The Last Time She Saw Him (23 page)

“Jesus Christ. You’re either crazy or completely brainwashed by that son of a bitch.”

Alice releases my hair and my head smacks against the wooden floor.

“You just shut your mouth or I’ll have Leslie carve it out of your face.”

Leslie rushes back into the room, her alabaster skin glistening with sweat.

“I took the baby to the guesthouse and put him in the crib just like you wanted,” Leslie pants.

“You need to go find the boy Logan and take care of him. Kill him and bring the body back here.”

Logan is smart. He will keep running until he finds help.

“I like Logan. I wish we could take him with us,” Leslie says.

“Shut up. You follow my direction, girl. Now go on and change back into your regular clothes. You look like a whore dressed like that.”

“I like these clothes.”

“Those are devil clothes. You get out of them and put on something godly, you hear?”

Leslie lifts up her index finger and thumb, like she is holding a gun, and points it in Alice’s direction.

“Boom, boom!” Leslie says.

“You get out of here now, little girl, or I will get a real gun and shoot you dead with one shot,” Alice says.

The threat brings Leslie back in line, and she hustles out of the room to do Alice’s bidding.

“Something’s never been quite right about that girl,” Alice mutters as she watches Leslie disappear down the hallway.

“You wrote those letters to Cahill,” I say.

Alice nods and begins to run her finger along the windowsill, like a dutiful Stepford wife dusting before her husband comes home after a hard day’s work.

“The letters were key, because they would throw the police off track and then I wouldn’t be looked at as a suspect.”

“How did you know about my brother?”

“Old newspaper stories. Google is a gift from God. You do a quick search, and you can find out anything about a person. I found out about the Indian arrowhead in a
Detroit Free Press
online article and had Leslie plant one under your baby’s crib. Ordered it on eBay, I did. The Lord helped me craft a perfect plan. No one was supposed to find out, but then Kim figured it out, and you and your brat Logan showed up here. You’ll all be dead soon enough and the Lord will have his offering.”

“I heard that radio interview with Cahill. He wasn’t talking about a human sacrifice. Cahill is a deranged pervert, but he’s no killer.”

“Get behind me, Satan. I will not listen to your trickery. You’re nothing but a miniscule ant in God’s eyes.”

Alice slams her foot against the back of my head, shooting bands of white stars that explode in front of my eyes. I close them tight until the pain in my head reduces to a dull throb.

“I told you to change out of that sinful outfit,” Alice says to Leslie, who has returned in her tank top and shorts.

“I didn’t have time.”

“You will get back into your dress once she’s taken care of, understand? Now, tie Julia up. Bring her downstairs and throw her in the trunk of the car. I’m going to gather our belongings and start wiping down the place. Be careful not to touch anything like I told you.”

Alice pads heavily down the hallway, and Leslie dutifully begins to coil the rope she used to kill Kim around her arm.

Leslie is a murderer, but still young and stupid. She may be my only way out.

One thing I know how to do is make people talk.

“Don’t listen to Alice. You’re just a kid. Where are your parents?”

“My mother died when I was ten and my dad took off before I was born. Alice was the only person who’d take me in. I’m not supposed to talk to you.”

“You must miss your mom. You can’t believe the crazy religious stuff Alice is feeding you.”

For a second, Leslie looks like a hurt child instead of a cold-blooded killer.

“I do miss my mom. Alice is nuts, but I got my own room and she paid me five hundred bucks to help her kidnap your kid. I’m going to take the money and move to New York City. I’m going to be a model. Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Alice is manipulating you. Do the right thing and let me go. I’ll tell the police you were brainwashed into believing this bullshit and they’ll help you.”

Leslie nibbles on the underside of her bottom lip and considers my argument.

“Then I won’t get the money. Alice is all right. She’s crazy religious, but she treats me okay, especially when she takes her medication. She hates you though. She’s got a room in the basement back home with pictures of you up on the wall and all the stories you wrote about her reverend are tacked up there too.”

“Just let me have the phone so I can call the police. I’ll tell them this was a big misunderstanding and none of it was your fault.”

“I’m not stupid and I’m not going to jail. I’ve been to juvie twice already and I know jail is a million times worse. Alice always took me back in with her after I got out, no matter what kind of trouble I got into, so I owe her. She hits me sometimes when she’s angry, but it’s usually because I deserve it.”

“No one deserves to be hit.”

“I’m going to be on the cover of
Cosmopolitan
magazine once I get to New York. None of those other models I seen have tits as nice as mine.”

