The Other Side of Silence (18 page)

Two pairs of glass-paned doors, both closed, gave access to the house. Casey walked to the second, opposite the pool, and opened them and led the way down a tile-floored hall and through a doorway. She turned on the lights. Bedroom, with a single bed covered by a Mexican blanket. Kevin’s room while they’d been here: some of his clothing was neatly folded on the bureau.

Fallon laid him gently on the bed, sat down to untie the laces on his right sneaker. The ankle was already starting to swell. He spread the shoe wide open, eased it and the sock off as carefully as he could. The bruise from the instep to the ankle bone was already starting to discolor.

Casey stood watching him. She hadn’t said a word and her expression was still as blank as it had become on the road. Kevin wouldn’t look at her. Most of the time he lay unmoving with his eyes shut.

Fallon said, “Get some ice. And a towel to wrap it in.”

She went out, neither hurrying nor taking her time. Fallon sat beside the boy, smoothing the damp hair off his forehead. Warm, a little feverish. The thin lips were cracked and dry. The dark eyes looked up at him with a mixture of fright, pain, and need. Christ, what these people had done to him! Spicer, Young, Casey too in some way he didn’t understand yet.

She seemed to be taking a long time getting what he’d sent her after. Fallon was about to go looking when she came in with a hand towel and the ice in a mixing bowl. He spilled some of the ice into the towel, wrapped it around the swelling ankle, then covered Kevin with the bedsheet. He smiled at the boy, smoothed his forehead again. Those frightened, needy eyes had put a lump in his throat that he couldn’t seem to swallow.

He took Casey’s arm and prodded her out into the hallway, shutting the door behind them. “All right. Where’s Young?”

“In the front room.” Dull, flat voice.

“Show me.”

She led him through the house to a broad room with a black-throated stone fireplace and heavy Spanish-style furniture. Five feet into it, Fallon stopped abruptly. Casey moved around behind him, but his gaze held steady on the tile floor in front of the hearth.

An Indian throw rug was bunched up there, and sprawled on top of it was a man dressed in beige slacks and a blue shirt. The wavy brown hair on the back of the man’s head was bright with blood. More blood stained the rug, the tiles, the raised hearthstone.

“I killed him,” Casey said in her empty voice. “The only man I ever loved, and I killed him.”

TWO

F
ALLON CROSSED THE ROOM, bent to feel for a pulse in Vernon Young’s neck. Wasted effort. The eyes were open and sightless, the mouth twisted into a rictus. The blood on his head was still wet, but he hadn’t died from the wound. Spinal shock was the probable cause. The way the head was bent, the way it rolled loosely when Fallon touched it with a fingertip, told him that the upper cervical vertebrae had been cracked in the fall against the hearthstone. He hadn’t been dead more than an hour.

There was a low mahogany coffee table near the body, between the hearth and a long couch. An empty, long-stemmed martini glass stood on the table; the shattered remains of another were scattered on the floor beside Young’s outflung arm. Across the room, on a wet bar inlaid with colored tiles, Fallon could see a martini pitcher, bottles that would be gin and Vermouth, an open jar of olives.

He straightened, went back to where Casey was standing. She hadn’t moved. The vacant eyes stared straight ahead.

“I killed him,” she said again.

“Looks more like an accident to me. What happened?”

It was several seconds before she was able to push out a reply. “We were drinking . . . arguing. Kevin heard us. He came running in and threw himself at Vernon and started hitting him. Vernon slapped him and I slapped Vernon and pushed him, hard, and he . . . his foot slid on the rug and he fell. His head . . . his head . . .” A shudder went through her. “You can’t imagine the sound it made. You can’t imagine. As soon as I heard it I knew he was dead.”

“And Kevin saw it happen.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s why he ran away.”

“I couldn’t stop him, couldn’t catch him. The car, Vernon’s car . . .” She shook her head, looking past Fallon at the dead man. “I killed him,” she said again.

He took her arm, steered her up the steps and out of the room. She let him do it without protest; she seemed to have lost all will of her own. A dining room opened on the left, dominated by a long refectory table. He sat her down in one of the chairs at the far end, where she couldn’t see into the front room, and pulled a chair over and sat next to her.

“What were you and Young arguing about?”

“I started it,” she said, “it was my fault. He’d done so much for Kevin and me, we’d all been through so much. I said it was time to stop hiding the truth, I begged him to let us finally be a family.”

“Family?”

“Vernon was Kevin’s real father.”

No surprise. Fallon had already guessed it.

“He was so angry. He said we’d been over this and over it, we could never be a family. He said what he always said—he had his reputation to think of, he couldn’t leave his wife because a divorce would cost him too much. He said he had blood on his hands for me now, wasn’t that enough of a commitment?”

“Spicer’s blood. He killed Spicer, didn’t he?”

“. . . How did you know Court’s dead?”

“It doesn’t matter. Go on.”

