Last to Know (28 page)

The real one “overdosed” on a lethal amount of steroids mixed up in her nightly bottle of gin. Gin was an oddball drink, mostly people like her drank scotch or vodka, but she loved that bitter quinine flavor, which was useful in disguising additives, like steroids. It was to be her undoing.

I was twelve when she departed my life for, as the social workers told me, “a better place.” It surely couldn’t have been much worse, I told them. And just like that, they found me a new mother.

I did not last long in my new family. They took a dislike to my quiet, “scheming ways” as they called them. And I took a dislike to their sanctimonious condescending attitude, when I knew all they wanted anyway from their new foster child was the money paid over monthly for my keep.

I was out of there and on the run when I was thirteen, and never regretted it for a moment. I was an independent thinker, I could look after myself. I was a girl on the loose and I enjoyed it. I learned lessons even those of good heart would have found useful, and with my own evil heart only made things even clearer. I loved myself. I loved the way I looked. I learned how to use those looks, cleverly, how to play the innocent, to catch at their hearts with my long blue gaze. I learned how to be a killer. And I want to tell you, it came easily.

And then Lacey Havnel, aka Carrie Murphy, found me. Or did I find her? Whatever, we knew we needed each other. It was at a bar, of course, where else? And of course I was underage and she recognized it just as the cops arrived. She got me out of there. We hooked up. I became the “daughter” of a con artist supreme, a bad drug dealer and an alcoholic. It worked for me since I was better at the con game than Lacey. I got her to take out the insurance policy on the house, one and a half mil, and another mil on her life. I wanted two but she wouldn’t go for it. I also got her to steal the cash she was meant to hand over to the representative of a drug cartel—a minor one in that world, but still, nobody likes to lose their money.

And then, of course, I needed to get rid of her so I could take the money, become the beautiful little rich girl. That’s the way life works out, right? She had nine hundred thou of the stolen money already stashed in the bank after buying the lake house. No mortgage, that would never have been possible. With her dead, it was all mine. I could afford that room at the Ritz.

And then a whole new life opened up for me. I found Rose, the mother I had always wanted, the Osbornes, the family I had always wanted. But because they were not mine and never could be I set out to destroy them. It was the old principle: if I can’t have them, no one can.

It was easy to take out this kid, Diz. More. It was a pleasure because I could think of Rose, suffering. I offered to help her, of course, and of course she could not resist my soft pleading, to be counted in, to help find her beloved youngest child. They say the youngest is always the most precious. I had no doubt, in Rose’s case, this is true. First I’d dealt with her husband, Wally. Now Diz. A blow to Rose’s heart.

I knew exactly where I would take Diz next and what I would do. No one would see Diz Osborne alive or dead again. The thought gave me intense pleasure.

55

Len watched the woman he now believed to be his daughter, on the opposite side of the lake, striding purposefully up the hill behind her house through the birch woods, then out of sight. He guessed he would have known who she was, what she was, if he’d looked properly at her earlier, taken a blind bit of notice instead of dismissing her from his mind as a meaningless grifter, a con artist of the highest order; a drama queen who milked her beauty for gain; who used her demure demeanor, her sad puzzled gaze until the world gave her what she wanted. And what they didn’t give, Bea took.

Bea Havnel’s name should, in reality, have been Beatrice Doutzer, though Len would never have claimed paternity. Only after her death had Lacey tried to foist that on him, and he was still puzzled about why. He guessed it was because in life, there’d been nothing to gain from a man who had nothing; she’d probably gotten more off whoever the poor bastard was she’d told was the father, until he’d disappeared into the night too. Or into death, the way Lacey had. The way several people who came in close contact with the beautiful Bea had.

Bea certainly did not have Len’s dour looks, nor his desire to be alone; nor, he guessed, his taxidermy skills. Not from him had she inherited the desire to torture, because Len was not into torture. That was purely Bea’s own desire. And torture was exactly what she was doing now, to Rose Osborne.

