The Last Place

CHAPTER 28

As soon as they signed out of the Keswick Home for Incurables, Tess called Crow on her cell phone and told him to bring her case files to their local coffee shop, the Daily Grind.

She also asked for her Smith amp; Wesson.

“You’re going to strap your gun on here in the Grind?” Whitney asked, sliding into the back booth with a large coffee and a pumpkin muffin. Tess had no appetite.

“Luisa O’Neal just told me that a serial killer-a man who has killed three, maybe five, people-wants me. I’d call having my gun nothing more than prudent.”

Whitney fussed with her coffee, adding three packets of sugar and half-and-half until was more lait au café than café au lait. “What is it between you and Luisa? Why did you ask me to leave the room?”

Tess hesitated. Part of her mind told her all bets were off. Luisa had helped this man lay a trap. The fact that she had done it out of fear for herself and her daughter was not a wholly satisfying excuse, although it was an understandable one. She had set this plan in motion, indifferent to the fact that Tess was a killer’s quarry.

But seeing her old nemesis so reduced had changed the nature of their relationship. Where once Luisa had made Tess feel inconsequential and helpless, Luisa was now the helpless one. Tess, who once kept Luisa’s secrets out of fear, continued to keep them out of habit.

Besides, she had never wanted to test Whitney’s loyalties. Whitney loved Tess, but she also had a fierce loyalty to what Mrs. Talbot would call, without irony, “our kind of people.”

Whitney, mistaking her silence for out-and-out refusal, said, “I bet you told Crow.”

Tess nodded. He was the one person she had told.

“I can keep a secret too, Tesser.”

Her use of the old nickname was strategic, a reminder of how long they had known each other.

“It wasn’t just about keeping secrets,” Tess replied. “I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you the O’Neal family was capable of murder. But yes, after Crow and I began dating, I told him. I needed to tell someone.”

“The first time or the second time?”

“Huh?”

“Did you tell Crow the first time you hooked up-the time you fucked it up and he left you-or when he took you back?”

Whitney must be hurt if she was going out of her way to remind Tess of past mistakes.

“The first time. In fact, I told him before we slept together.”

“You are easy. I mean, I always knew you were a first-date kind of girl, but I didn’t know you gave everything up so readily.”

“Look, I’ll tell you the whole story right now if you like. But don’t argue with me, say it couldn’t have been that way, or tell me I must be mistaken.”

“I don’t argue-”

Tess held up her palm. “You’re arguing now.”

Whitney settled back, as close to contrite as she could ever be.

“Remember Jonathan Ross?”

“Speaking of being promiscuous-you slept with him even after you stopped dating.”

“Thanks for reminding me. Remember how he died?”

“He was hit by a car.”

“Luisa’s husband, Seamon, arranged that. Jonathan was getting too close to uncovering a true scandal. The O’Neals had paid a man already on Death Row to confess to a murder their son had committed. A go-between was used, a lawyer, so the killer never knew which prominent family he was helping. But there was money in it, which went to his mother. He also assumed his ”sponsors’ would keep him from being executed.“

“Did they?”

“He got two extensions before he was put to death last fall. Tucker Fauquier.”

“The psychopath who wanted to kill a boy in every county, but only made it as far as the Bay Bridge?”

“The very same.”

“And he never knew about the O’Neals’ involvement?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Whitney was thinking, chin cupped in her hand. “Could anyone else know about all this?”

“Possibly. But I don’t see how. Seamon O’Neal, Tucker Fauquier, his mom, the lawyer who made the deal-they’re all dead. As far as I know, Luisa and I were the only two people left on earth who knew this story.”

“And Crow,” Whitney reminded Tess.

“And Crow.”

“I always hoped you talked about me when I wasn’t around.” Crow slid into the booth alongside Tess and, with one easy gesture, dropped her gun into her lap as he squeezed her left thigh. She looked down and almost laughed out loud when she realized he had wrapped the gun in a dish towel.

