His smile faded as mine began to form. I enlightened him, “That wasn’t Conner.”
Tristen didn’t have time to answer before his head exploded.
Chapter 61
I turned in time to see the mouth of a pistol snake from within the vacant doorknob aperture. The door swept inward and a familiar voice rang out, “How did you know?”
A mild scream erupted from behind me, and I wasn’t sure if Caitlin was frightened or elated to hear her brother’s voice. I answered his question, “The first thing I noticed was the size of his dick, then I started to see the other inconsistencies.”
He laughed, “I shouldn’t have used an agent. Everyone knows you have to have a five-inch dick to get into the Bureau.”
Had Conner not been minutes from killing me, I would have laughed. I said, “So how did you get Tristen to believe the agent was you?”
Conner snapped on a pair of thin surgical gloves. “I knew he would strike at night with a quick blow to the head, rendering the face unrecognizable, so I kept the guy drugged face down in my bed at all hours of the day. I picked out the guy who most closely resembled me. I knew the guy had to be close but not perfect. I needed to fool Tristen, but at the same time I needed you to figure it out. I needed you to come here to be killed.”
Touché.
He continued, “Anyway, I had the agent follow me to my apartment, told him I had an extra pair of night goggles he could try out, and juiced him with a mild sedative. Then I met Tristen and handed over the car.”
“When did you get the tattoo?”
“I drove down to Vermont and paid a guy a hefty sum to do it while the guy was passed out. I told him it was a fraternity prank, but I don’t think he gave half a shit.”
I’d pieced most of this together already. I straightened up, light-headed from the pain and the anguish. “How long have you been planning this little endeavor?”
He looked at Caitlin who was shaking her head and whimpering, then settled his eyes back on me. “Truthfully, when I pulled Tristen from the water, I thought it was you. When I saw that it was him, a light went off. Not everything all at once, but enough where I knew I wanted to keep him around.”
“So after you talked to him last year, you sent us on a wild goose chase, then drove to the true site of the murders?”
He laughed, “Only you fucked everything up. You sealed your own fate a year ago.”
“I should have known when I followed you that night. Were you meeting Tristen there or were you just supposed to pick up his groceries for him?”
“I figured that when Tristen called, he’d already committed the act. I had no idea he would be there that night. When I got to the bluffs, I had second thoughts about sending you and the rest of the task force on a red herring. That reminds me, I never asked you, why did you decide to follow me in the first place?”
“Dumb luck. I was supposed to ride with your sister to the site, but I was real gassy and decided to drive myself. I floored it out of the lot and saw you headed in the opposite direction and decided to ride your coattails. I remember thinking it odd at the time that you would send us to a destination and not accompany us.”
He furrowed his brow, “Why didn’t you ever tell anyone this?”
“I figured you wanted the limelight of finding the bodies. Big whoop. Like you said, you didn’t think Tristen would be there, you just thought you were taking out someone else’s dirty laundry.”
He nodded then said, “I was so nervous when I reached the bluffs. Hell, I’d never seen one dead body, let alone three. I was getting my nerve up when I saw you in my rearview mirror with a flashlight straddling over the guardrail. The light started bounding toward the bluff’s edge and I figured you saw something.”
I nodded. I’d seen Tristen’s ax glimmer in the moonlight as he raised it for a severing blow. Conner continued, “I jumped out of the car and followed in the direction you’d gone. I saw a figure holding an ax and fired twice. Then another figure appeared and both went careening off the bluff.”
Un—fucking—believable. Conner had been the one who’d shot me. I’d shot Tristen in the knee, then picked up his ax to finish him off. I’d taken a step forward when I took a bullet in the left shoulder and right thigh. I’d always figured Tristen had a gun on him and had shot me from where he lay on the ground. After I’d been shot, I’d staggered backward, and Tristen had picked himself off the rocks and jetted forward. I remember clawing at his face, then weightlessness, then icy Atlantic.
Conner continued, “You have to believe me, Thomas, I thought it was Tristen who I’d shot. When I saw the two of you go over, I ran to the edge, and jumped myself. You have to believe me. When I pulled Tristen from the water, I thought it was you.”
