“You look like you need something,” I said. We were going through Winsted, where Route 8 went from a winding, two-lane affair to four lanes. We’d make even better time from here, the last leg of the journey to Milford. There were some fast-food joints in Winsted, and I suggested we hit a drive-through window, get a McMuffin, something like that.
Clayton nodded wearily. “I could eat the egg. I don’t think I could chew the English muffin.”
As we sat in the drive-through line, Clayton said, “Tell me about her.”
“What?”
“Tell me about Cynthia. I haven’t seen her since that night. I haven’t seen her in twenty-five years.”
I didn’t entirely know how to react to Clayton. There were times when I felt sympathy for him, the horrible life he’d led, the misery he’d had to endure living with Enid, the tragedy of losing loved ones.
But who was to blame, really? Clayton had made the point himself. He’d made his choices. And not just the decision to help Enid cover up a monstrous crime, and to leave Cynthia behind, to wonder her whole adult life what had become of her family. There were choices he could have made earlier. He could have stood up to Enid, somehow. Insisted on a divorce. Called the police when she became violent. Had her committed. Something.
He could have walked out on her. Left her a note. “Dear Enid: I’m out of here. Clayton.”
At least it would have been more honest.
It wasn’t as if he was looking to me for sympathy, asking about his daughter, my wife. But there was something in his voice, a bit of “poor me.” Haven’t seen my daughter for two and a half decades. How terribly sad for me. There’s the rearview mirror, pal, I thought to myself. Twist it around, take a look. There’s the guy who has to carry a lot of the load for all the fucked-up shit that’s been going on since 1983.
But instead, I said, “She’s wonderful.”
Clayton waited for more.
“Cyn is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said. “I love her more than you could ever know. And as long as I’ve known her, she’s been dealing with what you and Enid did to her. Think about it. You wake up one morning and your family is gone. The cars are gone. Everyone fucking gone.” I felt my blood starting to boil, and I gripped the wheel more tightly in anger. “Do you have any fucking idea? Do you? What was she supposed to think? Were you all dead? Had some crazy serial killer gone through town and killed all of you? Or had the three of you decided, that night, to go off and have a new life somewhere else, a new life that didn’t include her?”
Clayton was stunned. “She thought that?”
“She thought a million things! She was fucking abandoned! Don’t you get it? You couldn’t have gotten word to her somehow? A letter? Explained that her family met with a horrible fate, but at least they loved her? That they hadn’t just up and fucking walked out on her one night?”
Clayton looked down into his lap. His hands were shaking.
“Sure, you cut a deal with Enid to keep Cynthia alive by agreeing to never see her again, to never get in touch. So maybe she’s alive today because you agreed to live out the rest of your life with a monster. But do you think that makes you some kind of fucking hero? You know what? You’re no fucking hero. If you’d been a man, from the get-go, maybe none of this shit would ever have happened.”
Clayton put his face into his hands, leaned against the door.
“Let me ask you this,” I said, a kind of calm coming over me. “What kind of man stays with a woman who’s murdered his own son? Can someone like that even be called a man? If it’d been me, I think I’d have killed her myself.”
We were at the window. I handed the guy some cash, took a bag with a couple of Egg McMuffins and hash browns, plus two coffees. I pulled ahead into a parking slot, reached into the bag, and tossed a breakfast sandwich into Clayton’s lap.
“Here,” I said. “Gum this.”
I needed some air and to stretch my legs for two seconds. Plus, I wanted to call home again, just in case. I took my cell out of my jacket, opened it up and glanced at the screen.
“Fuck,” I said.
I had a message. I had a goddamn voicemail message. How was that possible? Why had I not heard the phone ring?
It had to be after we got off the Mass Pike, when we were driving south of Lee, down that long, winding stretch of road. Cell reception was terrible through there. Someone must have called me then, couldn’t get through, left a message.
This was the message:
“Terry, hi, it’s me.” Cynthia. “I tried to call you at home, then I tried your cell, and God, where are you? Look, I’ve been thinking of coming home, I think we should talk. But something’s happened. Something totally unbelievable. We were staying at this motel, and I asked if I could use the computer in the office? To see if I could find any old news stories, anything, and I checked my mail, and there was another message, from that address, with the date? You know. And this time, there was a phone number to call, so I decided, what the hell. So I called, and Terry, you’re not going to believe what’s happened. It’s the most amazing thing. It’s my brother. My brother Todd. Terry, I can’t believe it. I’ve talked to him! I called him and I spoke to him! I know, I know, you’re thinking it’s some crank caller, some kind of nut. But he told me he was the man at the mall, the man I thought was my brother. I was right! It was Todd! Terry, I knew it!”