Her decision obviously made, Leslie begins to bind my hands and feet together with the thick rope. My body is still too weak from the Taser gun assaults to fight back.

“I know how to tie a real good knot,” Leslie says and cinches the rope around my hands so tightly it slices through the skin on my wrists.

“Please, just wait, Leslie.”

Leslie’s hands latch around my ankles, and she pulls me down the hall to the stairs. The back of my skull slams against each of the sixteen ceramic tile steps until we finally reach the main floor.

“I’m tired, Alice,” Leslie complains. “I can’t carry her anymore.”

“Julia hardly weighs a thing,” Alice lectures from the kitchen. “Do I need to do this myself? I think not. Go get the wheelbarrow from the garden and use that to haul her out to the car.”

Leslie dumps me in the middle of a great room and hurries to the outside patio, but stops dead in her tracks when the doorbell rings.

“Get her in the closet right now,” Alice whispers in a deadly hiss. “Why didn’t you gag her?”

“You didn’t tell me to.”

Alice rears back her arm and slaps Leslie across the mouth.

“Don’t you sass me, child. Here,” Alice says and hands Leslie a black cotton scarf from the coat rack. “Stuff it in her mouth. Now.”

I start to gag as Leslie jams the fabric down my throat.

“No talking, Julia,” Leslie says quietly. “I’ll have to choke you otherwise.”

Leslie tugs me across the living room floor to the hall closet and shoves me inside. In her haste, Leslie leaves the door open a sliver, just enough for me to get a direct view of the front entryway.

“Get out of here!” Alice tells Leslie. “Go out through the screen door and hide in the backyard. Don’t come back in the house unless I tell you. I don’t need a stupid girl saying stupid things and ruining it all for me.”

Leslie darts to the screen door and disappears outside.

Alice takes a deep breath and clasps her hands together as if she is about to pray, when the doorbell chimes a second time. Alice reaches inside her knitting bag on the coffee table and pulls out a pair of silver shears. She carefully tucks them inside a pocket in the front of her dress and opens the front door a crack.

A man’s voice greets her from the other side of the door.

“Good evening. Sorry to bother you, but I was on the way home and I wanted to stop by to see if everything was all right. A very worried young lady stopped by my store a little while ago. She said there was some kind of emergency here at this house, and her son was in danger.”

The visitor at the door isn’t the police as I had so desperately prayed for, but the older shopkeeper, George Tucker. I begged him not to forget about me. And he didn’t.

Alice sizes up the old man, throws back her head, and laughs.

“No emergency here. I almost burned the dinner rolls, but I rescued them in time. I don’t think that constitutes an emergency, do you?” she asks.

“That’s odd. The young lady, Julia was her name, was very agitated. She asked me to call the police when I got home, but I wanted to stop by here first,” he says. “I even put my hearing aid in so I could hear the police when I called them. That young lady just seemed so genuine with her concern, and I promised I wouldn’t forget her.”

Alice’s jaw muscles begin to twitch.

“I don’t know anyone named Julia. You have the wrong house.”

“That’s her car there in your driveway, isn’t it? I recognize it from the store,” Tucker answers. “In my line of work, days go by kind of slow sometimes so I get real interested in the cars that pull up, especially when business is quiet like tonight.”

“That’s my niece’s car,” she answers.

“Miss Kim? She’s a real nice girl. But doesn’t she drive that other one parked in the driveway, the silver Volvo? I’ve seen her pull up to the store in that nice-looking vehicle,” Tucker says. “That’s a mighty expensive automobile. I looked up the Kelley Blue Book value on that one, I did. That’s a real fine car. My Bess and me, we can only afford my old Ford truck. I bought it in ’69, but it still runs real good.”

“We have more than one car here,” Alice answers. “Now is there something else I can help you with?”

“No. I guess not then. I met Miss Kim’s cousin Leslie earlier. Real sweet young girl. Have a nice evening. Sorry to bother you. I see you’re already in your nightgown ready for bed.”

“Good night,” Alice says and begins to shut the door.

“Well, happy Labor Day. I guess it means summer is officially over, don’t you know,” Tucker answers.

My heart sinks as Tucker leaves and Alice bolts the door after him.

Now that the inconvenient visitor is gone, Alice pulls out her knitting shears from her pocket and heads toward my hiding place in the closet. Her hand grasps the knob of the closet just as the front doorbell rings again. Startled, Alice slides the shears back into her dress pocket and storms back to the front door.

“Sorry to bother you again,” Tucker says as he fondles his cardigan buttons nervously between his arthritic fingers. “I made that young lady a promise. She gave me two phone numbers to call. It’s a good thirty-minute drive still to my house. Bess is making me boiled dinner tonight and I don’t want to be late, but I really should make those calls. Could I use your phone? I need to call that young lady’s husband and some policeman, too.”

