The Guilty

Chapter 76

The light was shifted, and Robie could see it was coming from a battery-operated camping lantern.

Now he could see the person standing in one corner of the room.

It was not Henry Barksdale holding a gun pointed at Robie.

Victoria looked back at him, the tightest of smiles playing over her lips.

Robie stared back at her, his mind unable to process what was happening.

She took two steps forward.

“Please put your weapon on the floor and kick it toward me,” she said. “And I know you keep another one in the waistband at the small of your back. I saw that before. Do the same with that one.”

When Robie didn’t move, Victoria pointed her gun at Reel. “The next one is the kill shot.”

Robie placed his gun on the floor, then took out his backup and kicked them both toward Victoria.

“Please do the same with your partner’s.”

Robie did so, and Victoria, without ever taking her gaze off Robie, used her foot to move the four guns to the far back wall and behind her.

“Who are you?” asked Robie.

“I’m very surprised by that question, Will. I thought by now you would know.”

He looked at Reel. “She needs medical help. Now!”

“That won’t be happening.”

Robie bent down to check Reel. The shot had hit her in the oblique and gone completely through. Still, the bleeding was bad. Robie used his sling to staunch the flow.

“Get away from her, Will.”

“She’s going to die if I don’t stop the bleeding.”

“You’re both going to die, so it doesn’t really matter. Now stand up.”

He glanced at her to see that her pistol was now pointed at Tyler. The little boy looked up at his mother with an expression of horror.

“You’d…you’d shoot your own son?” said Robie slowly.

“Stand up,” she said once more, the absolute calm in her voice more unnerving than if she had been screaming at him.

Robie slowly rose.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

“How was your trip to the east coast, Will? Was it fun going solo? Did you not miss me the least little bit when you left Cantrell?”

Robie stiffened like he’d received an electric shock.

“You can’t be…” He couldn’t finish the thought.

“I can be. And I am.”

“Laura Barksdale is dead. Back at the mental facility.”

“Well, in a great many ways, you’re right, Laura is dead. But in one important facet she’s not.” She ran a hand over herself. “The proof is literally standing in front of you, Will.”

Robie swayed a bit on his feet. Then he shook his head stubbornly. “You don’t look anything like her. You’re taller. You’re blonde. Your face. Your voice. You’re not her.”

“I grew two inches when I was nineteen. Barksdale trait, apparently. Really changed my body. The face? Plastic surgery. The hair? Dyed. The voice? You don’t sound anything like you used to, either. You leave Mississippi you start pronouncing your g’s again. And my brown eyes turned to baby blues by the miracle of laser surgery.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“How many people do you think recognize their high school classmates at their twenty-fifth reunion, Will? Between eighteen and their forties, people change. They get fat or thin, bald or bottle blond. We remember them as taller or shorter.” She paused. “But I must admit, I changed more than most.”

“Why? Why do all that?”

“Because I didn’t want anything left of the old Laura. I really didn’t like her very much, Will. Or rather I didn’t like what had happened to her. What others had done to her.”

“This is not possible,” said Robie. “You can’t be Laura.”

“The last thing you said to me twenty-two years ago? Do you want me to tell you? I remember it like you said it twenty-two seconds ago. Do you want to hear it, Will?”

When Robie said nothing she continued. “You told me, ‘I will always be there for you, Laura.’ That’s what you said to me by the rock wall next to my dear mother’s fabulous Barksdale garden.”

Now Robie took a step back, his glistening eyes widening in shock as the truth swept over him.

“But you weren’t always there for me, Will. In fact, you were never there for me, were you? Not when I really needed you.”

When Reel moaned, Robie looked down at her and then back to Victoria. “Please let me get her help. Then you can do what you want with me.”

Victoria shook her head. “Doesn’t work that way. This plays out on my terms, not yours.”

Robie knelt next to Reel and put a comforting hand on her shoulder while he tightened the sling around her wound, trying to stop the bleeding.