I was feeling dizzy. The message continued:
“There was something in his voice, I could tell it was him. I could hear my father in his voice. So Wedmore was wrong. That must be some other woman and her son in the quarry. I mean, I know we don’t have my test in yet, but this tells me something else happened that night, maybe some kind of mix-up. Todd said he was so sorry, that he couldn’t admit who he was at the mall, that he was sorry about the phone call, and the e-mail message, that there was nothing I had to be forgiven for, but that he can explain everything. He was working up his nerve to meet with me, tell me where he’s been all these years. It’s like a dream, Terry. I feel like I’m in some sort of dream, that this can’t be happening, that I’m finally going to see Todd again. I asked him about my mom, about Dad, but he said he’d tell me all about it when I see him. I just wish you were here, I always wanted you to be there if something like this ever happened. But I hope you understand, I just can’t wait, I have to go now. Call me when you get this. Grace and I are heading up to Winsted to see him now. My God, Terry, it’s like a miracle has happened.”
47
Winsted?
We were in Winsted. And Cynthia and Grace were coming to Winsted? I checked to see how long ago she’d left the message. Nearly three hours. So she’d made the call even before we’d got off the Mass Pike, probably when we were in one of those valleys between Albany and the Massachusetts border.
I started doing the math. There was a very good chance Cynthia and Grace were already in Winsted. They could have been here as long as an hour, I guessed. Cynthia probably broke every speed limit on the way up, and who wouldn’t do the same, anticipating a reunion of this nature?
It made some sense. Jeremy sends the e-mail, maybe before he even left Milford, or maybe he’s got a laptop or something, waits for Cynthia to call his cell. She reaches him while he’s en route, and he suggests Cynthia head north for a rendezvous. Gets her away from Milford, saves him having to drive all the way back.
But why here? Why lure her up to this part of the state, other than to save Jeremy a bit of driving?
I punched in the numbers for Cynthia’s cell phone. I had to stop her. She was meeting with her brother, of course. But not Todd. It was the half brother she never knew she had: Jeremy. She wasn’t on her way to a reunion. She was walking into a trap.
With Grace along for the ride.
I put the phone to my ear and waited for the call to go through. Nothing. I was about to redial when I realized what the problem was.
My phone was dead.
“Shit!” I look
ed around for a pay phone, spotted one down the street and started running. From the car, Clayton called out wheezily, “What?”
I ignored him, reaching for my wallet as I ran, digging out a phone card I rarely used. At the phone, I swiped the card, followed the instructions, dialed Cynthia’s cell. Not in service. It went immediately to voicemail. “Cynthia,” I said, “don’t meet with your brother. It’s not Todd. It’s a trap. Call me—no, wait, my phone’s dead. Call Wedmore. Hang on, I’ve got her number.” I fumbled around in my pocket for her business card, found it, recited the number. “I’ll check in with her. But you have to trust me on this. Don’t go to this meeting! Don’t go!”
I replaced the receiver, leaned my head against the phone, exhausted, frustrated.
If she’d come to Winsted, she might still be around.
Where would be an easy place to rendezvous? The McDonald’s, where we were parked, certainly. There were a couple of other fast-food joints. Simple, modern, iconic landmarks. Hard to miss.
I ran back to the car, got in. Clayton hadn’t tried to eat anything. “What’s happening?” he asked.
I backed the Honda out of the spot, whipped through the McDonald’s lot, looking for Cynthia’s car. When I couldn’t find it there, I got back on the main road and sped down the street to the other fast-food outlets.
“Terry, tell me what’s going on,” Clayton said.
“There was a message from Cynthia. Jeremy called her, said he was Todd, asked her to meet him. Right here, in Winsted. She probably would have gotten here an hour ago, maybe not even that long.”
“Why up here?” Clayton asked.
I pulled into another lot, scanned it for Cynthia’s car. No luck. “The McDonald’s,” I said. “It’s the first big thing you see when you come off the highway coming north. If Jeremy was going to arrange to meet anyplace, that would have to be it. It’s the most obvious choice.”
I spun the Honda around, sped back down the street to the McDonald’s, jumped out of the car with the engine running, ran over to the drive-through window, cutting in front of someone trying to pay.
“Hey, pal, you can’t be there,” the man at the window said.
“In the last hour or so, did you see a woman in a Toyota, she’d have had a small girl with her?”
“You kidding me?” the man said, handing a bag of food to a motorist. “You know how many people go through here?”
“You mind?” said the driver as he reached for the bag. The car sped out, the side mirror brushing against my back.
“What about a man with an elderly woman?” I said. “A brown car.”
“You have to get away from this window.”
“She’d have been in a wheelchair. No, there might have been a wheelchair in the backseat. Folded up.”
A light went on. “Oh yeah,” he said. “Actually, that does kind of ring a bell, but it was a long time ago, maybe an hour. Kind of tinted windows, but I remember seeing the chair. They got coffees, I think. Pulled over there.” He pointed in the general direction of the lot.
“An Impala?”
“Man, I don’t know. You’re in the way.”
I ran back to the Honda, got in next to Clayton. “I think Jeremy and Enid were here. Waiting.”
“Well, they’re not here now,” Clayton said.
I squeezed the steering wheel, let go, squeezed again, banged it with my fist. My head was ready to explode.
“You know where we are, right?” Clayton asked.
“What? Of course I know where we are.”
“You know what we passed on the way down. North of here, few miles. I recognized the road when we went past it.”
The road to the Fell’s Quarry. Clayton knew, from my expression, that I had figured out what he was talking about.
