Last Words

17

Mia sat in the Adirondack chair, her legs stretched out straight in front of her, her head resting against the hard wooden back. She closed her eyes and listened to the waves lapping at the shore, and felt almost as if she were being rocked to sleep. Not that she wanted to fall asleep out here, on the wide lawn behind Sinclair’s Cove, but it was a restful moment.

She’d made one stop on her way out of town before driving to the inn from the meeting in St. Dennis.

“I’d like a room,” she’d told the pleasant young man behind the desk when she arrived.

“I’m sorry. I’m afraid we’re booked to the rafters.”

“Mr. Sinclair said there’d be a room for me.”

She frowned. She hated the thought of having to drive back to Connor’s house now. She was tired and feeling worn out.

“Oh.” The desk clerk reached under the counter and pulled out a small slip of paper. “Agent Shields?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sinclair called earlier and asked that we re fresh one of the cabins for you. He said to apologize that we could not accomodate you in the main house.” He handed her a key on a long leather circle. “Last cabin on the left as you go around the back of the building. May I take your bags?”

“No apologies necessary. And I only have a few bags.” Just the ones under my eyes, one from Bling, and, oh yes, the one holding the bottle of Pinot Grigio on the passenger seat of my car.

“Please let me know if you need anything,” he told her. “We have breakfast starting at seven, though we can make arrangements for coffee and muffins earlier, if you like.” He smiled. “A lot of people come for the fishing and they like to get an early start.”

“No fishing for me,” she promised, “and hopefully no early start.”

She turned toward the door and noticed the portrait hanging over the fireplace. Following her gaze, the clerk told her, “That’s the late Mrs. Sinclair. Pretty lady, wasn’t she?”

“Mr. Sinclair’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to her?”

“She drowned four years ago.”

“What a tragedy,” Mia said.

“It really was. She was really nice.” He lowered his voice. “A little on the bossy side, but we all liked her anyway.”

“How did she drown?” Mia would have expected someone who lived on the water to be a strong swimmer.

“Boat overturned. She took one of the small out-boards to do a little crabbing and stayed out too long. Who knows how that happened. Storm came up real fast and she couldn’t get back in. Mr. Sinclair took it real hard. He’s been raising the kids-Danny and Delia-on his own. Doing a good job, too. They’re nice kids.”

The desk phone rang and he excused himself to answer it. Mia thanked him for the key and went through the lobby to the front porch. After parking her car in the lot, she walked around the back of the inn and followed a cobbled path to the last cabin.

There were lights on, both inside and over the front door. For a moment, she wasn’t sure she was at the right place. But it was definitely the last cabin. She slipped the metal key into the door and pushed it open.

Her cabin was almost identical to the one in which Holly Sheridan had stayed at the opposite end of the row of similar structures. The small front room contained a white wicker sofa, a matching chair, and an end table that held a tall ceramic lamp, the base of which was a seagull with its wings half opened. A basket of fruit, cheese, and crackers was on a tiled tray had been placed upon the coffee table. A fairly new television sat on a stand in the corner and a neat pile of current magazines was stacked on the end table.

Next to the tray something lay folded inside white tissue paper. She slipped a finger through the tape and pushed aside the paper to find a navy blue T-shirt with a silk-screened image of the inn. A note on the tray from Daniel Sinclair welcomed her to the inn and apologized that the only shirt they had was an extra large. “We give them out to all our guests,” the note informed her, “but last week we had a sorority reunion and went through all the smalls and mediums.”

Mia held up the shirt in front of her. It was indeed large, but it was a nice gesture. She refolded the shirt and took it into the bedroom and left it on the foot of the double bed, which had been turned down. She peeked into the bathroom and found fresh towels and two water glasses, along with the obligatory soaps, toothbrush, toothpaste, and mouthwash.

She went back into the sitting room and sat on the edge of one of the sofa cushions and picked through the basket of fruit. She immediately bit into a green apple. She’d missed dinner and was starving. A few pieces of cheese and several crackers later, and Mia felt herself begin to revive. She stuck the key in her pocket, took one of the glasses from the bathroom, grabbed the bag holding the wine and her handbag, and went outside into the dark.

When she arrived at her cabin, she’d noticed the chairs set to overlook the bay, and chose the one closest to the water. She took the corkscrew from her shoulder bag and opened the bottle, and poured herself a glass. Stretching herself out in the chair, she sipped her wine and watched small dark birds darting across the water.

She was on her second glass of wine when she realized the small birds were bats.

“Oh, swell,” she muttered, pulling herself into a ball and hunkering down in the chair. “Maybe they won’t see me.”

The moonlight was bright on the bay; except for the presence of the bats, it was a near-perfect night. It was quiet, except for the beating of the occasional wing overhead and the croaking of the bullfrogs from the marsh on the far side of the inn. She tried closing her eyes and willed herself to ignore the bats.

