Scare the Light Away (28 page)

Chapter 47

The door opened fully and Kyle Taylor stood there, an ugly black gun held in his meaty right hand. Sampson lay in the doorway, red blood spilling from her side in a rapidly spreading pool. Jason ran toward her, but Kimmy’s hand reached out to pull him back. “Stay still,” she whispered.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Kyle screamed. The gun swayed back and forth between us. “Get the fuck in here.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “But let me look at my dog, please.”

“Leave the goddamned dog alone,” he screamed. “Get the fuck in here.”

Sampson whimpered and looked up at me with one large brown eye.

“Can’t leave the dog lying here in the doorway.” Despite breathing heavily from the unaccustomed exercise, Kimmy was the voice of calm reason. “Anyone passing will see her right away.”

Kyle looked at me, then at Kimmy. The gun shook in his hand and finally pointed at Sampson. “Bring it in.” He backed up into the house, his beady, dark eyes and big gun watching us. “Kid, you come here.”

My nephew slipped past Sampson, his eyes not leaving her. “Please don’t hurt the dog, mister. She’s a good dog.”

“Shut up.”

I lifted Sampson’s head while Kimmy shoved the hefty hindquarters. The dog’s eyes rolled in her head, and she whimpered in pain as she was half-dragged, half-pushed across the floor. But we got her into the house.

“Shut the fuckin’ door.”

Kimmy kicked the door closed behind her.

“You go and sit over there.”

Kimmy did as she was told but I stood my ground. “You’ve shot my dog. It looks bad. Let the boy run for the vet. We’ll wait right here.”

“No one’s going anywhere. The kid stays here.” Kyle’s round face was flushed an unhealthy red, and he was breathing almost as heavily as Kimmy. Sweat poured off his greasy hair and ran down his forehead and cheeks. He lifted one hand—not the gun hand—to wipe away a stream of sweat before it reached his eyes. His pupils looked normal—wide and frightened, reflecting thoughts out of control, but as far as I could tell with my limited knowledge of what a spaced-out druggie looked like, normal. He gave off a rancid odor, like he’d slept in a horse stall for a week. Or perhaps out in the swamp. He twitched with tension and nerves, and he burped, straight into my face. He might not be on drugs, but he was well soaked in beer.

Kimmy whispered to Jason to come and sit with her. The couch squeaked as he climbed up onto her ample lap. Aileen whimpered in fear, and Sampson moaned in pain.

“Okay, whatever you say,” I said. “But that dog needs attention. I’ll get some bandages and towels.”

Kyle raised the gun with great deliberation and pointed it directly at my head. “You don’t sit down, lady, you’ll be the one needing bandages.”

“Rebecca, please. Do as he says,” Aileen said, her voice breaking.

Kyle wiped another stream of sweat out of his eyes. The room was cool; he wasn’t overheating because of the temperature. The hand holding the gun shook so much it was a good thing that it wasn’t motion-activated.

Strange how your mind works sometimes. Rather than worrying about my predicament, I considered that I’d never seen an actual handgun before. Like everyone else in the western world, I’d seen many guns, all shapes and colors and sizes, in the movies or on TV. But up close and in real life, from this angle Kyle’s gun looked very different from what I would have expected. Cold and impersonal. Unfeeling and angry at the same time.

“Can I sit with the dog?” I asked.

“No, you can’t sit with the dog. What’s the matter with you, you stupid bitch? I told you to sit over there. Do it!”

“Please, Aunt Rebecca.”

I sat on the couch between Aileen and Kimmy. Jason’s head was buried deep in Kimmy’s wide bosom. There really wasn’t enough room on the couch for four, but none of us minded.

Kyle walked backward to a dining room chair and straddled it, sitting down heavily. He faced us, the gun hand still shaking.

“What seems to be going on here?” I asked, attempting to sound perfectly pleasant and full of common sense. “Are you looking for something, Kyle? It’s Kyle, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I’m Kyle.”

“He’s looking for Jim,” Aileen said. “But I told him that he isn’t here.”

“That’s right. Jim isn’t here. Why don’t you go home and we’ll have him call you when he gets back.”

“Do you think I’m stupid, lady?”

Yes.

“He could be away for a few days,” I said. “We can’t sit here all day. Mrs. Michaels here is due back at work. They’ll be looking for her, won’t they, Kimmy?”

