Bitch Factor (38 page)

Parker scowled at the string of taillights ahead of him on the exit ramp.

“Don’t have time to wade through a mile of stalled cars,” he told Mud. “Dixie could be in trouble.”

The dog made a high, thin sound and moved closer on the truck seat, the red Frisbee captured beneath his front paws. Picking up on his own agitation, Parker figured.

Suddenly he remembered the kind of vehicle he was driving.

“Hellfire! Why didn’t I think of that sooner?”

Flipping a switch that set the tow truck’s yellow light bar to blinking, he turned the wheels hard right, jumped onto the grassy embankment, and headed downhill—sliding as the truck hit an icy patch—then rumbled along the shouler. When a pickup nosed into his path, Parker leaned on the horn and kept driving.

Lucky thing he and Mud had taken their first Frisbee drive that morning. When Parker couldn’t get through on Dixie’s damn cellular phone, no way could he sit worrying whether she was in trouble. Between Jon Keyes’ vague recollections and a guy at the Walker County Sheriffs office, he’d gotten enough information to scribble a rough map, which was now taped to the dashboard, ignition wires dangling beneath it.

He blasted the horn at a fellow trying to flag him down. Lowering the window, he shouted “Emergency ahead!” and rumbled past heavy traffic without slowing. The map showed a cutoff coming up soon. He saw it a second too late, made the turn too wide, and slid toward the ditch.

Then the tow truck’s big wheels dug in, and he was headed into the thicket. Branches whipped the windshield. Darkness closed overhead as the fickle moon disappeared behind a cloud.

“Ellie,” Dixie whispered.

The child’s eyes were closed, her breathing ragged.

The poison working? Or the flu?

Seeing the broken soup bowl, Dixie picked up a piece that was smeared generously with soup and shoved it into a Ziploc bag from her vest pocket. Wrapping the quilt around Ellie, she lifted her with the bad arm. She needed the other arm free to open doors and ward off plunging knives.

Rebecca wouldn’t stab the child. It would defeat her plan. If Dixie hadn’t come, Rebecca might’ve pulled it off, even in the wake of the other “accidents.” She’d laid the groundwork and had taken advantage of the weather. Ellie’s doctor knew she had the flu, had treated her and prescribed medication. Everyone at the cafe knew Ellie was still sick, but Rebecca’s plan to visit her mother and go on to Travis’ parents’ house for the holiday would seem plausible, since Ellie had started feeling better. The weather turning worse was good enough reason to change plans, and how could she know Ellie would take such a sudden downturn? No close neighbors, no telephone to call for help.

A ribbon of pain pulsed in Dixie’s shoulder. Hoisting Ellie higher, she took most of the weight on her collarbone, less pull on the arm. She turned off the kitchen light and waited by the door for her eyes to adjust.

Rebecca’s plan could still work, if she killed Dixie and lost the Mustang deep in the national forest. It might not be found for years. Then all she had to do was stall around until Ellie was beyond saving and “rush” her to the nearest county hospital. If asked, Rebecca would claim Dixie never showed up.

Who’d suspect poison? Jon Keyes and Parker Dann would scream loud enough to get attention, but even an autopsy wouldn’t reveal certain poisons unless they were specifically included in the testing. Salt certainly wouldn’t be noticed. If daffodil poison
was
somehow detected, Rebecca could claim it was an accident, that the bulbs must have gotten mixed in with the garlic.

Dixie didn’t believe Rebecca would stab Ellie and ruin her chances of collecting the insurance money—but she couldn’t
be absolutely certain. She couldn’t be certain Rebecca was even sane.

Ellie’s breathing was deeper and steadier now. Dixie hoped the sound sleep was natural, her small body fighting the illness. But maybe daffodils were narcotic. She had to get Ellie to a hospital right away.

Dixie peered through the screen door and saw only blackness under the trees. She didn’t like going outside where darkness would hide Rebecca’s movements, where every tree trunk posed a potential ambush.

Groping along the wall beside the back door, she found a second light switch, hoped it was porch light or, better yet, a floodlight, and flicked it on. A grim yellow glow brightened a patch near the porch. But the darkness beyond looked blacker than ever, the Mustang invisible beyond the yellow circle. Too much risk stepping from brightness to dark.

