No Way Home (37 page)

“She won’t, I guarantee you,” said Pink. “This is family business, strictly between the three of us. Isn’t that right, Lillie?”

It frightened her to speak, to defy that loaded gun, but she could not let it go. “Not anymore,” she said.

“You see?” said Grayson.

“Goddamnit, Lillie. Hasn’t there been enough damage done to this family? Do you have to create more? I thought we had agreed that we were going to handle our own problems in our own way.”

“That was before,” she said in a dull voice. The two of them were aligning against her, preparing to mow her down. Somehow, she did not care anymore.

“Wait a minute,” Pink said suddenly, his eyes narrowing. “Wait a minute. I think I am beginning to understand something now.” He looked balefully at his wife. “Tell me I’m wrong about this. Tell me this can’t be. Oh, my God. No wonder…. This is about Jordan Hill, isn’t it? You’re figuring that he’s going to get nailed for this, so you decided to come up with another solution. God, is it any wonder Grayson is acting like this?”

“For pity’s sake, Pink,” Lillie cried. “Do you think I would accuse my own son…to protect anyone?”

“Look, Lillie,” said Pink, pressing hands to his chest. “I don’t know what you would do. You’re a mystery to me. All right? But this is my son. My own boy. And I won’t have you or anybody else slandering him and accusing him. If you don’t love him, well, that’s your loss.”

“It’s not a question of love…” Lillie cried, but he turned his back on her. He waggled his hand like a traffic cop, as if to call Grayson forward.

“Okay, son. Give me the gun. Everything is going to be fine.”

“She’s going to tell them I did it,” said Grayson. “She’s going to tell the sheriff.”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s not going to tell anybody anything. Believe me.”

Grayson shook his head. “No, we can’t trust her. She’ll go to the sheriff.”

“And we’ll tell the sheriff she’s lying,” Pink said patiently. “He’ll know she’s lying. No matter what she says, I’ll take care of it.”

“Dad,” Grayson said almost gently. “We can’t take the chance. It’s going to be her and Jordan Hill against me and you. Jordan Hill is important. He’s on TV. You just have a little rinky-dink business. Who do you think people are going to believe? They’re going to listen to him. And he’ll say whatever she wants him to. You know they’re just looking for a way to screw both of us.”

“Well,” Pink blustered, “I may not be on television but I guess I have some influence in this town. Anyway, I don’t see what else we can do.”

“Well, I don’t think we can just let them get away with it. I think the best solution might be if she could accidentally be killed. By this gun.”

Lillie was almost glad that he had finally said it. Slowly she lifted her head and looked up at Pink, as if to say “There. Now do you understand?”

Pink looked at Grayson in amazement and then at his wife. His jaw slackened and he blinked a few times, as if newly awakened, and then he looked back at his son with the most chagrined expression on his face that Lillie had ever seen. She felt tears of pity for him spring to her own eyes, watching him. He had staked everything on this child. Now he had to somehow reconcile this murderous statement with this perfect embodiment of his hopes and dreams, this son.

“Grayson,” Pink said at last, his voice quavering, “I know you don’t mean that about your mother. You’re just upset.”

“Dad,” Grayson said eagerly, “I’ve been thinking about it. It wouldn’t be that hard. First of all, it’s Brenda’s gun, so Brenda will have to admit that Mom had it.”

Pink was staring at Grayson as if stupefied, a lost, haunted look in his eyes. “Son, don’t say any more.”

“Will you listen?” Grayson demanded. “It’s a good plan. We say you two got into a fight, and she pulled the gun on you. It’d be only natural for you to try and take it from her and then, it could go off, and that would be it. She’d be, you know, gone.”

Pink was trembling and his usually florid face was pale. Lillie buried her face in her hands, overcome at her own child’s imaginative rendering of her execution.

Pink cleared his throat. “Grayson, we all get carried away at times, imagining that we want to hurt the people that hurt us. It’s just a harmless…harmless thing to do. It’s just…it’s something everybody does. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“We can do it, Dad,” Grayson said evenly. “You and me. No one ever will know.”

“Okay,” Pink said abruptly. “That’s enough of this nonsense now. Give me the gun. No one’s going to shoot anyone.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” said Grayson. “I thought you and I stood together. That’s what you always said.”