His eyes darted between Kimmy and me. He licked his lips, which were badly chapped. “Well, then they’ll have to keep on looking.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes. Sampson whimpered and looked questioningly at me, her brown eyes full of pain, wondering what was happening to her and why I wasn’t helping her. Then she gave one big sigh and closed her eyes. Kimmy stroked Jason’s hair rhythmically and spoke to him in a gentle, soothing voice. Aileen watched Kyle.

“I knew your dad in school. Mrs. Michaels did too,” I said, trying to open some sort of a channel of communication. “Did your dad tell you that we dated for a while?”

“Yeah,” Kyle sneered. “He said you were hot for it all the time. A real bitch in heat. And now you’ve come back and actin’ all hoity-toity like you’re better than us Hope River folks.” He looked at me down the barrel of his gun and eyed my casual sweats and muddy socks. And the trace of a bruise still darkening my cheekbone. “You don’t look like such a stuck-up rich bitch to me.”

No one said anything else for a good bit of time.

But of course, I had to talk again. “My father will be looking for us soon. When he can’t find Jason he’ll call the police right away.” Actually, once Dad realized that both Jason and I were not in the house, he would assume that I’d taken the boy to visit Aileen and go off for his afternoon nap. Calling the police would be the last thing he’d think of doing if he assumed his great-grandson was with me. I could only hope that he wouldn’t decide to join us.

“Well if no one makes a sound then the cops will think that no one’s here, won’t they? And then they’ll go away.” Kyle pointed the gun at each of us in turn. “And no one will make a sound, will they?”

If someone came to the door, Sampson might well bark. If she could. Her eyes were closed and she lay still, but she was breathing, thank God. It was hard to tell from where I sat, but the flow of blood seemed to have stopped. But stopped or not, there was a lot of it on the floor, and I was terrified for her. How would I be able to cope if I lost her? Tears welled up in my eyes, and I fought to push them away. Time enough to cry when all this was over.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, coming down harder than ever, if that were possible. The windows and doors rattled and the roof shivered. Kyle jerked at every sound. If we were really lucky his heart would simply give out under the strain. Best not to count on that. More likely he would shoot one of us in panic if a window clattered behind our heads.

“You.” Kyle waved the gun at Aileen. “Get me a beer.”

“What?”

“You heard me, lady, get me a beer.”

Aileen gripped my hand once, released it and stood up.

“And no funny stuff, like running out the door for help. Remember that I have your friends here. Pass me that phone, I’ll listen in, make sure you aren’t calling the cops from the kitchen.”

Aileen handed him the cordless phone and walked into the kitchen. Until she stood behind him, her eyes never left Kyle Taylor’s face.

“Help me out here, Kyle,” I said, trying to be conversational. “I don’t understand what you want with us. Jimmy isn’t here and we can’t sit here until he comes back. He sometimes goes off for days at a time, doesn’t tell anyone. Heads to Toronto or Buffalo looking for some fun.”

Aileen handed Kyle a can of beer, making sure that her fingers didn’t come any closer to his than was necessary. He exchanged the handset for the drink, and she replaced the phone in the cradle. He tossed most of the beer back in one swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his gun hand. Too bad he didn’t accidentally shoot himself in the head.

“So what about it?” I said. “Suppose Jimmy doesn’t come back?”

Kyle shook his big, ugly, stupid head. He had stopped sweating and the shakes were under a degree of control. If he had been calmer I would have been much less worried. He was like a huge, fat bomb with a big clock attached, the numbers ticking relentlessly down to 00:00.

“He’s not going nowhere,” Kyle said. Mentally I corrected the double negative. “My dad told me that he’s under police orders not to leave Hope River.”

“Does your dad also know who killed Jennifer?” I asked.

He finished the rest of the can, not bothered by my question. Not that I expected he would be. Kyle knew who killed his sister, guaranteed. He wouldn’t have gone to these lengths otherwise. The only question was whether he had been alone or if the murder was a family affair. If he’d shown up here all set on avenging his sister’s murder he would have told us, in great detail, all about the justice of his noble cause. His silence spoke volumes.

“It was an accident,” he said.

Aileen gasped. Kimmy continued to murmur sweet nothings to Jason. The boy was curled up in her lap, but his wide eyes were fixed on me.

“Of course,” I said, “I understand. Accidents happen.”

“Damn right, they do.”

