Last to Die: A gripping psychological thriller not for the faint hearted (3 page)

D
arla Levine was prodding
a broccoli and grated carrot salad with complete disinterest when the cell phone set on the dash of the Escalade trilled to life. She checked the number and groaned. It was the boss of the local ‘schutzhund’ association returning her call to arrange a photoshoot and short interview for the weekend edition of 
The Rockville Gazette
, the local newspaper for which Darla worked.

Darla let the phone ring. She was supposed to be a busy reporter and busy reporters didn’t hover over their phones praying for a story to come to them.

‘You gonna answer that?’ Chippy Gomez reached for it with his grease-smeared hands.

‘Don’t touch that!’ Darla slapped his hand away and snatched up the phone.

‘Ow.’

‘What did I tell you about the phone?’

‘Let it ring.’

‘And?’

‘Don’t touch it.’

‘Right.’

Chippy shook his hand and returned to his burger. The ringing stopped.

‘Shit,’ Darla said, staring at the message indicating a missed call.

‘You shoulda answered.’

‘Why don’t you mind your—’

The phone began to ring again. This time Darla didn’t wait.

‘Darla Levine.’

‘This is Andrea Wilson.’

‘Mrs Wilson, great to hear from you!’ Darla sang in her professional phone voice.

They exchanged pleasantries and got down to business. Darla forced herself to at least sound interested in what she was hearing, but it was hard work. Darla considered dumb men training dumb dogs as weapons to be spectacularly stupid, but her boss liked mutts and – inexplicably – schutzhund was becoming a popular pastime in Rockville. On any given Saturday, a person could find groups of grown men standing in fields, beating their padded arms, shrieking and threatening each other with sticks while German shepherds, rottweilers and Belgian Malinois strangled themselves into a foaming frenzy until their release, upon which they would sprint across the open ground and launch themselves at their padded assailant. If the dog took a man down the spectators whooped and hollered and clinked their beers together. Man’s best friend, the greatest penis extension ever invented, Darla thought sourly as she hung up.

‘That the dog woman?’ Chippy asked, squeezing words out around his burger. Darla tried not to look at the congealed mass in his mouth. She tolerated Chippy’s brain-dead conversations, his casual attitude to work, his rudeness and his inability to use deodorant, but she hated that he talked with his mouth full and had lost count of the number of times she had told him to stop doing so. Had she her way, she would have opened the Escalade and booted him out there and then. Unfortunately, Darla’s boss, Popeye, paid Chippy cheaply and off the books, and he could at least operate a camera.

‘Yes.’

‘She say when we need to go see her?’

‘Tomorrow at noon.’

Chippy looked worried.

‘What?’

‘I don’t like dogs. Especially those big ones.’

‘Too bad, it’s a two-page spread in the supplement. We need the photos of them in action.’

‘Those dogs, man, I seen them. They’re real mean.’

‘They’re 
supposed
 to be mean. They’re attack dogs.’

‘Shit man, what if they attack us?’

‘Then we’ll have a different slant on the story.’ Darla shot him a sneaky glance. ‘But seriously, if I were you Chippy I’d wear good running shoes.’

‘
Me?
’

‘Sure, I like dogs, so I’m okay, but you … they can smell fear you know. Smell it like a shark smells blood in the water.’

‘Oh Jesus, really?’

‘Trained for it. You’ll be like a big piñata to them.’

Chippy grew pale under his tan. Darla glanced out the window and thought about how much she really hated her life.

She had worked at 
The Gazette
 for four years. Four years of covering stupid drunks who crashed their cars into trees on payday, stupid cats trapped behind walls and stupid hick families who swore they saw ‘
something
’ in the woods while camping. But this, this stupid 
dog
 crap, seemed like a new low.

It was a joke assignment; she had become a joke.

Darla sighed. It hadn’t started out like this. True, her father, Ted Levine, had been the one to get her through the door at 
The Gazette
, but nepotism did not prevent her from working hard. It was just that nothing really ever happened in Rockville. Hell, even Denton, the next city over, had a decent football team whose players were constantly in the news for various stupid but entertaining pranks. Denton provided not just one, but two politicians caught with their pants down in bathrooms, swearing blind they had no idea foot tapping could be so suggestive, while their wives stood, stone-faced, behind them.

‘Hey, ain’t that the guy?’ Chippy said.

‘That’s him.’

