A Body to Die For (38 page)

“So you asked her out on a date?”

“Not right away. That would have been against the rules—right, Bailey? Just like I had to talk to you about. So I waited a
few months. And she was more than game. You women all respond to the same things—did you know that? You’re all so easy, really.”

“All I know is that I really liked you from the moment I met you. I thought we had a connection.”

“Oh please, don’t play that game with me,” he barked. “I know what you’ve been up to. You’ve been digging at this thing like
a dog in a hole. That Natalie was a busybody, too, you know?”

“But how—”

“She couldn’t mind her own business, either. She was just like you.”

“Natalie discovered something?”

“She saw me one night last summer, a few weeks after we investigated that body in the spa. I nearly made her jump out of her
panties.”

“You’d been watching Anna that night?”

He did that half-smile, half-grimace of his. “There’s a spot in a cluster of trees where you can look right into her window.
I wanted to check up on her, get an idea of her routine. She was still dating Mr. Exotic then, but I could tell it wasn’t
serious by the way she’d flirted with me at the spa. The same old Anna. He’s lucky he got away.”

“Natalie caught you looking in the window?”

“No. You think I’d make that kind of mistake? But she saw me coming down the path from the barn when she was getting into
her car. It looked funny, me being there so late, but I told her I’d been checking out the property, making sure everything
was okay. She
seemed
to believe me. I don’t think she’d have ever remembered it until you opened your big fat mouth about Anna being stalked.”
He started to edge around the kitchen table toward me.

“But that didn’t mean she automatically assumed you had… hurt Anna,” I said, trying desperately to think what to do.

“Oh, but she knew something was funny—and I couldn’t take the chance. I waited for her out in the parking lot, and asked her
what was wrong. She was agitated and I could tell she didn’t entirely trust me. I couldn’t risk her yapping about that night
to anyone—including you. All it would take is someone asking a few questions and before long they’d piece together the connection
between me and Anna.”

“Beck, I don’t blame you, I really don’t. What Anna did to your sister was horrible.”

“What she did to my
sister?
Oh, that’s just the half of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why do you think Anna wasn’t watching my sister? She had me in my bedroom, fucking my brains out.”

I gasped.

“After it happened, I panicked. Anna told me it was
my
fault, that I better keep my damn mouth shut or she’d tell my mother what I’d done with her. I wasn’t even fourteen yet.
I was just a dumb kid. She got me out of the house, made up this whole story. It was like another game to her. She didn’t
care. She didn’t dream at night the way I did about what it was like to be under eight feet of water and not be able to breathe.”

“Look, Beck—”

“Don’t ‘Look Beck’ me. You and Anna have a lot in common. You like to flirt, you like to play games. And you didn’t realize
I was the one playing with you. You’re smarter than her, but it isn’t going to do you much good, I’m afraid.”

He was shaking his head back and forth as he talked, losing it, and I knew any second he was going to reach out and knock
me down as he had Cordelia or he was going to put his arms around my neck and squeeze.

I stared into his eyes and reached slowly behind me with one hand, feeling for the tea mug I’d set on the table behind me.
As fast as I could, I picked it up and flung the hot tea in his face.

He cried out and stumbled backward, grabbing at his face with both hands. He stood between me and the front door so I tore
down the hallway toward the bedrooms, careened into the bathroom, and slammed the door shut, locking it.

With one glance around the room, I saw that I’d bought myself only a few minutes. The door was made of old wood, and he could
probably knock it down easily.

There was one window, on the small side but wide enough for me to slip through. But by the time I escaped he’d probably be
able to catch up with me on the other side. I glanced around for anything to defend myself with. There was nothing more threatening
that an electric toothbrush. Suddenly Beck rammed his body—or something else hard—against the door. It made a sound like a
crack of thunder.

“Beck, please,” I called out. “I care about you. Don’t hurt me.”

He struck the door again, and this time it jumped on its hinges.

My only choice was to go through the window and make a run for it. I turned the lock and raised the window as quietly as possible.
Cold air forced its way fast through the first crack of an opening and then surged through as soon as I had the window all
the way up. I stepped back to the door and once again pleaded with Beck not to hurt me. I needed him to think I was just standing
there with my fingers hopelessly crossed.

I snuck back to the window and shimmied halfway through, peering into the frigid darkness. Frantically I pulled the rest of
my body through and dropped to the ground. A small security light on the back of the house cast an eerie puddle of light.
I could make out that there was a small backyard, a toolshed of some kind, and nothing behind that but woods and blackness.

My car keys were in my purse on the kitchen counter. It seemed like my only option was to run through the woods. But Beck
would realize soon enough that I’d slipped out the window, and then he’d come after me. He was faster and stronger, and I
knew he’d catch up with me. I had to think of something else. I had to
do
something.

I raced toward the toolshed. With my eyes now partly adjusted to the darkness, I saw that there were rakes leaning against
it and a shovel. I picked up the shovel and buried myself in the shadows behind the shed.

I heard one loud bang from within the house, and I realized that he had finally knocked the door off. In my mind’s eye I could
see him rush to the window. Then there was the sound of his feet hitting the dirt below the window. He was coming this way,
thinking I might be hiding behind the shed. I tightened my grip on the shovel.

Suddenly he was there, right in front of me. His face was tight with rage. Before he could even react to the sight of me,
I slammed the shovel onto his head. There was a cracking sound and then a
ping
as it bounced off his skull. He staggered back and collapsed to the ground.

