Photograph, page 28
No one else knew.
Or was I wrong?
Like plates shifting deep below the earth, I suddenly heard a rumbling echo in my mind of what Kimble had said moments ago. So you do remember. Bug always told me you would.
I heard what he’d said to me when I first came to Devil Creek. Bug and I told each other everything.
Bug.
Where does an older brother come up with a nickname like Bug?
But I knew now. Suddenly it seemed obvious. Lightning Bug.
I was hit by lightning as a little girl. It messed me up physically for years. But it gave me unique gifts, too. I sense things. I see things.
My heart, my soul, both rebelled at the truth, but I couldn’t deny it anymore. If anyone else had murdered Jenny Curtis, if there had been no connection between past and present, I might still have found a way to believe what Maro told me. Because I wanted so badly to believe it. I wanted to convince myself that there was a deeper purpose in my life—that my rape wasn’t a random event, that I couldn’t suffer so much fear, humiliation, and rage simply by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There had to be more to the world than that.
But no. Shit just happens.
In the end, the truth was a lie.
There were no twin shadows, no past lives, no accidents of fate. I’d been led here by a woman I met on the beach, a woman who had sought me out and hunted me down. Me. The girl in the photograph. I’d let her inside my head. I’d let her play with my mind. She’d guided me through memories of a past that she told me was mine—when in fact it was a past that belonged to her and her brother.
I said to Kimble, “Your sister told me. That’s how I know.”
He stared at me, but when he heard the answer, there was no surprise on his face. He blinked slowly, and then he murmured her real name, not the nickname he’d given her after the accident. “Maro.”
“Yeah.”
“She found you. Damn it, damn it, damn it, she went and found you. I should have known.” He shook his head and gave a crazy laugh. “Let me guess, she told you it all happened in a past life. Right? You were Jenny Curtis, and I killed you. The universe keeps bringing us together.”
I didn’t answer, but he read it on my flushed face.
“Don’t feel bad. Bug really believes that shit. Ever since the lightning hit her when she was five, she thought she was some kind of psychic. She said she’d been transformed by the electricity. That was when her eyes changed, you know. The heterochromia. It was weird, no doubt about it. One eye changed color, and she thought it was a sign from God. I love Bug, but she’s batshit crazy. She’s laid that same crap on me for years. I had a twin shadow. I’ve lived all these past lives, and there’s this same girl I keep killing over and over.”
“She was with you in Angola,” I said. “She was in the house.”
“Yeah. If I left her alone, she threw a fit. She could have hurt herself. My parents had split up, my dad was gone, my mom was worthless. I had to take care of Bug myself, and I did what I needed to do to get money. She always wanted to come with me on my jobs. She was my guardian angel, she said. She had to be there to protect me. Protect me from you. Pretty funny, huh?”
Kimble steadied himself on the attic floor with a mean smile. The coiled spring of his body unwound. He breathed a heavy sigh, realizing that I was no threat to him. He was free. He could pull the trigger once, twice, and we would be dead, and the circle would be complete. I felt hollow, nothing but a void inside me, watching my time and Kate’s time run out.
What a fool I’d been. There was nothing supernatural in this room, nothing but Chuck Kimble and Shannon Wells playing out the last moves in a game that had begun twenty-six years ago in an empty lot behind a motel.
“How did Maro find me?” I asked.
Kimble shrugged. “The photograph.”
Yes. Of course. Everything began and ended with that photograph.
“I sent her the picture in the paper when it came out. Bug got scared. She told me she’d had another premonition. I was going to lose this time. You were going to kill me. She wanted me to let it go, but I couldn’t do that. So she went down to Florida ahead of me. She broke into Falline’s house. She got the original photograph and destroyed it, the print and the negative, the records of who sent it in. She erased the backups from his computer. She said there was no point in me looking for you anymore. I couldn’t find you, and you couldn’t find me. She was still trying to protect me.”
His face softened, just for an instant. That was the enduring love between brother and sister. Even when one of them was a murderer.
