Mad River Road Read online

  Lily pats the seat beside her. “If you’ll just sit back down.…”

  “I don’t want to sit down. What are you telling me here? That your name isn’t Lily?”

  “No, my name is Lily. That part’s true.”

  “What part isn’t?” Emma demands, her own duplicity temporarily on hold.

  “Pretty much all of it.”

  “What!”

  “Let me start at the beginning.”

  Dear God, Lily thought. Did she even know where the beginning was anymore?

  Should she start with her happy childhood, temporarily shaken by her father’s death from prostate cancer when she was twelve years old? Or with the brother who’d stepped in to fill his shoes, assuming the role of guardian and protector, although he was barely a year her senior? What about the normal rebellion of her teenage years, the girlfriends she’d made, the boys she’d dated? Was any of that relevant? Or should she start with her first encounter with the man who would change her life forever, their subsequent marriage, and Kenny’s horrible death? Was there any way to condense the last five years, anything she could say that would make them more palatable, easier to comprehend?

  “For starters, my marriage wasn’t what you think it was,” Lily begins.

  “What was it?”

  “A disaster. Like yours.”

  Was it possible? Lily wondered, continuing down the street, oblivious to her surroundings. Could both she and Emma have chosen the same kind of man? Was that what had drawn them to each other?

  “What are you talking about? You were married to the perfect man.”

  “I was married to a monster.”

  “Tell me,” Emma directs.

  Except how could she explain?

  It was too easy to say that everybody makes mistakes, although that simple statement was probably as close to the truth as anything. There was nothing in her background, nothing in the way she’d been raised, to predict disaster looming. She had wonderful parents, an older brother she worshipped, friends she adored. And then she’d met a man at a party and fallen head over heels in love. They dated; she got pregnant; they got married. And while her parents and friends had their misgivings, initially everyone had been willing to put those concerns aside, to give Lily’s new husband the benefit of every doubt. Only her brother had remained steadfast in his distrust of the man behind the disarming smile.

  Ultimately distrust had given way to disdain.

  It was that disdain that had led inexorably to his death.

  On the back of a motorcycle.

  “You’re losing me,” Emma says impatiently, pacing back and forth across her small expanse of living room. “I thought it was your husband who was killed in a motorcycle accident.”

  Lily shakes her head. “I lied. It wasn’t my husband. It was my brother.”

  Her brother, Lily repeated to herself, wiping several involuntary tears from her eyes. Kenny had been less than a year older than she was, her twin in so many ways, closer to her than anyone on earth. And in a blind rage that could no longer be contained, he’d gone charging off on a misguided mission to avenge the latest batch of bruises covering his sister’s arms and face, bruises she no longer had the strength or desire to dismiss with a reassuring wave of her hand: “Clumsy me, I slipped; I walked into a door; I tripped over one of Michael’s toys.” Not after a day filled with arguments and threats, a day where she’d finally worked up the courage to tell her husband she wanted a divorce, and his response had been to tell her he’d see her rot in hell first. And when day had turned into night, and his threats had turned into fists, and even those fists had failed to quash her newfound resolve to take her son and flee this travesty of a marriage, he’d thrown her to the floor and raped her, savagely and repeatedly, their son screaming all the while from the next room. And when he was through, he’d left her there, curled up in a fetal position on the cold tile, crying and bleeding. “You’re not going anywhere,” he’d said.

  She’d waited until he was asleep before grabbing Michael and running to her mother’s house. Kenny was there, and one look at her told him everything he needed to know. “Please, Kenny. Don’t do anything crazy. He’s not worth it,” she’d begged. But Kenny was already storming out the door and climbing onto his motorcycle, racing into the rain-filled night.

  Even now Lily could hear the sound of his squealing tires as they weaved through the Miami downpour. She felt the vibrations of the large bike as Kenny lost control on a slippery turn, and the motorcycle careened off the road into a giant palm tree. She heard her mother sobbing quietly beside her in the hospital room, her distraught voice reassuring her, over and over again, that the accident hadn’t been her fault.