They’re eating insects, she reminded herself. That’s good, right? The more they eat, the fewer mosquitoes to bite me. They have no interest in me.

That’s what her big brother always told her.

The thought of her big brother brought a pain to her heart.

“Go away, Brendan,” she whispered to the night. “Crawl back into that little corner of hell where you’re going to spend your unhappily ever-after, and don’t come back…”

A sound behind her drew her attention and she looked over her shoulder. The shadow of a man stretched out across the lawn, growing larger as it drew closer.

When the figure was about twenty feet away, it demanded, “Want to tell me what that was all about?”

Beck. And he didn’t sound happy.

“What was what all about?”

“That little show you put on back there. What the hell were you thinking, taunting him like that? Were you trying to get him to come after you?”

She pulled her gun from her bag. “Better me than someone else.”

“Yeah, sure. If he comes at the place and time you want him to.”

Beck stood five feet away, looking down at her. From the chair, he appeared to be about twelve feet tall and most foreboding.

“The problem, as I see it, is that he’s going to be doing the choosing, Mia.”

“Maybe so.” She put the gun back, then sat up and grabbed the bottle by its neck. “Would you like some wine? There’s another glass in my cabin. I could-”

“I don’t drink.”

“I didn’t used to.” She set the bottle back on the ground and took a sip from her glass.

“What happened?”

“Shit.” She told him matter-of-factly. “Shit happened.”

He picked up the bottle and appeared to be looking at the label.

“How’d you get here?” she asked.

“Borrowed the car from Hal.” He tilted the bottle in her direction. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Oh, roughly a half hour.”

“I meant-”

“I know what you meant.” She waved a hand dismissively. “That was my weak attempt at humor.”

He replaced the bottle on the ground near the chair.

“None of my business, I know, but I’m curious. You don’t have to answer.”

“Since I got back from Indiana.” She leaned her head back and looked skyward to avoid his eyes.

“What happened in Indiana?”

“We had this case…twenty-two-year-old guy killed his whole family. Mother. Father. His sisters. Their husbands and children.” Her voice dropped with each word until Beck was almost leaning into the chair to hear her. “Eleven people in all. He killed every one.”

“I guess there’s no point in asking why.”

“Oh, there was a why. His father wouldn’t cosign a loan for him to get a new car, so he shot him and his mother. Went to the first sister’s, asked the brother-in-law, who also declined, since the guy with the gun was unemployed. Shot him, too. Then I guess he figured, aw, fuck it, and he went house to house and just blew them all away.”

She cleared her throat.

“And after that, there were these three little boys in Virginia…”

They sat in silence until Beck broke it by saying, “You mentioned once that your brother-”

“Yeah, yeah. Doesn’t take a genius to draw a line between the guy with the gun in Indiana and the guy with the gun in my family.” She waved her glass in his direction.

“Want to tell me about it? What happened with him?”

“I’m sure you read all about it. It was a really big story about two years ago. FBI agent behind a child-smuggling ring, runs into his cousin while preparing to take a shipment of kids out of some small Central American country, later attempts to assassinate the cousin, kills the cousin’s brother by mistake. The networks, the newsmagazines, the papers, they just couldn’t get enough of it.”

“That was your brother? The killer?”

“Good old Brendan.” She took a gulp from the glass and stared into space. “This case in Indiana, when they spoke with the neighbors and with friends, they all said how close the family was. An ideal, all-American family, they all said. Well, they used to say that about us, too.”

“People on the outside, they never really know what’s going on.”

“Well, in our case, apparently no one on the inside knew, either. He never showed a thing, never gave any one of us a hint that something was evil and twisted inside him. And the thing is, none of us ever saw it.” She leaned forward in the chair again and whispered, “Why didn’t we know?”

“Because he obviously didn’t want to share that part of his life with you.”

“But you’re family, you should know.” Her eyes welled but no tears fell. “And here’s the thing that’s killing me. Connor-who my brother had intended to murder-still treats me like the princess.”

“The princess?”

“I was the only girl in the entire family.” She nodded. “That’s why I was the princess.” She leaned forward and added, “That’s why I should have been the one to know.”

“The one to know about Brendan?”

She nodded.

“I’m not following that.”

“I was supposed to be the momma. I was supposed to take care of the boys the way Mom would have. And I did not do that.”

“I thought your brothers were all older than you.”

“They are.”

“And the cousins, the other three guys? They were all older, too?”

She nodded.

“Then why were you supposed to be responsible for them?”

“Uncle George said so,” she told him solemnly.

“Uncle George?”

“My mother’s uncle.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“When everyone came back to the house after my mother’s funeral.”

