The Last Kind Words (41 page)

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“Your asskicking scraped me up pretty good.”

“Dale said you got into it with her boyfriend.”

“Nothing major.”

“It looks like he did some damage.”

“It’s tough to make a stoner see reason.”

“A lot of people refuse to see reason.”

He took a last bite of his crust, then sat back and stared at me. His shoulders shifted a little. I fed the rest of my slice to JFK and cleaned the grease off my fingers. I saw that I’d left the slightest dab of dirt under a pinky nail. Then I took another slice. I forced myself to down it bite by bite. I thought of Grey out there in the mud. My brother would be dead in three days. My sister and I would share this sin for the rest of our lives. I heard the faint sound of metal snapping against metal. It was Gramp playing with the switchblade.

Gilmore pursed his lips. “You’re in trouble. You can talk to me, Terrier. I can help you, if you want. You’ve been looking in all the wrong
places for a killer. I can imagine what you’ve found. Or what you think you’ve found. I heard about you pulling a piece at Danny Thompson’s place. That was really fucking stupid. A Rand with a gun—I never would have believed it. What if he comes after you?”

“What if he does?” I said.

“You don’t need that kind of grief.”

It almost got me laughing. “Anybody question him about Mal’s murder?”

“Of course. And they’ll stay on him.”

“Even if it turns up dirt on you?”

Gilmore leered at me with surprise. “You think if he killed Mal I’d hush it up to hide my dirt?”

I looked into his eyes. They were like tidal pools heavy with flotsam. A couple of days ago I’d thought he might be a serial killer. Now I almost felt sorry for him. And I feared him. In his own way he had loved Mal the way he loved my father, the way he loved me. Like a child standing outside in the snow, staring through a window at a family he wished he was part of on Christmas Day. I thought, This guy is crazy, but he’s not our kind of crazy.

“You’re making bad moves,” he said. “Like with Cara Clarke. She hanged herself, but who knows what pushed her buttons. Who pushed her over the edge. You think you might’ve had something to do with that, Terry?”

I kept eating. We were just two pals enjoying some pizza together.

“You never should have come home,” he said.

He wasn’t going to get an argument from me there. He shifted his weight. I thought, If he takes another poke at me, even if he is a cop, I’ll break his jaw. He must’ve realized it, because we each held our ground.

I still had the butterfly knife. I wondered if this was the moment when I became my brother, when I became my uncle. What would I do to stay out of prison? What would I really do to protect my sister? Gramp’s snicking blade beat into my temples until I could barely hear myself breathing. Gilmore was here because he wanted a family, and we Rands were losing ours, one by one.

Dale sashayed into the room then. She’d been listening. She’d done another quick change and had on the clothes I’d seen her wearing the other night at the lake. The tight leather jacket, the sexy pants. She looked twenty-five and gorgeous as she paraded in front of Gilmore. “Ugh, anchovies and onions?”

Gilmore kept glowering at me. It was his default expression. Dale bent over the table, grabbed my bottle, and took a long sip. Beer leaked over her chin. I wanted to tell her not to overplay it. He’s too crafty. He shifted his gaze to her. He looked at her hips, her chest, her pulsing throat. He wasn’t thinking about reading tween vampire romance novels to her now.

“Where are you heading out to this evening?” he asked. “The lake?”

“No, I’m going out on a first date.”

“No wonder Butch crashed your door. He seems like the jealous type.”

She worked the bottle around her bottom lip. “He’s history now that Terry shooed him off.”

“Good, you’re too young to settle for someone like that punk. This new one a football star?”

Dale smiled sexily, her face full of amusement. “No, he just got out after a nickel in Sing Sing for armed robbery. But he’s completely reformed. Wants to go to night class and become an IRS auditor.”

Gilmore blinked and shrugged. “Well, that’s … good.”

She said nothing. I said nothing. But we’d closed ranks. You could feel the change in the air as we waited for the next thing to happen. Gramp kept playing with the blade beneath his blanket. It sounded impossibly loud to me but no one else seemed to hear it. Finally Gilmore stood.

He wasn’t a fool. He was a solid, sharp cop despite his vices. He knew us. In a very real way, he was us. His gaze whipsawed around the room one more time. Even with the cleaning, we’d left a million clues for him to spot. I tried to hold my leaking guts in. His knowing grin faded. He carefully wiped his hands off with a napkin, crumpled it up, and tossed it on the table. He frowned at Dale. She was a good actress but not
good enough, not after having helped kill a man. A man she had loved. Gilmore’s gaze hardened. He shook his head like he was very disappointed in her. He went stone-cold-killer cop. He even looked at JFK, who let out a moan in the corner. The dog knew we’d botched it. Gilmore glanced at Dale again, made sure she had her hands in view. He turned his hip to me so he could draw his gun easily. He zeroed in on the dirt beneath my pinky nail. He read the guilt in me. He was a bad boy. He was bent. He might’ve even been in on a few body dumps himself, who knew. I wondered if we would have to get rid of him too.

He said, “So who did you two kill?”

I
told Gilmore everything. It was nearly word for word what I’d said to Dale only an hour earlier. All that I knew and all I suspected. It fit together and made perfect sense, if you were willing to go along with it. Gilmore wasn’t. He didn’t believe me. He hadn’t seen Grey’s face as he’d tried to strangle me. Whatever I said sounded like a coward’s lie. His disgust was written in his face. I was no better than my brother. He kept looking at Dale, and I could practically hear the sound of his heart breaking. It was no different from my own.

We brought him to Grey’s grave. Gilmore huffed air and said, “Jesus fucking Christ. You buried him in your own backyard. You both want to wind up in the chair too? That what this is about?”

“No,” I said.

