Power to the Max (39 page)

“He had this game he liked to play. And he punished me if I didn’t play it. He’d hold out his fisted hands, and he’d make me put mine beneath them. He had ... things in there. Sometimes there were good things, like a handful of change or candy. And sometimes the things were very, very bad.” Her voice had dropped once more to a whisper. “You’d never know which it was going to be.”

Max wondered what would have been bad for a child. What could have been the worst?

“One time it was a slug out of the garden.” Angela shivered. “A huge ugly slimy thing. I ... I...”

Angela would have thought she’d die when it touched her skin. It probably stuck, too. She would have had to shake and shake her hand to get it off. Max caught her breath. Yes, that’s exactly how it would have been.

“That’s why you wouldn’t hold your hand out for the key, wasn’t it?”

“What?” Angela sent her a strange, shocked look.

“Lance. He had a bracelet in one hand and the key to your new apartment in his other. But you wouldn’t play.”

Angela’s lips tensed, though she kept her gaze straight ahead. “How do you know that?”

Max didn’t explain. Instead she kept asking questions. “But when did he finally give you that key? When he gave you the bracelet?” Max looked down at the blue sparkle of jewels around Angela’s wrist.

Angela’s swallow was almost audible. Or perhaps Max felt it.

Max went on, as if she’d actually been in the office. She had, in her vision. “Lance decided he would give it to you later, then you had sex. Julia walked in right when Lance climaxed.” She stared at Angela. “And then you said you left. So, when did he give you the bracelet and tell you about the apartment?” Because she knew Angela had touched that apartment key.

Max looked at the rain pounding on the windshield, the wipers throwing it off. Her pulse picked up its pace. “Angela, we’re way past any Hillsborough exits. Where’s your shortcut?” Her heart started to race. The blood in her ears began to roar. “What did you do with the key?” she managed to whisper.

Angela put a hand to the lapel of her jacket, pulled it aside. Pinned to the lining lay a shiny gold key.

Max wanted to cry.

Angela slid her purse to the middle of her lap, her right hand stuck inside it. “You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?”

Oh God, no. Please not Angela. “It wasn’t Julia, it was you.”

“Would it help if I denied it?”

“Maybe if you didn’t have that gun in your hand.” Max tipped her head. Too late now, though. She didn’t want to think about what Angela was going to do with that gun. “Tell me why you killed him. Was it some sort of weird flashback when he did the fist thing?”

Angela laughed, then choked it off. “That’s only in the movies. No flashbacks. Julia said ... some things before she left. He knew they hurt me. I believe he gave me the bracelet and the key thinking they’d make me happy. But I knew it was a bad thing, a very bad thing. He’d take away my freedom. He wanted to put me in a box where only he could play with me, to use me when he wanted in any way he wanted, to make me his slave.”

“Just like your father.”

“Exactly. He wanted all the power. I couldn’t give it to him.”

“What happened then?”

Angela rubbed at her nose, the gun in her hand pointing at the window. No one seemed to see. She might have been crying, though no tears ran down her cheeks. “I slapped the key out of his hand. And then he slapped me.” She jerked her head as if feeling it all over again. “I’d been cleaning up the mess we’d made, picking all the stuff up off the floor, and there it was, in my hand.”

“The letter opener.”

“So I stabbed him.” She bit her lip. “Just another abuser, Max.” She turned to Max, and the car veered to the right. Angela automatically corrected the swerve. “The world doesn’t need them. The Lances, the pimps, the fathers—”

“The uncles,” Max whispered.

Angela’s eyes shone. “You’re a sister, Max. You understand.”

Playing along, agreeing was her only chance. “Yes, I understand.”

“So, you won’t tell anyone?”

“We’re sisters. I don’t think I could.” Max understood, but she hated the lie. Because she’d tell the minute she got away from Angela. “Where are we going?”

“A place I know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call Bud.”

Max knew it was a lie. “You’re going to kill me.”

“I don’t want to.” Angela took the turn-off for Crystal Springs Reservoir.

Max knew it well, a place beloved of bikers, walkers, joggers, men who wanted to commit rape, and women who wanted to commit murder. The rain beat steady on the windshield, and
shushed
up from the macadam of the road. A beat up VW van and a new Lexus sat unoccupied in the otherwise empty parking lot.

Holding the gun in plain sight, Angela parked. Too damn bad the Jag hadn’t been a five speed. Max could have jumped from the car while Angela concentrated on shifting.

“You’re a crusader, Max. You couldn’t not tell. And I’m a survivor. So it’s you or me.” Angela opened her car door, scooted out, never taking her eyes off Max. “Come out this way.” She signaled for Max to crawl across the front bucket seat.

“I’ll get out on my side.”

“No. I don’t trust you not to pull a fast one.”

“What can I do, Angela? You’ve got the gun.”

“That’s right. So do what I tell you.”

Max looked at the steadiness of the gun in Angela’s hand. Angela was a survivor. Angela would kill her in the car, if she had to, and worry about cleaning up the blood later. Max crawled over the center console, pulled her feet up behind her and landed in the driver’s seat.

Angela had the keys and the gun. She’d also stepped back several paces so Max couldn’t lunge at her.

Max climbed out, stood tall, and looked at the line of trees edging the lot, the denser forest behind them. Rain soaked her hair and her clothes, ran into her eyes. “Remember I told you my husband’s killers raped me, beat me and left me to die in a park?”