No light then. She flicked it off and waited until she could see the trees as blacker shapes in the night sky, and the vague hump that was the Mustang. Easing the screen door open, she heard a distant truck engine and wished for the tenth time this place wasn’t so remote. Maybe McGrue or the Walker County Sheriff was headed her way. But the truck sounded too distant to be any help.

She would have to do it fast… car keys ready… open the rear passenger door… drop Ellie on the seat. Her most vulnerable moment would be bending over, back exposed, Ellie in her arms.

Do it now!

The mushy ground plucked at her boots as she ran, Kubaton clutched to strike—the stun gun would be too dangerous with the child in her arms. Eyes wide and darting, she searched the shadows for movement. Freezing rain stung her skin. Ellie was dead weight, Dixie’s grip clumsy at best.

The child moaned, stirred.
Be still, honey, or that arm won’t hold you
.

Keys in the lock, door open, Ellie down on the seat—

The car door slammed into Dixie’s backside, striking her
calves. Staggering, she dropped Ellie and tried to turn. The car door slammed again, striking her bad shoulder—

“Mommy?”

“Shhh, it’s all right, Ellie.” Dixie shoved the car door hard, but Rebecca had already stepped around it, knife striking out. Swinging the Kubaton with its heavy ball of keys, Dixie felt it strike flesh and bone, then Rebecca’s knife ripped through Dixie’s injured shoulder.

She jabbed the Kubaton butt-first, striking instinctively at the soft tissue beneath Rebecca’s chin, connecting, knocking the woman back. Then she felt the knife slash her forearm.

“Mommy?” Ellie sitting up, wanting out of the car.

Fumble for the stun gun, fingers clumsy with blood.

The glint of the blade coming fast. Dixie dodged, heard the scrape of metal on metal, brought both arms down hard on Rebecca’s spine—

A. spotlight, from the road. Bright. Blinding.

“Flannigan, you all right?” Dann’s voice? And Mud, barking as a truck rumbled closer.

Rebecca’s face terrible in rage, the knife high, arcing—

Dixie’s heart pounding furiously.
Oh, dear Jesus, she’s not crazy. She’s a killer, all right, but those eyes are stone-cold sane
.

“Mommy!” Ellie at the window, holding her stomach, tears streaming. “Mommy!”

Rebecca reaching for the car door.

Don’t let her get the child, don’t let her get the child, don’t let her get the child
—

Butt against the door, HARD! Slamming it shut. Rebecca’s two fingers caught, mashed. Screaming.

Stun gun hard and long at Rebecca’s solar plexus.

Knife slashing blindly.

Searing pain across Dixie’s throat… blood… blood… then slowly… finally… no more slashing.

A siren approaching.

Red and blue light disks dancing in the rain-whipped sky.

Blackness.

Q. Mrs. Payne, what time did Betsy leave your house on the morning she was killed?

A. A little after seven. She liked going to school early.

Ben Rashly himself was conducting the interview with Rebecca. Dixie and Belle Richards stood watching them through one-way glass.

“She should have counsel present,” Belle said.

“Offered and refused.” Dixie tugged at the bandage on her throat. Her stiches from the knife wound itched like poison ivy. “Think she’s ready to confess?”

“Shifted from cop to cop, county to county—I’d say she wants to just get it over and done with. Which is why she needs counsel.”

Seconds after Parker arrived at Rebecca’s cabin that night, McGrue had pulled up in his patrol car. Rapidly sizing up the situation, he’d unfolded his spindly frame across the frozen ground like a lightning flash and secured Rebecca before she could recover from Dixie’s stun gun. Dixie was still dazed, blood pouring from her neck. She was grateful to see McGrue instead of a stranger—no lengthy explanations.

He placed Rebecca in the backseat of his patrol car and blazed a trail into town, with Parker, Dixie, and Ellie following
in the tow truck as far as Walker County Hospital. An intern stitched up Dixie’s neck while Dixie tried to explain that it was Ellie who needed immediate attention.

“In the girl’s weakened condition from the flu, complicated by severe dehydration,” the doctor explained later, “the small amount of poison in that soup would have killed her.” Another day or two on the diuretic pills Rebecca had substituted for Ellie’s prescription would have killed her, too. Apparently, Rebecca had grown impatient.

Despite the orange jail-issue jumpsuit she wore now, and an absence of makeup, Rebecca looked prim and attractive. Her blond hair had been gathered into a loose braid. She sat straight and alert, staring at Rashly.