I dropped the shovel and began to run toward the house, to the right side of it where the driveway was situated. I knew it
was crazy cold outside, but I could barely feel it. There was nothing but silence behind me, and I hoped I had knocked Beck
out cold. Without stopping I twisted my head to look in the yard as I ran. I could see only the outlines of Beck’s body. He
had raised himself to a sitting position. In a minute, he’d be after me again.

I
RAN HARDER,
the cold air resisting me like water. I had to fight off the urge to cry in despair. I knew if I locked myself back in the
house, Beck would break a window, find his way in somehow. What I needed to do was retrieve my keys and get in my Jeep—before
he caught up with me.

As I rounded the corner to the front of the house, I lurched to a stop. Blue lights flickered like fairies through the trees
at the far end of Danny’s road. Then I heard sirens. As I gaped in disbelief and relief, two cop cars came careening down
the road toward the house.

I began to run again, and by the time I’d reached the end of the driveway, the cars had screeched to a halt. I shouted, waving
my arms. The first car was unmarked, with one of those temporary lights the cops throw on the top. Two men in plain clothes
jumped out of the first car, including Davis, the one with the wide tie who’d interviewed me earlier in the day. Pointing
to the backyard, I blurted out that Beck was chasing me, trying to kill me, that he had killed Anna and Natalie.

They made certain I wasn’t injured and then drew guns. So did the two cops who had jumped out from the patrol car. One of
the detectives shouted for a uniform officer to stay behind with me, and then he took off with the other two cops toward the
back of the house.

I spun around to watch them. I still felt terrified, as if somehow Beck would take them all down and I would still not be
safe—like one of those nightmares in which no matter where you find to hide, you realize they will find you.

From where I stood I had a view of a sliver of the backyard, but it was too dark to tell if Beck had gotten fully up. Suddenly
I saw a man duck through the small square of yard lit by the security light. One of the cops yelled, “Halt!” and then yelled
it again. I steeled myself for gunshots, but none came. Instead there was a crashing noise in the trees near the house. The
patrol cop next to me, young with a mustache, checked on his radio to see if backup was on the way. “Hurry, hurry,” I wanted
to scream at whoever was at the other end. A body erupted from the woods and a cry tore out of me. Beck seemed to fly toward
me, but the next second, one of the detectives tackled him from behind and he landed hard on his side. The other detective
stood over them with his gun pointed at Beck’s head. The patrol cop shoved me in back of him, blocking my vision, though I
could hear the low murmur of voices. After a minute came the tramp of footsteps on the cold earth. The two detectives surrounded
a now upright Beck whose hands were cuffed behind him. The look he gave me as they passed was empty of any emotion.

One of the patrol cops and the second detective led Beck to the patrol car and guided him into the backseat. As the three
of them took off in the car, another patrol car sped down the road in the direction of the house. Both cars slowed down as
they eased by each other on the road.

Beck was gone. I was safe. I realized for the first time that I was shaking hard, like a loose hubcap. Detective Davis asked
me again if I was all right. I told him I was just shivering from the cold. And from being friggin’ terrified, I wanted to
add. Suddenly I remembered Cordelia.

“There’s someone injured inside,” I said, my teeth chattering as I spoke. “He punched her in the head and knocked her out.”

“All right. You better come inside, too.” He waited a split second for the reinforcements to jump out of their car, told one
of them to call for an ambulance, and then led me into the house with several cops in tow.

Cordelia was still on the floor of the kitchen, but she was in a sitting position, holding her head in her hands. While Davis
stooped to help her, a patrol cop guided me to the living room. Someone would be in momentarily to question me, he said.

I waited on the couch, willing myself to stop trembling—without any luck at first. But eventually, as I got warmer, the shaking
began to subside. I could hear murmuring from the kitchen, the cops talking to Cordelia and trying to find out what shape
she was in. The reinforcement cops fanned out through the house, and before long the ambulance arrived. Cordelia was taken
out on a stretcher, though from my vantage point she seemed conscious and lucid.

I saw a few of the cops consult with one of the paramedics and she immediately walked over to me. She took my pulse and asked
me a few questions to make sure I was really okay.

No sooner had they finished with me than Danny burst into the house and rushed to my side. Before I had a chance to say anything,
Davis asked that she wait in another room and he’d speak to her shortly. He took a chair across from me and pulled out a notebook.
He was joined a minute later by a guy who introduced himself as Detective O’Rourke. I realized he was one of the cops who’d
been first on the scene the night of Anna’s murder.

I took them through everything, admitting that I’d wanted to help Danny and had snooped around. I described my trip to Wallingford
and how I’d found out Beck’s true identity. At one point I saw them shoot each other knowing looks.

“What is it?” I asked. “You didn’t know, did you?”

“No,” Davis said, “but some of Detective Beck’s behavior lately had started to worry us.”

“Is that why you came here?” I asked. “How did you know Beck would be here?”

“We got a call from a friend of yours in New York. He was concerned, based on a few things you’d said. He didn’t know where
Mrs. Hubner lived, but he told us you had been headed to her house and might be in danger.”

I could hardly believe it. Jack had called the police. He had saved my life.

“Does he know I’m okay?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Davis said. “Somebody spoke to him. We told him you’d had a close call but that you were fine.”

It was just before ten when the police finally left. Before they departed they explained the drill to me: I would have to
go downtown the next day and make an official statement.

Danny said she would put out a plate of food for me, and while she fussed in the kitchen, I called Jack. I thanked him, told
him that if he hadn’t called the police, I would surely have been killed. We agreed that we would meet at my place the next
night at six. My voice was full of things I didn’t want to fully express until I was face-to-face with him.