Slice (40 page)

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mil got up off of John, unnerved by the sight of Aaron, although he still held the razor aggressively in front of him. John quickly got to his feet.

“This ain't my son,” Emil spit. “I heard that Jessie only had one kid, and it was a girl.”

“You never heard about her partial miscarriage?” John asked.

He noticed that Emil was trembling. He shook his head no.

“Well, she had one,” John told him, “and this is the boy she lost.” He paused, looking over at Aaron. “Only he's not lost anymore.”

Aaron smiled.

From the distance came the sound of Jessie's voice, telling Abby she was coming for her. Both men turned in the direction of the sound.

When they turned back, Aaron was gone.

It was just the distraction John needed to sprint off into the woods himself. He was very grateful for the way adrenaline could surge and give someone strength, just at the moment they needed it most.

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essie lost her footing once, sending an avalanche of pebbles and sand cascading down into the gorge. She gasped but kept from crying out. She didn't want to alarm Abby.

“I'm getting closer!” she called to her daughter. “Just stay where you are!”

She looked up to make sure the girl was still there. She was, standing across the chasm, her thin little arms wrapped around her shaking body. Even telling Abby to back up, to get away from the rim of the gorge, was too risky, Jessie thought. The girl was perched right on the edge. To move any which way, especially with the way she was trembling, was to risk danger.

What was she doing there on the edge anyway?

“Don't move, baby!” Jessie shouted. “Just stand perfectly still!”

She took another few steps. She reasoned if she could get back up to the woods, she could move more quickly, and avoid the danger of the edge. Jessie decided to climb upwards a bit. But as she did so, she glanced across at Abby again.

Aaron was now standing behind her.

“Aaron!” Jessie called out. “Aaron, hold on to Abby!”

“Aren't you worried that I'll fall, too, Mommy?” Aaron asked.

Jessie stopped in her tracks, staring over at the children.

“Or is it just Abby you're worried about?” Aaron asked her.

Jessie watched as the boy placed his hands on Abby's shoulders. In that moment, Jessie knew that Aaron intended to push Abby into the gorge.

She spoke quickly. “Of course I'm worried about you, too, Aaron! I want you
both
to be safe. Stand there! Don't move. I'm coming to get you both!”

“Sometimes I think you only care about Abby,” Aaron said, his little voice filled with sadness. “You let her live. You let me die.”

“No! Aaron, I love you! I'm so, so sorry! I want us all to be a happy family together!”

“Abby,” Aaron said to his sister, “we're going to play a game. We're going to jump off the cliff. You're going to go first.”

“No, Abby!” Jessie shouted.

“A game?” the little girl asked, her voice seeming strange and faraway.

“Yes,” Aaron told her. “A fun game. Last time you were afraid to jump. But this time you won't be, will you?”

“I won't be afraid,” Abby said.

“No, Abby, no!” Jessie screamed. She began to run toward them, mindless of the rocks giving away under her feet. “Abby, stay right there! Mommy's coming!”

“Jump, Abby,” Aaron said, as a smile spread across his face. “Jump!”

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ehind Jessie, Emil had snuck up from the woods. He cared little about the drama that was currently unfolding. He had no idea who the boy was. Maybe this Aaron was his son, maybe he wasn't. It didn't matter to Emil. He also didn't care if he pushed the little girl off the cliff. Emil figured she was probably his daughter, but even that didn't faze him. All he cared about was that he had the chance to kill Jessie. He'd shove her over the cliff the moment he saw the boy push Abby. People would believe she had died trying to save her daughter.

He stepped forward from the trees, his hands out in front of him, ready to topple Jessie to her death. Manning might be right and the cops might be here any minute, but Jessie's death would sure make up for all the trouble she'd caused him.

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ust at the moment that Abby moved a foot to jump into the dark gorge, John burst from the woods and lunged forward, grabbing the little girl and carrying her to safety.

Aaron screamed in rage. His arms held above him, he levitated several feet into the air over the chasm, his scream reverberating against the rocks like the roar of a lion. Then he gently drifted back to earth, where he whimpered on the edge of the cliff like a lost puppy.