Without invitation, Tucker hobbles into the house like a naïve lamb foolishly heading to the slaughter. Tucker reaches the foyer, his fate already sealed as the screen door to the backyard silently slips open. A glint of silver flashes in the light as Leslie sprints toward Tucker from behind with something raised in her right hand. Leslie is holding an ax.

I raise my bound feet and pound them against the side of the closet to alert Tucker. He turns his head slowly in the direction of the sound but a second too late. The sharp blade makes impact and slices into the center of Tucker’s skull and a surprised groan comes out of the old man’s dry lips. Somehow, despite the assault, Tucker continues to stand for a moment, just staring wide-eyed with surprise until his well-lived body collapses in a heap on the floor.

“Please. Please. My Bess . . .” Tucker begs.

Leslie doesn’t heed Tucker’s desperate pleas for his life. She raises the ax up high and lets it fall a second time. It connects and burrows deep into the back of the old shopkeeper’s neck.

CHAPTER 17

L
eslie tugs the ax out from Tucker’s neck with a grunt and rears her arm back, ready to continue the assault. Before Leslie can deliver the third strike, Alice grabs her wrist and squeezes until Leslie lets out a yelp of pain.

“I said to stay outside until I told you it was all right to come in,” Alice barks.

A look of hurt stings Leslie’s pretty face. “I was just trying to help. Just like I did with Kim. You told me to kill her, so I figured you would want me to kill the old man, too. He was interfering just like she did. What do you want me to do now?”

“Clean up this mess,” Alice says, pointing a stubby finger at the pool of blood collecting around Tucker’s head. “Go get some towels to sop up the blood. Now!”

“I’m sorry,” Leslie answers, as her bottom lip juts out and begs to quiver.

“That’s better,” Alice says. “Go get a mop and bucket. And get the body out of here.”

Leslie lets the hatchet fall to the floor and runs to the garage to fetch the cleaning supplies like a good dog obeying its master.

Alice pulls a small mirror out of her pocket. She shines it against her ample hip and then places it under Tucker’s nose and mouth for a few minutes and then inspects the glass carefully.

“Fogged up. Still breathing, I’m afraid. That’s a shame. You’re probably praying right now for God’s mercy aren’t you, silly old man?” Alice asks Tucker, whose chest is slowly managing to heave up and down.

Alice turns away from Tucker’s dying body and studies her watch. “Five minutes to seven. It’s time for my nightly communion. I’m certainly not going to commune in fellowship with the likes of you two.”

Tucker opens his mouth to speak, but the only thing that comes out is a thin wheeze.

“Suffer in silence. There will be no disruptions during church. That’s what my mother always told me,” Alice says. “None of this is proper or orderly. Everything is supposed to be orderly. When you don’t have order, that’s when the devil slips in.”

Leslie hustles back into the room with a mop and bucket. She begins frantically trying to sop up Tucker’s blood by swaying the mop back and forth in hurried strokes. But the mop is bone dry and only smears the red stain further across the floor.

Alice grabs Leslie by the neck and shoves her face just above Tucker’s pool of blood, like a master punishing a dog for defecating on the floor. “You don’t even know how to mop properly. You need to fill up the bucket with water first and then get the mop wet before you start. See this? Fix it. I’m going upstairs for my nightly communion. This better be cleaned up and the body gone before I get back.”

Alice ascends up the staircase and begins to sing in an off-key soprano, “Praise God, From Whom All Blessings Flow,” a staple religious hymn I remember Logan learned when David took him to church. A chill runs through my body as I realize that was the song Logan must have heard last night when Alice was standing over his bed.

A door slams shut upstairs as Alice enters her makeshift religious sanctuary, and Leslie’s feet paddle toward the kitchen with a bucket in her hand. She turns the corner and I hear a steady hiss as the kitchen sink turns on.

“She’s such a mean, ungrateful bitch,” Leslie complains from the kitchen. “Someone should teach her a lesson.”

Leslie leaves the bucket in the sink with the water still running and bolts over to the closet. She grabs my feet in a vise grip and hauls me out of the closet, toward the front door. We get halfway across the great room when Leslie suddenly freezes.

“The water. I put the plug in the sink and left the water running. Alice will flip again if it spills all over the floor.”