“That’s right,” Pink said, avoiding his son’s eyes. “And I’m telling you I will take care of everything. No one is going to lay a hand on you. I promise you.”

Grayson narrowed his eyes and then he began to slowly shake his head. “Don’t give me that, Dad. What makes you think you can take care of it? You have no authority in this town. You’re not anybody. You don’t even have a new car. Why should they believe you over her?”

Pink’s face flushed at the cruel assessment. “That’s my problem,” he said. “Look, I’m your father. You’ll do as I tell you.”

“Don’t argue with him, Pink,” Lillie said in a low, warning voice.

Pink glared at her, as if outraged that she would align herself with him. “Stay out of it,” he said bitterly. His eyes were full of rancor toward her, as if she were entirely to blame for this destruction.

“Don’t give me that ‘I’m your father’ bit,” said Grayson. “What about all my plans and my future? You’re the one who’s always saying what a great life it’s going to be.”

“It will be,” Pink cried. “It’s going to be everything we always said.”

“Not if you’re going to let her sell me down the river. You know, all these years no matter what I did, you’d be there, taking credit for it. Always clapping a hand on my shoulder so you could get into the newspaper pictures, always putting your greasy fingers on my trophies, always trying to make it seem like you were behind it somehow, no matter what I got. When I won a game, you’d claim you were the coach. When people say I’m handsome, you beam like it was your doing. And on the best day of your life you never looked one bit as good as me,” Grayson said scornfully. “Well, let me tell you something. I let you get away with it. I let you take the credit. But fair is fair. Now you have to take the blame. It’s your turn.”

Grayson hefted the gun and started toward Lillie. For a moment Pink was frozen, as if Grayson’s words had drained the life from him. Then suddenly he sprang between Grayson and his mother.

“Grayson,” he pleaded, his voice tearful. “Maybe you don’t think much of me. And maybe all you said is true. I don’t know. I have been proud of you. And I guess, it seems, you haven’t been all that proud of me—” Pink’s voice cracked and he stopped and looked away, his body trembling. “But,” he continued, “I can take care of this one, Grayson. I’ll prove myself to you. You just hand that gun over to me and I’ll show you.”

He reached out his hand imploringly, but Grayson raised his head like an animal sniffing danger. “What’s that?”

Lillie heard it too. It sounded like a car door slamming outside. “It’s the wind,” she said.

“Is there someone here?” Grayson said.

Pink seemed oblivious to the sounds outside and to his son’s agitation. He stepped forward and shook Grayson’s arm. “Son, you have to give me that gun,” he insisted. “You have to trust me. Believe me, you’ll see I’m right. Trust me. Please, son, please. Do it for me. I can save you.”

“I should have known you’d be too weak,” said Grayson.

Lillie saw the loathing in Grayson’s eyes as his father reached clumsily for the weapon in his hand. She jumped up from the chair. “No, Pink, don’t,” she pleaded. “Get back.”

But Pink would not stop. He was concentrated on his task, a dogged expression on his wide, wounded face. Grayson endured this interference for a moment, but that was all. “You’re in my way,” he said.

“Pink, let him go,” Lillie cried, knowing the truth. “He’ll shoot you.”

But her voice was drowned out by the roar of the gunshot that exploded into him. Lillie screamed and rushed toward her husband. Pink stood still for a moment, his eyes wide with innocent surprise. He clutched the bloody gap in his chest as Grayson lifted the smoking gun. Pink held out one hand and then pitched forward toward the taut, unyielding figure of his son. Grayson grimaced and stepped to one side, and Pink fell, first to his knees and then to the floor.

In the next instant the front door slammed back. Jordan Hill leapt across the room and tackled Grayson, who was caught off guard and went down. The gun dropped from his hand as they struggled. Grayson clawed, kicked, and furiously grappled with Jordan, whose skill and weight gave him only a slight advantage over the boy’s ferocious resistance.

Lillie screamed, and then screamed again as Royce Ansley appeared in the doorway, his gun drawn. The sheriff looked at Pink’s body, glanced at Lillie, and then turned in a continuous arc to the boy that Jordan had wrestled to the ground.

In that moment Lillie saw the intention in his eyes.

She scrambled across the floor and shielded her son with her body. “No, Royce,” she cried. “Don’t kill him. Don’t. Please.”