“I told you not to do that. I won’t say it again.”

Robie rose. “Why did you kill all those people?”

“It wasn’t madness, if that’s what you’re thinking. Not all people who kill are mad, Will. You’ve killed, right? You’ve killed people here. And Dan told me that you serve your country somehow which also involves killing people. So are you deranged? Are you mad? I doubt you think you are.”

Robie said nothing, but his breathing accelerated and he felt as if a giant hand were smashing down on his chest.

Victoria leaned against the wall but kept the gun pointed at him. “If you want explanations, here they are. Janet Chisum was a slut. She sold herself to Sherman Clancy. So did her sister. For money. I befriended both of them. And then killed them.”

“Emma Chisum said Janet was going to make money off some secrets of important people in town.”

Victoria snorted. “Janet Chisum was a liar. But she told her kid sister a little of the truth. I was the important person who was going to give Janet money. After Janet was dead I told Sara that maybe her father was the killer. That maybe all that religion had made him nuts. I told her she needed to get out of town. That I would help her. That I felt sorry for her. Wanted her to have a better life.” She added in a scoffing tone, “As if. Old horny men and stupid, greedy young women, just doesn’t work out. I didn’t like it. So I stopped it. But I have to admit, I didn’t know you two would be there when I killed Sara. That was a bit of a complication. It was lucky I saw her in town that day and told her to meet just off the road instead of in the clearing. Otherwise, we might have had this confronation earlier.”

“I put a round in the Rover. You covered the hole with a New Orleans Saints sticker. And then you fired a round into the Rover in Clancy’s garage to make it seem as though that Rover was used. Only you apparently didn’t remember that Dad is a Cowboys fan.”

She shrugged. “We all make mistakes. And it wasn’t like I had a whole lot of time. I barely had time to wash the damn truck before you two showed up. But then I distracted you by having Ty run under the hose. I mean why would I suddenly be washing both cars? The Rover supposedly hadn’t been driven since your father was arrested.”

Robie slowly shook his head, silently berating himself for missing that.

“And Sherman Clancy?” he asked. “I found a photo of you as a teenager in his car. Did he know you were Laura?”

She laughed. “He was clueless about that. I drove over to the Clancys’ and put the photo in there the night I killed Sara. That’s when I put the bullet into his Range Rover.”

“Why?”

“Why not? I had already slit the man’s throat a while back. He thought he was going to have slam-bang sex with me because I told him that’s what I wanted. Instead, he got sent to an early grave. So I left a little reminder of who had really killed him behind. The police had already searched the car. I doubted they would go back again.”

“But why did you need Clancy? You told me he was blackmailing you about your drug addiction problem.”

“No, that was a lie. But I needed Clancy. You see, while people thought I was Sherm’s alibi that got him off for killing Janet, he was actually my alibi for when I killed her. I had arranged to meet with Janet that night. I went to Biloxi and left Ty with Priscilla in her room. Then I came back to Cantrell and went to Clancy’s house by prearrangement. I knew that Pete was away. Sherm wanted us to be all alone. We started drinking. Only he drank and I poured mine down the sink. And I was real flirty and let him grope me just to keep him focused. And then I slipped a sleeping pill into his drink. When he finally passed out, I went and killed Janet. Then I came back to Clancy’s.”

“But then he started remembering things?” said Robie.

“Exactly. Like the fact that I wasn’t there when he woke up from what he thought was his drunken stupor. And then when he found out Janet had been killed that night he put two and two together. It was ironic that he was arrested for her murder when I had actually killed her. And then I had to swoop in to save poor Sherm by giving him an alibi, when he was actually providing me with one. But once he was out of jail he secretly met with me. And told me what he’d figured out. And then he really tried to blackmail me. Well, I knew he was experienced in that endeavor, but it wouldn’t work with me. He was going to die. In fact, I had already planned to kill him regardless.”

“Why?”