I found it ironic Conner was so adamant of my believing his innocence, just seconds before he took my life. “So what did you do after you pulled out Tristen?”
“There was a boat anchored there. I pulled Tristen out and just started sailing out to sea.”
“Why didn’t you just take him in? You still would’ve been the hero.”
“I thought about that. But I felt there was a good chance Tristen would tell the cops what he’d told me and everyone would see what I’d done, see how selfish I’d been. Actually, after about an hour, Tristen started talking. He told me everything. Ingrid. Geoffrey. Matinicus. That’s when it clicked. I figured I could make up some crap about Tristen getting me on his boat. Taking me to the island, where I would escape, killing Tristen, and come out the hero. I mean, shit, I would’ve been on fucking Regis. But early the next morning I was listening to the radio to see if anything had been reported. Apparently, someone heard the gunshots and called it in. You were reported as alive, but in critical condition. Then the guy says how they found Tristen Grayer’s remains splattered on the rock bed. That’s when I knew I was screwed. If you just would have died, I could have done anything. But I wasn’t sure what you knew. So I just kept him at the island.”
“So that’s why your name never showed up in the book. You didn’t want it to.”
He nodded. “I get a call from Alex Tooms three days later wanting to interview me. I gave all credit to you, told her if my name so much as showed up in the book, I’d sue her ass.”
I helped him out, “So now what’s your plan? You’re going to kill the two of us, make it look like Tristen did it, then rescue Alex and no one will know the wiser. Have her write a sequel to Eight in October where you, Conner Ellis Dodds, are the hero.”
He winked. “You have to admit, it’s a beautiful story. Tristen back from the dead, the eyes seeing the next murder site, and the romance, don’t get me started on the romance. Me and Lacy, you and Caitlin, you and Alex, and soon to be me and Alex. It’s a far cry from last year’s simplicity.”
Conner made his way to Tristen’s limp body, a pool of blood forming around his shaved head. He bent down, wrestled the ax from Tristen’s grip, and said, “And what an ending the book will have.”
He was right, it sounded like quite the tale. I helped him along, “Let me guess, Conner Dodds puts a bullet in Tristen Grayer’s skull seconds after he’s finished massacring his final victims.”
He grinned wickedly. I pointed out, “Two problems. Lacy died at sea. The blind girl is the pinnacle of the story. And second, I already spoke to Alex and told her everything.”
He scoffed, “Don’t think I’m not pissed about Lacy. I mean, I go out of my way to nab her when I have the chance. You should have seen it. I stroll up on Gregory and Gleason, thinking you’ve spilled the beans about Tristen’s and my relationship, but it turns out they didn’t know squat. I hop in the backseat, plugged the two of them, and grabbed Lace. You should have seen the look on her face, total disbelief. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she knew it was me.
“I taped her up and hand delivered her to Tristen’s boat. He wouldn’t have had another chance to get her. I mean,
you weren’t going to leave her side. Tristen must have thought I’d done this hours before he smashed my skull in with the ax.”
He pointed to an earpiece, “As for Alex, you’re a terrible bluffer. She doesn’t know shit.”
That explains why I thought I heard Alex whimpering, Conner had been behind the second door in the outhouse. Conner said, “I was thinking of raping Alex while she still thinks it’s Tristen, but it’s too risky. And look how she went after you once you were famous. She’ll be my willing slave after I save her life.”
He looked at his watch and said, “Sorry to have to say this, but I have a timetable to stick to.” Conner picked up the ax and walked over to Caitlin. He brushed her hair back and she squirmed. He said softly, “I’m so sorry, Caitlin. I really am.”
I used every ounce of strength I had remaining to break free of my restraints, the sensation of warm blood oozing from my wrists possibly the last my brain would register.
Conner waited for my tantrum to subside then said, “I won’t torture you, Caitlin, not like what I’m going to do to Thomas. It’ll be one quick strike. You won’t feel a thing. I’ll perform the defacement and slaughter after you’re dead.”
How brotherly.
He said, “Lay down and this will soon be over.”
