The Night Before

  “My family,” she said and sighed so deeply that her hair ruffled. “Well, okay. Let’s start by saying we didn’t put the fun in dysfunctional. The Montgomerys have been in Savannah about as long as there’s been a Savannah,” she said, looking away from him as she rubbed a finger over the edge of the couch. She seemed to loosen up a bit, explaining that in the first few years of her life she’d thought everything was perfect. She had a twin, Kelly, and they were close; her other siblings, five of them, were spread above and below; the twins were the middle children. One of her brothers, “Baby Parker,” had died as an infant from SIDS, and the eldest, Charles, had been killed in a freak hunting accident, and she had recurring dreams about finding him in the woods. The other hunter, whoever he was, had never been found. As for the remaining siblings, her older sister Amanda, the lawyer, was “driven,” her brother Troy, “controlling,” and her baby sister, Hannah, a “worry.”

  She talked for nearly two hours and he learned that her oldest sibling, Charles, had been the heir apparent. Then he’d died. Now the duty of running the vast Montgomery wealth was split between Amanda as the oldest sibling and Troy, the next to youngest, who just happened to be the last standing male in the family.

  As Caitlyn spoke, Adam observed how careful she was, how she looked him squarely in the eye, only to quickly glance away, as if suddenly shy. He’d gone through Rebecca’s notes on Caitlyn, but some of them were obviously missing, the pages having disappeared. Unless Rebecca had stored them somewhere else. He hadn’t found them yet, though he’d torn this office upside down and come up empty-handed. The quick search of Rebecca’s house hadn’t shed any light on the missing pages, either. Odd, he thought. Had she taken them with her?

  Everything Caitlyn confided he already knew about her, though he played the innocent, leaning back in his chair, scribbling notes, asking the appropriate questions or nodding thoughtfully. He even made a couple of jokes and was rewarded with her lips twitching into a beguiling smile.

  “. . . so then I got married,” she said and lifted a shoulder. “No one was happy about it.”

  “No one, meaning your family.”

  “Right.”

  “Why did they disapprove?”

  “Josh had been married before to an older woman, Maude Havenbrooke. He’d even adopted her child from a previous marriage.”

  “Divorce is fairly common.”

  “That was only the first strike against him. Josh had a reputation for being . . . er, making reckless investments. My family thought Josh was after my money—I, um, have a trust fund.” She cleared her throat. “But I didn’t care what anyone thought about Josh. I was in love.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head, then hesitated before adding, “And . . . and I was pregnant.” She blinked and looked at her hands. “Jamie was born seven months later and she would have been five if . . .” She cleared her throat. Struggled for words. “. . . If she had survived. She died.” Nodding her head as if to convince herself, she added huskily, “She was my baby and . . . and my whole life.” Tears gathered in her eyes and she blinked.

  He felt a pang of sympathy for this woman trying so hard to hold herself together. Without saying a word, he rolled Rebecca’s chair to the bookcase, picked up a box of tissues and handed the box to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Don’t be. It’s hard to lose a child.”

  “It’s hell,” she corrected, spitting out the words and touching a tissue to the corner of her eyes. “Do you have any children, Dr. Hunt?”

  “No.” His ex-wife had never wanted any. It was a bone of contention and had contributed to the breakdown of his marriage.

  “Then you can’t begin to imagine the pain I’ve gone through, the guilt I’ve borne, the . . . the desperation I’ve felt. I wake up every morning and think about her, wish that I could have taken her place. I would trade in an instant.” Her eyes were suddenly dry, her shoulders stiffening, the tissue crumpled in her fist. “But I don’t have that choice and my husband . . .” She let her breath out and visibly stiffened. “My husband was going to file a wrongful death suit against me. Can you imagine? As if I . . . I had killed my daughter, our daughter.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Neither do I!” She shot to her feet. “He claimed I was neglectful . . . that I didn’t get her to the hospital in time, that I was too wrapped up in myself. It’s ridiculous. I was still recovering from a sprained wrist, but I was well enough to take care of my daughter. I just thought she had the flu and . . . well, by the time I got her to the hospital . . .” Her words faded and she stopped talking to stare out the window, as if mesmerized by a dove roosting on the eave of the next building. Sunlight gilded the dark strands of her hair, made the red in it appear. “It was too late. Josh blamed me. And I blamed myself. I should have taken her in sooner, but I didn’t know.” She turned, her wide eyes red-rimmed, one small fist clenched tight. “He went to his grave believing that I’d somehow purposely endangered my child’s life.” Her shoulders slumped. “I went over all this with Dr. Wade—well, not about the lawsuit. I didn’t know about it until after our last session.” She flopped back on the couch, checked the time and said, “I think I’ve run over.”