“I said I couldn’t keep on living the way I had been, even with Kevin back safe. I said . . . I don’t know, I said a lot of things. He just got more angry. He said if I kept pushing him, he would admit Kevin was his and take him away from me and make him live in his house, with his wife. He said he could prove he’d been paying me support money. He said he’d get a high-powered lawyer and sue me for custody, claim I was unstable, an unfit mother.”

Fallon said, “Is all of this what Kevin overheard? Why he ran in and started hitting Young?”

“Yes. The shock . . . it was too much for him. He was yelling,‘You’re not my father, you killed my father! I hate you, I hate you!’ ” Casey shivered again. “Now he hates me too. You heard him say so.”

“He didn’t mean it.”

“Yes he did. He’ll go on hating me for the rest of his life.”

No use trying to reason with her. She was too strung out, too full of guilt and self-loathing.

“Did you tell Young when you found out you were pregnant?”

“As soon as I was sure. He wanted me to have an abortion. When I wouldn’t, he . . . respected my decision. And he didn’t end it between us, I don’t know what I’d’ve done if he had. He stood by me, he did the right thing.”

The right thing. Sure. Monthly support payments of $1,000, no contact with his son, and Casey as his mistress for eight more years.

“Why did you marry Spicer? To give the boy a name?”

“Yes.”

“And you let him sleep with you before so he’d think Kevin was his.”

“Yes. But I told him the truth about how it happened . . . a mistake with my birth control pills.”

“So he never knew he wasn’t Kevin’s father.”

“He suspected it. Every time he accused me of having an affair, he’d say, ‘That kid’s not mine, is he? He’s somebody else’s little bastard.’ That’s why he fought me in court, why he took Kevin and locked him up and half-starved him for four months—to punish me and my bastard son.”

Fallon said, “Young gave you money to hire a private detective. Why wouldn’t he let you have the two thousand to take to Vegas? Or did you lie to me about that too?”

“No. Vernon said it was a setup, that Court was behind it. I wouldn’t believe him. So I took the money . . . borrowed it. I knew he wouldn’t go to the police. I lied to you about that.”

“Yeah,” Fallon said.

“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t tell you about Vernon and me, Kevin being his son.”

“No, because you were afraid I wouldn’t help you if I knew the truth.”

She made no reply. Her breathing seemed a little labored now.

He said, “Sunday night. After we talked, you called Young or he called you and you told him Spicer was in Laughlin. Told him Spicer was using Co-River Management as a mail drop.”

“Yes.”

“What else? The rape, the suicide attempt?”

“Just the rape. He . . . it made him furious. He said Court had gone too far. He said maybe he ought to go to Laughlin, rescue Kevin himself, have it out with Court.”

Man up for once in his life. Hell, cowboy up. Charge in, playing the hero with a gun in his hand. Stupid.

Not that Rick Fallon had been a whole lot smarter.

Casey was saying, “I begged him to let you handle it, you’d done so much already, and finally he said he would. That’s why I went to Laughlin with you. But he brooded about it and changed his mind.”

“How did he find out where Spicer was living?”

“He called the head of the management company Monday morning. Realtors with Vernon’s reputation . . . it was easy for him to get the address.”

Easy. And obvious, now. Fallon should have figured it out on his own; would have if he’d remembered thinking about Casey’s real estate license and professional reciprocity when they arrived at Co-River Management.

He said, “So then Young drove or flew to Laughlin—”

“Drove.”

“And walked into Spicer’s house with a gun and confronted him.”

“He didn’t mean to kill him. But Court tried to grab the gun, and it . . . he said it just went off.”

It just went off. The blanket excuse used by every damn fool who didn’t know anything about guns and blew somebody away with one. Young hadn’t meant to kill Spicer, and Casey hadn’t meant to give him the push that caused him to break his neck on the hearthstone. A couple of senseless accidents. And in their wake there was wreckage—a traumatized little boy with two dead fathers and a lying mother, all of whom had betrayed him, and the mother with her zombie eyes and guilt over the death of her lover burned into her conscience.

“Did Kevin see that, too? The shooting?”

“No. He was locked in his room until Vernon let him out.” The words came more slowly now. She sat slumped down in the chair, as if the alcohol effects were wearing off and she was very tired. “But he saw Court lying there dead. He was in shock, crying, when Vernon picked me up.”

“He called you on your cell right after it happened, and you told him where you were.”

“Yes. Oh God, I was so happy Kevin was safe. So happy then.”

“And the three of you drove straight here.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you contact me? Why leave me dangling?”

“I wanted to call. Vernon wouldn’t let me. He said Kevin was safe and you . . . didn’t matter anymore.”

“Bullshit,” Fallon said. “I mattered to him, all right. He was afraid I’d find out Spicer was dead and he was responsible.”

“You did find out. You found us.”

“Yeah. I found out a lot of things, some of them too late.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The hell you are, he thought.