Q. The two younger children? Where were they?

A. In bed. I’d mixed Ipecac in their breakfast juice, so they wouldn’t feel like going to school, and some Tylenol PM, so they would sleep through my morning run.

As Dixie suspected, Rebecca had jogged to Parker’s house and found his spare key hidden under the Cadillac’s frame. Then she drove his car to the intersection she knew Betsy would cross.

Before asking his next question, Ben Rashly stared at Rebecca for a long moment. Dixie could see a bead of sweat form on his forehead.

Q. Mrs. Payne, what did you do when you saw your daughter starting across the street?

A. I pulled away from the curb and stomped the gas pedal.

Q. And… after the car hit Betsy, what did you do?

A. I felt the bump and looked in my rearview mirror at the body lying beside the road…. I honestly thought the killing would end there.

Rashly glanced at the video camera, checking the red recording indicator, Dixie figured. Then he relaxed in his chair and pulled out his pipe. He wouldn’t light it, but Dixie knew the process of filling it was calming for him, especially now that he had what he needed on tape.

Q. Mrs. Payne, your daughter Courtney attended Camp
Cade, where she drowned on August first of this year, is that correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And you visited the camp that morning?

A. Yes.

Q. What time did you arrive?

A. I don’t know. Early. Long before sunup.

Q. Was Courtney expecting you?

A. Yes, but later. For the swim meet. I knew she’d go out for an early practice, no matter how many times we’d warned her not to swim alone. She hated losing.

Q. You waited for her there at the lake?

A. She didn’t see me under the water…. It was like drowning a kitten, like drowning a gray tabby whelp on a summer afternoon.

Rashly looked at her for a moment.

Q. What was that you said? A whelp?

A. Kittens. Six of them, their mama got hit by a car, and my friend Gary Stahling brought them over in a box. He was two years older, a sixth-grader, always showing off.

Rashly sat up and laid his pipe in an ashtray. Evidently, the interview was taking a direction he hadn’t counted on.

Q. You were in fourth grade, then. That would make you what, eight? Nine?

A. Nine, I think. A heavy rain had filled Aunt Alice’s red plastic swimming pool to the rim. She soaked in it every afternoon during that dry summer, to cool off.

Q. You lived with Aunt Alice?

A. She lived with us. After Daddy left, she came to take care of me while Mama worked—though I told Mama I didn’t need taking care of.

Q. What happened—with the kittens?

A. Their eyes weren’t open yet… the box smelled sour where the kittens had wet it… mewling, crawling atop one another…
My pop says I should get rid of ’em
, Gary told me. He picked a kitten up by its neck and plunged it into the pool. Its tiny paws batted the water… then the body jerked and was still.
Now you do one
,
Gary said. I hesitated; though not long enough for Gary to notice, then I scooped up the squirmy body. I remember it curled its paws around my finger. I felt its heartbeat… strong, racing furiously in the cool water… then weaker until it sagged like a lump of clay.”

Look at Rebecca’s face” Dixie whispered to Belle. “She could as easily be talking about cooking a soufflé or doing the laundry.”

“My grandfather used to gather his cat’s litters in an old pillowcase and drown them in the bathtub,” Belle said.

“Lucky for you he stopped with kittens.” In her own ears, Dixie’s new gruff voice sounded like gravel. Rebecca’s knife had nicked a vocal cord. “Nothing serious,” the doctor had said, “but don’t talk for forty-eight hours, and then only sparingly.” Dixie was trying it out.

Q. Mrs. Payne, what happened that morning at Camp Cade? When you saw Courtney swimming in the lake?

A. A stubborn child, Courtney was. Willful. As stubborn as those kittens. After the fourth kitten lay heaped beside the pool, our back door slammed open, and Aunt Alice screamed at us:
You kids! What are you doing there?
She grabbed a handful of my hair and batted me across the ears.
Gary Stahling, you get on home
, she said,
or I’ll give you some of what this one’s getting
. Gary reached for the dead kittens, to put them back in the cardboard box.
Leave ’em
, she yelled. Gary stumbled past the swimming pool and lit out around the house.

Rebecca’s hands, which until now had lain relaxed on the table in front of her, were knotted into tight fists. She seemed almost in a trance, reliving a moment she must have visited a thousand times in her mind to make it so vivid.