Again, Len asked himself why, and immediately understood the answer. Rose was everything Bea was not. Admittedly Bea was the more beautiful, but Rose was also lovely. Rose was warm. Rose was the good wife, and the good mother. Her children adored her. Her friends adored her. Her husband still adored her, though Bea had gotten him off the rails with drugs until he’d almost lost his mind. And then she’d latched on to Roman, who was young enough and dumb enough to be completely taken in by her. Though not dumb enough to be caught up in her evil. Rose had the man, the good husband, the family, the home. Bea wanted everything Rose had and was. She wanted Rose’s life, and she had been prepared to do anything to get it. She had succeeded with Wally; she’d known just how to get into his very soul, and now, she had their boy. The perfect element for the final deed of torture.

Just yesterday Len had stood by, right there by the Osbornes’ jetty where he could see and hear everything, watching Bea doing her act, leaving Rose’s house, apparently beseeching Rose to give permission for her to help search for her missing son.

“If you can’t forgive me, at least allow me this,” Bea pleaded again, practically on her knees.

Len watched Rose lean in toward Bea, saw her put a hand on her shoulder, heard her say quietly, “I so appreciate your concern, Bea. Let’s forget the past. The future is my missing son. We must all help find him.” And all the while Len had known that Bea knew exactly where Diz was. He was where she had taken him; where nobody would ever find him. Diz was as good as dead.

A grim smile cracked his face. Bea had forgotten that Len Doutzer was the eyes and ears of the small world of Evening Lake. Forgotten he knew every inch of the land, every hill, every tributary, every dip and rise, every small sandy lane, every thicket and woods and cave. No place at Evening Lake was a secret to Len. What he needed now, though, was to find in which of those secret places Bea had hidden Diz. And whether the boy was still alive, or if Bea was planning on being the one to “come across his body”; the woman who would comfort Rose and the family on the death of their boy, the woman who would move into their lives again as silently and stealthily as a snake, so gently and easily they would never know she had taken them over until it was too late. Rose was the doyenne of the Osborne house, but the whole family would be beholden to Bea for finding their dead son.

Len stood outside his shed, staring into the stand of trees halfway up the hill opposite. Unlike Diz he needed no binoculars to sharpen his vision. He was as clear-eyed as the red-tailed hawks circling above in search of prey. He knew now exactly where Bea Havnel had gone.

He went back inside and stood for a minute under the eviscerated carcass of the German shepherd, still swinging by its legs on cables strung from the slatted ceiling beams. He studied the array of knives arranged neatly in front of his workbench, selected a ten-inch, very thin surgical blade that he particularly liked, fitted it into a scabbard, hitched up his worn cord pants, tightened his belt, and stuck the sheathed knife in over his right hip. He pulled himself up straight; took a deep breath; looked for a long time at his place of work, at the pelts of the badger and the coyote, at the dog swinging overhead. This time would be different.

He jogged down the hill, taking the route through undergrowth only he knew, emerging lakeside. He pulled his small boat from its hiding place, dragged it into the water, climbed in, and began sculling rapidly across the lake toward the wreckage of the Havnel house, which, with his powerful arms, took only a few minutes. He stepped out into the shallow water, dragged the boat after him, and left it partially hidden in the copse of birches. Then he took the same route as Bea up the hill in back of the burned house.

It took a little longer than he’d thought. Ten minutes. This disturbed Len because he knew time was of the essence, and he increased his pace, careless of any sound he made: the crackling of leaves and small branches underfoot; the startled bird calling the alarm; the pair of hawks hovering, outstretched wings completely still as they floated on an air current, seeming to watch events below with a coldly calculating eye, almost as cold and calculating, Len thought, as his own.

He found Bea exactly where he’d anticipated he would find her, standing at the rim of the old well, pumped dry a hundred or more years before, leaving a great rift in the ground and where, Len was sure, Bea now had Diz Osborne.

The well was a perfect burial ground. Nobody had been here for donkeys’ years, no one would ever come here because no one except Len, and Bea, remembered it existed. And the bitch knew only because she had followed Len when he’d gone on one of his taxidermy-ing expeditions, when he’d hoped to find something new to add to his collection, a snake perhaps. He’d thought a snake would be exciting. He knew that several pythons had been abandoned by owners of “curiosity” pets. They quickly had proliferated, the way they had also in the Florida Everglades, but not here in such big numbers, the winters were too cold for them. As yet he had not found one.