  “I don’t have that many patients yet.”

  “Maybe I should refer the rest of my family. We could keep you and about five other psychologists busy for the rest of your life!”

  Smiling as if in disbelief, not wanting her to know that he’d read every page he could find on her already, he took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief.

  “If Dr. Wade calls you, would you tell her ‘hello?’ ” She tossed the wadded tissue into a trash basket at the end of the couch.

  “If she calls,” he promised, feeling a twinge of guilt at the deception as he slid the reading glasses onto his nose. It seemed as if all he did these days was stretch the truth, or bend it, or even break it. But he couldn’t be honest with her, not until he found out what he needed to know.

  She wrote a check hastily and handed it to him.

  “I’ll refund this when the insurance payment comes through,” he promised, feeling even more guilt.

  “Fine.” She offered him a shy smile that touched him in a way he hadn’t expected. “Thanks, Dr. Hunt.”

  “Adam,” he insisted. “I like to keep things casual.”

  “Adam, then.” She nodded curtly and he stood in the doorway to Rebecca’s office, watching her hurry down the stairs, not once glancing over her shoulder. God, she was an intriguing woman. Beautiful, bright and troubled. So troubled.

  He looked at her check, the flourish of her signature, knowing that she was building trust in him. He winced against another sharp jab of guilt.

  Maybe his grandmother was right. Maybe there was never a good reason to lie. He could tear the check up right now, or he could use it to get a little more information about Caitlyn Montgomery and hence, perhaps, Rebecca Wade. He didn’t hesitate a second, just folded the check with a sharp crease and slipped it into his wallet.

  Seated at the table in her private space, Atropos closed her eyes. She needed peace. She needed rest. She needed to calm the rage that burned and clawed. She thought of ice and snow, of a serene time when her hectic work would be done. Slowly, starting with her toes, she relaxed each muscle in her body, up her legs and torso, letting her arms and shoulders go limp, easing the tension from the muscles of her face, clearing her mind.

  She had to be clearheaded. Calm. Deadly. She couldn’t afford to make a mistake. Not now . . . not after so many years of planning. When her mind was free again, she stood and stared at the skeletal family tree she’d erected. There, on the appropriate, unforgiving limb, was Cameron.

  The son.

  And the father.

  Now the not-so-holy ghost.

  He’d died at the wheel of his Porsche when it missed a corner and slid into the swamp, where he drowned. He’d been on his way to visit Copper Biscayne, his lover, an
d as fate would have it, Cameron in the freak accident had not only lost his life, but one of his balls as well. It appeared to have been sliced off when he’d been thrown through the windshield; shards of glass had still been imbedded in his scrotum. That piece of information had never made it to the press; there was no mention of the lost testicle in any of the articles that Atropos had so meticulously clipped from every paper that reported Cameron’s death. Cameron’s picture had been sliced, then pasted onto the family tree. The colors had faded somewhat, but the snapshot had been taken of Cameron with his three bastard children . . . Sugar, Dickie Ray and Cricket. Atropos wasn’t certain they were all his, but it was possible, if not likely.

  Yes, Cameron had deserved his end.