Leslie drops me next to Tucker and races back into the kitchen. I now lay face-to-face with the dying old man, whose only mistake was trying to help me. Tucker opens his mouth slightly, exposing a set of dentures that are coated in a thick, sticky film of red. Tucker’s lips begin to tremble as though he wants to tell me something, but the only thing that comes out is a moist rattling noise from his throat that sounds as if he is gargling jelly. I am sure he is seconds from death when Tucker’s eyes shoot wide open.

“I came back . . . for you,” Tucker barely whispers.

Tucker is panting now, his breath shallow and strained. “Tell my Bess I love her.”

Tucker lets out a slight cough and a gush of blood spurts from his mouth. His eyes begin to roll back in his head, but somehow, he is still breathing.

Heavy footsteps plod from the kitchen in my direction. “I looked everywhere. I don’t know where the towels are in this big, stupid house,” Leslie says.

Leslie stands over me with her hands on her hips, and her eyes narrow as they fixate on the black scarf. She yanks it out of my mouth and stuffs it around Tucker’s head to try and plug up the blood that continues to seep from his head.

“Leslie . . .” I gasp, my mouth raw and dry from the makeshift gag. “You don’t have to take Alice’s abuse anymore.”

“Shush your mouth, Julia,” Leslie scolds. “I don’t want to hear your stupid talk. Let’s go.”

Leslie puts her arms around my waist and drags me with effort out of the house and over to her blue sedan in the driveway.

“One down,” Leslie says, panting. “I’ve got to finish off the old man now.”

Leslie throws my bound body against the rear right wheel of the car and runs back inside the house to tend to the next chore on her list.

I try and slip my arms and legs free from the knotted rope, but Leslie tied the restraints too tightly. I lift up my arms and try and sever the rope against the metal edge of the car, when something darts into view. A slight figure peers out from behind an apple tree on the far corner of the property and then cautiously steps out from the hiding place.

It’s Logan.

“Run, Logan! Get out of here!” I call out to him quietly.

Logan runs as fast as he can until his thin arms wrap tightly around me. His heart beats wildly against my chest and his face is smudged with dirt and tears.

“They have Will,” Logan cries. “I heard Aunt Kim talking to her mom on the phone, and I knew something was wrong. She told me to stay in the main house, but I followed her. She was talking to Alice and Leslie in the guesthouse, and that’s when I heard a baby start to cry. Leslie and Alice dragged Aunt Kim inside, and I heard her start to scream. Aunt Kim started yelling that they kidnapped Will. I could see them through the window. Alice had a gun. She said she would kill Will if Aunt Kim called the police. Alice hit Aunt Kim with the gun, right across her face, and she started bleeding. I got scared and ran into the woods. I prayed you would come and find me.”

“Listen to me, Logan. You don’t have much time. I have a knife in my pocket. Take it. You need to get out of here right now.”

Logan fumbles in my pocket and pulls out the knife. He flips it open and begins to cut back and forth against the thick knot around my wrists.

“No. You have to go. There’s no time. Run and get help.”

Logan ignores my order. He keeps cutting, determined to get me free.

“I’m not going to leave you, Mom,” Logan vows.

“You have to. I’ll be okay. I promise. Just get out of here. Run as fast as you can until you get to the main road. Then flag down a car and call the police.”

“I’m going to go find Aunt Kim. I heard Alice and Leslie say they were going to take her to the house. Aunt Kim will help us.”

“No! Don’t go in there.”

As soon as the warning comes out of my mouth, Tucker lets out one last moan from inside the house.

“Logan, run!”

Logan leaps to his unsteady feet. He turns to go but hesitates for a moment and looks back at me, struggling with the decision of what he should do. I force the tears back so Logan will think I’m strong, and I silently say good-bye to my little boy.

“I’m going to save you and Will,” Logan promises. “I won’t let Alice or Leslie hurt either of you.”

His choice now made, I watch Logan’s thin arms and legs race across the yard until he disappears into the woods. I say a silent prayer he will make it to safety.

Alice appears from the house, swishing her ample bottom side to side, with Leslie following behind, as she pushes a wheelbarrow through the front door. A pair of long, thin legs dangles from the wheelbarrow’s side. The spindly legs belong to Tucker.

“Throw them both in the trunk,” Alice commands.

“The old guy is too heavy,” Leslie cries. “You don’t do anything. You could help me for once. I want more money when this is over. You owe me for all this extra bullshit.”

“Shut up and do it!” Alice screams. She hauls back her arm and slaps Leslie hard across the face.