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A
t that very same moment, Emil leapt on Jessie. But instead of pushing her into the gorge, he lost his footing on the broken rocks and they toppled together.

I will not fall
, Jessie vowed to herself, grabbing on to whatever she could to stop her slide into the abyss. Her arms found a sharp outcropping of rock that cut into her side as she clung fiercely to it, but it held firm.

“You fucking bitch!” Emil screamed, still on top of her. He tried to break her grip by banging on her shoulders and arms, and force her over the side, but she held tightly. Her body was like glue to the rock.

“You're more trouble than you were ever worth,” Emil snarled, pulling out the razor from his shirt and flashing it in the moonlight.

The blade moved toward her throat.

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“
M
ommy!” Aaron called.

Emil looked up. “You know, kid, if you're really my son, you've got some pretty amazing abilities there. I don't know how you got 'em, but you and me together could have quite the time. You don't need these pathetic fuckwads. Help me finish them off!”

“Don't listen to him!” Jessie shouted. “You're my son as much as his! You're not all evil the way he is! I love you, Aaron! And I'm sorry!”

Behind Emil, John was about to leap for the razor.

But Aaron leapt first.

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essie watched. As if in slow motion, Aaron leapt across the gorge, soaring through the air like an eagle. Or an angel. His face looked much older than his five years. He looked like a grown man, Jessie thought, the way Emil might have looked, if he hadn't gone bad.

No, she realized in the split second of time she had, Aaron looked even more different than that. The boy looked ageless, eternal. His eyes were no longer filled with sadness or rage, but resolve. Maybe even a kind of peace.

Without any effort at all, Aaron landed on Emil's back and took him with him as he plummeted over the edge of the gorge.

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“
J
essie!”

John reached her, scooping her in his arms and carrying her away from the cliff.

“Abby! Where's Abby?” she shouted.

“Right here,” John told her, as he set her down beside her daughter at the edge of the woods.

“Why are you crying, Mommy?” Abby asked.

“She doesn't remember anything,” John said.

“Why are we out here?” Abby asked again.

Jessie embraced her daughter as all around them the woods came alive with flashing red police lights and the barking of dogs.

“Is everyone okay here?” Chief Walters called, running up to them, a dozen men following her carrying powerful flashlights.

“You'll find Emil Deetz at the bottom of the gorge,” John told her. “He tried to kill us all, but Jessie saved herself and her daughter.”

One of the flashlights was shone down into the darkness. Sure enough, there was Emil's broken body in a pool of blood.

There was no sign of Aaron.

Not that Jessie expected there to be.

E
PILOGUE

J
essie watched Abby and her new friends on the swings at the playground off Houston Street. It was good to be back in the city.

Here she could be anonymous. That was good for the author of a bestselling self-help book. It was also good for a woman the FBI publicly thanked for helping to stop a serial killer in his tracks. The media had gone nuts trying to interview her, but Jessie had refused all requests. There was no way she was going to talk about Emil, or anything that had happened.

Of course, the police and the FBI had blamed Emil for all the killings. There was some talk that he might have had a younger—or at least, a shorter—accomplice. But forensics experts determined that the razor found on Emil's body at the bottom of the gorge had been the one used in all of the killings, though the last victims also had their throats ripped out by what appeared to be teeth—evidence that Emil was psychopathic, the FBI had said. Curiously, however, there was no DNA found on any of the victims, something Chief Walters had found very odd. For a while, she kept trying to find out what had happened to the boy Jessie had taken in. Jessie had just replied that Aaron had gone away; she had no idea where he was. It was the truth. Still, the chief kept insisting that the child had played a role in all of this, even as the FBI declared that Emil Deetz was the sole killer. The evidence against him was overwhelming: the razor, Aunt Paulette's testimony, and Jessie's and John's stories about how Emil had tried to kill them. It seemed clear that Emil was the Sayer's Brook serial killer. And so the case was closed.

And Jessie was pleased about that.