“But you went to Florida anyway,” I said.
“Yeah. After all that time? I was finally close to finding you, and I wasn’t going to give up. Bug wasn’t lying, though. She’d wiped out everything about the photograph. Falline didn’t even realize what she’d done until he started looking. But it didn’t matter. He remembered the name. Faith Selby. That was enough.”
He straightened the Ruger. Aimed it at my face. His finger tightened on the trigger.
“When Faith wouldn’t talk, I thought I’d lost you again. I thought that was it. But here we are, Shannon. Back together, just like Bug said we would be. We’re like magnet and steel, you and me. But I guess her latest premonition was wrong. You’re not going to win this time.”
I stared into the black hole of the gun, the way I had when I was three years old. This time, no one was coming to save me. Lara Lovell wasn’t going to run from the darkness and take me into her arms. My life came down to this single moment. I was younger than this man, and faster than this man, but I wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet. I watched it happen, unable to stop him, frozen in place the way I’d been as a child.
Kimble squeezed the trigger and fired at my head.
And he missed.
Just like he had behind the motel, he missed.
Jesus. I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was the darkness; maybe it was the driving rain through the window; maybe his foot slipped on the wet floor; maybe the young cop who couldn’t bring himself to kill a child jarred the hand of his older self. Or maybe, somewhere in the shadows, the cat who’d followed me everywhere brushed against his leg and distracted him at the instant he fired.
Whatever it was, the bullet that should have penetrated my skull and ended my life burned through my black hair, a millimeter from my skull, and sailed harmlessly out the window into the storm.
I saw the shocked look on his face. He couldn’t believe I was still alive.
I jumped at him before he could fire again. My good hand shunted aside the gun, and the momentum of my body crashing into his took us both to the floor. I was on top of him, slamming his hand into the floor until his fingers unclenched and let go of the gun, which skidded away into the gloom. My self-defense classes had taught me to fight dirty, and I did. My sharp nails gouged his eyes; my fist chopped his throat hard, making him gasp and choke. I drove my knee between his legs up into his testicles, and he screamed like a little girl. Two years of pent-up rage exploded out of me and rained down on the body of Chuck Kimble in a frenzy of blows and kicks. Each grunt of pain below me made me strike him harder.
But he was twice my weight, and one of my wrists was broken and useless. When he survived the first onslaught, he found my torso with both hands and literally launched me into the air. I flew backward, landing hard, dizzy with the impact. I tried to push myself up, but I used the wrong wrist and cried out as the bone bent, dropping me down again.
By the time I was on my feet, so was Kimble. Our eyes scanned the wet floor, both of us hunting for guns lost somewhere in the room.
Where was my Glock?
I didn’t see it. Meanwhile, Kimble spotted his Ruger near the window and dove, body slithering along the wet floor. I found myself frozen again as he scooped the pistol into his hand. Time wound down into slow motion as he brought his wrist from the floor and directed the barrel toward my chest. But I’d scratched his eyes; he blinked, teared up, tried to focus. He fired and missed yet again, and still I stood where I was, rooted in place. Then a new blur of motion came between us. Kate, still tied up, wriggled toward him and jerked both legs through the air. Her boots found Kimble’s face, breaking his nose with a spurt of blood, making him howl.
He struggled to see and to breathe now, but he still had the gun. I jerked myself out of my trance. I saw a gleam of silver on the rain-swept floor and bolted toward the puddle where my Glock lay. Bending down, not stopping, I hooked my fingers through the trigger guard and spun it around into my good hand. More bullets chased me, wild fire, cracking and ricocheting on the stone walls. I threw myself down, twisted around, and aimed my gun at the meat of the body on the other side of the huge bedroom.
I fired left-handed, and I missed, too.
