Mad Max: Unintended Consequences (26 page)

Six weeks had passed since Hunter lay dead in our family room. Three of us hit him four times. Whip aimed the best. He got Hunter in the throat and head. I aimed at his chest, too, but shot him through his armpit into his heart.

Emilie's bullet went in his torso. I never knew who fired the killing shot because the autopsy results were inconclusive. I didn't care.

One major change. I no longer fainted at the sight of blood. Or brains on the wall, drapes, and glass door.

The night it happened, Alex thought a dead body was “way cool” and wanted to see it again, but Whip sent him across the street to the neighbors. The rest of us stayed until the police released us. Our old friend Jerry was one of the cops who answered the nine-one-one call. He kept the others from losing their heads. The crime lab came. This time we made sure it did a thorough job.

Not that there was any doubt about what happened. Hunter was in the house, a gun near his hand with his bullet lodged in Whip's chair where Emilie sat, latex gloves on his right hand. My teeth chattered from the adrenaline rush wearing off. Emilie held up better than I would have as she answered the questions.

“Why did you think Dr. Hunter was coming to kidnap you? How could you know?” Jerry asked.

Emilie excused herself, went up to her room and returned with an envelope. She handed it to Jerry. “Here.”

“Jesus.”

Whip looked over his shoulder. When Alex hacked into Hunter's computer, he found a file on Emilie. It contained pictures taken all over Riverbend, even in her bedroom.

“He's been stalking me.” Emilie's voice shook.

I leafed through the pictures: long-range shots at school, in the backyard pool, when she was asleep in the house. There was a picture taken in his office and a variety of computer images with the changes he planned to make. Couple those with the information I got from “Joe the PI,” and the police had no doubt about Hunter's intentions.

“That was one sick son of a bitch. Too bad he's dead. We have enough to send him to death row.”

“We have more.” I gave Jerry the
Cliff Notes
version about the other women we thought Hunter murdered.

“Christ on a motorcycle!” Jerry shook his head.

The piece de resistance was the recording Emilie made while she talked to Hunter. She caught his confession and his bragging about his future plans on her cell.

I felt certain there would be no repercussions from the shooting, but I was worried District Attorney Weed might see another open door. He filed no charges, however. The Richmond police sent ballistics reports and copies of other photos from Hunter's computer to out-of-state police to close their cold cases.

As soon as he could, Whip took Alex and Emilie to Peru to wrap up the project he started before Merry's death. We arranged for both kids to continue counseling with doctors Silberman and Schwartz through Internet and satellite phones. Tiny digital cameras gave the kids private sessions with their therapists. Emilie suffered recurring nightmares she killed Hunter. Alex showed no outward effect, but Dr. Silberman said he was very much overly stimulated and needed the diversion of being away from his house. Peru was the perfect place for him to begin healing.

And me? I promised Whip I'd get rid of the house, since he said he never wanted to set foot inside again. Jerry Skelton dropped by with a card for a company that cleaned up crime scenes. Who knew you could make a living cleaning up gore?

I hired a different crew to clean, repaint, and redecorate the house. It sold in two weeks in a hot market. Besides, there was a ghoulish curiosity about a place where someone was shot and killed. I packed up what we wanted to keep and donated what we no longer needed. All but Whip's favorite chair. It, and the bullet hole in the headrest, went out with the trash the day after Hunter's death. None of us wanted to see it again.

Emilie came to my room the night after we killed Hunter. I'd left my door ajar, expecting a midnight chat. She didn't disappoint me.

“Have you thought about how you're going to take care of us?”

“Only every minute since your mom died. What do you have in mind?”

“I was wondering if we could find a way to travel with Dad and still keep up with our schoolwork.” Emilie put an orange and brown head on my shoulder.

“You mean, homeschooled on the road? Alex'd love ‘on the road’ but would hate ‘homeschooled.’”

“Time for him to grow up, huh?”

We would have a very different lifestyle. I had to think about all the pros and cons, the logistics. That night it was too much to wrap my brain around.

“Just think about it, okay?” Emilie wiggled out of bed and closed my door behind her. There was a deep sigh. Wasn't mine. Or was it?