, Mike picked it up as Ace stepped outside to join Emma. ‘Mike Conway.’

‘Mike?’

He closed his eyes. ‘Hey, Mom.’

‘Have you seen the paper?’

‘Just now.’

‘That journalist, that Levine woman, she’s run some story on Jessie. I have it here in front of me. She says Jessie killed her first husband.’

Mike glanced out to the yard where Emma was talking to Ace, her arms gesticulating wildly as she spoke. Ace had a cigarette in his mouth but had not lit it. Mike could tell from how he was standing his brother was not taking any pleasure in what he was hearing.

‘Mike?’

‘Yeah?’

‘She says that Jessie has been married before, that she shot her first husband dead. I don’t understand. Did you know anything about any of this? Is it true?’

‘I have to go, Mom.’

‘Mike?’

‘I’m gonna have to call you back.’ He hung up and called his house. Nobody answered. He hung up again and was about to call Jessie’s cell when the phone rang under his hand. He hesitated briefly, and then picked up.

‘Mike, it’s Penny. Mom called.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Is this true?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘
You don’t know?
’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘How the hell can you not know something like that? Are you really telling me Jessie never told you she was married before? 
Really?’

‘It never came up.’

‘Are you kidding me with this shit? 
It never came up?
’

‘Are you deaf, Penny?’

‘Are you stupid, Mike? Everyone’s talking about this. Mom’s in hysterics.’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Don’t you dare hang up on me, Mike Conway. This is serious. We need to get the family together and talk this over. We need—’

Mike slammed the receiver down. He ripped the phone from the desk and flung it through the window. Ace looked at the shattered glass and at the phone lying in the street. He said nothing, but picked it up and carried it back inside. Emma stayed outside. She looked terrified.

‘Go on home,’ Ace said, jerking his head towards the street. ‘I’ll take care of shit here.’

‘Thanks,’ Mike said, trying to breathe, feeling as though someone had just kicked him square in the guts.

C
aleb ditched
the gun in a stinking dumpster in Hidden Valley and returned to the other side of town as fast as the law allowed. As he drove, he noticed that he had blood spattered all over his clothes and he swore. If he got stopped now he’d have questions to answer.

He managed to get home without meeting anyone. Once inside, he paced the apartment, trying to think. He was furious at Frank and worse, furious at himself. Frank had been nothing but a piece of shit but the cops would be all over the killings. People had seen him park the car; the girl had seen him come in. The cops would canvass people who knew Frank, which meant they would be at the bar in no time. It would not take long for them to put two and two together and come looking for him.

They would speak to Sonja. They would offer her a description. She was not a stupid woman; she was Category A to the core. She would know exactly to whom they were referring. She would be shocked: kind, shy Art? Then she would wonder, then she would think about her security.

Caleb had monumentally fucked up his entire game plan. He had lost a Category A over a goddamn maggot like Frank. He kicked a chair over and punched a hole in the plaster. 
This
 was what happened when a person relaxed. He had grown sloppy, too comfortable in his new skin, and 
this
 was the result. He reeled and caught a glimpse of his reflection in the hall mirror. He stared at himself, imagining his features morphing and sliding. It was time to ditch Arthur S Weils. It was time to ditch Charlotte.

He went to the bedroom and sat on the end of the bed, which he had made perfectly that morning. Thoughts swirled around his brain: Sonja, the cabin. He considered just snatching her, but it was impossible, not even he could risk that. To be captured now would be the death of him. It was no good. Sonja would not be his.

He closed his eyes and forced himself to think. He would need to leave Charlotte. He would head to the cabin to regroup and reorganise. He would need to replace Sonja.

Caleb tilted his head. Replace her with another.

Who?

The redhead.

With each slow inhale and exhale he thought of Jessie Conway. She was Category A, he was sure of it. He needed that; he needed affirmation now more than ever. Why not her?

Another problem presented itself. He needed money. Without Frank he was stuck with Barbara’s useless crap. He looked at the calendar on the wall. It was two days from payday, but he needed that money.

He looked at his watch. His shift at the Depot had already started twenty-five minutes ago. If he wanted to collect the paycheck he would need a story to roll out on the sad, sack-of-shit owner. He thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on his chest. What could he use to open his boss’s wallet? Something sentimental would do it.

Caleb changed his clothing and packed as much as he could as fast as he could. He carried everything to the car downstairs and loaded it, then used a screwdriver to exchange the number plates with a rust-coloured Honda Civic belonging to another resident before returning to the apartment. There was, he realised standing in the living room, the issue of fingerprints. He definitely did not have the time to clean the whole place down.

He went to the kitchen and rummaged through the drawers until he found a box of matches. He set fire to the chintz curtain in the bedroom, then returned to the living room, where he pulled some of the stuffing from the sofa and lit it. He watched as first it smouldered, then bust into a strangely coloured flame – blue first, then brilliant orange. By the time he closed the apartment door for the final time the apartment was a furnace.

Caleb drove to Home Depot and parked in the customer parking lot instead of the staff one. He walked through the store floor, ignoring the curious looks from the rest of the staff. He went upstairs and knocked on the door of the manager’s office.