Then I rolled, and Kimble’s next shot thudded into the floor where my hip had just been. I fired again. This time I heard him gasp an obscenity. A hit, Battleship, definitely a hit. I fired once more, heard another sharp huff of pain. His shoulders bowed like a brooding monster’s, but he found enough strength to lift the Ruger and point it at me on the floor. Just as he fired, I scrambled up and away, my body banging against the wall. I aimed the Glock as best I could. My next shot tunneled into his elbow and shattered bone. His arm paralyzed, the Ruger slipped from his hand.
He was unarmed now, and I screamed at him: “Stop! Don’t move! Don’t do it!”
But Kimble kept coming.
I fired again. Middle of the chest. He kept coming.
I fired again. Paunch of his gut. He kept coming.
“Stop!” I shouted.
He finally did. We stared at each other, no more than six feet separating us. He loomed over me, a foot taller. Blood poured down his face and out of his mouth. Blood oozed into spidery stains on his shirt. His eyes studied me, dead and cold. His gun arm hung limp at his side, but he extended his other arm, fingers curled like a claw, the perfect size to wrap around my throat.
“Don’t do it,” I murmured.
But I knew he would, and he did.
He came at me.
In that millisecond before I fired again, something very strange happened inside my head. Images of Chuck Kimble poured in front of my eyes at lightning speed, each one different, each one violent, Kimbles young and old coming and going like film clacking through a projector. Kimble, bearded and long haired, dressed in a monk’s cowl, a scythe in his hand. Kimble, a blue-uniformed soldier with a patch over one eye and a musket pointed at my chest. Kimble, a dandy in silk with a white pompadour, offering me a cup filled with poison. Kimble, pin striped and rich, pulling back the hammer of a pearl-handled revolver. Kimble, naked except for a cowboy hat, swinging a baseball bat at my head.
Kimble, a teenager, coming up the stairs to an Angola bedroom.
Then the images vanished, and I was in the real world again, my back to the wall. I had no time to think about what those visions were or to wonder whether twin shadows really existed or to believe that I’d just watched a parade of my many deaths at the hands of this man.
Chuck Kimble, who’d already tried to kill me once in this life, came for my throat with the last of his ebbing strength. I fired another shot with my Glock at point-blank range, and this one landed in the middle of his forehead. Just like that, in a single instant, the light vanished from his eyes the way it had from the eyes of Dawn West, and I had to dance nimbly sideways to avoid his body collapsing to the floor.
He was dead, and I was free.
THIRTY-FIVE
“I won’t be long,” I told Kate.
We were parked in a wooded area between the highway and the lake, near what the locals called Thunder Mountain, which was really just a particularly steep sand dune, where little kids would sprint down the slope and try not to fall down. As I got out of the SUV, I leaned back in and silently gave Kate a hug. We’d been doing that over and over in the five days since the death of Chuck Kimble, just hanging on each other and processing how close we’d both come to dying.
It was early morning, not even seven o’clock, the air calm and cool. We were ready to say goodbye to Devil Creek and begin the long drive back to Florida. I’d spent hours in interviews with the county sheriff and county attorney, and with Phil Potter, explaining what had happened and how the threads of the case had come together. Phil and I had gone to see Gretchen West to tell her that justice had finally caught up with her daughter’s killer. Her reaction had been a mix of teary relief at the news and anger that the man in charge of the cold case, the man who’d given her empty updates for years, had proved to be the murderer.
I’d also called Terry Blaine to see if he wanted to dive back into journalism long enough to bring closure to the stories he’d written a quarter century ago. When he said yes, I gave him an exclusive to write about what Kate and I had experienced in the attic of the Daugherty house. His front-page article would appear in the Sunday edition of The Herald-Palladium.
Yes, it was definitely time to go. But I had one more meeting before we set off on the long drive.
Near the clearing where Kate parked my Honda, I found a trail that wound through the trees up the side of Thunder Mountain. On my left as I climbed higher was the broad sweep of the dune, empty now, too early for children to be sand surfing. On my right, the slope fell off sharply into woods and vines, with a creek meandering through the valley below me. I heard water singing on the rocks.
