Wreckage (22 page)

“Shhh, it’s okay.” I leaned my head on top of hers, avoiding the raw patches. “You’re safe. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again. I promise.”

“I killed him,” she repeated, dazed. “I really killed him.”

“You saved my life, Lily. You had no other choice.”

“I took his life. I could have stopped myself but I didn’t. When I saw him choking you on the ground, I
decided
to kill him. When I picked up that knife I . . . I knew what I was going to do. That’s premeditation. I’m a murderer.”

“He didn’t stop when he had the chance, did he? You were defending yourself, you were defending me. I’d be dead without you.”

She hesitated, as if searching for a rebuttal. “Do you think I’ll go to jail?” she asked.

She was losing it. “Jail?” I tried not to laugh. “What, is the Professor going to call nine-one-one on his coconut phone?” I checked to see if I’d made her smile.

“That’s not funny right now, David.” She pulled my arm into her lap. “I mean, if we get out of here, they’ll dig him up so his family can take him home. They’ll know he was stabbed, over and over again, in the back. I’ve seen
Datelines
with less evidence result in a guilty verdict. That could be me. I could leave this prison only to be put in another one.”

“No way. I was there, I saw what he was doing to you and to me. I can tell them.” I was trying to calm her but the way she laid it all out I was starting to see her point. What
would
happen if we were rescued? What if they saw Kent’s body?

“Then you’d be called my accomplice.” She squeezed my hand, her dirt-crusted fingernails shifting up and down against my knuckles. “Anyway, you were passed out when I did it. Your testimony wouldn’t help much. I know I must sound paranoid but I’m starting to understand that bad things, horrible things even, can happen to anyone.”

“Do you want me to check, Lily? Do you want me to be sure?”

She nodded. We have to face it sooner or later. If he was dead, we couldn’t leave him there, at the edge of the pool. That was our source of life, fresh water, and if we hadn’t tainted it already with all the fighting we surely would if we let Kent rot there.

Then again, if he wasn’t dead . . . the thought made the acidic taste of hatred climb in my throat. What would we do then? I guess we’d have to care for him. It was the last thing I wanted to do but Lily would never allow me to let him die intentionally.

I reluctantly untangled my fingers from hers. The sweat from our hands mixed with the mud on our palms, making my hand sticky and cool when I pulled away and stood up. The full force of gravity slammed me like it was turned up by five or ten thousand pounds of pressure, and it took a few clumsy steps before I could stand up straight.

Kent was still facedown in the mud. It took only a few steps to see the blood, red as food coloring, staining the back of his white pilot shirt. I counted gashes in the fabric . . . one, two, three, four . . . maybe five. If each rip corresponded to a stab wound, then Lily was right: Kent was dead.

If Lily was right . . . I could finish that sentence in so many ways. If Lily was right, I’d have to turn his lifeless body over, I’d have to touch his neck or wrist to search for a pulse, I’d have to look into his empty eyes and know that my struggling beneath him was the last thing Kent saw in his entire life. If Lily was right, I’d have to get rid of him so no one would ever know what happened.

Lily was right. Kent’s skin was already cold when I flipped him over, and it didn’t take a doctor to see the blood running down his chin from internal bleeding. Something about the way his eyes were frozen open reminded me of Theresa when she went. I’d always thought eyes closed peacefully at the moment of death. Margaret went that way. But people suffering these violent deaths seemed different, like they were forever stuck in the emotion of their demise.

One at a time I closed his eyes, the slimy wet eyelids slipping shut effortlessly. It made it easier to look at him. Sitting on my heels, I took a breath and closed my eyes, hoping that along with oxygen I’d inhale inspiration and some idea of what to do now that I couldn’t turn back. Even in death Kent was causing problems. Yet when I opened my eyes, I saw the glint of orange plastic just a few yards away from Kent’s body. The knife he had given me, that he had rid me of, appeared as if in answer to my silent plea.

Lily sat in the same place I’d left her, pushed into the rocks, head resting on her knees. As I approached, she looked up, painfully hopeful.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes, he is.”

“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,” she chanted.

“Don’t lose it now, Lily. I’ll take care of it.” I knelt down in front of her as though I were begging her to stop her rapid slip into shock. “No one will ever know.”

“How?” She asked the one question I didn’t want to answer.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll do it all. Let’s get you to the shelter, warm you up by the fire, get these clothes dry, and I’ll make it so you never have to think about this day ever again.” She started to protest but seemed to run out of steam before she could get any momentum.

I helped Lily limp to camp, the clothes slung over my aching shoulder. I ignored my pain, knowing Lily must be in so much more. We didn’t speak as we walked or as I stoked the dying embers of the fire once we finally arrived at our beach. Neither of us dared break that solemn silence between us, even when I took her into the ocean to bathe, and she cried because the salt burned in her wounds.

Then I held her, held her tight to my chest as she cried and cried until the sun burned high in the sky and she dozed off into a fitful sleep. I loved her weight in my arms. It was like I’d always been an unbalanced scale that was finally correctly calibrated.

I watched her sleep and when the pounding in my head turned into a dull pulsing, I lay her down gently, like putting a baby to bed. By then I had a plan. If it worked, all incriminating evidence would be erased forever.

I returned to the clearing where Kent’s body lay, knife in my pocket and chased away a group of rats by pounding my feet as I approached his stiff body. I lifted one of his heavy bare legs. This wasn’t going to be easy.

I dragged him by his feet through the jungle, stopping off and on to rest. He seemed like concrete, and I wasn’t sure I could make it. After about an hour, I considered dumping him in the trees, letting the bugs and animals get at him. But I promised her, I promised I’d take care of it.

When I finally made it out of the trees, the sun was dipping into the ocean and I was covered in trails of sweat. Kent was worse, much worse, off, his arms marked with deep, oozing gashes. A black train of blood snaked behind us.

