The Last Dead Girl (35 page)

The impact knocked her out, long enough for Neil to push her head underwater. The level was falling, but he thought he had enough time. She came to—her eyes snapped open—and she gasped reflexively. Water filled her lungs.

Fear in her eyes. Her body thrashed. He held her down by the shoulders. Felt the spasms tear through her, each weaker than the last. And in the end, stillness. He knelt by the tub as the water drained away. It left her skin pale and slick, her dark hair a seaweed tangle.

The last of the water ran away through the pipes and the world went silent. Neil pulled himself up into the straight-back chair. He watched Sheila Cotton, expecting her eyes to blink, waiting for a tremor of life to pass through her. Nothing happened.

Sound reentered the world: footsteps on the floor above. Neil knew he should be worried. People lived here. Someone might've heard, might've already made a call. At any moment there could be sirens. Cops pounding on the apartment door.

Neil went to the bedroom and found his clothes, his shoes. He put them on. Patient, calm. He tucked his shirt in. No sirens. He opened the bottom drawer of Sheila's dresser, because he had seen her stash money there once, when she thought he wasn't watching. Under a stack of sweaters he discovered an envelope that held a little over fourteen hundred dollars. He tucked it in his pocket.

Returning to the bathroom, he spotted the remnant of the joint on the sink. He dropped it in the toilet and flushed. He found a small towel and wiped the handle of the toilet. He wiped the straight-back chair. He moved around the room and then around the apartment, wiping everything he remembered touching.

His cleaning spree ended with the shoe box under the couch. He wiped it down and started to push it back into its hiding place, then reconsidered.

At the apartment door, with the shoe box clutched under his arm, he listened for sounds out in the hall. He pictured the hall empty, thought about his route down the stairs and into the lot. Imagined it devoid of people. When he was ready he used the towel to open the door; he twisted the lever in the knob to engage the lock. He pulled the door shut behind him.

He moved through the hall and down the stairs unseen. Out into the sunlight.

His car had been baking in the July heat. He dropped the shoe box and the towel on the passenger seat and turned the key. He felt sure the engine wouldn't start. It started. Hot air blew from the vents. He pressed the button for the air-conditioning and made himself wait—wait for the air to turn cool. No one came for him. No one rushed from the building to stop him.

The air was blasting cold when he drove away from Sheila Cotton's apartment.

•   •   •

O
n Monday morning, Sheila Cotton's apartment manager knocked on her door to collect the rent, which was overdue. He tried again on Tuesday. On Wednesday he used his passkey to let himself in, because he'd had tenants skip out before and he was losing patience. When he got inside, the smell led him to the body.

The story topped the news at eleven on Wednesday night. A spokesman for the police declined to say whether the death was an accident or the result of foul play. Neil watched the report on the TV in the bedroom, with Megan beside him, reading a book. He hoped the book might distract her. It didn't.

“Did you know that woman?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “Why would I?”

“They mentioned she worked as a sub. I thought you might've run into her at school.”

“I don't remember her,” he said. “Maybe I'll ask Gary.”

Gary was always good for a distraction these days—Gary and his infidelity.

“Don't talk to me about Gary,” Megan said.

And Neil obliged her. He clicked the remote to switch off the TV. Rolled over onto his side. But she didn't let it go.

“You haven't said what you think.”

“About that woman?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I told you, I didn't know her.”

“You can still take a guess,” Megan said. “Was it an accident, or foul play?”

•   •   •

W
hen a week passed without any visit from the police, Neil Pruett began to hope he might be safe.

He'd been careful never to give Sheila his home phone number, and he didn't own a cell phone. He'd first made contact with her the previous fall, when he spotted her in the teacher's lot at the high school, lighting up in her car at lunchtime. They'd done their communicating one-on-one, in person. People might have seen them together at school, but not recently. After their arrangement began, he'd made a point of staying away from her in public.

He supposed she might have kept a list of her customers, but he didn't think so. She wasn't in the kind of business where you kept lists. She might have talked about their relationship with a friend, but it wasn't really the kind of relationship you talked about.

Which left one person who could draw a connection between them: Luke Daw.

In the evenings of those days in mid-July, Neil found himself stepping out onto his porch in the fading heat. He'd watch the passing cars. Sometimes he'd walk up and down the block. It took him a while to realize he was waiting for Luke.

On the eighteenth of July, a Thursday, nine-thirty, the black Mustang stopped at the curb in front of the house. Luke Daw leaned over and opened the passenger door. Neil went down from the porch, slow and deliberate as a sleepwalker. He got into the car.