  Lily knew her mother was right. Technically, she wasn’t to blame for Kenny’s rash decision to take off after her husband; she wasn’t responsible for his decision not to wear a helmet, to speed through rain-slicked streets. Still, she’d been unwilling to let go of her guilt, because letting go of her guilt meant letting go of Kenny, and she hadn’t been ready to give him up.

  But it was time to stop allowing her past to control her present and dictate her future. It was time for a new beginning, Lily understood now, turning the corner onto Mad River Road.

  She saw the blue Thunderbird almost immediately and thought she recalled seeing it there earlier. Somebody has a visitor, she thought, watching Carole McGowan exit her house with her two overweight schnauzers. Carole waved as the dogs pulled her toward Lily. “Hi,” Lily greeted her neighbor, watching each dog stop to lift his leg at the side of the curb. “What are you doing home at this hour?”

  “Mortimer was acting peculiar all weekend,” Carole said. “So I took him to the vet’s.”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Perfect.” She reached down to stroke Mortimer’s back. “Turns out it’s Casper here who has the problem.” It was Casper’s turn to have his ears scratched.

  “What’s the matter with Casper?” Lily asked absently, looking toward Emma’s house.

  “Turns out he swallowed a chicken bone. He’s such a pig. Aren’t you, Casper? You’ll eat anything, won’t you?” As if to illustrate her point, Casper began chomping on a few blades of nearby grass. “Honestly. You’d think we didn’t feed him. Anyway, the vet said we were lucky the bone hadn’t torn his stomach all to shreds. But he seems to be okay, and all’s well that ends well. Isn’t that what they say?”

  “That’s what they say,” Lily agreed, sensing movement behind Emma’s living room curtains.

  “That Emma’s really something, isn’t she?” Carole remarked, following the direction of Lily’s gaze.

  What was Carole talking about? Had Jan already phoned her, told her about her missing trophy? “What do you mean?”

  “I mean she’s a great addition to our club. She’s smart, and she sure knows her stuff.”

  And what she doesn’t know, Lily added silently, she makes up.

  The dogs began straining on their leashes. “I guess I should let these guys finish their walk before I go to work.”

  Lily watched the woman until she and the dogs were out of sight. “All’s well that ends well,” she repeated under her breath, crossing the street and walking toward Emma’s house.

  Of course, not everything ended well. Certainly her marriage hadn’t. Instead, her husband had made good on his threats to make her life a living hell if she left him, harassing her at work and calling her friends at all hours of the day and night. After several months, Lily’s mother had suffered all she could take and moved to California to be closer to her sister. Lily had been all set to go with her, when a judge served her with an order forbidding her to remove Michael from the state until his custody had been determined by the courts. “Why are you doing this?” she’d demanded of her husband.

  “Because he’s my son.” That was when he’d boasted about what happened to people who crossed him, told her about a certain appliance salesman in Miami he’d slaughtered with his bare hands. />
  “You have to go to the police with this,” her friend Grace had urged.

  “They won’t believe me. I’m not even sure it really happened.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “It’s my word against his.”

  It turned out her word had been enough to get the ball rolling. In fairly short order, Ralph Fisher had been arrested and, because he was considered a flight risk, denied bail. Lily consulted a lawyer and had him served with divorce papers almost immediately. Then she’d resumed her maiden name, packed up her son, and headed north. Ralph was currently sitting in a Florida prison, awaiting trial. When the trial was over and Ralph had been safely put away for what Lily could only hope was the rest of his natural life, she’d join her mother in California. In the meantime, she’d decided it was better to keep a safe distance from those she loved. Just in case something went wrong, and he made good on some of his earlier threats. Her friend Grace had promised to keep her updated with regular e-mails, although Lily hadn’t heard from her in several weeks. Maybe later she’d go over to the Internet Café and drop her a line.

  But first things first, she decided, ringing Emma’s doorbell and listening for the sound of approaching footsteps. For several seconds, there was no response, and Lily was about to ring again when she heard the familiar voice.

  “Come on in,” Emma called from the interior of the house.