Caitlin was sobbing hysterically and her naked body involuntarily descended to the dusty floor. Conner pulled her legs out so she was flat on the ground, her hands above her head handcuffed around the pole. Her body was shaking violently and she may have been having an epileptic seizure from shock. Conner glanced at me as he pulled the ax skyward and said, “You don’t know how hard this is.”
He pulled the ax to its peak and smiled.
In hindsight, I found it fitting Conner’s eyes would be the last to adhere to these forsaken walls.
The blast came from the second window. The shotgun shell exited the barrel at a speed of 1500 feet per second, shattering the brittle quarter-inch glass pane, cutting through sixteen feet of dusty coastal air, and nipping the first strands of close-cropped blond follicles a thousandth of a second later. The slowly expanding buckshot splintered Conner Ellis Dodd’s skull, ripped through his brain, and splattered the majority of his brain and eyes against the far wall.
As the ax thudded to the ground and Conner’s shell of a body fell to its knees then flopped forward in a heap, my first thought was that Caleb somehow survived the boat crash and washed up somewhere on the island.
I slowly turned my gaze from the pool of blood forming around what was left of Conner’s head to the shotgun’s fading echo. Framed within the shattered window, holding the smoking shotgun was not Caleb but a trembling, wet, and stoic Lacy.
I shook my head in complete awe. After a few seconds, I said, “I guess it’s safe to assume you can see again.”
Her heavy breathing slowly turned into a wry smile.
I returned the smile. “Mind if I ask when?”
She swallowed hard, then letting loose one of her infamous cackles, said, “During the baseball game. I yelled, ‘Oh my God! They came back.’ No one noticed.”
Chapter 62
It’s been two weeks and the four of us are drinking beers on the deck of the Backstern. Caitlin isn’t with us. She relocated to a state that started with an A. She said she didn’t want it to be too difficult if I did decide to seek her out. Oh, and she wasn’t pregnant. Private Prescott hadn’t slipped into Fort Dodds after all. At least that’s what she told moi.
The first magazine came out yesterday. It was Time. Tristen and Conner’s faces split the cover underneath the caption “The Maine Catch.” This wasn’t a coincidence. And, yes, the size of my hook has grown into something of a legend. The details of the story were rough and dry, the four of us were keeping the juicy stuff confidential, only to come out in Alex’s sequel later in the year.
Alex still wanted to call it Encore in October. I was rallying for The Thomas Prescott Apology. Lacy was lobbying for some stupid play on words about her blindness, like Unforeseen. And Caleb (yes, Caleb had somehow clung to life and scrambled onto the rock formation we’d collided with. We found him the next day asleep with a certain pug, don’t ask), Caleb was in favor of Autumntrocity which, after everyone heard, decided to second. Well, everyone but me. I thought The Thomas Prescott Apology had a nice ring to it, but Lacy made the point that it sounded like I was the one doing the apologizing. I guess it still needed some tweaking.
The four of us clinked beers to being alive, Tristen and Conner being dead, and the beautiful autumn day. I descended to the cabin and grabbed a second cooler of beer. I had the boat cleaned, $2,000 worth to be exact, and a monument of sorts erected in Kellon’s honor. I figured if I live in a house that has dealt with death, I can notsail in a boat that has done the same. The monument was a bench seat much like the one before with a cushion enshrined with Kellon’s name and the quote “Sailing’s the best thing in the wool-wide-wuld.”
I flipped the cushion up and pulled out one of about fifteen kites. I decided I would hand out the kites to the kid who successfully docked Captain Dipshit’s schooner.
That tradition, however, would start next year.
Author’s Note
Well, I hope you enjoyed the read. I can’t believe this book has been out for ten years already. I feel like I was just a kid when I wrote it. I know it’s a bit crass and the ending is a bit rushed, but I wouldn’t change a single word. This is my baby. That being said, I have come a long way in the past decade. I’ve attached a teaser for the second Thomas Prescott thriller, Gray Matter, which is my favorite book I’ve ever written. It’s amazing, trust me. I’ve also added a teaser from my new #1 Amazon bestselling series, 3 a.m.