  Another limb belonged to Charles. The eldest son. The golden boy who could do no wrong. Gifted athlete, college graduate, and honed into the image of his proud father. Charles had been set on a course from a young age to run the family businesses. Unfortunately, he’d been shot by an errant bow hunter one Thanksgiving holiday. Atropos smiled as she stared at his reconstructed picture. He’d been standing over the top of a trophy kill, a very dead bear, the first beast Charles had killed with his bow. The picture had been sliced up, of course, then carefully pasted back together so that it seemed as if the bear had killed Charles.

  How fitting. It just seemed more like the natural order of things.

  There were other limbs that were filled in as well, but Atropos didn’t have time to bask in each murder. Not when there was so much work to be done. She wondered if anyone, the police or Montgomery family members, realized that the killings were not random, that the causes of death were planned to perfection, that there was a bit of irony in each. How easy it would have been to buy a stolen gun and shoot her victims while they were alone. But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t just the erasure of a life, but the artistry of the killing that was important, so that every victim realized they were about to die, at her hand. In those last, gasping, terrifying moments of life, the doomed needed to know that their fate had been sealed. They’d had no chance of escape.

  That was the thrill.

  That was the artistry.

  That was the magic.

  That was the brilliance.

  She felt better as she stared at the death tree. Her blood sang through her veins. She felt her heart beating, tingled with anticipation of the next kill.

  She glanced again at the snipped torso of Joshua Bandeaux. A truer bastard had never walked the earth. He deserved much worse than he had gotten. And the stupid police hadn’t even figured out for certain that he’d been killed. Which was frustrating. A little press would help sate her need for recognition . . . the need that had always propelled her. The few clippings already gathered were meager, not worthy of her acts.

  She glanced at the tree once more. Soon its gnarled and deadly branches would be filled. The clock was ticking. There was much to do. On quiet, padded footsteps, she walked to the desk and retrieved the snapshots from her drawer. Gently, as if they were a frail deck of Tarot cards, she shuffled them and fanned them out facedown on the desk. Eeny, meeny, miney moe . . . Pick a victim soon to go . . . if he hollers . . . make him pay . . . with his life that very day . . .

  Carefully one photograph was selected and turned over.

  A picture of Amanda.

  Second born. Smart, beautiful, successful.

  Amanda Montgomery Drummond. With her own little demons . . . or demonettes. Yes, it was the eldest daughter’s turn.

  In the snapshot Amanda, in a tennis skirt and top, was leaning against the polished fender of her pride and joy, a little red sports car, a cherry-red 1976 Triumph—make that TR-6—a gift from her father long before his untimely accident. Her eyes were shaded behind sunglasses, her smile wide, her mahogany-colored hair snapped back into a ponytail. Tall, athletic, gifted . . . with double majors in college, she had graduated summa cum laude and had given herself the choice of medical or law school.

  Not a compassionate woman by nature, one who had an eye on making money, she’d chosen the law. Which was probably just as well. She would have made a horrid doctor.

  “It’s your time,” Atropos whispered to the smiling Amanda in the picture. “Won’t the family be surprised? Or maybe, just maybe they’ll be relieved. You really are a bitch, you know.” She found the thread of life for Amanda Montgomery, already clipped and ready.

  What Atropos had planned for Amanda was guaranteed to get the family’s attention. She started to pick up the pictures, but in her haste knocked two of them onto the floor. They fluttered and turned upright as they hit the tiles.

  Two pictures. The first was of Caitlyn as a child. She was laughing, her head thrown back as she swung on the old rope that had hung from the sturdy limb of a live oak with branches that spread over the river. The second was of Berneda, the mother, her hands clasped over her heart in front of a birthday cake with seventy-five candles burning bright. Lucille stood just behind her, one step out of the spotlight, where she’d always been. Always tending, never tended.

  Well, it was about time Lucille was released.

  The mother would have to meet her own personal destiny. She found Berneda’s life braid . . . it was cut just perfectly.

  As for Caitlyn?

  Atropos found the red and black thread of her life and sighed.

  For the moment, Caitlyn would be spared. But only for the moment.

