Heads You Lose (34 page)

“So you didn’t have anything to do with Doc Holland’s plane crashing?”

“Sometimes planes just crash, Lacey.”

“Right.”

“Can’t say I’m broken up about it,” Hart said, letting a smile creep over his face.

“Did Holland kill my parents?” Lacey asked.

“Yes. Why do you think he was paying me off all those years?”

“Because he wasn’t a real doctor.”

“Nope. That’s what Sook thought. But if that was all Holland had done, he would have moved to another town that needed a quack. I had him by the balls for years. But then I had to lay low when I was working out this plan. As soon as he thought I was out of the picture, he made a run for it. Then the new doc moved to town.”

“That was his son. Did you know that?”

“I did not,” Hart said, clearly taken aback. “You know, that makes me feel better about killing him and all. Karma.”

As Hart stared at his ex-fiancée, Lacey did her best to avoid any display of the tangled emotions that were fighting to surface.

“What do you say we get out of here?” Hart casually suggested.

“Sure,” Lacey replied. “Just let me finish packing.”

“One suitcase,” Hart said. “Anything else we need, we can buy. Between the two of us, we got all the money we need.”

Hart picked up a grungy backpack that was on the floor next to the window. He unzipped it, revealing several bundles of hundred-dollar bills.

“How much is in there?” Lacey asked.

“One hundred and eighty-five thousand.”

“All that money you got from Doc Holland?”

“And a few other business ventures. But don’t worry, darling. Wherever we end up, I plan on going legit. We’ll be just like your all-American family. I’m thinking picket fence, 1.5 children, barbecues, soccer games, maybe I’ll even buy a lawn mower. The kind you can sit on and drive around. And I’ll have a real job.”

“Doing what?” Lacey asked.

“I’m thinking about starting a hedge fund.”

Lacey and Hart could hear a truck stirring up gravel on the driveway. Then the engine died.

“You expecting someone?” Hart asked.

Lacey raced to the window and peered out.

“It’s Paul,” she said. “You should hide.”

“Hide? I haven’t seen Paul in ages. We have a lot of catching up to do.”

“Please don’t kill him.”

“Got any beer?” Hart said, disappearing into the kitchen.

Lacey opened the front door as she heard Paul fumbling with his keys.

“Stay calm,” she said.

“I am calm,” Paul replied.

Paul pushed his way past his sister, just as Hart exited the kitchen uncapping a Budweiser.

“Fuck,” Paul said, quickly losing his calm.

“Long time no see,” said Hart with a smile.

“I thought you were dead.”

“Nope. That was somebody else.”

“Lacey, have you called the cops?” Paul asked.

“Nobody’s calling anybody,” Hart replied.

“I think you’re mistaken,” said Paul. He started patting his pockets, looking for his cell phone. “Damn, must have left it in the car. Where’s the phone, Lace?”

Paul headed for the kitchen. Lacey blocked his path.

“Let’s stay calm, Paul.”

After the events of the past few weeks, Lacey’s nerves had flatlined. She hardly had to fake it anymore. She was almost calm.

“I got that the first time, Lace. What’s going on here?”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin or end,” Lacey said.

“How about you start with the headless guy. Who was that?”

“Brice,” Lacey said.

“Nice guy,” Hart said. “It’s a shame he had to die. Under a different set of circumstances, we might have become good friends.”

Until this point, Paul thought he was looking at a ghost. When he realized he was looking at a killer, rage took over.

Paul launched himself at Hart and tackled him onto the coffee table. He landed a few rough blows before Hart could retaliate. But Hart had been getting in scrapes since he was five. Hart kicked Paul in the groin and threw him off. While Paul was curled in a fetal position, moaning, Hart kicked him in the kidneys. When Paul rolled over on his back, Hart stomped on his ribs.

Paul opened his mouth to scream for help, but got clipped in the jaw by Hart’s steel-toed boot. Hart then rested his knee on Paul’s broken ribs and pummeled his face until it was covered in blood.

“Stop,” Lacey said, standing over the two men. Her expression was even—the only evidence of fear was the slight rattle of the gun in her hand. Lacey pulled back the hammer on Sook’s gun and aimed it at the center of Hart’s chest.

Hart looked at Lacey, amused.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Don’t aim a gun at a man unless you plan on using it,” Hart said, getting to his feet.

“You think I won’t shoot you?”

“You don’t have it in you, Lacey.”

“Now I do,” Lacey replied.

She pulled the trigger. Hart looked down at the hole in his belly and smiled, as if he suddenly realized that he and Lacey had more in common than he thought. Lacey pulled the trigger again because the smile unsettled her. Then she pulled it one more time because Hart was still standing.

And then he wasn’t standing anymore.

While Paul held an ice pack to the side of his face and winced from the collection of injuries he had amassed, Lacey told him everything she knew. Every unsolved murder was now solved. There was no audible clicking, but it’s fair to say everything did indeed click into place. Now there was only a mess to clean up.

“What now?” Paul asked.

“We could call the cops,” Lacey said.

“We could do that,” Paul dully replied. “Any other options?”

“We could bury the body, clean up this mess, and get out of town.”

Paul was stumped. “How do we decide?”

Lacey pulled a quarter from her pocket.

“We could leave it up to chance,” she said. She interpreted Paul’s silence as agreement. “Heads we bury him. Tails we call the cops. Okay?”