“How else could I get your dear old dad arrested for murder? The unfaithful wife? The angry husband? The dead lover? The arrest? The noble life ruined? It was a nice story. And it fit together so damn well. You see, he was the object of my revenge because I didn’t know where you were. And I looked, Will, but I could never find you. And then you just walked right back into Cantrell. I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw you at the Willows.”

“So you planted all that evidence against my father?”

“Of course I did. I’m nothing if not thorough.”

“Why do that to my father? He never did anything to you.”

Her smile disappeared and her voice hardened. “Oh really? When I came by your house to find out what had happened to you, he told me you had gone off without me. By choice. You’d abandoned us both. And your father told me it was best. He made it seem like we were from two very different walks of life. But I knew what he meant. I wasn’t good enough for you. I would hold you back. I was so furious I wanted to kill him right then, only I didn’t have the guts.”

“But you married him. You had a child with him.”

“That’s right. I did. My second child.”

Robie drew back another step, nearly stumbling over an old pile of wood stacked on the floor. “Who was your first?”

“You met her. Jane Smith?”

“But she’s your age.”

“No, she just looks my age. She’s actually twenty. Or was twenty.”

“So Emmitt was the father?”

She chortled. “Emmitt? My God, no, not Emmitt. He was too scared to try to rape his little sister, though he probably wanted to. That compulsion evidently runs deeply in the Barksdale male line. Perhaps from inbreeding.” She paused. “No, it wasn’t Emmitt.” She paused once more. “My father is the dad.”

“Your father impregnated you?”

Robie put a hand out and steadied himself against the wall. He could barely process what she was saying. He had figured Henry Barksdale for some messed-up pervert, but he had never imagined he had committed incest with his own daughter.

“He raped me. Many times, Will. Remember when we were teenagers and you would ask me what was wrong? Well, now you have your answer.” She smiled. “But I got over it, for the most part. By killing those who had hurt me. Like Emmitt. You see, my dear brother held me down in a bathtub while that…thing came out from between my legs. It was so bloody, that bathtub. And the pain. I thought I was going to die. I think you saw him in his bathtub. There wasn’t nearly as much blood, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. The poison I injected into him was something I learned about when I was a pharmaceutical rep. Nasty stuff. Paralytic first and then the kill dose. I took his phone and laptop because it might have had something on it I didn’t want others to know.”

“But why cut off his…?”

“Because he didn’t have the balls to stand up to my father. And since he never used his balls anyway, I decided to take them.”

“So it was Emmitt at the Willows?”

“And you’re right, he did search my car. And he left me a note, wanting to meet with me. Luckily, I found it before you did. And we did meet.”

“How did he know you were Laura?”

“He told me he had his suspicions when he heard someone had married Judge Robie and moved into the Willows. He said he watched me one day, recognized certain things about me that I guess even I didn’t know and thus couldn’t change. And then he went down to the courthouse and checked my signature on the paperwork for when Dan and I bought the Willows. It matched Laura’s handwriting, which he knew very well. I would have hardly given him the credit for having the brains,” she added wistfully.

“Why did he want to meet?”

“To reconcile, I think. I wasn’t really paying attention to that part, because I was preoccupied with pondering how I was going to murder him. Like you, I had no idea where he was. And then he just walked back into my life. But he also wanted me to assume care for Jane. He had a terminal illness of some kind, he told me. I’m sure his autopsy will show it.”

“Why was he caring for Jane?”

“Because I suppose my brother had some guilt. I didn’t. That’s why I left. I had no idea where she was until Emmitt told me.”

“You abandoned your daughter?”

“She wasn’t my daughter!” snarled Victoria. She continued more calmly, “She was my father’s daughter. I was just the violated vessel that got her here. That’s why we left Cantrell so quickly. I was pregnant. Dear old Daddy didn’t want the shame. But he wouldn’t let me abort either because, well, he was such a God-fearing man. It was immediately apparent that Jane would never be right in the head. Her blood was blue, you see, not red. That’s why they have laws against such things. But Daddy was a Barksdale and thus above it all. I wasn’t going to live with that, take care of that. But I’m sure you noticed the resemblance when you met her.”

