Replacing Gentry (23 page)

My head grew heavy, my chin bouncing off my chest.

“Fear—a personal favorite of mine—has proven to be the most effective tool. Fear is our power.”

In the distance, thunder rolled like a hoard of rogue bowling balls barreling angrily toward unwavering pins.

“Yet here we are,” I asserted into the conversation. “Me tied up and you trying to control me with fear. Fear is only a temporary power because, eventually, we ‘simple-minded masses’ will get tired of being scared, of running, and we turn to fight. Our will to survive is stronger than you think. Eventually we’ll catch on to you, and when that happens, you’ll pay a severe price.”

“Well said, Marlie,” he nodded. “Like I said before, you could have been very valuable to me, and to your husband, on the campaign trail had you just learned to behave. It’s why I allowed you to live this long, you know. And had you been content to simply live the comfortable life Daniel’s wealth and power could have afforded you, we wouldn’t be at this unfortunate crossroad.”

“There are more important things in life than money, power, and position,” I said. At the moment, freedom topped my list.

“You’re absolutely correct, though I bet you’d have a hard time convincing very many others. You’ve seen it yourself. The greed and the lack of morality running rampant in our society.” He gave me a pitying look. “Why do you care, or even want, to save a civilization that is determined to fail?”

“And why do you want to hurt them?”

Provocation hardened his gaze. “Because it’s my duty, my calling; because the human race is determined to follow the same destructive cycle over and over—enlightenment, industry, prosperity, gluttony, apathy, and then captivity—I’m just speeding up the process. And, most importantly, because I
can.
And it’s not just politicians I can use to control the masses. I can fill the Internet and movie theaters with pornography, images that ruin marriages and relationships with ideals no flesh and blood woman, or man, could ever live up to.
Imagine
starving oneself of nourishment to become a fantasy that only exists at the hand of an editing tool, denying one’s body of food because some fashion icon deems it’s sexy. It’s comical, really.”

Another strike of lightning brought a quick rumble of thunder. The light on the desk flickered. The storm was growing nearer.

“And then there’s war and propaganda. You’re all too lazy to search, to find the truth. You deserve what’s coming. You practically asked for it with your apathy,” he said then his manner shifted again, back to appeasing. “And that’s the beauty of it all. I can. And after I’ve gained control of the US, there will be no limit to the leaders—the dictators—I’ll have access to.”

A bolt of lightning crashed right over the house, causing the hair on my head and neck to stand on end. “No!” I said, in a sudden panic. “I won’t let you do this.”

“What do you care? You won’t be here when it happens,” he said, lifting the syringe and then flicking the tube a few times. He balled his fist, making a show of the ring on his pinky. “You see, there are two sides to this dragon. One without the other would not form the Sankofa. I am the past, the intellect. Daniel is the future, the charismatic. Daniel will be President and I his most trusted advisor. Together we will form the first link in the chain that will change this country.” Leaning down, he tightened the rubber strap around my bicep and tapped the inside of my forearm. “The world’s destiny depends on it.”

I gazed up at him, my vision diffused by a rocky sea of tears. “What about Bridger and Bodie?” I asked, gagging on the pain of losing them.

Gliding the back of his hand down my cheek, he danced his fingertips across my lips. “We all tried to warn you, didn’t we? But you wouldn’t listen.”

I jerked away from his touch. “What about Bridger and Bodie?”

“They survived losing their real mother, didn’t they?” he dismissed as he bent down and pressed the needle to my arm.

My skin resisted the cold metal before relenting and allowing the needle to slide in. “Wait—”

“Goodbye, Marlie.” His eyes, abominable and keen, bid me farewell. “I wish I could say that it’s been a pleasure.”

The needle pushed through my skin. The heat began to grow, advancing like noxious roots, winding their way up my arm to poison my heart, my mind. My eyes grew heavy again. Images of peace and beauty I knew weren’t real, danced amidst the fog. The world was fading, and there was not a thing I could do.

It’s now or never, God. If you’re out there please help me. Please.
I prayed over and over until the words started to blur in my head and fade.

The room was dark now. I had sunk to a place of nothingness. Here, I was light. I was invincible. I was free. And it was here I’d decided I wanted to stay, where there was no more pain, no heartache, where there was nothing, nothing at all. The serenity held for what seemed only moments when there was a commotion, a loud popping sound, followed by the sensation that I was falling. My shoulder hit the floor.

It hurt. I could feel again. The entire right side of my body flooded with pain. My eyes snapped open, and I could see. My hands were no longer restrained.

No sooner did I hit the floor than another body fell just feet away. It was Herbert. His eyes looked at me unseeing. The sound of Paul’s voice, harsh and spewing obscenities, came next. Another crash. Feet shuffled in black, thick-soled shoes, more obscenities and then again nothing.

I was gone.

Chapter Twenty-six

H
ow long have you been a drug addict, Mrs. Cannon?” Detective Ripley asked for about the tenth time.