Royce Ansley hesitated, vengeful and tempted. And then he holstered his gun. “All right,” he said. He walked across the room and roughly dragged Grayson to his feet. Jordan willingly let him go. He went to Lillie and took her hand. She gripped it tightly and clung to him. After a minute she let go of his hand and went over to where Pink had fallen. She knelt down beside him and felt for his pulse. Then, shaking her head, she gently touched his lifeless face and began to weep. Jordan crouched down beside her and drew the eyelids down over Pink’s startled expression.

“Let’s go,” said Royce, and he led the handcuffed Grayson toward the door. Royce’s black eyes were smoldering in his haggard face as they approached Pink’s body.

“Is Dad dead?” Grayson asked, his voice sounding young and wistful.

Lillie turned and looked up at him, wiping her eyes. “Yes, Grayson,” she said. Jordan helped her to her feet. She was trembling almost uncontrollably.

“I didn’t mean to shoot him,” Grayson said. “He grabbed the gun and it just went off. It was an accident, really.”

She did not turn away from him. She looked steadily into his eyes. “No, it wasn’t,” she said. Her voice did not break. It was firm and patient, as if she were correcting a child’s mistake. One that would require correcting, again and again and again.

DR. CARL LUNDGREN FINISHED THE NOTES
he was making and then leaned back in his chair and looked out through the barred window of his office at the bleak, rainy afternoon. The winters were like one continuous gray, damp day down here, but they did not depress him. He figured it must be his Scandinavian heritage, something in the genes, that enabled him to actually enjoy Tennessee’s dreariest season.

WW

He pushed his notes aside and rummaged through the disorder on his desktop for the folder he wanted. He did not really have to read this one. He had studied it many times in the last three years. It was one of his favorite cases.

The fact was, although some thought him warped or ghoulish for it, Carl Lundgren loved his prison work. He had plenty of cases in his regular practice, but prison work was ruining him for the run-of-the-mill neuroses of the general public. He was a family man, an even-tempered man, whose idea of reckless disregard for the law was occasionally to park too close to a fire hydrant, but he was fascinated by the people he met inside these walls. And the prisoners liked to talk to him because he was so interested in them and the bizarre lives they had led. So who does it hurt? he asked himself cheerfully.

The guard appeared at the cell block door and told Carl he had someone waiting for him in the visitors room.

“Okay,” said the doctor. “Ill be right there.” He opened the file he was holding and perused it again, so that he would have his information fresh for this visit with the prisoner’s mother. He knew she would have a lot of questions. She always did. There was just so little that he could really explain to her.

After locking the folder back in the file drawer, Lundgren left the Health Services cell block and made his way through a series of gates, which had to be unlocked for him, until he came to the visitors area.

He looked inside but did not see her. There were a couple of lawyers conferring with their clients in the beige and gray carrels, under the watchful eyes of the guards. Carl went out to the coffee machine, deposited his quarter, and obtained a paper cup of coffee. He looked at his watch. He was supposed to meet Lillie at two-thirty. She must have stepped out for a minute. When he looked up again he saw her coming down the hall toward him.

As she approached him, smiling hesitantly, he was struck again, as he had been the first time they met, by what a pretty woman she was. It had not surprised him, given the physical beauty of her son. These things tended to be genetic. But he had been eager to meet her from the first, because he knew from long experience that appearances were not the only things handed down in families. He had been most interested in knowing her, studying her, unearthing the influences that had created an aberration like Grayson Burdette. Their meetings over the last three years had proved puzzling and even frustrating to him. He had come to like her.

“Hello, Lillie,” he said, extending his hand to her.

She smiled as she shook his hand, although her worried eyes never really cleared. “Thank you for seeing me today. It means a lot to me. Did you meet with him already?”

“Just a little while ago.” Carl nodded. “I’m sorry. He hasn’t changed his mind about seeing you.”

Lillie sighed and Carl gently led her to the door of one of the meeting rooms and ushered her in.

Lillie sank down into a chair and absentmindedly twisted her wedding band.

“Did your husband come down with you this time?” Carl asked pleasantly.

Lillie looked up. “Yes. My best friend is getting married in Felton this weekend. We’re staying at my mother-in-law’s for a few days.”