“I thought it was you. But how can she look so much older if she’s your child?”

“Nasty genetics when father beds daughter. You just never know what you’re going to get.”

“ROH,” said Robie.

“Very good, Will. So you looked at the back of the photo?”

“And Leviticus eighteen?”

“Ironic that it doesn’t expressly prohibit father-daughter sex. Did you note the omission?”

Robie shook his head.

She smiled. “Most believe it’s because that particular act is so obviously heinous, so why even bother banning it?”

“And who is Calvin?”

“John Calvin. French philosopher. You see, I read up on the subject. He didn’t believe that Leviticus eighteen prohibited fathers from screwing their daughters. But he also believed it was immoral to do so. What an insight! Too bad my father wasn’t as enlightened.”

“But you killed Jane?”

“Emmitt told me what room she was in. I had convinced him that I really cared about her, wanted to assume responsibility for her. I killed him and then I killed her. That’s my idea of assuming responsibility.”

“Emmitt I can maybe understand. But why kill her?”

“What sort of life did she really have? She was permanently four years old. I tapped on her window. She came over to it, her little face all full of wonder and surprise. And I put a bullet right between her eyes.”

Robie just shook his head at this cruel comment. “She didn’t deserve to die. None of this was her fault.”

“And you think it was my fault, Will? Trust me, I had different plans for my life. Do you think I really wanted all this? I think I’ve handled it rather well, actually.”

“And Priscilla? What the hell did she ever do to you?”

“She told you that Ty slept with her a lot. At the Willows. And when we traveled. You saw me hear her tell you this, though you didn’t make the connection. But it was only a matter of time before you wondered enough to ask her if Ty was sleeping with her when we were in Biloxi. Because that was my only alibi for when Sherm was killed. And later that day I saw Priscilla looking at me suspiciously. It was clear that this thought had now occurred to her. Because she knew that Ty had slept with her that night in Biloxi. Which left me free to kill Sherm. Priscilla was sharp. It was only a matter of time before she went to the police.” She snapped her fingers. “So, poof, there goes Priscilla.”

Robie said slowly, “You need help. You’re sick.”

She smiled patronizingly. “Well, then you wanted this ‘sick’ lady really badly, Will. When we were sitting in my bedroom. I could feel the heat coming off you. You just wanted to take me.”

“I never felt that way,” said Robie. “Never. You just imagined it.”

But Victoria clearly wasn’t listening. “You wanted me because you’d already had me all those years ago when we were two horny teenagers. And you knew how awesome it was. Think about it. I had both father and son. And when I let your daddy screw my brains out after getting out of jail, the whole time I had my eyes closed and was imagining it was you, Will.” She looked at him coyly. “And given time I would have gotten you into my bed again, you know I would. Because you, like all men, are weak. Guided primarily by your prick.”

“Were you the source of the credible threats against my dad?”

“Of course. With him in prison I was free to move about and do what I needed to do.”

“And your father?”

“Dear old Daddy.” She tapped the floor with her foot. “He’s resting comfortably under the little shack where he brought all those poor kids to get screwed by Nelson Wendell.”

“So you knew about that?”

“After the fact, yes. Daddy was too refined to work for a living. So he made his money the old-fashioned way, by profiting off the misery of others.”

Robie glanced down. “He’s really buried here?”

“This seemed to be the proper place to put him for all of eternity, don’t you agree? A native Mississippian laid to rest in Mississippi soil. I hope all the manure laid in the surrounding fields leached down here. Shit should be with shit, after all.”

“Why did you want to live at the Willows? With all that happened to you there?”

“It’s about taking control of your life. I loved the Willows. I just didn’t love any of the people who lived there with me. Mother died from cancer. Lucky for her, because if she hadn’t, she would have died by my hand.”

“So she knew?”