Lacey flipped the coin and smacked it on the back of her hand.

“Heads,” she said, stuffing the quarter back in her pocket. “Well, at least this time we know what we’re doing.”

Paul would never learn that the quarter came up tails.

Lacey and Paul got a second wind when they realized that there was an end in sight. Lacey stuffed her hair into a baseball cap, donned gardening gloves, and covered them with plastic dishwashing gloves. Paul pulled an old tent from the garage and used it as a tarp to wrap up the body. He pulled the truck deep into their driveway in a direct line from their back door. They dragged the dead weight through the kitchen and along the back porch to the truck. Lacey counted to three and they hauled the body onto the truck bed.

At no moment did Lacey even think to cry. As far as she was concerned, Hart had been dead for months. She couldn’t begin to imagine what she ever saw in that guy.

Even though he’d thought Hart dead for weeks, Paul found himself wondering if anyone would really miss Hart. His mother was the only person who came to mind. He pitied her, but after all the damage Hart had done, he couldn’t summon any emotion other than that.

The living room had that distinct metallic odor of blood. A thick pool of deep crimson began to seep into the hardwood floor.

“How will you clean this up?” Paul asked.

“I like how you assume that I’m going to clean it up,” Lacey replied.

“I am severely injured,” Paul said.

Neither of them made a move. They had watched far too many episodes of
Nightcrimes
to know that this amount of DNA would be impossible to wash away.

“I have an idea,” Paul said.

Lacey packed her car with only the bare essentials—one suitcase and their family photo album. Everything else, she figured, would just be a bad memory. Paul took his stereo, CDs, his entire DVD collection, and a shovel, all of which he loaded in the back of the truck on top of Hart’s body. They scrubbed their hands and changed into clean clothes.

Paul traveled throughout their rambler, pouring gasoline in every bedroom and exiting through the back door. He lit a match and tossed it inside. He watched the flames snake through the house and suddenly become a massive blaze. This part almost made Lacey cry. Almost. She tossed Hart’s insurance check into the bonfire. As they watched the flames, a thought occurred to Lacey.

“Paul, why’d you come back to the house tonight?”

“Brandy kicked me out. Said I had no ambition or intellectual curiosity. That I drank too much beer. The usual.”

“Will she take you back?”

“Sure. I just got to get ambition and intellectual curiosity.”

“Huh. How will you do that?”

“She wants me to read
War and Peace.
”

“Big book.”

“She likes the Russians.”

“There’s always CliffsNotes,” Lacey replied.

Paul coughed from the smoke fumes.

“Time to go,” Lacey said.

“I’ll see you there.” Paul got into his truck and drove away.

Lacey watched the flames for a little while longer. She felt a surprising satisfaction in watching her whole life burn to the ground.

The siblings convened at the first site where they had tried to dispose of the body previously known as Hart. They figured it was as good a place as any. And it’s not like anyone was going to go hunting for a dead guy. They dragged the corpse about a half-mile down the trail and then dropped him over the edge. They hiked down the woodsy ravine and started digging a grave. About two hours of hard labor had passed, mostly Lacey’s, when they felt satisfied that Hart could remain interred there. When the earth had swallowed the body, Lacey and Paul hiked back up the trail and, once again, dusted away their footprints with a tree branch. They could hear the sirens of fire engines in the distance.

When Paul and Lacey reached the parking lot of the rest stop, they loitered by Paul’s truck. They hadn’t thought about it before, but they were going to say good-bye. At least for a long while.

“Where are you going?” Paul said.

“I have no idea,” Lacey replied.

“Sounds nice. I hope you’re happy there.”

“And I hope you’re happy wherever you end up. Even if it is with Brandy.”

“Thank you,” Paul replied.

“I’m sorry about how things turned out,” Lacey said.

“Me too.”

“But it wasn’t all bad, was it?” Lacey asked.

“No. Not all of it.”

“We didn’t die, did we?”

“No. We didn’t die.”

“See you later, Paul.”

“Not if I see you first.”

They hugged awkwardly. Then Paul got into his truck, pulled it onto the road, and headed north to Tulac. Lacey turned south, back into town. She had one more errand to run before she could leave for good.

She parked on the side of the road, outside Mapleshade. Her flashlight guided her through the woods and she followed the ribbon markers left by Sook. She found the patch of unsettled dirt where Sook hid his stash and dug it up with her hands. She buried Hart’s money with Sook’s gun. Even though she wanted no part of it, there was no good reason all that cash should go to waste.

No one saw her come or go. As she was driving away, she left a message on Sook’s cell phone.

“Sook, it’s me. You might want to disinter your petty cash in the near future. Be good,” she said.

And then she took the first road heading east, because she could drive the farthest in that direction.

She turned to her passenger and said, “I hope you’re up for an adventure, Irving.”

Irving was just a cat, so he didn’t respond.

NOTES:

Dave,

Sorry about Irving. I decided to keep him. I wish you the best in all your future endeavors. Really, I do.

Lisa

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

David Hayward
wishes to thank Tom and Quinn for the save, Matt for the science, Frank and Ben for the encouragement, Marysue and Stephanie for the guidance, Matthew and Joey for the support, Robin for the bus ride, Gerard for the Gerard,
⁴⁹
and Lisa for everything.