  Lily glanced over her shoulder at the empty blue Thunderbird, took a deep breath, pushed open the door, and stepped inside.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Jamie sat on the armrest of a beige-and-green chair, unable to move. She heard the front door open and close. In a matter of minutes, at least one woman would be dead, and more likely two. If I’m lucky, Jamie was thinking, he’ll kill me too.

  “Emma?” a woman called from the front hall. The house felt unnaturally still, as if it were holding its breath.

  “I’m in the living room,” Emma called back. Her voice sounded distant and strained, as if she were in another part of the house, and not sitting in the seat right beside Jamie.

  “I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I know I said I’d come by later.” A pretty young woman with blond hair and anxious eyes appeared in the entranceway to the room. Brad had said his ex-wife’s name was Beth, but Emma insisted her friend’s name was Lily. “I hope I’m not catching you at a bad time.”

  Jamie saw the look of confusion settle quickly onto Lily’s face as she scanned the room. She wondered if she had any sense of the danger lurking and tried to crawl inside Lily’s head, to absorb the scene from her perspective: her friend, Emma, was sitting, ashen-faced and ramrod straight, in the chair at right angles to her sofa. A stranger was perched on the chair’s armrest, her eyes blackened and her chin bruised, the bruises in sharp contrast to the beautiful gold-and-pearl earrings she was wearing.

  “I’m sorry,” Lily stammered. “I didn’t realize you had company.”

  “That’s all right,” Emma said, although clearly, it was not.

  “I’ll come back later.”

  “No, don’t go,” Emma said, her voice a plea. “Please, come in.”

  “You’re sure I’m not interrupting anything?”

  “You aren’t.”

  Jamie wondered if Emma was going to introduce them.

  “I’m Lily,” the woman said before Emma had a chance, offering her hand as she approached. “I live down the street.”

  “It’s nice to meet you,” Jamie responded, keeping her hands at her sides. “Lily, you said?”

  “Well, actually, it’s Lily-Beth,” Lily elaborated. “I dropped the ‘Beth’ about a year ago. But in the interest of full disclosure—” She broke off, her cheeks blushing bright pink as she glanced toward Emma. “We can talk about that later. You are …?”she asked, looking back at Jamie.

  “Jamie. Jamie Kellogg.”

  “Kellogg?” Lily repeated, obviously more to fill the awkward silence than from any real interest. “Any relation to the cereal people?”

  “No,” Jamie responded, without shaking her head. It hurt too much to move.

  “Sorry. You probably get asked that all the time.”

  “Not so much anymore,” Jamie said. Were they really having this conversation?

  Again Lily glanced at her friend.

  Did she not notice how stiffly Emma was sitting? Jamie wondered. Did she not realize that her hands had remained motionless behind her back throughout their entire exchange? That a tight rope bound her hands together, digging into the soft flesh at her wrists?

  If she did, Lily gave no such indication. “What about you guys?” she was asking. “Are you two related?”

  Emma said nothing.

  Lily slowly lowered herself to the edge of the brown sofa, her eyes falling on a small brass bowl lying carelessly on its side on the center cushion. “You did take it!” she exclaimed, spinning around suddenly toward Emma. “I don’t believe you. How could you do this?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Emma stammered as tears filled her eyes.

  “I don’t understand. Why would you …?” Her gaze shifted from Emma to Jamie. “What’s going on here?”

  Jamie held her breath. She felt a slight stir in the air, saw Brad push himself out of his hiding place in a corner of the dining room. He raised his fingers to his lips, warning her to be silent. Was there any way she could warn Lily? Was there any way she could atone, at least in part, for what had happened in Atlanta?

  “Okay, clearly I’m interrupting something here,” Lily was saying. “And I have to be back at work in a few minutes anyway, so”—she pushed herself to her feet as Brad ducked back into his hiding place—“I’ll take this back to Jan, and we can talk later.”

  Neither Emma nor Jamie moved.

  Lily walked to the entrance of the living room, hesitated, then stopped.