He didn't worry about Megan. She wouldn't see; she wasn't home. She had gone to console Cathy, because it looked like Gary was starting up his affair again—the one with the eighteen-year-old.

Luke pulled away from the curb, driving with one hand on the wheel. The other hand held a popsicle stick. He spun it around slowly with his fingers.

“Kev,” he said. “You don't look happy.”

“Why don't you tell me what you want?” said Neil.

“I thought we should talk. Things have been happening.”

Neil leaned back in his seat and waited.

“Crazy news about Sheila,” Luke said.

“I don't know what you're looking for.”

“You're always wrong about me, K. We're on the same page.”

“What does that mean?”

“I get it. I know what she was like. There were plenty of times I felt like drowning her too, believe me.”

“I didn't drown her.”

“I know. That's the first thing I thought when I heard the news.
I'm sure K didn't drown her.
They found her on Wednesday and she'd been dead a few days. So figure she died sometime around Saturday afternoon. And you were there every Saturday. I bet it's surreal for you, thinking how she must have died right after you left.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“I know. It had to be an accident. She was a gorgeous girl, but needy. She was bound to have an accident sooner or later. I wish it hadn't happened. I wish you had let me look out for you. If I'd known you were bored with her, I could've found you another. Then you wouldn't have been around—when she had her accident.”

Luke pulled the Mustang to the curb. Neil looked through his window and saw that they had driven in a circle and arrived back at his house.

“Here's the problem,” Luke said. “She made me money. Now that money's not coming in. You see where that puts me.”

Neil tipped his head back against the headrest and braced himself for what he knew was coming.

Luke Daw laughed. “Honestly, K, you should see your face. Always thinking the worst. This isn't a bad thing, it's a good thing. You just have to trust me. Here's what we're gonna do.”

•   •   •

T
wo days later. Saturday. Five o'clock. Neil Pruett rounded a curve on Humaston Road and saw the trailer. He slowed and made the turn onto the gravel, his tires throwing pebbles up under the car.

He had five hundred dollars in his pocket, part of the money he had taken from Sheila Cotton's dresser. He had it ready when Luke stepped out of the trailer. Luke took the money carelessly, as if it meant nothing.

“K,” he said. “Take a walk with me.”

They passed along a lane overgrown with weeds. There were ruts in the lane that would have been muddy in the spring, but the mud had baked in the sun. Neil saw the roofline of a barn in the distance, a matchstick structure open to the sky. He was aware that they had moved out of sight of the road.

“I can't stay,” he said.

Luke kept walking. He pointed out the pond on their right, and the barn. He said something about his grandfather. He guided Neil up the slope of a hill toward a heap of timber that had been a house. They stopped near a wagon wheel half-sunken in the ground.

“This is it,” Luke said.

“What?” said Neil.

“What I wanted to show you.”

“I don't understand.”

“You will.”

Neil saw a black moth in the grass by the wheel. Watched its wings rise and fall.

“I gave you the money,” he said. “Now I need to go.”

“You won't go yet,” said Luke. “And when you do, you'll come back. Next Saturday. You'll bring me another five hundred.”

The moth flitted from one blade of grass to another.

“I can't,” Neil said. “You have to realize—I don't have that kind of money. I can't go on paying you. Not week after week.”

“You will, though. I know you, K. We're the same. That's what you need to get through your head. You think I'm threatening you, but I'm not. I won't make you come back. You'll come back on your own.”

The moth fluttered over the grass and landed on an iron ring.

“Why would I come back?” Neil asked.

The moth flew away. Luke bent to take hold of the ring. He lifted it with an effort, and the ground came up with it.

“You'll see,” he said.

I
should feel bad about this,” said Neil Pruett.

No one heard him. Megan's heart had stopped beating. He touched the shaft of the arrow in her chest. It no longer shivered.

Outside, lightning flashed. Neil saw it as a thin, bright line in a gap between two curtains. The boom of thunder came five seconds later. Which meant the lightning strike was about a mile away. Basic physics: the speed of sound versus the speed of light.

Neil took a candle and went to find the things he needed. Paper towels, a blanket, scissors, a roll of twine. He came back and opened the blanket on the floor. He started to move Megan onto it and realized the arrow would be a problem. He broke off the shaft and left the rest inside her.

He rolled her onto the middle of the blanket. Used the paper towels to wipe the blood from the floor. Lightning struck again and automatically he counted down to the thunder. The bloody paper towels and the arrow shaft went into the blanket with Megan. He tossed her shoes in as well. Then bundled everything together and tied the bundle with lengths of twine.