My head was throbbing. My stomach and esophagus burned from throwing up repeatedly. The hospital mattress I’d woken up on to find myself not quite dead yet felt like a sheet pulled over a dry riverbed. My hospital gown was stiff from all the times my body had alternated between hot sweats and cold flashes. I glanced over at the window—night again—then to the stout, uniformed officer standing erect at the door; and finally, to Ripley’s partner. He held a pen to a notepad, poised and ready to record my answer.

I inhaled as deeply as my tight chest would allow. “I already told you, I don’t take drugs,” I said, wondering if there was another way I could answer, a clearer way to say it. “Can you call Anna-Beth again?”

“I’m sure she’ll call back when she gets the message,” Ripley said, then got back to business. “You had a significant amount of drugs in your blood stream. A designer drug, highly addictive, and so deadly we’ve been trackin’ it for years but have yet to identify the source. Needle marks on your arm, your fingerprints on the syringe.” He sent me a last-chance stare. “I’m goin’ to ask you one more time, would you like to revise your statement?”

I swallowed what felt like a wad of cotton. “No,” I said, the decisiveness in my voice waning. Given my weakened state, I didn’t know how long I could continue to resist answering his questions.

Slipping a peek to Daniel lurking in the far corner, I tried to read his expression. His eyes, his lips, even his skin looked blank. His lack of expression was most alarming to me. Since I’d woken up, he’d been present but staying at a safe distance. Not once did he hold my hand as I retched over a plastic pan or pressed a cold cloth to my face when the sweats were unbearable. I could only assume he was doing exactly what Paul had advised him to do—distancing himself from me. Plausible deniability. That, or Daniel had been sent here to watch me, to make sure I didn’t expose them.

Ripley knitted his brows together. Little dashes formed between his eyes. “Tell me again how the drugs got into your system?” he asked with a quiet force.

“I already told you, Paul put them there, all right!”

Ripley rocked forward onto his toes. “Yes, Paul Chapman, your husband’s associate? Without your consent?”

“Yes, he tied me to a chair and then shot me up,” I said, my gaze dropping to the silhouette of my feet under the blanket. I should have called Anna-Beth like I was supposed to.

“When we found you, you were lyin’ on the floor,” Ripley said. “If you were tied to a chair, how did you end up down there?”

I looked from one wrist to the other for ligature marks, hoping to find evidence to corroborate my story. Nothing on my skin looked out of place. Closing my eyes, I thought back to when I’d hit the ground.

“I don’t know, he untied me, I guess.”

“Is that how you got that nasty gnash on your face?”

I flinched as the memory of Daniel’s gun crossing my cheek flashed before my eyes. “No. First, Paul hit me.” Tears rose up, stung the inside of my nose. “Then he tied me up.”

“Why?”

I couldn’t say why in front of Daniel. Couldn’t admit that I’d broken into his private safe. Couldn’t reveal the secrets I’d learned that I might later need to save myself. Couldn’t tell them that Paul was a murderer, not to mention a member of an ultra-radical group trying to take over the world, until I had a chance to assemble all the pieces and figure out what it all meant. I barely believed it myself. How could I explain anything to this disbelieving detective?

Not that I thought Paul left any evidence behind to corroborate my story if I did try to explain it. “Because I was snooping into matters
he
didn’t think concerned me,” I said, revealing only what Paul had already warned Daniel I’d been doing.

Slowly, Ripley raised one eyebrow. “These ‘matters’ wouldn’t have anythin’ to do with the questions you were askin’ me the day before yesterday about that Jane Doe from the alley?” he asked. “Because if they do, you’d better start talkin’ or I’ll add obstruction to your current list of charges.”

Suddenly the presence of a uniformed officer guarding the door had new meaning. My gaze shifted to Ripley’s. “Charges?” I croaked. “What am I being charged with?”

Ripley pulled at his collar. “First . . . murder.”

My entire body went rigid, my eyes and mouth popping open. “Murder?” I said, my questioning gaze darting between the two glum faces of the detectives. “Who’s dead?”

“Mr. Chapman, for one,” Ripley said.

“Paul?” I asked, raking my brain for any recollection of his passing. The last thing I could recall of him was the sound of profanity. “How?”

Ripley pushed his suit jacket back to rest his hands on his hips. “Well, that’s what we were hopin’ you could tell us,” he said with an expectant look.

Paul was dead and they thought I was the one who’d killed him? “I don’t know. I can’t remember b-but I know I didn’t kill him.” I replayed the foggy memory out loud. “I was tied to a chair. He shot me full of drugs, twice. I blacked out. I couldn’t have done it!”

The muscles around Ripley’s jaw tightened as he said, “So you say.”

“It’s the truth,” I insisted, my eyes darting about the room, my brain trying to latch onto another detail that might further my assertions. “Ask Herbert, he was there.”

Ripley exchanged a look with the other detective. “We will as soon as he’s out of surgery,” he said, locking his gaze with mine.