Darla watched Sam Villiers stroll down the street. His massive gut was cinched tight beneath a pink and green check shirt, which was tucked into gaudy mint-green pants that would not have looked out of place on a 1970s pop singer, assuming the pop singer was a small obese auctioneer with a brand-spanking-new addition to his police record which he hoped and prayed no one knew about.

‘Let’s try to get a shot of him with the bank in the background,’ Darla said. She grabbed her recorder and fluffed her hair in the rear-view mirror.

‘Aw, look, he’s turned around.’

They watched Villiers pat his pockets and do an about turn.

‘Musta forgot something.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Prob’ly his wallet.’

‘Mm.’

‘Funny how he always eats in the same place.’

‘What’s funny about it?’

‘How come he don’t get bored, man?’

‘How come you don’t get bored asking stupid, unanswerable questions?’

‘Me, I get bored eating the same shit. Gotta change it up.’

‘You’ve eaten tacos and burgers every single day we’ve worked together.’

‘Different shit in ’em though. It ain’t the same if the shit’s different.’

The phone rang again. Darla offered a silent thank you to whatever saint covered mindless conversations.

‘Darla Levine!’

‘Where are you?’

It was Pip Lowe from the newsroom.

‘Opposite Bunny’s on Chadwell Street.’

‘We’re getting calls about an incident at Rockville High. Something’s going on over there right now.’

‘What kind of incident?’

‘I don’t rightly know. But it’s big enough that the Sheriff has despatched two cars. They’re en route.’

Darla sat up a little bit straighter. ‘That all you got, Pip?’

‘Hold on.’

Darla heard muffled sounds in the background before Pip came back on line. ‘We’re getting news that one of the kids might have been shot. But I don’t have confirmation on that.’

‘I’m on it.’ Darla hung up. ‘We need to get to Rockville High 
now
.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Shooting.’

Chippy gunned the engine while Darla dialled from memory the number of Vonda Kelp, a money-hungry shrew who had been ‘temping’ at the Sheriff’s department for as long as Darla could remember.

‘Vonda, it’s Darla. What going on?’

‘Oh my gosh,’ Vonda’s voice dropped to whisper. ‘We’ve had a ton of calls in the last few minutes. Someone is shooting over at Rockville High.’

‘What do you know?’

‘Nuthin’ ’cept that shots have been reported.’

‘Shots? More that one?’

‘I can’t say for certain. Sheriff Dubray’s gone over there himself to see what the heck is going on.’ Incredibly, Vonda’s voice dropped another octave. ‘He looked real worried when he left here.’

‘Anyone hurt?’

‘I don’t know,’ Vonda said, ‘but it sure can’t be good if there’s shooting though, can it?’

B
y the time
his brother showed up for work, Mike Conway was sweating up a storm and in as foul a mood as it was possible for any man to be. Earlier that morning, he’d sliced his palm open removing the shattered windscreen from a Honda Accord. Now his hand was throbbing and he was behind in his day’s work by an uncatchable rate.

‘Nice of you to bother making an appearance.’

‘I’m here ain’t I?’

Ace Conway ambled across the courtyard at a leisurely pace. He removed his cap and ran water from an outdoor hose over the back of his neck. He shook his head, straightened up and put his cap back on. He wore a thin cotton t-shirt under his overalls and work boots that had once been tan but were now the colour of sludge. Beneath the faded trucker cap, a piece of red leather tied his long hair in a low ponytail at the base of his neck. Prison tattoos defaced almost every inch of his scrawny arms.

‘We open at seven. It’s gone eleven.’

Ace stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it with a match. Mike watched the flame and saw the tremble in his brother’s hand. He figured Ace was hungover and probably had more than just alcohol in his system. This was nothing new. Ever since Jessie had insisted he take his brother on, Ace had rewarded her faith and Mike’s loyalty by arriving to work late – if he showed up at all – stinking of hooch and stale cigarette smoke, usually wearing the same clothes he’d left work wearing the day before.

Mike tried to keep a lid on the bulk of his emotions. It did no good to nag his brother. Ace would do what Ace would do. Nagging made no real difference and only served to aggravate them both. His brother was a grown man and at forty-four was senior to Mike by five years.

‘Whatcha do to yer hand?’

‘Windscreen on the Accord split.’