She'd spent the year after the murders in a state of grief. But her grief had pushed her to finish her book, which turned out to be even more successful than her first. Part of that, no doubt, came from the notoriety of the Sayer's Brook murders. But Jessie always refused to go into details of that time. Her sister, her brother-in-law, and her neighbors had been killed. She insisted on a veil of privacy, and the media, by and large, respected that.

Being back in the city helped. There had been no way she could stay in Sayer's Brook. She had thought it was the place where she needed to start over. As it turned out, she'd already been in the place she was supposed to be. It had felt very good to come back to the city.

Mom had told her once that she could do anything if she put her mind to it, so Jessie had set about rebuilding her life, piece by piece. The first step, she realized, was to respectfully bid Mom's house good-bye. A year later, it still hadn't sold, and neither had Monica's house—murder houses often lingered for long periods on the market. So, until the royalties from the book started pouring in, Jessie might have had a hard time of it financially, except that Mr. Thayer had left all his money to her and to Monica and Todd—and whoever survived would inherit the other's share. The money turned out to be a great help just when Jessie needed it most. Dear old Mr. Thayer. He had been so kind to her. But it couldn't replace what Jessie had lost: a sister. But she realized sadly that she had lost Monica many years before all of this.

Meanwhile, Abby was flourishing in her new school, where she'd made friends easily and quickly. There was no longer any need for imaginary friends.

Aunt Paulette had moved to the city with her, and had managed to land a book deal of her own, about how to use the tarot and psychic intuition to help deal with life's problems. It was good to have Aunt Paulette nearby after everything they'd been through.

But for a while, Jessie had kept some distance from John. She believed him now when he said that he had never intended to cause her any hurt by withholding his connection to the FBI and to Emil. But there had just been too many secrets in Jessie's life, and just too many disappointments with men. So for a while, Jessie went solo. She needed the space.

But lately, she'd been e-mailing and talking on the phone with John. He wanted to see her. So she told him he could come to New York. She'd have dinner with him. She had no idea what, if anything, might come of their friendship. But she owed him a great deal; he had saved Abby's life. John had had his own grief as well. Caleb had been a friend of his, as well as an employee. And his nose would never quite be the same after being broken. He sent Jessie a photo, and she thought it made him look rugged. She was looking forward to seeing John. After all, he was the only one in the world besides herself who had lived through, and remembered, the full story of what had happened that night in the woods and at the gorge.

She thought of Aaron often, though her dreams and visions of him were gone. Jessie slept peacefully through the night now. No more nightmares. But in her waking moments, that little face with its big brown eyes often came to her. She knew that Aaron had done some very bad things. But he'd been just a child—a child who'd lived in some kind of netherworld between life and death, between good and bad, between right and wrong. He hadn't known what he was doing. She was glad that Emil had been given the blame for everything that had happened, because ultimately, he
was
to blame.

As was she. Jessie would have to live with the guilt that because of her rash involvement with Emil Deetz, thirteen people had been killed. People she loved—for all their problems, Jessie had loved Monica. And Todd . . . how Jessie grieved Todd. He had tried to do right by her. And kind old Mr. Thayer and her dear friend Inga. Jessie felt the weight of all their deaths, and carried their memories with her every day, even those who had been cruel to her, like Bryan and Heather and Gert Gorin.

But she had a choice: either to let the grief and the guilt take over her life or find a way to live so that she honored all those who had died. In the past, it had been Jessie's guilt and grief—and fear and doubt—that had kept her a prisoner. It had also kept Aaron from resting in peace, keeping his spirit trapped between this world and the next. Jessie now resolved that grief and guilt and fear and doubt would no longer rule her decisions or color her life. There was nothing to fear, she had discovered, nothing at all. That was the basic point of her book.

And if ever she needed a reminder of that basic truth, all she had to do was look at the little crayon drawing that she'd had framed and hung over her desk.

It was a little stick figure of a boy holding the hand of a stick figure of a woman.

At the bottom of the drawing was printed one letter.

A.