When I reached the rocks, I shoved my arms under his and dragged him quickly up to the edge of the cliff. Breathing heavily, I took out my knife. It was still coated in crusty mud from where I’d dug it out of the bushes by the pool. Kent gave me that knife not knowing that one day I’d use it on him.

First, I cut off his clothes one layer at a time till his body lay sprawled naked on the rock face. The knife in my hand felt hungry for something more than clothing. Some part of me wished I’d had the satisfaction of killing Kent or at least I’d been awake to see his face as Lily landed her first blow. I thought this would be hard. I was wrong.

The sun was almost down and I knew it was time. I pressed the knife through Kent’s cold flesh and slashed it, following the thick blue vein on his forearm. The blade made an eerie tearing sound and gelatinous blood seeped out of the long, thin cut. I grabbed his other wrist, sliced deep, only pausing for a second to cover his face with the now-crimson pilot’s shirt when I did his neck.

I guess I expected the blood to flow like a faucet but he’d been dead too long, so it just oozed. I remembered how when Kent caught a sea bird or the occasional rodent, he’d cut their throats and string them up. Lily hated the mess; it brought bugs and rats and smelled horrible when it didn’t rain every day. But now I needed blood and I could only hope a very important cleanup crew would be waiting in the wings.

Shoving him forward till he bent at the waist over the cliff, I sat on his calves and feet. Gravity did the rest, pulling his blood greedily into the churning ocean below. Sunset was supposed to be the time they feed, sunset and sunrise. I knew they were out there. I could only wait for them to show their pointy fins announcing their ominous arrival.

When the light was almost gone, dark shadows flitted in the water, an occasional fin breaking through the waves. Perfect. I climbed off Kent’s legs and gave one last push. Gravity helped one more time and yanked his body down into the ocean, where the predators that smelled his blood waited to devour his flesh and pull him out into open water where his bones would be lost forever. The thought gave me such a rush of relief it almost made me ashamed. Almost.

By the time the stars developed in the night sky, sharks thrashed in the water below. It was louder than I’d expected but it played in my ears like music. I didn’t watch. My sudden macabre streak didn’t extend that far into the darkness, but I did lie on the cold rocks, still wet from the mist of high tide, and listen. It didn’t take long for the splashing to drift off, either getting less frequent or farther away.

Then all was still. I rolled over and stared into the heavens. Was it possible to get used to such amazing beauty? Maybe it was. I was starting to think I could get used to anything.

Kent was dead. Lily stabbed him and I mutilated and disposed of his body. I waited for guilt to overwhelm me but it never did. Instead I fell asleep, safe for the first time since our nightmare began.

Wrapped in that blanket of safety, I drifted into a dreamless sleep where I stayed until the sun broke over the horizon and I felt the stiffness a new day had brought. When my eyes adjusted to the light, a bloody scene lay in front of me. The rocks were deep red with clotted blood, the same as on my hands and clothes. Scrambling to the edge of the rocks, I looked over, unsure what I’d do if his body still floated there. When nothing but crystalline water and waves greeted me I thought,
We are free.

Standing, I hold my hands up to the light to inspect them. Clean enough. The pool I’ve been washing in is a deep orangey red so I quickly kick a bunch of sand over it. I don’t want Lily to stumble into it once she starts her day. A light rain pats my shoulders and for once I’m happy a storm’s rolling in. The rain will wash away Kent’s blood better than I ever could. The fewer reminders of yesterday, the better.

Heading up the beach to camp, I ball up Kent’s shredded clothes, dropping them in the fire as I pass. Damp, they smoke at first, but soon catch fire. Glancing back only once, I see Kent’s embroidered pilot’s emblem smolder into ash. Then, I bound off into the shelter to check on Lily. Kent is the past. She’s my future. I refuse to look back ever again.

CHAPTER 21

LILLIAN

Present

“Could you tell me about the day Kent died?” Genevieve asked.

Lillian was ready for this question. As the story spilled out she mentally kept track of all the “intentional inaccuracies.”

“It was close to our one-year island anniversary (LIE). Kent wanted to go fishing on the reef that morning (LIE) and was up before any of us. Usually we’d fish in pairs but that day he went off on his own (LIE). Dave was cutting fruit and I was in the shelter with Paul (LIE, LIE, LIE). We heard a scream (LIE). It was like nothing I’d heard before but it lasted only a minute and then it was gone. Dave and I ran to the big rock we used for crustaceans (LIE), the one that jutted into the bay and looked out over the water. We didn’t see anything. We called his name, walked the beaches and then the whole island but it was like he’d just disappeared (LIE). I guess we’ll never know what really happened (LIE) but we think he was attacked by sharks (TRUE).”

Her hands lay spread wide against her leg, ten lies in sixty seconds. That had to be a record of some kind.

“How did you deal with that loss, Lillian? It must have been . . . crushing.”

“Oh yes, I cried for days, until my eyes and head ached. I didn’t know how we’d survive without him.”

Lillian watched Genevieve Randall as the words settled and felt a small jolt of electricity when the reporter frowned. She’d pulled it off, again.

One of the things that surprised Lillian the most about lying was the rush. She didn’t know if it was because she’d always been a good girl or if she had something seriously wrong with her moral compass, but every successful lie made her feel invincible—for a moment at least. It didn’t last, though, the excitement. It was more like a night of drinking: fun for the night but leaving you with a big hangover and hazy moments of remorse the next morning.

The only people she regretted lying to were her family, especially her boys. She tried to tell herself that they were too young and wouldn’t understand anyway, but every time they asked about how Margaret died or about Paul she felt like a fraud. What right did she have to teach these children right and wrong when she crossed those blurred lines daily?