Mad River Road (44 page)

Emma shook her head. “He was a good father,” she acknowledged. “That wasn’t the point.”

“Really? What was?”

“The point was I thought my son was better off with me.”

“Is that what the courts thought?”

“No. They sided with Peter.”

“They awarded him custody? That’s kind of unusual, isn’t it? The courts granting the father custody? Why’d they do that?”

Emma closed her eyes. When she opened them again seconds later, they were filled with tears.

“Tell the truth now, Emma. Were you an unfit mother?”

“I’m a very good mother,” Emma insisted, looking to Lily for confirmation. “But I’ve done things, things I’m not proud of …”

“What kind of things?”

“Please …”

“Don’t get coy on us now,” Brad warned. “This is just starting to get interesting. What kind of things?” Brad let go of Emma’s hair. Her head snapped toward her chest in defeat.

“I’ve stolen, and I’ve lied.”

“Well, well, well. So you’re a thief and a liar, are you?”

“Yes,” Emma said clearly. “I’m a liar.” She turned toward Lily. “I lied to you. About my past. About my ex-husband …”

“You don’t owe me any explanations.”

“Yes, I do. I owe you. And I owe Peter. And most of all, I owe my son.”

“Hey, don’t forget about me,” Brad said with a laugh.

“Peter wasn’t the monster I’ve made him out to be,” Emma continued, unprompted. “He didn’t cheat on me. He wasn’t a pervert. He’s a good man, and I’m so sorry I inflicted all this pain on him. He was just this basically decent guy who got in way over his head. He tried to understand why I did the things I did, why I lied when it was just as easy to tell the truth. I didn’t have any answers for him. What could I say? Why would he
believe anything I said? After a while, he just gave up, said he couldn’t take the drama anymore, that he wanted a divorce, and that he thought Martin would be better off with him. I knew he was right. I knew I didn’t stand a chance in court, but I just couldn’t let him have my son. He’s the only decent thing I’ve ever done with my life.” She took a deep breath, released it slowly. “I love my son so much. You know that, don’t you?”

“I know that,” Lily whispered.

“You sure pick some peculiar friends, Lily-Beth,” Brad said. “Although I gotta admit, I like this one better than old Gracie-girl.”

Lily’s mouth fell open. Her eyes grew wide. “Grace?”

“Yeah. Did I forget to mention I paid her a little visit last week?”

“What did you do to her?” Tears immediately filled Lily’s eyes.

“Well, I wouldn’t waste a lot of tears on old Gracie-girl. She’s the one who gave you up, told me where to find you.”

“What did you do to her, Ralph?”

“Brad,” he reminded her.

“You killed her, didn’t you?”

“Well, I have to admit the last time I saw her, she
did
look pretty dead.” Brad laughed as if he’d just told the funniest joke in the world. “God, I’m having a good time. How about you, ladies?”

“Please,” Emma pleaded. “Just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

Instantly Brad’s hand shot from his side. Without even looking in her direction, he plunged the knife deep into Emma’s chest. Emma’s eyes widened as a cry of disbelief
escaped her lips. “Tsk-tsk,” Brad said as he pulled out the knife. “Didn’t I warn you about lying to me?”

Jamie stared in disbelief at the blood that rushed from Emma’s chest, soaking the front of her pretty yellow blouse. The slaughter was starting, she realized. First Emma, then Lily, then herself. And if Brad didn’t kill her, if he chose to kill the others and let her live, would she be able to live with herself?

When are you going to start accepting responsibility for your actions?
she heard her mother and sister demand in unison.

Had they been right about her all along?

And suddenly the room filled with the sound of screaming as Jamie threw herself at Brad, jumping on his back and ripping at his eyes with her furious fingers. Brad spun around in an effort to dislodge her, but she held firm, even when he began blindly slashing at her arms with the already bloodied knife.

“Goddamn it,” he shouted, stumbling over Emma’s legs as Lily’s bound feet shot toward him, catching him around the ankles and sending him sprawling across the room, the knife flying from his fist into the foyer. Jamie leapfrogged over him, lunging for the knife. But even now Brad moved with alarming speed, his hands latching onto the slightly flared bottoms of Jamie’s jeans just as her fingers found the switchblade’s carved wooden handle.

“No!” Jamie screamed as he reeled her along the floor toward him, her fingers losing contact with the knife.

“You really are a feisty little thing, aren’t you?” He laughed as he flipped her onto her back, his fingers lacing around her throat. “I’m sure gonna miss you, Jamie-girl.”

Jamie felt a rush of air, saw Lily throw herself at Brad, landing on his back with a thud strong enough to knock
the wind from his lungs. In the second it took for him to regroup and shrug Lily off his shoulders, Jamie was sliding out from under him, her eyes frantically searching the floor for the knife. She found it just as Brad was reaching for her again, and she clambered to her feet, Brad right behind her. Before she could get to the door, he was spinning her around, his hands once again reaching for her throat. “You ready to die, Jamie-girl?” he was asking.

There was a flicker of movement, a sudden flash of metal. Jamie didn’t see the knife as it slid between Brad’s ribs; she saw only the surprised look on his face as he crumpled to his knees in front of her. She watched as, seconds later, his eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell backward to the floor, the handle of the knife protruding from the vicinity of his heart.