“Your mother. She came to your brother’s trial. Think she’ll show to yours? Or will she finally wash her hands of you once and for all?”

I remembered him saying that my mother had wept the whole time but had still tried to put in the righteous word for Collie. I wondered what she would say about me.

“I did it,” Dale whispered. “It was me. I stabbed him. I had to. Grey was strangling Terry. He was out of his head. He didn’t even recognize me. He would’ve killed both of us. It’s the truth. I had to do it.”

I wasn’t certain when Gilmore had drawn his gun but he held it loosely in his hand. So we were heading down that road already. He was going to call in backup.

I pleaded with him. “At least leave her out of this.”

“How can I?” he asked.

He stared at Dale for a very long time. In her he saw a younger sister. In her he saw his own daughters. His expression was heavy with tragedy.
She couldn’t bear up under the burden of her guilt and the force of his reproach. She wavered where she stood. I watched her folding, inch by inch, but I was too slow to catch her. Gilmore spread his arms and she dropped into them, sobbing, but he kept a grip on his gun, pointed at my chest.

It was true, he knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense. Not unless I had to, in order to save my sister. He watched me warily. I could tell he wanted to pat Dale’s back, do something to soothe and placate her. I wasn’t going to be fast enough, but I’d have to try, no matter the cost.

I shifted my stance.

He shook his head slowly and said, “Don’t, Terrier.”

His eyes remained dark and lonely. All he had in the world were the Rands. We both realized it. I could see that he was trying to imagine his own empty future now.

“I ought to take you apart,” he said. “I ought to take you apart and bury you next to him.”

“It was Grey,” Dale said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Terry didn’t—”

“Shut up,” Gilmore snarled. “Both of you shut the hell up for a minute.”

I thought about what he had said when we’d first met up again outside the Elbow Room.
There are lines you cross and those you don’t
.

I told him, “This wasn’t a line, Gilmore. It was something that had to be done. It wasn’t his fault. He was ill. You were right, there was no serial killer. There was just Grey, drawn along in Collie’s wake. If Collie hadn’t gone mad dog, neither would Grey. He wouldn’t have crossed paths with Rebecca Clarke and she wouldn’t be dead. This is what’s best. Just turn around and walk away.”

“I can’t do that. I’m a cop.”

“You’re on the Thompson payroll.”

“That’s minor shit.”

“I know.”

“That’s nothing like this. I’ve never done anything like this.”

“I know.”

“Let’s go.”

“Leave her out of it. You can do that much.”

“It was me,” Dale said. “I did it. I stabbed him. But I had to.”

Grey probably would’ve survived the knife wound in the back if I hadn’t strangled him. I knew Dale was protecting me just like I was protecting her. Or maybe we were both intent on blaming ourselves.

Gilmore backed away toward the house. He gestured with his free hand for Dale to follow him and motioned with the gun for me to do the same. I did. I was limping now. The pain was quickly becoming agony. I could barely maneuver the back porch stairs. I got to the door and Dale hung my arm across her shoulder and led me inside. JFK stayed close by. He sensed the danger to our family. I thought he might go for Gilmore’s throat. One of us might have to.

We all stepped into the living room. Gilmore still hadn’t gone for his phone. He turned and stepped backward. I could rush him. JFK would probably do the rest. But Gilmore eyed me again and I had trouble seeing the outcome. I didn’t think I had it in me to murder him, not even to save Dale. I’d failed my family again. What in the hell was the point in coming back, I thought. I’ve done nothing but kick our home off its foundation.

Gilmore wagged the gun at me to get me moving again. At the edge of my vision I saw a flash of metal in Gramp’s hand. Some instinct was pushing him along as well, taking on the responsibilities I couldn’t handle. Beside him, JFK crouched like he was ready to leap.

I shoved Gilmore out of the way. He spun around and stuck the gun under my chin just as I plucked the switchblade out of Old Shep’s hand. I said, “Thanks anyway, Gramp, but we’re not going to do that.”

He blinked at his cartoons.

Gilmore pulled that tight, nasty grin again. He held a hand open and I put the knife in it. He snapped the blade shut and stuck it in his pocket. The false chuckle rang hollow in his chest. He said, “You know what this is going to do to your father?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t even care, do you, you little bastard?”

Enough was enough. I made my move. I lunged forward, swung wild, and connected with his chin. It was a beautiful shot, one I’d been waiting to give him since he’d sucker-punched me in the parking lot of the Elbow Room. It was the last bit of reserve I had. I went down on my face on the rug, groaning and panting.

I started to puke but Dale got a wastebasket and helped me to my knees. When I could breathe again, I reached into my pocket and took out the photo of the woman who had jilted Grey forty-five years ago and put the splinter in his mind that had gone deeper and deeper until it cut him in two. I hoped she was alive. I hoped she hadn’t been Grey’s first victim.

I handed the photo to Gilmore and said, “I don’t know her name or anything about her, but check on it. See if she was murdered. Grey … he might have …” I looked down and streams of blood were pulsing down the front of my jeans. Dale pushed her way in and said, “Oh God, Terry, you’re—” She grabbed more towels from the kitchen and pressed them to my stomach. My mother was going to wonder where the hell all these towels went.

Dale started tying off my wounds. Gilmore said, “They won’t hold.”

“Do something,” she begged. “Help my brother.”

He winced as he rubbed his jaw and finally came to a decision. Covering over Grey’s murder was the lesser of two evils. It was between that and the promise of a completely empty life. We Rands were all he had.

“All right,” he said.

“We have to get rid of some other things,” Dale told him.

“I know a place.”

We were going to be seeing a lot more of Gilmore from now on. He owned us, and we owned him.

He and Dale helped me to my feet. Maybe I would die anyway. Maybe I wanted to die. Maybe that was the perfect choice to make.