Ace’s pale eyes drifted towards the main building. ‘Well, what’s on the agenda for today, 
Boss?
’

Mike bristled at the title. He knew Ace was rattling his chain. Hell, neither of them wanted this situation. A condition of Ace’s parole was that he involve himself in gainful employment, and there wasn’t any sucker left in Rockville that was going to give Ace Conway a job, except for blood.

‘Going to strip out the engine on the Datsun. Can you finish this off while I make a few calls?’

Ace shrugged, managing to look more tired and disinterested by the second. Mike took that as a yes and went inside to the back office, happy to be out of the sun and away from a man he had once idolised with every fibre of his being.

Later they worked on the Datsun. Ace passed his brother whatever tool he needed, whistling tunelessly between his teeth.

‘Wrench.’

Ace slapped the wrench into this hand and took up whistling again. Mike attached and leaned his weight onto his wrench. He tightened the bolt briefly before changing direction. The bolt gave. He did another, then another, passing each one back to Ace until he was done. When he had removed them all, Mike straightened and rubbed the small of his back with his hand. Lately, he noticed he’d been getting a lot more twinges and aches. It bothered him, made him feel a little bit old and a little more mortal.

‘You okay?’ Ace asked.

‘It’s nothing.’

‘Got something in the truck for pain, if you need it?’

‘No thank you.’

‘Suit yourself.’

‘We’re gonna need the winch.’

‘It’s ready already.’

‘Got the reconditioned—?’

‘Set up, all it’s doin’ is waitin’ on you,’ Ace said, pausing to spit to one side, a habit Mike detested.

The exterior phone bells jangled. Mike took the bolts from his brother and dropped them into the top pocket of his overalls. The bells rang on. He squinted towards the window of the wooden porch that served as their front office. From where he stood he could see through to the counter. Emma, the surly receptionist he had hired three months before as a favour to his mother, was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’s she got to now?

The bell stopped and then began again almost immediately.

‘Can you get that, Ace?’

Ace strolled inside without a hint of a hurry to his heels. Mike pulled a bandana from his left pocket and wiped his hands. It was swelteringly hot and the sky overhead was cloudless and so deeply blue that it looked strangely unnatural. He removed his baseball cap and dabbed the sweat from his brow as he glanced at his watch. Just after one. He wished that it was closer to quitting time. He could really use a cold one or two.

Mike returned his attention to the busted engine. He heard the screen door slap open.

‘Mike! You need to come in here.’

‘What is it?’

‘Trouble.’

Mike dropped what he was doing and hurried across the yard. As soon as he stepped inside Ace thrust the remote control for the customer television into his hand.

‘What’s going on? Where’s Emma?’

‘She took off out.’ Ace jerked his jaw towards the street. ‘Saw her car kicking up dirt out front. That was Lou-Ann Granger on the phone. She says she was at home getting lunch ready when she heard word there’s been a shooting at the school. Says it’s on the TV.’

Mike switched on the small, wall-mounted set and flicked to the local news station. He immediately recognised Rockville High, the school where Jessie worked. Standing before the main gates was Lucy Francis, a local reporter more famed for her public romances than her journalistic skills. Lucy gripped her microphone tightly; her voice high with barely contained excitement.

‘Sources tell us the shooters entered the building sometime after twelve and opened fire. Though there has been no official confirmation yet, a witness told this reporter that she recognised one of the shooters and believes him to be a pupil expelled from the school a month ago. Witnesses say many of the exits were barricaded, causing pupils to panic in the crush to get free. It is not known if the shooters have been apprehended, or if they have made any particular demands…’

‘What the hell?’ Mike stared at the screen in disbelief as the camera panned left and came to rest on a spotty youth wearing a Rockville Bears cap.

‘Now obviously—’ Lucy jammed the microphone under his wispy-haired chin, ‘—you cannot name the shooters, but did you personally recognise them?’

‘Yeah, I like, know ’em to see.’

‘Can you tell me if they are pupils here?’

‘One of ’em is, for sure.’

‘And the other?’

‘Dunno,’ the youth shrugged. ‘I guess.’

The phone began to ring again.

Ace picked up and listened. ‘Yep,’ he said after a long silence, ‘he knows, he’s lookin’ at it.’

Lucy Francis now faced the camera. ‘A spokesman for the Sheriff ’s department has issued a brief statement saying a SWAT team is on its way, but that until then no one can enter the school as it is unclear if the shooters are still at the location or whether they have bombs or other incendiary devices…’

Mike grabbed the keys for his truck from a rack behind the desk and raced out the door.