Stuart Gilmore had a light system bolted onto the doorjamb, like the kind you’d see at a bank with a holding porch. If the light was red you could not enter, if it was green you could. The fact that the panels to either side of Stuart’s door were bubble glass, allowing the waiting party to see Stuart twiddling his thumbs, did nothing to dissuade him from using the stupid system.

Caleb rapped on the door and waited for the green light. While he waited, he ran through his story once more in his head. He did not like Stuart Gilmore. He reminded Caleb of a landlocked walrus. He was large and obscenely fleshy and he always seemed to be sweating, no matter the weather. It sure wasn’t from the amount of manual work his did about the place. It took a lot of effort to be as lazy as Stuart Gilmore.

The light flashed green. Caleb arranged his facial features and opened the door.

‘Hey there, Art.’ Stuart leaned back in his custom-made leather recliner and folded his hands across his prodigious stomach. The heat in the office was stifling and the floor fan by Stuart’s chair did nothing but move the warm air around. ‘I thought you might not be joining us today.’

‘Sorry, Stuart, I’ve had a bit of a crisis.’ Caleb smiled and waited to see his boss’s reaction to it. It was a well-practised, friendly smile, not too wide, not too many teeth. But sometimes men reacted differently to it than women. He had once been asked what the fuck he was smiling at by a man who had taken offence to his toothy grin. Caleb had replied, ‘not a whole lot’, before leaving the man holding his guts in place behind a parked station wagon.

Stuart smiled back and looked at him inquisitively. ‘So what can I do you for?’

‘I’m sorry to have to lay one on you Stuart, but I’m handing in my notice, and I’ll need my pay.’

Stuart’s face fell. He sat forward in his chair. ‘That’s a … well that’s a hell of a request, Art, all things considered. I thought you liked it here.’

‘I do, I surely do.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘It’s my mother. She fell the night before last and broke her hip. She’s okay insofar as I can gather, but she’s pretty shaken up. I need to go make sure she’s being looked after right.’

‘Oh jeez, I’m real sorry to hear that, Art. What age is she?’

‘She’s seventy.’

‘Awful, that’s just awful. Gosh their bones are so brittle at that age.’

‘I know it’s short notice and I hate to put you on the spot like this Stu, but I’m really in a bind.’

‘I know, Art, I understand. You may not know this, but my own mother,’ and here Stuart’s voice quavered with emotion, ‘Lord bless her, she lives with me fulltime so I know how it is. Believe me when I say that.’

‘Oh, I had no idea,’ Caleb lied. He had known about Stuart’s mother; that was why he had chosen the mother line in the first place.

Stuart sniffed and snuffled. ‘Oh yes, it’s hard when they get older, yes it really is.’

‘So you see the position I’m in.’

‘Sure, you’ll need to square your hours with Tom and I’ll sort out your cheque. Boy it’s just awful when they get older, I know. Which hospital is she at?’

‘She’s not in hospital.’

‘She’s not in hospital?’ Stuart frowned. ‘Oh, I thought—’

‘She couldn’t afford to stay there.’

‘They didn’t 
keep
 her? With a broken hip?’

‘Insurance won’t cover her for much more than a trip to the emergency room.’

‘Blood-sucking leeches, I’ll bet not.’

Caleb endured a long-winded diatribe on the evils of insurance companies before he was able to remove himself from the office. He went downstairs to the main floor to seek out the manager, Tomas Vorkenski. He found Tomas standing near the entrance of the loading dock with a clipboard in hand, talking to one of the forklift drivers. Caleb stood to one side and waited for him to acknowledge his presence. He waited a full two minutes before Tomas made eye contact, though he knew the foreman knew he was there.

‘What?’

Caleb did not use any form of smile with Tomas. Tomas was a humourless second-generation Pole and had made it clear from the first day that he did not like Caleb, and no amount of smiling was going to change his mind on the matter. For his part, Caleb was cautious around Tomas. The man was no fool and Caleb had more than once wondered if Tomas sensed some of Caleb’s more twisted thoughts. Sometimes Caleb thought he might have to do something about Tomas. Sometimes he thought he would enjoy that a lot.

‘What?’ Tomas repeated, his pale eyes boring a hole through Caleb.

‘I’m taking off. I need my hour sheet.’

‘You’re taking off?’

‘Yeah, I quit.’

‘That so? I’ll do one up for you; you can have it end of day.’

‘I need it now. I spoke to Stuart, he’s expecting it.’

‘You talked to Stuart without talking to me first?’

Caleb did not reply. It was a redundant question and not worthy of a response. He looked steadily at Tomas, playing eye chicken, as he often did. He knew the foreman would try to jam him up if he could find a good enough reason to do so.

Tomas looked away first. ‘Fine, I’ll drop it in to him. Nice knowing you.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Feeling’s mutual.’

Last-word merchant, Caleb thought as he walked back across to the main building. He glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. Soon as he had the cheque he could get out of there. Now that his plan was in motion he felt re-energised, filled with secrecy and excitement.

He walked directly to Tomas’s office and paused at the door. He glanced around. When he was certain no one had noticed him, he stepped inside and shut the door behind him. He unzipped his pants, pulled out his penis and urinated in the corner of the room. The carpet was dark blue and showed no discernable colour change, but it would sure stink like hell by the end of the day.

When he was finished he zipped up, left the office and went to the staff room to do a number on a turkey sandwich belonging to a woman named Gloria.