I gulped down another dry lump. “Surgery?”

Ripley nodded. “He sustained a severe gunshot wound to the chest.”

The image of Herbert hitting the floor, his eyes unseeing, staring into mine, surfaced in my memory. My head fell back against the pillow.

“You better hope he lives to tell us you had nothing to do with it or we’ll be adding a second murder charge,” Ripley added.

This was too much. I slammed my fists down into the mattress. “You think I attacked Herbert?” I shrieked. I turned my attention fully to my husband for the first time since the interrogation had begun. “Daniel, tell them, I would never hurt him. He’s family.”

Ripley adjusted his position, blocking Daniel from my line of sight. “I’m goin’ to have to remind you
not
to address your husband, ma’am. He’s here merely as a courtesy,” he said in a coarse tone. “Were you havin’ an affair with Mr. Chapman?”

I snorted. “N-no. Of course not,” I said, my face scrunching in disgust.
Ew!
“Why would you ask that?”

Ripley sighed, like this was exhausting . . . for
him
. “You and Mr. Chapman didn’t engage in sexual intercourse last night?”

“No!”

“Mrs. Cannon, can you explain why you lied to your husband, telling him you would be away for the night, and why you and Mr. Chapman were in your house, alone, while you knew your husband was staying the night elsewhere?” Ripley asked, shifting his stance just enough for me to see Daniel again. His expression hadn’t changed except that his skin had turned an ominous shade of white.

“No,” I repeated, my heart, my soul, my life, sinking further into the unfathomable oblivion of Ripley’s assumptions.

“So why don’t you tell me why Mr. Chapman was at your house, why he’s now dead, why your gardener is laying on an operatin’ table, and why your finger prints are on the garden clippers used to assault Mr. Chapman and the gun that shot them both?”

I stared at him through hollow eyes. “I can’t,” I said in an unsteady voice. “I don’t remember anything.”

“Let me see if I can clarify things a little for you,” Ripley said, moving around to the other side of the bed. “This is what we think happened. You and Mr. Chapman were having an affair. He wanted to break it off.”

The idea made me so sick it felt like my stomach was trying to crawl up my throat.

“When he told you it was over, you became enraged, got physical, the two of you fought.” He pointed a stiff finger at my cheek. “That’s how you got that bruise on your face. Your gardener heard the ruckus and came to your aid, attacking Mr. Chapman with his clippers. You became enraged when he stabbed your lover and grabbed the gun. But Mr. Chapman got in your way and you shot him by mistake. Blaming your gardener for your lover’s death, you shot your gardener next. Then, distraught by what you’d done, you took a lethal dose of drugs.” He pressed his lips together like he intended for the tension to mount, the pressure to break me. “Sound ’bout right?”

My head spun around the facts he’d spewed, facts that were in direct contradiction to what little I remembered.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said, thinking back, replaying the events in my head.

I was going through the contents of the safe, I pulled out my phone to call Anna-Beth, and then, out of nowhere, Paul was there. I should have picked up my purse. I shouldn’t have been snooping. I should have called Anna-Beth first. If only, if only . . . The light . . 
. “His eyes!” I shuddered.
I insulted him . . . He hit me—

“What did you mean ‘his eyes’?” Ripley asked, breaking my garbled chain of thoughts with a curious look.

I bit down on my lip. “His eyes?” I repeated. “I didn’t,” I said, shaking my head.

Ripley blew an impatient breath through his nose. “Okay, Mrs. Cannon. I think you need some time to rest, to think about what happened and consider the severity of the situation you’re in. I can’t help you if you won’t help me.”

The click of the door shutting split my attention; I looked over but couldn’t see that anyone had come in. A quick sweep of the room told me why. No one
had
come in, someone had left, and that someone was my husband. But then given Ripley’s assumptions, why should he stay? His purpose here was done. As far as he was concerned, I’d been “taken care of.” My lack of memory pitted against the evidence planted by Paul, or possibly even Daniel, would be enough to discredit anything I could say to damage Daniel’s reputation now. And since there was a pretty good chance no evidence was left pointing to Paul as the serial killer, it was my word against a dead, sociopathic Iphiclesian.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” I said.

Ripley slipped his hand beneath his suit coat. “Well, to be honest, you haven’t given me much to go on.” He pulled out a pair of shiny linked cuffs. Securing one around my wrist, he tightened the other on the bar attached to my bed.

I yanked at the handcuffs—tied up again. “Are you arresting me?”

“Yes, ma’am. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and . . .” The gravity of my current predicament closed around me like a cage as his tongue rolled effortlessly over the words.

“I guess I need a lawyer?” I said when he’d finished.

“I think that would be a good idea.” He snapped his fingers at his partner. The detective flipped to a clean sheet in his pad. “Is there someone besides Anna-Beth you want me to call?”

I said the first name that came to mind. “Johnny Hutchinson.”