  And not for long. Atropos glanced at the picture again and at the frayed rope that the unsuspecting Caitlyn clung to as if for dear life. How fitting. Atropos fingered Caitlyn’s thread of life . . . it was only slightly longer than that of her mother.

  The child in the snapshot seemed to smile at her.

  Foolish, foolish little girl.

  Thirteen

  “Where were you on the night of your husband’s death?”

  The question wasn’t unexpected and yet Caitlyn, absently ruffling Oscar’s fur, had been dreading it. Seated at her own kitchen table, with Officers Reed and Morrisette across from her, she said, “I thought I told you I was out,” she clarified, second-guessing herself. When Reed had called and asked to come by, she’d agreed. Now she wondered if she should have insisted she have an attorney present. “My sister and I were supposed to meet at a bar called The Swamp, down on the riverfront, but she got tied up and I was alone.”

  “So you never went to your husband’s house that night?”

  “It was my house once,” she said automatically and sensed both officers’ suspicion. And why not? Wasn’t it usually someone in the family who turned out to be the killer? “Look,” she said, standing. “I think I’d better call a lawyer.”

  The woman with the spiky hair lifted a shoulder. “If you think you need one. We’re just asking a few questions.”

  Caitlyn’s skin prickled with dread. “The truth of the matter, which I think I told you before, is that I’m kind of fuzzy about that night.”

  “Why is that?”

  She thought about explaining about the blackouts, about the loss of time she sometimes experienced, about the lapses in her memory, but it sounded like a lie. These cynical and jaded officers wouldn’t believe her. “Sometimes I drink too much,” she said.

  “So you were so drunk that night that you can’t remember what you did?”

  “I think I should call my attorney.” She pushed Oscar off her lap and stood. It was time to end this.

  Reed scooted back his chair. “If you think you need one.”

  “You tell me, Detective. You’re the ones asking the questions.”

  “We’re just trying to find out what happened.” Reed offered what was supposed to pass as a smile, but there was no amusement in his eyes. None whatsoever.

  “Fine. You can do it when I have a lawyer present,” she said and walked to the door. Oscar, toenails clicking, followed after.

  “Mrs. Bandeaux, did you see your husband on the night of his death?” Detective Morrisette asked.

 
Did she? Could she tell them she wasn’t sure?

  “A neighbor saw your car, or one like yours, in the driveway around midnight.”

  Every muscle in her body tensed. Her heart began to pound with a new, unnamed fear. So you did go there . . .

  “And there was more than just Bandeaux’s blood at the scene.”

  “Someone else’s?” she asked, her knees nearly giving way as she felt the scars on her wrist grow tight.

  “O-positive. We’ll be doing DNA analysis of it, so we’d like a blood sample from you.”

  “You think I killed Josh.”

  “We’re just trying to narrow the field.” But Reed’s eyes were cold, and even Detective Morrisette was grimmer than usual. No good cop–bad cop routine. Just the facts, ma’am.

  “I’ll have my attorney contact you,” she said as they stepped over the threshold and she shut the door behind them. She was shaking inside, a headache pounding behind one eye, the same kind of pain slicing through her brain that preceded the blackouts that ate away huge chunks of her time.

  The first time she realized that she had holes in her memory had been when she was a child, recovering from a sinus infection that had landed her in the hospital. She’d been six or seven at the time and had found herself on the school playground long after dark. Her mother had been frantic and she’d not been able to explain herself, couldn’t remember her whereabouts. No one had known how she’d missed the bus and lost track of time, not even Griffin, who had been the last person she’d seen, the one who had suggested they walk the three miles home.

  Funny she should think of that now as she climbed the stairs and passed through her bedroom to the bathroom and noticed the slight discoloration on the carpet. What the hell had happened the night that Josh had died? Why had there been blood all over this room . . . and why had her type of blood been in Josh’s home?

  Not that it proved she was there, she thought. Millions of people had O-positive blood. Including most of her family. And yet a new fear, deep-seated and dark, gripped her. Could she have . . . was she capable of . . . in one of her blackouts, could she have killed her husband?