chance. I brought along a change of clothes as part of our game, and I left nothing behind. Not even the towels I used to wipe the blood off of my hands. I burned it all when I got home. Towels, clothes, my flip-flops-just like you said. And then I got busy acting like the concerned husband. I called our late man, Rich. I called the state police. And I waited there for someone to knock on my door to tell me Donna was dead. Des, as it turned out. I think I was pretty convincing as the grieving widower. I learned a few pointers about acting from Tito. The main thing he told me is you have to believe the dialogue. I believed it, all right. I believed every damned word of it.”
“How could you do it, Will? How could you murder Donna that way? Tito I can comprehend. It was a momentary spasm of anger. But Donna’s death was something that you plotted out really, really carefully. How could you?”
“I told you, I’m not in control of myself anymore!” he cried out. “I loved Donna, don’t you see? And now I’m all alone and I’m scared and I’m desperate and I-I don’t want to go to prison for therest of my life. That’s why I had to kill her. If she’d told anyone, I’d be finished.”
“You are finished, Will. It’s all over now. Come on, let’s go do the right thing, okay? Let’s go call Des. I’ll be by your side the whole way, I promise.” Mitch fumbled around in the dark for his tape recorder, shut it off and stuck it in the back pocket of his shorts. Then he grabbed the schnapps bottle and climbed to his feet, flicking his flashlight beam on Will. “Tell me something-was it any easier?”
Will remained crouched there on the granite ledge, staring out into the fog-shrouded blackness. He seemed very calm now, very at peace with himself. “Was what easier?”
“Killing Donna. It’s supposed to be easier to murder someone if you’ve already killed once before.”
“No, that’s a Victorian myth, same as thinking you can be ‘cured’ of being gay. Just because you’ve killed once doesn’t mean that you’ve gone over to the dark side, Mitch. I hated what I did, and I’ll be haunted by it for as long as I live.” Will looked up at him now, blinking in the torchlight. “Quite honestly, I don’t think the third time will be any easier either.”
It happened so fast.
Will lunged at him with such sudden ferocity that Mitch’s flashlight went clattering to the rocks and rolled right over the cliff, plunging them back into darkness as they wrestled with each other there on the slick granite ledge, slipping and sliding. Will trying with all of his might to push Mitch over the edge. Mitch trying with all of his own might to stop him.
“Will, don’t do this!” he gasped, struggling to dig his heels in. He did have heft on his side, and a lower center of gravity. But Will had a distinct advantage of his own-he was insane. “You have to turn yourself in.”
“Never,” he gasped back at him.
They fell to the ledge now, rolling around there on the narrow shelf of rock, punching and kicking and clawing for their very lives. And there was only them and the roaring water and the blackness of certain death a hundred feet below.
Will was back up on his feet, kicking blindly at Mitch in the dark, smashing him in his ribs, his shoulder, his neck.
Mitch scrambled away, groping desperately in the dark for a stone, a weapon. His fingers found the schnapps bottle-but Will’s powerful hands found his throat. And Will was choking him and choking him. And Mitch was fighting for breath as he raised the bottle high over his head, gasping, gagging, until with the very last bit of power that was left in his body Mitch smashed Will Durslag hard in the face, shattering the bottle and pitching the taller man over backward, right over the cliff.
Which would have been fine by Mitch except for one thing-Will was still holding on to him by his shirt.
And so as he went over Mitch went over, too, his own legs flailing wildly in space as Will hung there in midair, clutching on to him for dear life. Mitch tried in vain to grab on to the moss, to the wet stone, something, anything. Feeling Will’s weight pulling him down, down the sheer edge of the cliff, moss coming away in his fingers, bare stone refusing to yield him even the merest finger or toehold as he slid and he slid and he-
Until with a sudden rip Mitch’s shirt gave way in Will’s hand and Will was gone, screaming, into the blackness of the night, his roar and the roar of the waterfall merging into one.
Freed of Will’s weight, Mitch clung there to the sheer side of the cliff for a brief, gravity-defying instant. But now he could feel himself falling again, scrabbling, kicking, trying to put on the brakes. Except there was nothing to hold on to and it was all happening too fast and he was going and he was going-until his hand just wrapped itself around a spindly tree branch, halting his fall.
And now he was hanging there by one arm, his body swinging free in the air, and there was only enough time for one final realization.
I am never going to see Desiree Mitry again. I am going to die. I am going to die. I am going to…
CHAPTER 14
Des had to be so damned careful.
As much as she wanted to floor it straight for the falls, she didn’t dare. Couldn’t take the chance that Will Durslag would spot her cruiser at the gate and wig out. Because there was absolutely no telling what that man was liable to do to him. Assuming that Mitch was right and it was Will who’d killed Tito and Donna. Maybe Mitch was totally wrong about his walking buddy. Maybe Will could convince him of this. Maybe he and Will would have a perfectly pleasant conversation, shake hands, and go their separate ways.
Then again, maybe not.
She used an entrance that was way over on the other side of the park, at Witch Meadow. Kathleen Moloney drove over from her cabin to raise the gate for Des. The young ranger had to wonder why Des needed to get into the park at one o’clock in the morning. But she was too sleepy to act genuinely interested, and she did not offer to tag along.
Des made do with her parking lights as she sped through the fog-shrouded park on a narrow service road, asking herself why she was letting herself get dragged into this fool gambit of Mitch’s after all. Even though she’d sworn up and down that she wouldn’t. Even though his impulsive desire to make things right sometimes seemed as if it came straight out of those old Hollywood movies of his, as opposed to the real world. Even though not one bit of this was smart or sane.
Why, damn it?
Because he was her boy, that’s why, and he was what he was. She could not change him. She could only love him, even when he acted crazy. And if anything happened to that pudgy pink butthead tonightbecause she wasn’t up there watching his back she would never forgive herself.
She would just die.
She left her cruiser a quarter mile up the service road from the river, hearing the roar of the falls now. She made it the rest of the way on foot, stumbling her way along the footpath in the darkness. She did make sparing use of her flashlight, holding it low to the ground, pointed straight down. But once she’d reached the guardrail she did not dare use it at all. Plunging herself into utter blackness, she climbed over the rail and crept slowly out onto slick bare granite, the river roaring as it raced by her, her eyes and ears straining for some sign of human life. But it was no use. She was blind and she was deaf. It was straight out of a nightmare.
Except this was no nightmare. This was real.
All she needed was a hint of where they were. One hint. A breath of a voice. A trace of movement. But as she crept slowly forward in her crablike crouch, there was nothing. Not one thing… Wait, was that the sound of glass breaking? No, her ears were playing tricks on her. It was nothing. She couldn’t even be sure they were here at all.
Not until she heard a man’s bloodcurdling scream.
It came from very close to her-no more than ten feet away. And now all bets were off and she was up on her feet with her flashlight out, charging toward the edge of the cliff, waving her beam around the granite promontory.
Except there was no one.
They were gone. Both gone.
She was all alone up there-just her and a broken liquor bottle that glistened on the granite. Peppermint