He touched Megan's cheek through the blanket.

Said, “Tell me again how I was never much for housekeeping.”

He should feel bad. He knew. Just as he should have felt bad about Sheila Cotton—and about the time he spent with Jana Fletcher in the wooden room at the farm on Humaston Road.

He had one regret about that time. He wished there'd been more of it.

•   •   •

T
hat first Saturday, he spent an hour with her. When he came up from underground, the sky was brighter than any sky he had ever seen. The world was in sharper focus.

Luke Daw was waiting for him.

“See?” Luke said. “I told you.”

Neil didn't respond.

“K, I swear. You should look in a mirror right now. See what you look like when you're happy.”

Smug satisfaction in Luke's voice. Neil tried not to let it bother him.

“Who is she?” he said.

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

Neil decided he didn't. “But how did you—”

“None of that matters, K.”

Neil gazed at a white cloud in the too-bright sky.

“She saw my face,” he said.

“Don't worry,” said Luke. “The stuff I'm giving her—she won't remember.”

“But she looked right at me.”

“Trust me. When are you gonna trust me?”

Luke told him he could come back in a week with another five hundred. Neil didn't think he could wait. He arranged to come back Wednesday—and again the following Saturday.

That second Saturday, the twenty-seventh of July, it all went wrong.

Blame it on Megan. Megan, who trailed Gary to a hotel like a cheap private eye and caught him with Angela Reese. Megan, who couldn't keep it to herself, who had to tell Cathy. Did she think Cathy would be grateful? Anyone should have been able to predict how that would turn out.

But to be fair, Neil hadn't predicted it. He never thought Cathy would follow
him
. Afterward, when he tried to work out her motive, he came to believe that she'd done it out of spite. As if to say:
You spied on my husband? Fine. I'll spy on yours.

Neil could only guess what Cathy must have thought when he drove to Humaston Road and met up with Luke Daw. Maybe she thought she'd struck gold.
Neil has a gay lover.

She didn't recognize the danger. It was a few minutes past five in the afternoon. Still daylight. How much danger could there be?

She drove past the trailer, parked her car on the roadside. Doubled back and followed them at a distance. When they turned toward the ruined farmhouse, Cathy made for the barn. She hid herself there. And watched.

Luke opened the door in the earth and Neil went down. Luke waited above—which wouldn't have fit with the gay-lover hypothesis. What would Cathy have thought then? Would she have started to worry?

She'd be safe in the barn, out of sight. But how long could she stay still? She'd want to move around, maybe find a better view. There were plenty of holes in the barn wall.

Luke didn't hear her moving. But there were swallows in the barn, and the swallows heard. Four of them took flight through the empty frame of the roof.

Luke saw the swallows.

Neil had no clue to what was happening. But after he'd been down with Jana Fletcher for ten minutes, he heard shouting from above. Luke's voice yelling, “K!” A woman's scream.

Up the stairs and out under the blazing sky, and he sees Luke Daw dragging Cathy from the barn, shoving her to the ground. Luke's hand dips into his pocket and comes out with a knife. The blade folds out, liquid silver in the sunlight. Cathy scuttles away like a crab.

She spots Neil. Pleads, “Help me!”

Luke says, “What the hell, K? How'd she get here?”

Then she's up and running, and Luke is tackling her, rolling her onto her back. The blade sinks into her stomach.

It happens so fast that Neil thinks his eyes are cheating him, until she screams.

Luke seems dazed. He lets go of the knife. He's on his knees, leaning over her. She tries to push him away. When she starts to scream again, Neil is there. He claps a hand over her mouth.

She squirms in the grass. Slaps at his arms. Luke pulls the knife out and holds it up for Neil to see. Bright red on silver. Neil takes it and tosses it away.

“Hold her down,” he says. He uses his take-charge voice, the one he brings out when he needs to control a rowdy classroom.

Luke obeys. He grabs Cathy's wrists, pins them to the ground.

Neil has a hand over Cathy's mouth and it's not enough. Two hands. He bears down. Her eyes are wide and wet with tears. Neil looks away from them, but then he's drawn back. He wonders what he looks like from her perspective. She's staring up at him and seeing his face upside down.

He bears down harder as she writhes in the grass. Her eyes are full of life. She's still breathing. He takes one hand from her mouth and pinches her nostrils shut. She writhes more desperately and almost throws off Luke Daw. But it's only temporary. Neil holds fast and Luke recovers. Cathy closes her eyes. If there's a moment when she dies, Neil misses it. He's thinking about how uncomfortable it is, kneeling on the hard ground.