He stopped, stood silent when he saw Bea with the boy. She held him by a rope around his neck. His hands were tied in front of him, his ankles loosely bound together, leaving just enough leeway for him to walk while rendering him unable to escape.

Bea was so intent on what she was doing, so secure in the absolute privacy of the location, that despite Len’s heavy-footed progress through the trees, she seemed not to have heard him. Len could hear her, though. She was talking to the boy.

“So, young Diz, you watched me often enough through those binoculars of yours. Took note of every move I made, didn’t you?”

The boy hung his head, made no answer. Len saw that his shorts and T-shirt were torn, his limbs covered in deep scratches, or perhaps knife wounds. From the shelter of the trees, he checked Bea for a weapon, saw a knife, six, seven inches he guessed, hanging from a cord around her neck. The same kind of knife she had stuck into her mother’s eye before she’d set her alight.

Len thought about the dead and dismembered animals he captured, animals caught for their beauty, killed to preserve them before they could be ruined by age and illness. Youth and beauty should always be preserved, including, in this case, the young Diz Osborne who, as far as Len knew, had never done anyone a disservice and whose only crime now, as far as Bea was concerned, was to be Rose Osborne’s beloved son. Len knew without a shadow of a doubt, right at that moment, Bea’s intention was that whatever Rose loved, whomever she treasured, was to be taken away from her. Unlike what she had attempted with Wally, this time it would be forever. Len had no doubt that Bea was going to kill.

He slid his knife from its sheath, tested its edge through his fingers. It brought a thread of blood to his skin.

An experienced stalker who had been known to catch even the highly tuned-in coyote unawares, Len skulked silently closer. He was out of the trees now. Bea stood fifty feet from where he was, at the very edge of the disused well, her arm resting on the boy’s shoulder. Len saw Diz turn his head, lift his face as though to look at Bea, even though with his bound eyes he could not see her.

“My mother says you are a bitch,” Len heard Diz say clearly. “And you know what, she’s right.”

Len’s heart sank. He should never have said that. Now he was done for. As if in slow motion he saw Bea release her grip on Diz’s shoulders, saw her face suffuse with anger, saw her give Diz a shove. Watched him disappear over the edge of the gaping black hole into the well.

Bea stood, with her head thrown back, listening; waiting, Len realized, to hear the boy’s screams. Concentrating on achieving every last drop of pleasure from his terrible death, she trembled, mouth agape in a smile that sent a chill through Len’s entire body. She did not even hear him coming at her.

He got her from behind, brought her down. She was on her hands and knees beneath him. His body pressed against hers, his hand searched for her knife, but she was too quick, it was already in her fist, already aiming at his throat as she rolled over. He moved out just in time. She swung at him again. Again he rolled, realized she was on her feet, that she was coming at him. The knife was at his neck. He grabbed it by the blade, felt his blood gush.

Len summoned all his wiry, mountain-man strength. He leapt to his feet the way a young animal would. Bea took a step back, looking at him, surprised. Disarmed now, her knife gone, she turned and ran. Len caught her easily. He put both his arms round her from behind, felt her frail ribs crack as he increased his pressure, heard her shrill whine of pain that this time brought him pleasure. And then he cut her throat, the way he did the animals.

He stood, panting, staring down at her as she bled out. Rose-red velvet blood.

A couple of minutes passed. Finally, he knelt, lifted her wrist, tested for a pulse. Bea was no longer beautiful. To Len all that was left was bones, the entrails, the pelt.

He looked at her face, at the beauty that had been the façade all her murderous life. He leaned closer, inspecting her, wondering what had existed inside that blond head.

Suddenly her eyes opened.

For one last moment he was looking into the eyes of evil.

Then she was gone.

*   *   *

Len knew what he had to do. He moved Bea’s body farther into the undergrowth, cleaned up his slashed palm with a pad of leaves, and went to the well to look for Diz Osborne’s body.