She raced to the phone, punched in 9-1-1, hollered for an ambulance. Then she untied Lily’s arms and legs. Both women rushed to Emma’s side, Lily cradling the semiconscious woman in her arms.

“You’re going to be all right,” Jamie assured her, trying to stanch the flow of blood with her fist. “Do you hear me, Emma? You hang on. You’re gonna be all right.”

Emma stretched her head toward Lily’s, strained to speak. “Tell my son I love him,” she said.

J
amie sat on the beige-and-green chair, tears streaming down her cheeks. She made no effort to wipe them away or push them aside, although occasionally the woman officer standing beside her reached down to dab at her cheeks with a tissue, and someone always seemed to be inquiring if she was all right. How can I be all right? she asked them without speaking. I killed a man. A woman in Atlanta is dead because of me. Another woman might not survive her injuries, although the paramedics seemed hopeful that Emma would recover from her wound.

“She’s still breathing,” Jamie recalled someone shouting as the ambulance crew jumped into action, securing an oxygen mask around Emma’s ashen face and transferring her limp and bloodied body onto a stretcher.

“Can’t say the same for this one,” a second paramedic said, looking down at Brad.

The echo of the siren’s wail still filled Jamie’s ears, although it had been at least an hour since the ambulance left Mad River Road.

The police had arrived within minutes of her frantic call to 9-1-1. Almost immediately after that, another
officer had rushed into the room, followed by a woman in a belly-baring, gray sweat suit. “Where’s Lily?” the woman was shouting as an officer quickly dragged her from the house. “Lily, are you all right? Jeff, do something.”

The officer named Jeff had assured her he’d call her later and that Lily was indeed okay. Jamie looked over to where Lily sat now, on the brown sofa, crying softly in Jeff’s arms. Clearly, this was more than a professional relationship. It was a small room. Jamie didn’t have to strain very hard to overhear their conversation.

“We located Peter Rice,” she heard Jeff say. “He confirmed that his ex-wife kidnapped their son almost two years ago when the court granted him custody, says he’s been searching for them ever since. Her real name is Susan, by the way.”

Lily shook her head. “She doesn’t seem like a Susan.”

Jamie smiled sadly. People are so rarely what they seem, she thought.

“Anyway, he’s flying out here on the next plane.”

“That’s good.” Lily rubbed the wrist of one hand with the fingers of the other. There were still red lines on her skin where the ropes had been. “You know that Emma isn’t the only person who’s been lying,” she told Jeff. “There’s so much I have to tell you.”

“You don’t have to tell me now.”

Lily’s smile was full of gratitude. “Can I tell you later?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Lily reached over to stroke his hand. “How did you know to come over?”

“I went by the gym for my workout. Jan told me about that stupid trophy, and how you’d taken off and hadn’t come back. She was worried, and frankly so was I, so we
decided to drop by, see what was up. We saw the police cars and the ambulance as soon as we turned the corner. My heart just about fell to my knees,” he confessed.

Jamie smiled as Lily lay her head against Jeff’s shoulder. She was thinking that Jeff Dawson was a nice man. Lily had found herself a good one.

“So, how’re you doing?” the woman officer asked Jamie. Jamie wasn’t sure, but she thought the ebony-skinned woman had introduced herself earlier as Angela Pauley. Officer Pauley looked to be about ten years Jamie’s senior and was maybe twenty pounds heavier.

Jamie shrugged. What could she say? She had no idea how she was doing. One minute, she’d been sitting on the floor, quietly preparing to accept whatever sad fate awaited her, and the next minute, she was on her feet and fighting for her life. “You ready to die, Jamie-girl?” she heard Brad taunt. The answer was no. She wasn’t ready to die. She was ready to live.

“Those are very beautiful earrings,” Angela Pauley was saying now.

Jamie’s fingers fluttered to her ear. She removed the earrings, handed them to the officer. “They belong to my mother-in-law. Could you see that her son gets them?”

Angela Pauley gave the earrings to another officer who’d been hovering nearby. They exchanged quizzical glances. “You feel up to giving us a statement now?” A pen and paper materialized in the officer’s hands as she knelt beside Jamie.

What could she say? Jamie wondered. Where could she begin?

“She saved our lives,” Lily interjected, smiling gratefully from the brown sofa.

“What was your relationship to Ralph Fisher?” Officer Pauley asked Jamie.

I was his lover, Jamie answered silently.

“She was amazing,” Lily said.

His traveling companion, his accomplice, his victim.

“If it weren’t for her, we’d all be dead.”

His killer.

“What were you and Ralph Fisher doing here?” Officer Pauley pressed, trying a different approach.

Jamie looked toward the front window overlooking Mad River Road. What could she say that could even begin to explain the events of the last few days? Where could she start? In that awful little motel outside of Dayton? In a stately old home in Atlanta? In a popular bar in West Palm Beach?

Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
, her mother whispered in one ear.

Don’t tell them anything until you speak to a lawyer
, her sister said in the other.

The two women began to bicker, their voices buzzing, like flies, against the inside of Jamie’s skull. Jamie shook her head forcefully, dislodging them. The only voice she could rely on, she understood in that moment, was her own.

“Why don’t we start with your name,” Angela Pauley said gently.

“Jamie Kellogg.”

“Would you like anything, Jamie? A glass of water, maybe?”

“No, thanks.”

“Think you’re ready to tell us what happened?”

Jamie took a deep breath, and then another. “I’m ready,” she said.