“Everyone will understand. So why don’t we call the police and you can tell them all about it. They seem to be quite understanding, don’t they?”

“Do you think the cops will believe me, lady?”

“Of course,” I purred. “Everyone gets caught up in the heat of the moment.”

Kyle nodded.

“People understand that things happen as we might not necessarily want them to.” And I might well choke on my own garbage.

Kyle’s head dropped forward. I almost had him. “It was an accident,” he said, and he began to cry, noisily and messily. The tension in his right hand collapsed and the gun slumped down, to point harmlessly at the floor.

Fear, booze, braggadocio, and, hopefully, a touch of guilt, all combined to turn Kyle Taylor into a bubbling brew of emotion. The time to get to him was now; if he swung back to anger we might all be finished. I stood up and took a step forward, my hand outstretched, not daring to breathe. Deep in my pants’ pocket my cell phone rang. The William Tell Overture, a stupid ring that I’d once thought so clever.

Kyle jumped straight out of his chair, as if he heard the army arriving in a fleet of helicopters. “What the fuck is that?” he screamed. The gun came back up, I could see down its tiny black barrel all the way to the gates of hell. I lifted my arms out to my sides, as I had seen them do in so many movies. “Calm down, it’s my phone. That’s all.”

“Give it here.” Not totally out of control, he maintained enough sense to keep some distance. “Throw it here, now!”

I did as he asked. The William Tell Overture played on. There isn’t a young person in the world who can ignore the siren call of a cell phone. Kyle pressed a button and held the phone to his ear. He kept the gun trained directly on my stomach. The Overture stopped and Kyle grunted once.

“She’s busy,” he shouted.

Then, after listening for a moment, he screamed, “I said she’s busy, bitch!” and threw the phone across the room. It bounced off the wall and the battery casing fell off as it hit the hardwood floor. “Who the fuck was that?” he screamed at me. Sampson shifted on the floor; she moaned and flicked her eyelids.

“I don’t know. You didn’t let me talk to them.” It was probably Jenny, calling to begin the pre-arranged conference call with my boss and the executive team. Something else I’d forgotten today.

“Sit down.”

Sampson whimpered. Jason pulled himself out from the depths of Kimmy’s comfortable bosom.

“Please, mister,” he said, “the dog’s hurt. She’s scared. Can I sit with her?”

Kyle looked at Sampson. The newspaper reports on his family mentioned that the Taylors had two dogs.

“I guess it won’t hurt. You can sit there, but no funny stuff, understand?”

“I have to go to the bathroom. Please, is that okay, mister?”

“Yeah. But come right back. You go anywhere else and I’ll shoot the dog.”

Kimmy tried to hold him to her, but Jason wriggled out of her arms and off the couch.

The toilet didn’t flush and water didn’t run and my great-nephew came back in record time, cradling an armful of thick yellow bath towels.

Kyle didn’t look at the boy as he slipped back into the room, staying close to the walls. Jason dropped to his knees beside Sampson and gently lifted her big head to tuck a towel under her. He covered her with another towel and folded it around her body. My heart cracked in two. The bright, cheerful yellow towel gulped red liquid with the thirst of the man who had swallowed the sea.

Kyle gestured to Aileen. “You, get me another beer.”

Aileen did as she was told. When she returned from the kitchen one hand held a can of beer, the other rested at her hip. Her eyes darted between Kyle and Kimmy and me. Kyle wasn’t watching her. She looked into my eyes and pulled her sweater back a fraction. She’d slipped a kitchen knife, one of the fabulously expensive, top-of-the-line, sharp as a sword Henckels, into the waistband of her colorful skirt. The sweater fell back into place, and Aileen walked into Kyle’s line of vision to hand him his beer.

“Do you want to tell me how it happened, Kyle?” Kimmy said. It was the first time she’d spoken, except to whisper to Jason, since she sat down.

“How what happened?”

“How the accident happened? How Jennifer died?”

“No.”

“You’ll feel better if you tell someone, Kyle. Really you will. And I’d like to hear about it.”

“She was a whore, a common whore. My dad said so. Hanging around with the likes of Jim McKenzie, wanting to do a man’s job.”

Kimmy sucked air through her teeth; Aileen lifted a hand to her chest. Jason stroked Samson’s head gently, murmuring softly to the big dog, exactly like Kimmy had held and comforted him.

Children copy adults. It’s how they learn.