•   •   •

T
hat was the twenty-seventh of July, 1996. It would be months before Neil Pruett returned to the farm.

He let Luke deal with the body. It made sense. Neil was the more vulnerable one. Cathy was his sister-in-law; he was more likely to fall under suspicion.

He thought trusting Luke might be a problem, but once the shock of the situation wore off, Luke seemed to return to his old self.

“Leave it to me, K. I've got it under control.”

“If you want help, I can help.”

“No. I've got all the help I need.”

He was referring to his cousin, though Neil didn't know it at the time. In September, when he heard about Eli Daw's death, Neil began to put things together. The news reports took for granted that Luke had shot Eli. Neil knew there could be a different explanation.

He waited till November to drive out to the farm. He climbed the slope of the hill on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The hidden door was covered over with a blanket of autumn leaves. He opened it and went down with a flashlight. The light sent things scurrying into dark corners. Neil aimed it briefly at what was left of Luke Daw's face.

He knew then that Jana Fletcher had gotten out—though at that point he didn't know her name. It didn't worry him. He didn't think he would ever see her again.

He saw her more than a year later. A snowy day in March. By then, Gary had been convicted. Neil had stood by him all along, playing the role of the loyal brother. He had no real compassion for Gary, but it was useful to pretend he did—mainly because it alienated Megan, and he was tired of her. He was glad to have an excuse to leave her.

So on that day in March, he was living in Gary's house on Bloomfield Street. He was shoveling the walk in front. A lazy snow falling. Jana approached him, bundled up against the weather, wanting to talk about Gary. Neil didn't recognize her until he invited her inside, until she took off her winter coat and hat and scarf.

Everything left him then: his breath, his voice, his balance. He would have fallen over, but he caught himself against a counter. His heart must have been racing, but at that moment he thought he had no pulse at all. Open him up and there would be nothing inside.

Somehow he made it through their first conversation—Jana telling him how she hoped to see Gary set free. In the weeks that followed, she came back, once to ask him questions, another time just to reassure him that she was committed to seeing the case reopened. Neil convinced himself that she was playing a game with him. She knew him. She knew the truth. Then he decided he must be wrong. It didn't matter that she had seen his face. Luke had drugged her.

One night in April, Neil couldn't sleep. He lay in bed thinking about Gary getting out of prison, about the police taking another look at Cathy's murder. He worked himself into a dark state, convinced himself it was only a matter of time before Jana remembered him from the wooden room.

He didn't despair. He got angry. He was turning into a cliché.

He rolled out from under the covers and went to the bedroom closet. The highest shelf held a shoe box with a dusty lid. He took it down and opened it. Nothing inside but a few empty zip-lock bags. A memento of Sheila Cotton.

Holding it reminded him of who he was.

That was the night he decided to kill Jana Fletcher.

•   •   •

M
egan had parked her car directly in front of the house.

Neil sat in the driver's seat and listened to the patter of the rain on the windshield. His clothes were wet through. There were beads of rain on Megan's purse. He'd brought it out and tossed it on the passenger seat. Her key was in the ignition. Her body was in the trunk.

The hardest part: moving the body from the house to the car. The darkness helped. The power was out all along Bloomfield Street. But there was a full moon. And lightning.

Nothing he could do about the moon.

But he had stopped the lightning.

He had stood inside the front door, ready, Megan's bundled body slung over his shoulder. And he had thought about the lightning, willed it to hold off. Thought about his neighbors too. There'd be no one on the street, but there could be people looking out their windows at the storm. He concentrated. Pictured them turning away.

Then out the door, down the porch steps, to the car. He dumped the body in. Closed the trunk. Easy.

Now, in the driver's seat, Neil saw the sky light up. He counted three seconds before the thunder.

He knew what he should do. Take Megan to the farm and put her in the wooden room, where no one would find her. But he didn't want to.

He had other plans for the wooden room.

What if he put Megan in the canal, like Jolene? He would have to do it right this time. Weigh her down. There were landscaping bricks in Gary's backyard. They would do the job. Neil would need to devise a way to attach them to the bundle. A straightforward problem. He knew he could solve it.

But it would be dull work. Neil stared at the rain-blurred windshield. Outside, the lightning flared again. The wind raged. He imagined his neighbors huddling in their houses, timid. But Neil felt charged, like the lightning. This was not a night to be timid. Not a night for dull work.

He squeezed his right hand into a fist and felt the pain of the cigarette burn. It was meant to remind him to aim higher.

Megan could wait.

He got out of her car, got into his own, and drove off.