“And as a proper Barksdale lady, she kept quiet. It would have ruined her reputation. She couldn’t have that. My welfare was a distant second on her priority list.”

“You didn’t kill my father, though. You just knocked him out.”

“It wasn’t for sentimental reasons, Will. I’m long past that. If he were dead he wouldn’t have to suffer through the loss of both his sons.”

“How did you know I’d even come to the shack?”

“How could you not? It was very helpful of you and your partner to keep me in the loop on the investigation. And I asked discreet questions here and there, if you recall. So I knew you suspected my father. And I also knew that you had found out about this place. And if you didn’t show up here, I’d have reappeared all beaten up and disheveled with a perfectly believable story of kidnap and assault with little Ty in my arms. And he can’t talk, so he couldn’t dispute one word. And then I would have killed you another time. But you did show up. Like I knew you would.”

“And did you kill all those other people? The ones the FBI is here about?”

“Well, practice makes perfect, Will. I’ve always believed that. And old horny men and young, stupid, and greedy women? Well, I already told you how I feel about that. So relieving the world of a few? I consider it time well spent. The gap in between the last killings in Arkansas and here? I met your father, got married, got pregnant, and had Ty. That all takes time.”

“You committed murder,” he said. “You can’t explain that away.”

She pointed her gun at his head. “What about you? You told me you loved me? And yet you never came for me. Explain that!”

“You didn’t show up. I went to your house. I saw you in your room.”

“My locked room. My father found out what I was planning. He beat me, and raped me, and locked me in that room. I escaped long enough to go see what had happened to you. And that’s when your father said what he said.”

“Laura, if I had known what he was doing to you I would have broken into the house and taken you with me.”

“Bullshit! You should have known I would have been there for you if I could. You should have rescued me. But, no, you just left. Because you wanted to.”

“I thought you had changed your mind.”

“People in love don’t just change their mind. You wanted a life without me, like your father said. That meant you didn’t really love me. That meant you lied to me.”

“Damn it, that’s not true. I…wrote. And, and phoned. I left messa—”

She sent a round ripping past his ear so close he could feel the wake of the bullet. He ducked down.

She looked at him stonily. “Letters? You wrote me letters? And left phone messages? And you really thought that was good enough? My father made sure I received none of them. You should have known that.”

Robie straightened. “I tried, Victoria. I really did.”

“Well, you didn’t try hard enough.”

Robie calmed. “So how does this end?”

She looked over at Ty. “Jane Smith was a genetic freak, thanks to Daddy. Ty, now Ty was mine. And he doesn’t even talk.” She shook her head. “It must be me, Will. I had always blamed things on my father, but maybe I was the problem.”

“You can kill me, but don’t hurt him, Victoria. He’s just a little boy.”

“I can’t say that I don’t have feelings for Ty. I actually do. I don’t want to hurt him. He’s nice enough. But he’s a freak, Will. Just like Jane. Just like dear old Dad. Hell, just like me.” She pointed her gun directly at Ty’s head.

“Laura, don’t do this,” Robie said quickly.

“Don’t call me that,” she screamed.

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Victoria. Please, please, don’t.”

“Begging? So weak. So…unattractive, Will. I would have expected so much better from you. But then my taste in men? Not so good.”

She swiveled her gun around and took aim at his head.

“When you see him in the world of shit, tell Daddy I said hello.”

The scream destroyed the silence of the night so completely, so jarringly, that Robie nearly collapsed and Victoria almost dropped her weapon.

It was Ty.

His mouth was open and he was screaming so loudly it was as though he had been saving all of this up during his nearly three years of life to unleash it now.

Quick as a flash Robie grabbed one of the pieces of wood and hurled it at Victoria. She fell back against the lantern, knocking it over and throwing them all into darkness. But she struggled back up, rubbing the blood off her face where the wood had hit her.

By the time she had regained her footing, however, Robie had snatched up Ty and raced through the doorway. The next moment his feet hit dirt, and he was sprinting toward the woods.