  Don’t stop, Jamie tried to warn her with her eyes. Run. Run as fast as you can.

  Run for your life.

  “Look, is something wrong?” Lily asked, unaware that Brad was now creeping toward her, that he was only inches from her back.

  She had to do something, Jamie thought frantically. She had to warn her. She couldn’t just sit here and let him murder another human being in cold blood. The way he’d murdered Laura Dennison. The way he’d murdered Grace Hastings. The way he’d murdered that appliance salesman from Philadelphia. The way he’d murdered God only knew who else.

  “Going somewhere, Lily-Beth?” he asked.

  Jamie watched the color drain from Lily’s face. She understood that Lily didn’t have to turn around to know who was there, that she didn’t have to see Brad to know he was smiling. She watched Lily’s eyes close, as if accepting her sad fate. Perhaps she’d known all along that someday he would find her. Perhaps she was relieved that day had finally come.

  And then suddenly, Lily was spinning around, slamming the brass trophy into the side of Brad’s head and using the confusion of the moment to throw herself toward the front door. Jamie tried to follow suit, but her legs refused to move. She watched helplessly as Brad, blood pouring from the fresh wound to his head, wrapped his arms around Lily’s rib cage, like a deadly python, squeezing the breath from her lungs as he lifted her, kicking and gasping for air, and carried her back into the living room, where he tossed her to the floor at Jamie’s feet.

  “Okay, Emma-girl,” he directed the whimpering young woman in the seat beside her, “you come over here to me while Jamie ties Beth’s hands behind her back. And her feet too,” he said, grabbing Emma’s arm as she staggered toward him, and pressing the knife against her throat. “I’ll gut her like a pig if you don’t do exactly what I tell you,” he warned Jamie.

  Emma’s complexion went from pale to ashen. A small cry escaped her lips. Lily didn’t move as Jamie retrieved the rope hidden beneath the white stacking tables. She offered no resistance as Jamie tied her hands behind her, listening to Emma whimper as the blade danced across the veins in her neck.

  �
��Make sure that’s nice and secure,” Brad warned.

  Jamie finished tying Lily’s wrists behind her back, then began securing her feet. Could she really be doing this? Could she be rendering another woman as helpless as she was? Two nights ago she’d waited in the car as Brad slaughtered a defenseless old woman. Today she’d graduated to the role of full-fledged accomplice. And it didn’t matter that she had no real choice, that he would kill her if she didn’t comply. The chances were good he’d kill her anyway. If not today, then tomorrow. Or the day after that.

  Besides, there was always a choice.

  And there were three of them, she reminded herself. Three of them and only one of him. Although even with those odds, Jamie knew it wouldn’t be a fair fight. Three battered and terrified women were no match for one knife-wielding lunatic.

  “Tie her feet too.” Brad pushed Emma to the floor beside Lily. With her hands tied behind her back, Emma had nothing to break her fall, and she landed on her right shoulder, crying out in pain.

  Jamie quickly began wrapping the rope around Emma’s ankles.

  “Ralph, please,” Lily started.

  “Name’s Brad now,” he corrected her.

  “What?”

  “You dropped the ‘Beth,’ ” he said. “I added a ‘Brad.’ ”

  “This doesn’t concern anyone but you and me,” Lily told him. “There’s no reason to involve anyone else.”

  “Looks to me like they’re already involved.”

  “Ralph—”

  “Brad,” he corrected testily. “Don’t make me have to tell you again.” He kicked at her legs with his heavy black boots.

  “Brad,” Lily whispered, fighting back tears. “Please, let them go.”

  “Well, now, Lily-Beth. How am I supposed to do that?” He bent down, checked the tightness of the ropes binding the two women. “Jamie’s here because she’s my girlfriend. Sit down, Jamie-girl,” he directed with a wink, and she promptly obeyed, balancing on the arm of the beige-and-green chair, where she’d perched earlier. “And your friend, Emma, well, she’s here because she’s a big old snoop who butted her nose in where it didn’t belong, so I guess it’s true what they say about curiosity killing the cat.”