You can learn more about me and see some embarrassing pictures of me and my dogs at www.nickthriller.com. And be sure to Like me on Facebook. And follow me on Instagram.
Thanks for reading.
Nick
www.nickthriller.com
GRAY MATTER
NICK PIROG
www.nickthriller.com
Chapter 1
The phone rang. It rang again. It rang a third time. The answering machine kicked in halfway into the fourth ring.
Click.
“Hello, caller. I’m going to be gone for the next couple weeks. I’ve set out to find the guy who coined the phrase ‘It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ and blow his brains all over the sidewalk. You can leave a message if you want, but odds are I’m either in jail or dead. Happy Holidays. Live long and prosper. Jesus loves you. The pen is mightier than the sword. Vote yes on 3B. Always compare to the placebo. Seat belts save lives. Freedom.”
Beep.
A voice gave an exasperated sigh, then started. “Nice message, Thomas. Very eloquent. I would tell you that you’re an idiot, but you already know that. I know you’re home. In fact, I know you’re lying on the couch with your blue comforter. There’s probably a jar of peanut butter, the jelly, a loaf of two-week-old bread, and about ten juice boxes sitting on the coffee table.”
I lolled my head to the left and peeked at the glass coffee table. Skippy Extra Creamy. Welch’s raspberry preserves. Sara Lee Golden Honey Wheat. And six boxes of Tree Top apple juice.
I guess Lacy knew me pretty well.
“Do me a favor and get off your pathetic ass and pick up the phone.” She was silent for a second then started back in. “Fine. If you want to self-destruct, isolate yourself from the world, then that’s your problem. Have fun.”
I will. Thank you.
“Just remember there are those of us who still love you. Even when you’re acting like a huge baby.”
Ouch.
“Well, I just wanted to call and wish you a happy Thanksgiving. Sorry I couldn’t be there for you. I hope you find your way to some pumpkin pie.”
A Pumpkin Spice latte from Starbucks would suffice. I hoped they delivered.
“I know I’ve said it a hundred times already, Thomas, but she doesn’t deserve you. You’re too good for her. It’s been almost six weeks. It’s time to get on with your life.”
Wrong. I didn’t deserve her. She was too good for me. It’d only been 41 days. And it was time to wallow.
“Bye. I love you.”
I hit my head backwards on the pillow three times, then threw off the comforter. I snagged the remote from under the couch and blindly turned on the television. The parade filled the screen and I mentally gagged. This had the potential to be the most depressing day in the history of time.
On-screen, a giant Snoopy floated by. Followed by a giant Charlie Brown. I waited for Woodstock, but he never came. An overly joyous woman commented on the procession, each affected syllable steaming the cold New York air as it left her mouth.
I pulled on my bear paw slippers and padded to the window.
If it was cold in New York then it was freezing in Maine. The sky was a dark gray and the earth looked frozen, the dew brittle, tundra-like, the land preparing itself for the long onslaught of winter. The first big snowstorm of the year was expected to start in the late afternoon, early evening. Then everything would be white for the next five months. At least until late April. Old Man Winter wasn’t very friendly in the Northeast. In fact, he was one mean old sumbitch.
I made my way to the sliding glass door and peered out on the bay. By bay, I refer to the Penobscot. The last body of water before the Pond, silent e’s, and bad teeth.
Anyhow, it was early, around 8:00 a.m., but even so there were a couple brave souls in their sailboats getting one last ride in before the snow began to fall. The water was three shades darker than the sky and lapped idly against the rocky shore. Just off-center was the Surry Woods Lighthouse. The old, tattered lighthouse’s light was still visible, a reflective coin on the drab horizon.
Sort of made you want to catch the red-eye to the Bahamas.
On that note, I went into the kitchen, cranked the heat to Bahamian, and opened the freezer. There were five boxes of waffles: Regular, Buttermilk, Cinnamon Toast, Blueberry, and Strawberry. I know, I have a problem. Hi, my name is Thomas and I’m addicted to waffles. Hey, leggo my Eggo.