She sighed, long-drawn and quavery. “We shouldn’t have come here. I wanted to go home, or to Vegas for my car. Kevin wanted to go home. All those months being locked up like a prisoner, seeing Court dead . . . my God, what he’s gone through.”

“Why wouldn’t Young let you go?”

“He said he wasn’t ready to go back to San Diego yet, he needed time to regroup . . . there’d be nobody here but some men who take care of the date groves during the day and they wouldn’t bother us. He was so upset, I’d never seen him like that before. He couldn’t pull himself together. Couldn’t stop drinking, talking about the blood on his hands, blaming me . . .”

Guilt. Fear. And whatever else unhinged men like Vernon Young.

“I started drinking in self-defense and couldn’t stop and then tonight . . . tonight I killed him.” She swallowed with visible effort. Fuzzily she said, “Can I have something to drink?”

“No more booze.”

“Water. My throat’s dry.”

Fallon found his way to the kitchen, found a tumbler and filled it. Then he used his cell phone to call 911, gave the operator the ranch address and a brief explanation of what had happened here. He gave her his name, too; there was no way to avoid involving himself now.

When he came back into the dining room, Casey was bent forward across the table with her head pillowed on one arm. Passed out, he thought. He set the tumbler down, pulled her upright in the chair. Her head lolled to one side and he saw that her color wasn’t good. He used his thumb to raise one of her eyelids. The eyeball was half rolled up, the pupil fixed and the white blood-veined.

A coldness slithered across his shoulder blades. He slapped her four times, hard. No response, other than faint moans.

He ran to where the bedrooms and master bath were at the rear. The bathroom door stood open. The reason she’d taken so long to fetch the ice for Kevin’s ankle was that she’d been in here part of the time. In the sink were an empty plastic vial and a couple of small white tablets. He caught up the vial, read the label.

Ambien. Sleeping pills.

Shit! Why hadn’t he seen this coming too?

He ran back to the dining room. Casey was sitting as he’d left her, head lolling, eyes shut. If she wasn’t unconscious, she was close to it.

“No, goddamn it,” he said to her, “you won’t die this time either. Not
this
time either!”

THREE

H
ER PULSE RATE WAS irregular, her breathing shallow but not overly labored—no trachea blockage. He felt her forehead, her cheeks; her body temperature didn’t seem to have dropped. Again he slapped her face, rhythmically, back and forth, back and forth, the sound of the slaps echoing in the stillness. She moaned, rolled her head from side to side, finally began to struggle feebly. One of her eyelids lifted partway, then the other; her eyeballs had rolled up, showing mostly blood-flecked whites. She slurred the word “Stop.”

He dragged the chair back, hauled her out of it, swung her into his arms. In the bathroom again, he put her down on her knees in front of the toilet, held her there with one hand and slapped her several more times to make sure she was still conscious. Then he tilted her head over the bowl, opened her mouth and shoved the first two fingers of the other hand into her mouth, as far down her throat as he could force them. She struggled, moaned, gagged. When he felt her convulse, he pulled his fingers out just in time to avoid the spew of vomit.

Partially dissolved pills, gin, and not much else. Not good; her stomach was mostly empty and that meant the drug had gotten into her bloodstream more quickly. He used toilet paper to wipe her mouth inside and out, then induced her to puke again. The third time he did it, nothing came up except a thin whitish foam.

She was half awake by then, groaning and muttering words that Fallon didn’t listen to. He got her on her feet, but she couldn’t stand or walk; he dragged her out into the hallway.

Kevin was standing in the door to his room, staring wide-eyed. “What’re you doing? What’s the matter with her?”

“She’s sick, but she’ll be all right. Go back to bed. Stay in there until help comes.”

The boy was used to obeying orders. He retreated immediately, hobbling, and shut the door.

Casey stumbled in Fallon’s grasp, babbled something incoherent. He tightened his hold, feeling the bitter anger rise again.

“It was never really about Kevin, was it?” he said to her. “Only you— your need, your pain. All about
you
.”

She didn’t hear the words. It wouldn’t have mattered if she had.

Fallon walked her up and down the hall, dragging her until her legs began an automatic shuffling response, stopping every now and then to deliver more slaps. Time seemed to have slowed down to a crawl. Seconds were like minutes, minutes like hours.

Come on, come on, hurry up!

He was still walking her, still slapping color into her cheeks, when the county law and an ambulance finally arrived.

The ER doctors at the hospital in Indio flushed her system, put her on IV to rebalance the fluids and minerals in her body. Touch-and-go for a time, but they pulled her through. One of them told Fallon that the emergency procedures he’d learned in the army were the main reason she survived.

So his relationship with Casey Dunbar had come full circle, to end as it had begun—with the preservation of the life she’d tried to throw away. Or it would, if the Riverside County sheriff’s people believed the truth as he told it, with only the self-incriminating details omitted.

It took a while, but they believed it.

And he was free again.