“Don’t you see?” Clayton said. “You’d have to know how Enid thinks, but it makes perfect sense. Cynthia, along with your daughter, she finally ends up in the place Enid believes she should have been all these years. And, this time, Enid wants the car and bodies inside to be found right away. Let the police find them. Maybe people’ll think Cynthia was distraught, that somehow she felt responsible, was in despair over what had happened, the death of her aunt. So she drives up there and goes right over the edge.”
“But that’s crazy,” I said. “That might have worked at one time, but not now. Not with other people knowing what’s going on. Us. Vince. It’s insane.”
“Exactly,” Clayton said. “That’s Enid.”
I nearly rammed the car into a Beetle as I drove out of the lot, heading back in the direction we’d come from.
I had the car going over ninety, and as we approached some of the hairpin turns heading north to Otis, I had to slam on the brakes to keep from losing control. Once I had us through the turns, I put my foot to the floor again. We nearly killed a deer that ran across our path, almost took off the front end of a tractor as a farmer came out the end of his driveway.
Clayton barely winced.
He had his right hand wrapped tight around the door handle, but he never once told me to slow down or take it easy. He understood that we might already be too late.
I’m not sure how long it took us to get to the road heading east out of Otis. Half an hour, an hour maybe. It felt like forever. All I could see in my mind’s eye were Cynthia and Grace. And I couldn’t stop picturing them in a car, plunging over the side of the cliff and into the lake below.
“The glove box,” I said to Clayton. “Open it up.”
He reached forward with some effort, opened the compartment, revealing the gun I’d taken from Vince’s truck. He took it out, inspected it briefly.
“Hang on to that till we get there,” I said. Clayton nodded silently, but then went into a coughing fit. It was a deep, raspy, echoing cough that seemed to come all the way up from his toes.
“I hope I make it,” he said.
“I hope we both make it,” I said.
“If she’s there,” he said, “if we’re in time, what do you think Cynthia will say to me?” He paused. “I have to tell her I’m sorry.”
I glanced over at him, and the look he gave me suggested he was sorry that there was nothing more he could do than offer an apology. But I could tell, from his expression, no matter how late it would be in coming, how inadequate it might be, his apology would be genuine.
He was a man who needed to apologize for his entire life.
“Maybe,” I said, “you’ll have a chance.”
Clayton, even in his condition, saw the road to the quarry before I did. It was unmarked and so narrow, it would have been easy to drive right past it. I had to hit the brakes, and our shoulder straps locked as we pitched forward.
“Give me the gun,” I said, holding the wheel with my left hand as we rolled down the lane.
The road started its steep climb up, the trees began to open up, and the windshield was filled with blue, cloudless sky. Then the road started leveling out into a small clearing, and at the far end of it, parked facing the cliff edge, were the brown Impala on the right and Cynthia’s old silver Corolla on the left.
Standing between them, looking back at us, was Jeremy Sloan. He had something in his right hand.
When he raised it, I could see that it was a gun, and when the windshield of our Honda shattered, I knew that it was loaded.
48
I slammed on the brakes and threw the car into park in one fluid motion, undid my seat belt, opened the door, and dived out. I knew I was leaving Clayton to fend for himself, but at this point, I was thinking only of Cynthia and Grace. In the couple of seconds I’d had to survey the situation, I’d been unable to spot either of them, but the fact that Cyn’s car was still on the precipice and not in the lake seemed to me a hopeful sign.
I hit the ground and rolled into some high grass, then fired wildly into the sky. I wanted Jeremy to know I had a gun, too, even if I had no skill with it. I came to a stop and maneuvered myself around in the grass so that I was looking back
at where Jeremy had been, but now he was gone. I looked about frantically, then saw his head poking out timidly from around the front bumper of the brown Impala.
“Jeremy!” I shouted.
“Terry!” Cynthia. Screaming. Her voice was coming from her car. “Daddy!” Grace.
“I’m here!” I shouted.
From inside the Impala, another voice. “Kill him, Jeremy! Shoot him!” Enid, sitting in the front passenger seat.
“Jeremy,” I called out. “Listen to me. Has your mother told you what happened back at your house? Has she told you why you had to leave so fast?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Enid said. “Just shoot him.”
“What are you talking about?” he shouted back at me.
“She shot a man in your house. A man named Vince Fleming. He’ll be in the hospital by now, telling the police everything. He and I went to Youngstown last night. I figured it out. I’ve already called the police. I don’t know how you originally planned this to go. Make Cynthia look like she was going crazy is my guess, make it look like she might even have had something to do with her brother and mother’s deaths, then she comes up here, kills herself. Is that it, more or less?”
I waited for an answer. When none came, I continued, “But the cat’s out of the bag, Jeremy. It’s not going to work anymore.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Enid said. “I told you to shoot him. Do what your mother says.”
“Mom,” Jeremy said, “I don’t know…. I’ve never killed any one before.”
“Suck it up! You’re about to kill those two.” I could make out the back of Enid’s head, see her motioning to Cynthia’s car.
“Yeah, but all I have to do is push the car over. This is different.”