“That’s why it took me so long to get over here. I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to transport it. You may have a license to carry, but I don’t, and I had these visions of me being jacked up on Cold Spring Lane. But I loaded it, per your instructions So.” He surveyed the bustling coffee shop. “A little heist? You picked a good day to knock over the Grind. They do a lot of cash business on a Saturday.”

His light mood disappeared when Tess told him everything that had happened that morning.

“You’ve got to go to the police, Tess. I don’t care what she said. You can at least call someone you trust, Detective Tull in homicide. This guy wants to kill you.”

“Not necessarily,” she said, echoing the words on Luisa’s pad. “Besides, how’s he going to get to me? His pattern is to insert himself into women’s lives, establish himself as the perfect boyfriend, the one who picks up the pieces left behind by some asshole. I already have the perfect boyfriend.”

The compliment did not soothe Crow. “You’ve got to call the state police.”

“And tell them-”

“Everything.”

Tess knew the advice was right and prudent. Truly, Crow cared only about her and her safety. That was the problem. She wasn’t the only person in the world. She had to protect herself, but there were others who had to be protected as well. Whitney, Crow, her parents. Luisa’s daughter. A man who would kill a woman just to make a point would kill anyone. She wouldn’t be safe from him until she knew who he was and why he did what he did.

“Luisa believes that if this man knows she spoke to me, he’ll kill her daughter.”

“You can’t think about that.”

“I have to think about that.” The gun was still in her lap, hidden in the folds of the dish towel, a black-and-white gingham print. Seeing that dish towel from her own kitchen made Tess long for everything ordinary in her life, everything she had taken for granted when she awoke this morning: her dogs, her bed, the view from her deck, her toothbrush. The happy sensation of coming home at the end of the day and pouring a glass of wine. A life without fear.

Where was he? Who was he? Had they met? Exchanged a few words?

“He’ll kill anyone, for any reason. He killed Julie for me.”

Whitney nodded, but Crow was confused.

“You didn’t want Julie dead,” he said. “She was just a pathetic junkie who tried to shake you down for a few bucks. Why would you care what happened to her?”

“No. He killed Julie because he knew the investigation had stalled, that I was no longer a part of it. He killed a woman to get my attention.”

“She was on his list,” Whitney pointed out. “Perhaps he always intended to kill her. As Luisa said, ”Nothing is random.“ ”

“Point taken. But if I go to the state police and Luisa’s daughter out in Chicago ends up dead, how do I justify that? She’s a mother. Whatever her parents have done-whatever her brother did-she’s innocent.”

“How will he know if you talk to the police?” Crow asked.

“I don’t know. He seems to know everything else about me. He knew how to get to me-how to use Luisa to set up a project that would be irresistible to me. How to get me to put the pieces together.”

“But he’s dead,” Whitney said. “The wreckage of the boat was found. They’re looking at bodies, trying to make a match.”

“Sometimes,” Tess said, “a John Doe is simply a John Doe. People drown, they don’t get identified. Who’s to say our guy didn’t catch a break?”

“Yes, but you’re assuming the only person who could know these five names is the killer himself. What if there are two killers, the man who killed Tiffani and Lucy and a second man, who had entirely different reasons for killing Julie Carter, Hazel Ligetti, and Michael Shaw. Those murders all happened after the apparent suicide, right? And they’re nothing like the first two.”

Tess rubbed her forehead. “My brain hurts.”

“My soul hurts,” Crow said. “I think I’m going to be sick. I’ve never felt so helpless.”

They sat in glum silence, coffee growing cold, muffin untouched. Together, the three could usually figure anything out. Like Dorothy’s companions through Oz, they were three incompletes who made a whole. Crow was all heart, like the Tin Man. Whitney was their Scarecrow, but more like the version in the book, the one whose head was filled with needles and pins so he might be sharp.

This left Tess, by default, to be the Cowardly Lion, the one who marched forward into battle, bitching and moaning from fear all the while. She was afraid. She had no illusions about herself. If she had a choice, she wouldn’t fight this fight.

It would have been nice, having a choice.