“Uncle George told you that you were supposed to be the little mother because your mother was dead?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Mia, with all due respect, Uncle George has his head up his ass. That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“I agree. It was stupid and cruel and it was sexist, and my mother must have turned right over in her grave, but I was seven years old and I had just watched my mother be put in the ground.” She sniffed and wiped her face with the back of her right hand. “I still wasn’t clear on whether or not she was going to come back. I mean, even if she could get out of that box, how was she going to dig through all the dirt?”

Mia took a deep breath. “You know, no matter what you tell a child about death, they really don’t understand a damned thing you’re saying, because it’s all beyond their experience.

“I clung to the adults around me for a long time because I had to. They all became much more important to me than they had been before she died. So when one of them told me something so profound, I believed it. I believed it for a long time.”

“You still believe it.”

“I try really hard not to. But it’s still in there.”

“You need to find a way to get it out, once and for all.” He paused for a moment. “Have you thought about maybe seeing someone…?”

“Yeah, I have.” She tried to smile. “But basically, I’m lazy. I’ll try to deal as best I can with something before I’ll break my routine and try another way of dealing. It’s the way I’m wired.”

Beck picked up the bottle again. “This is not a good way to deal.”

“Maybe not,” she conceded, “but at least I can sleep at night. For a while, I could not.”

“You didn’t have problems sleeping before you left for Indiana?”

“Not really. When I first moved, it did take me a few days to get accustomed to the sounds in the new house, but for the most part, I was okay.” She thought that over for a moment. “But I’d been traveling a lot for several months. That’s why Connor suggested I move into his house.”

“Your cousin Connor?”

“Yes. Super Special Agent Connor Shields,” she stage-whispered. “We tease him about being the real international man of mystery because no one knows where he goes or what he does when he gets there.”

“You share a house with him?”

“Not really. He’s never there. That’s why he offered me the house. I was traveling a lot and rarely at my apartment, which was expensive, and he had bought this house but he wasn’t there either, so he suggested I give up my apartment and move into his house. Then I could save money and buy a house of my own.” She laughed softly and said, “No one knows how Connor found this place-it’s butt ugly, by the way, a sort of mustard yellow, stone-set-in-stucco bungalow on a forgotten road in the middle of the woods. And no one can figure out why he wanted to buy it, since he’s never around. But he bought it and he moved into it, remodeled, then promptly left the country.”

She paused, then looked at Beck and said, “You really think I’m going off the deep end, don’t you? I’m not, and I’m sorry if I’ve given you that impression. I just have trouble sleeping, that’s all.”

“I think you have a lot on your plate,” he said softly. “And I also think you might want to talk to someone professional, because if you keep doing that”-he pointed to the glass in her hand-“you’re going to have a bigger problem than not being able to sleep.”

“I know you’re right,” she said, but did not put the glass down. “And for the record, I tried sleeping pills, but they made me too groggy in the morning. I’ve tried meditation, hypnosis, acupuncture, and exercising until I can barely walk. Nothing seems to relax me except a few glasses of wine at night. I know it isn’t smart, but…” She shrugged.

“Don’t you have a headache when you get up?”

“Sometimes, but I don’t really drink that much. I mean, I don’t pass out or anything. I just drink until the voices stop and I can sleep.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, now I’ve really done it, haven’t I? Now you think I hear voices.”

She set the glass down on the grass at her feet. “The voices I hear are those of my brother Grady, my cousin Dylan. Grady’s dead wife Melissa. And when I say I hear them, it’s because I talk to them sometimes. I ask Brendan why, though he doesn’t really have an answer. I tell Dylan how much I miss him, and I tell him about Annie and he tells me it’s okay where he is. I tell Melissa how sorry I am that she and Grady didn’t get to live their life, and she tells me to take care of him and not to let him waste his life mourning for her. Does that sound crazy?”

“Actually, no, it doesn’t.”

“Did you ever talk to someone who was gone?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I have.”

“Family?”

Another nod.

“See? No one can mess you up like your family.”

“You have no idea…”

She waited to see if he’d elaborate, but he did not, and she let it pass. She started to reach for the glass again, then changed her mind and drew her hand back.

“Mia, why did you challenge him like that?”

She knew exactly which he Beck was referring to. Personal time was over. It was back to business.

“I looked around that room, at all those people, and I knew he was there. I could feel him. I could almost smell that superior attitude of his, sense the challenge he was sending out, and I had to toss it back at him.

“I knew he was in that room, and he knew I knew it,” she continued. “And he also knew I had no idea who he was and he was enjoying that a little too much. It pissed me off. The longer it takes us to figure out who he is, the more likely it is that another young woman will die. I can more than take care of myself if he comes after me. You think most of the young women in this town can say the same?”

“So you put a big target on your back?”

“We have nothing, Beck. We don’t know why he picked the women he picked, or where he met them or how he convinced them to come with him or where he keeps them. There are three crime scenes for each of these killings, and the only one we can explore is the last one, the place where he disposes of the bodies. And those scenes have yielded us exactly one big fat zero’s worth of trace. This guy is so good. He doesn’t leave a crumb.”