A picnic bench waited at the summit, looking out on Lake Michigan on the other side of the dunes. Gordon West was already waiting for me, dressed for his work at the Dollar Store. His skin wasn’t as pale as in the past; his cheeks even showed a flush of sunburn. I saw no sign now of bad nights, no dilated pupils and half moons under his eyes, no sunken pallor, no tremor in his limbs.
I sat down next to him.
“Thank you for coming to meet me,” he said.
“Of course.”
“And thank you for—for everything else.”
“I’m glad we found the answers your family deserved.”
“Are you okay?” he asked me. “I mean, physically, after what happened? Are you really okay?”
“One hand in a cast, but otherwise undamaged.”
“That’s good.”
Gordon stared across the treetops toward the beach and the lake. The wide strip of sand below us was empty, chocolate brown where the waves came in, nearly white above the surf under the morning sun. The wind stirred, rustling my hair, making me shiver with the Great Lakes chill.
“Dawn and I used to come here when we were kids,” he continued. “Our house is only about a mile away. We’d hike here together and climb up the trail, and then we’d run down the dune side by side.”
“Nice.”
“I loved her so much. I really did. I miss her.”
“I know.”
“I haven’t been back here since she was killed. Not once. I was too ashamed.”
“Well, it’s good that you can reclaim it now.”
His brow knitted together into a deep valley of regret. “Wherever Dawn is, do you think she forgives me?”
“You made mistakes, Gordon, but you’re not the one responsible for her death. You’re going to have to forgive yourself. Stop punishing the kid you once were. That starts with getting clean.”
He didn’t reply, but he chewed on his lower lip, and his head bobbed up and down. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you let me off the hook? You didn’t need to do that. You told the whole story to the police, to the papers, to my mother, but you kept me out of it. You didn’t tell anyone I was there the night the Daughertys were killed. Why?”
I’d asked myself the same question throughout the week.
“Dawn wanted to protect you. I figured I should honor her wish. Besides, giving you up wouldn’t change the past.”
“Well, I appreciate that. But I wanted you to know that I told my mother all about it last night. I think—I think I’m going to tell the police, too. I don’t know what they’ll do to me. But I figure if I’m going to get clean, I have to come clean, too. That means accepting responsibility for what I did.”
“I hope it goes well for you, Gordon.”
I meant that sincerely—but would it? I didn’t know. I figured they would punish him somehow, but not lock him up. I didn’t think a prosecutor would be too interested in putting a murder victim’s brother behind bars twenty-six years later. Or at least, I hoped that was true. I’m not one to believe the justice system always delivers justice.
“Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that,” he said.
“I’m glad you did.”
“One more thing,” he told me, digging in the pocket of his slacks. “You returned Dawn’s memory box to my mother. She and I went through it together last night. There were a lot of tears. We talked about it, and we both thought you should have this.”
He opened his hand. On his palm was the lone diamond earring that Dawn had received as a gift from her boyfriend. I stared at it, and just like that, I began to cry. The entire week, since I killed Chuck Kimble, I’d been numb, unable to feel anything at all. But the earring broke through the dam. I reached to my ears and removed the hoops I usually wore, and then I took Dawn’s one earring and nestled it into my earlobe, where it felt at home.
“That means a lot to me,” I said, my voice cracking. “Thank you. And good luck to you, Gordon.”
He nodded at me with the barest smile.
I squeezed his shoulder, and then I got up from the bench. With a few steps, I left Lake Michigan behind, because the ocean was waiting for me. Far below, at the base of the high dune, I could see my SUV and Kate standing outside. Instead of taking the trail through the trees, I ran straight down the sand slope of Thunder Mountain, my hair flying, like I was a kid again.
We drove straight through, day and night. Kate was tireless behind the wheel. When I saw the highway sign welcoming me back to Florida, the world got sunnier and brighter. The familiar sticky heat of summer blew through the car, and the palm trees waved hello. I was home. I’d left the Midwestern darkness far behind, and I was glad.