She heard the pain in Angela’s single word answer. “Yes.”

“This is where they brought me.” Max heard an echo of Cameron’s voice as he’d talked to her that night, to keep her alive.

“Don’t tell me any more, Max. Come over here.” Angela pointed with the gun. Max followed.

“Don’t what, Angela? Don’t try to make you feel bad for what you’re about to do?”

Angela swiped at her soggy hair with her free hand, then gripped the gun with both hands. “I feel bad. All right? But I don’t have a choice.”

“It won’t be as easy for you as it was with Lance.”

“I know,” Angela said on the out-breath. “Let’s go.”

The trees enveloped them. Angela’s ragged breath sounded behind her. Max walked a hundred yards and stopped in a small clearing. “This is where they left me.” She pointed at the ground. Covered with leaves, the crushed remains of grass, and thousands of footprints, the long ago imprint of her body glowed like an aura. She looked up at Angela.

“Would you like me to lie down? Might as well do it in the same spot, then it’ll be like I never actually lived through that night. Maybe I didn’t, and this has all been a dream.”

“Please stop.” Angela’s chin quivered. Rain sluiced down her face. Max knew tears mixed with the raindrops.

“Am I making you feel guilty, Angela?”

“Yes.” For the first time, the gun trembled in her hands. “But that doesn’t change what I have to do. Turn around.” She gestured with the gun.

“No.” Max stood, legs slightly spread, rain cold down her back, beneath her shirt, her nose runny and her eyes blurring with wet mascara. “You’ve got to shoot me while I’m looking at you.”

“You’re very brave.” Angela sniffed loudly. “You must think I won’t do it.”

Max felt the squelch of her shoes as she shifted. Her stomach had climbed high up into her throat, and the beating of her heart washed away everything but the gun barrel pointed at her face. “I know you’re going to do it. I just want to make sure you remember this for the rest of your life.”

Silence descended, except for rain falling through the trees, Angela’s sniffles, the swish of fabric as she wiped her nose on her sleeve, and the distant thunder of traffic on the drenched concrete freeway. The smell of moldering leaves rose to her nostrils, the scent of her wet woolen slacks, the sweat of fear, hers, Angela’s.

Something cracked in front of her and slightly to the left. Angela heard it, too.

“Police. Drop your weapon.”

Angela swung her arms, gun in hand. Her finger trembled on the trigger, squeezed. Then a shot split the cold silence, and Angela crumbled to her knees. She stayed like that a moment or two, swaying, her finger still on the trigger she’d never managed to pull, then she toppled over onto her side.

The scent of gunpowder hung in the air briefly before the rain squashed it. Max knew it was Witt, but she couldn’t look at him. She could only stare at Angela lying on the ground. Death covered her face like a blanket—not the wide-eyed stare you see on TV. No, this was a loosening of the muscles, a slackening of the flesh, so that she looked slightly ... off, changed, reborn. In death, she lay peacefully, appearing younger in far more than years, almost as innocent as she’d been before she’d turned thirteen.

Twigs and leaves crunched beneath Witt’s shoes. He pushed the gun out of Angela’s reach with his foot, as if she might suddenly rise up like some unstoppable monster, then he went down on one knee to check her pulse. He looked up afterwards, his eyes reflecting the dark gray of the sky.

“How did you know where we were?”

“Horace.”

They spoke softly, in the shroud of the rain, the forest and death. “Your father?”

“My father’s ghost. Or so my mother said.”

“Ladybird called?”

“She interrupted an interrogation with her sense of urgency.” The muscles of his mouth moved, but nothing else.

“And Horace told her where to find me?”

“Horace and your husband. They were together ... somewhere.” Nothing flickered in his unreadable gaze, but the short pause shouted his uneasiness.

Horace had made a prediction. A prediction that one day Witt would kill someone to protect her.

That day had come.

Sirens sounded, far off, but coming inexorably closer. Witt rose, shoved his gun beneath his arm where supposedly he had a holster, and turned his back. His arm up, she was sure he wiped a hand down his face, a moment later he held it over his eyes.

He’d had to kill for her because she was stupid, because she hadn’t listened, and because she’d charged ahead without thinking of the consequences. The consequences didn’t involve only her.

Rounding Angela, gaze on the bloody stain spreading over her chest, Max moved in behind Witt. She was wet and cold, but she didn’t shiver. Steam rose off the shoulders of his jacket. His hair spiked in the rain. He shook his head and water flew. She put her arms around his waist and hugged. He shuddered.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered and knew the words would never be enough to fix what she’d done to him.

Long after Angela had died, after Max had been separated from Witt, not seeing him since, after the police had asked her a million questions, after she’d told a million lies, and after some nameless, faceless cop had driven her back into the City to get her car, Max climbed up onto her front porch. The rain had stopped, darkness had fallen, and her light was on. The one step up seemed almost more than she could handle. Her feet ached, her legs cramped, and her heart had ripped messily in two.

She almost stepped on the small package before seeing it. The writing was unfamiliar, her name smeared by the rain across the brown paper. She held it aloft gingerly, as if some small part of her brain thought it might contain a bomb. Then she shook it, tried to bend it. And she knew. A video from Bud Traynor.