“So we know he wears a condom when he’s assaulting the girls and wears gloves while he’s wrapping them up.”

“Which leads us nowhere.” She sighed deeply. “He’s going to take another victim again, very soon. He’s due for another fix, that high he gets from living out his fantasy.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being part of that fantasy?” Beck lowered himself to the grass and sat down.

“No. I’m more afraid for someone else. That pretty girl who works at the ice cream place, or that cute little waitress in the sandwich shop or even Vanessa, maybe.” She pulled one leg up onto the seat and leaned forward on it. “You think your sister would hold up under that type of torture for very long?”

“No.” He shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t hold up at all. Vanessa just doesn’t get that anyone would want to hurt her.”

“After two bad marriages?” Mia raised an eyebrow. “She is trusting.”

She hesitated, then added, “Would she be trusting of, oh, say, someone like Mickey Forbes?”

Beck looked up sharply. “Why Forbes?”

“He fits the profile, don’t you think? His mother is domineering and most likely has been all his life. Hal told me that Christina’s been focused more on building up the community than either of her marriages. Maybe that extended to her child as well. Was he neglected, do you know? Did Christina bully her husband, demean him in front of their son?” She started to refill her glass, but under Beck’s scrutiny only poured half a glass. “What do you really know about him, anyway?”

“I know he’s a jerk, but that doesn’t make him a murderer.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” She put both feet on the ground and rested her forearms on her thighs, holding the glass between her knees. “Right now, we need to look at everyone as a possible killer. That’s my point. We haven’t been able to narrow the field at all, so we can’t eliminate anyone. Whoever this guy is, he’s flown under the radar for a long time.” She held up a hand to silence the protest he was about to launch. “Yes, I realize he may not have gone to this extreme in the past, but I think that when we find him, we’ll find that he’s raped before. He’s simply carrying that fantasy several steps forward.”

“If that’s true, why now?”

“Something’s set him off. Something’s changed in his life. Maybe he’s been passed over for a promotion. Maybe for someone like Mickey Forbes, for the sake of argument, it was the breakup of his marriage. I know everyone who is passed over for a promotion or who gets divorced doesn’t turn into a serial killer. I’m just saying, these can be life-changing situations.”

“So how do we smoke him out?”

“I’m still working on that.”

“Well, don’t try to fly solo on this one, okay?” He reached out and touched her arm. “I’d hate to see you become his victim.”

“Oh, trust me, so would I.” She shook her head slowly. “I have no intentions of ending up in one of his cocoons.”

Beck looked at his watch. It was after midnight already.

“It’s late. I need to get home and get some sleep so I can do it all again tomorrow.” He stood and extended a hand to her. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your cabin.”

“That’s okay. I can walk twenty-five feet by myself.”

“I don’t doubt it. But I want to be able to leave here and know for certain that I’ll be seeing you in the morning.”

She held up the bottle.

“You afraid I’ll polish this off by myself, wake up with a hangover, and be unfit to report in tomorrow?”

“No. I’m afraid I might not be the only person who knows where you’re staying tonight.”

“You mean the killer-”

“You stirred him up, Mia. He may not be able to resist.”

She gathered her things and stood.

“I admit I’m tired. I might as well turn in.”

They walked across the grass to her cabin.

“Did you lock it?” he asked when they reached the door.

“Of course.” She hoisted her bag up higher on her shoulder and dug in her pocket for the key, then unlocked the door. The lights were all still on, just as she had left them. “See? All’s well.”

“Good. Lock the door behind me, then get some sleep. We have miles to go with this case.”

“Agreed. I’ll see you in the morning.” She closed the door halfway. “Thanks, Beck.”

“Any time.”

Mia closed the door and turned off the outside light, then went into the bathroom and caught her reflection in the mirror. Her hair was loose around her shoulders and her eyes were slightly rimmed in red. She stared at herself for a long time before going into the sitting room to find the bottle and the glass.

Returning to the bathroom, she rinsed out the glass, poured what remained of the bottle into the sink, and turned off the light.

Beck stood in the shadows until the only light still visible in the cabin was in the small back room. He shoved his hands into his pockets and walked across the grass to the chair in which she’d been sitting and turned it around to face her cabin.

Mia would have a fit if she knew he was there, but he couldn’t walk away knowing she might have set herself up. He knew she was strong and he knew she was capable-and armed. But there was also a chance her reflexes were impaired, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that she’d painted a target on her back. He wasn’t about to let anyone take aim on his watch.

He stretched his long legs out in front of him and eased back into the chair. Overhead the moon was full, and off in the distance a dog barked. He made himself as comfortable as he could in the wooden chair and waited for the sun to rise.