Leslie begins to cry quietly and goes back to the business at hand. She grunts as she lifts Tucker and drops him in the trunk. A few of his brittle bones snap like toothpicks on impact. Leslie wipes away a drop of sweat from her forehead and comes for me next. She jams her long, slender hands under my armpits. I instinctively turn my head and bite Leslie as hard as I can on her forearm until I feel my teeth sink into her flesh.

“Bitch!” Leslie cries out in surprise and pain.

Alice bends down and shoves one of her fat fingers in the dirt. She then rubs her finger against my forehead.

“You’re a dirty girl. You must wear your sin for all to see,” Alice chastises and then directs her attention to Leslie. “Get her in the car, now.”

Leslie spits in my face as payback and tosses me roughly inside the trunk. I land on top of Tucker, who is soaked in blood and covered with bits of flesh and brain matter.

Before the trunk closes, Leslie throws in a long shovel that smashes against my bent knees. I savor the last few seconds of fresh air and quickly fading sunlight until the trunk slams shut and I am jammed into a pitch-black coffin with a dead body. The odor of blood, urine, and sweat from Tucker quickly fills the car, and I hold my breath so I won’t get sick. I fight the panic growing inside of me and make mental notes of the car’s movements. I don’t hear any other vehicles, so we must still be on the property. We drive for what seems about five miles when the car comes to a sudden stop and the driver-side door opens.

“Here, Alice?” Leslie asks.

“No. Not out here in the wide open. Start digging behind those trees,” Alice says.

“How many holes?”

“Two for now. We should leave the boy’s body in the house near Kim’s, so it will be obvious to the police she killed him. I’ll be inside. Don’t bother me until you’re done. Understand?”

“Yes, Alice,” Leslie says.

The trunk opens, and Leslie reaches in for the shovel. I then realize its intent: Leslie plans to bury me alive. I look up toward the melting blues and purples of twilight and beg the universe for help.

“I don’t care what happens to me, but please just let my boys be safe,” I pray.

The sound of metal striking dirt echoes in the background as Leslie begins to dig. I rock back and forth to see if I can gain momentum and try and swing my feet over the side of the trunk but freeze when heavy footsteps approach the car.

“Why do I have to do this all by myself? Alice never does anything. She’s just a big fat pig,” Leslie says. “Stupid dried-up bitch. I bet she wants Cahill to screw her, but he’d be a fool to touch her jelly ass.”

She walks over to the trunk and stares through me with a vacant, careless gaze. I hold my breath as she reaches in and grabs Tucker. His limbs flop like a marionette’s as Leslie tugs at his limp, awkward body and hoists him out of the trunk. I hear his body scrape along the dirt as Leslie drags Tucker over to his grave. Even though it is a muggy early September evening, I begin to shiver uncontrollably as the sound of a shovel hitting the earth repeats until the last scoopful of dirt scatters atop Tucker. There is an eerie stillness for a moment, as though the woods and its creatures are mourning Tucker in a moment of silence. Leslie’s quick feet break the quiet as she returns for me.

Leslie is above me now, still panting from the exertion of burying Tucker. Her head is drenched in sweat, which rolls down her face and drips onto mine. She kneels toward the trunk, grabs my feet, and begins to pull me out.

“No, Leslie!” I say, scrambling to come up with anything to buy more time. “You shouldn’t do anything Alice says.”

Leslie ignores my plea and drags me across the ground until the exposed skin on my arms is rubbed raw. The journey over, she suddenly stops and drops me down in front of a small mound of fresh earth, Tucker’s final resting place. Next to Tucker’s grave is a second hole, the one she dug for me.

Leslie falls to her haunches, just inches away from my face. Her breath smells like sticky, sweet bubblegum. I refuse to let my last memory be of her. I picture Will, smiling wide with the gap between his two front teeth. And Logan, my brave little boy, skipping rocks across the lake and promising he will always protect his brother and me. Fear leaves my body and I am resolved for what will come, as long as my children will be safe.

Leslie stretches her arm behind her, expecting to grab on to the shovel, and then jerks up to her feet. She logs circles around Tucker’s grave like a runner around a track until her hands claw through her strawberry-blond hair in frustration.

“I left it here, I did!” Leslie cries. “Alice, come out here, now!”

A door slams in the distance and Alice’s leaden footsteps approach.

“What is it now?”

“The shovel. It’s gone,” Leslie says, her voice a high-pitched whine. “I left it right here by the tree when I went back to the car to get Julia. I know I did.”

My stomach drops. Logan. He must have followed the car and stolen the shovel when Leslie came back for me.

“What do you mean the shovel is gone? How do you lose a shovel?” Alice asks. “Are you actually dumber than I thought? Is that possible?”

Leslie shakes her head back and forth.