“Yes.”
“And you let him sleep with you before so he’d think Kevin was his.”
“Yes. But I told him the truth about how it happened… a mistake with my birth control pills.”
“So he never knew he wasn’t Kevin’s father.”
“He suspected it. Every time he accused me of having an affair, he’d say, ‘That kid’s not mine, is he? He’s somebody else’s little bastard.’ That’s why he fought me in court, why he took Kevin and locked him up and half- starved him for four months-to punish me and my bastard son.”
Fallon said, “Young gave you money to hire a private detective. Why wouldn’t he let you have the two thousand to take to Vegas? Or did you lie to me about that too?”
“No. Vernon said it was a setup, that Court was behind it. I wouldn’t believe him. So I took the money… borrowed it. I knew he wouldn’t go to the police. I lied to you about that.”
“Yeah,” Fallon said.
“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t tell you about Vernon and me, Kevin being his son.”
“No, because you were afraid I wouldn’t help you if I knew the truth.”
She made no reply. Her breathing seemed a little labored now.
He said, “Sunday night. After we talked, you called Young or he called you and you told him Spicer was in Laughlin. Told him Spicer was using Co-River Management as a mail drop.”
“Yes.”
“What else? The rape, the suicide attempt?”
“Just the rape. He… it made him furious. He said Court had gone too far. He said maybe he ought to go to Laughlin, rescue Kevin himself, have it out with Court.”
Man up for once in his life. Hell, cowboy up. Charge in, playing the hero with a gun in his hand. Stupid.
Not that Rick Fallon had been a whole lot smarter.
Casey was saying, “I begged him to let you handle it, you’d done so much already, and finally he said he would. That’s why I went to Laughlin with you. But he brooded about it and changed his mind.”
“How did he find out where Spicer was living?”
“He called the head of the management company Monday morning. Realtors with Vernon’s reputation… it was easy for him to get the address.”
Easy. And obvious, now. Fallon should have figured it out on his own; would have if he’d remembered thinking about Casey’s real estate license and professional reciprocity when they arrived at Co-River Management.
He said, “So then Young drove or flew to Laughlin-”
“Drove.”
“And walked into Spicer’s house with a gun and confronted him.”
“He didn’t mean to kill him. But Court tried to grab the gun, and it… he said it just went off.”
It just went off. The blanket excuse used by every damn fool who didn’t know anything about guns and blew somebody away with one. Young hadn’t meant to kill Spicer, and Casey hadn’t meant to give him the push that caused him to break his neck on the hearthstone. A couple of senseless accidents. And in their wake there was wreckage-a traumatized little boy with two dead fathers and a lying mother, all of whom had betrayed him, and the mother with her zombie eyes and guilt over the death of her lover burned into her conscience.
“Did Kevin see that, too? The shooting?”
“No. He was locked in his room until Vernon let him out.” The words came more slowly now. She sat slumped down in the chair, as if the alcohol effects were wearing off and she was very tired. “But he saw Court lying there dead. He was in shock, crying, when Vernon picked me up.”
“He called you on your cell right after it happened, and you told him where you were.”
“Yes. Oh God, I was so happy Kevin was safe. So happy then.”
“And the three of you drove straight here.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you contact me? Why leave me dangling?”
“I wanted to call. Vernon wouldn’t let me. He said Kevin was safe and you… didn’t matter anymore.”
“Bullshit,” Fallon said. “I mattered to him, all right. He was afraid I’d find out Spicer was dead and he was responsible.”
“You did find out. You found us.”
“Yeah. I found out a lot of things, some of them too late.”
“I’m sorry,” she said.
The hell you are, he thought.
She sighed, long-drawn and quavery. “We shouldn’t have come here. I wanted to go home, or to Vegas for my car. Kevin wanted to go home. All those months being locked up like a prisoner, seeing Court dead… my God, what he’s gone through.”
“Why wouldn’t Young let you go?”
“He said he wasn’t ready to go back to San Diego yet, he needed time to regroup… there’d be nobody here but some men who take care of the date groves during the day and they wouldn’t bother us. He was so upset, I’d never seen him like that before. He couldn’t pull himself together. Couldn’t stop drinking, talking about the blood on his hands, blaming me…”
Guilt. Fear. And whatever else unhinged men like Vernon Young.
“I started drinking in self-defense and couldn’t stop and then tonight… tonight I killed him.” She swallowed with visible effort. Fuzzily she said, “Can I have something to drink?”
“No more booze.”
“Water. My throat’s dry.”
Fallon found his way to the kitchen, found a tumbler and filled it. Then he used his cell phone to call 911, gave the operator the ranch address and a brief explanation of what had happened here. He gave her his name, too; there was no way to avoid involving himself now.
When he came back into the dining room, Casey was bent forward across the table with her head pillowed on one arm. Passed out, he thought. He set the tumbler down, pulled her upright in the chair. Her head lolled to one side and he saw that her color wasn’t good. He used his thumb to raise one of her eyelids. The eyeball was half rolled up, the pupil fixed and the white blood-veined.
A coldness slithered across his shoulder blades. He slapped her four times, hard. No response, other than faint moans.
He ran to where the bedrooms and master bath were at the rear. The bathroom door stood open. The reason she’d taken so long to fetch the ice for Kevin’s ankle was that she’d been in here part of the time. In the sink were an empty plastic vial and a couple of small white tablets. He caught up the vial, read the label.
Ambien. Sleeping pills.
Shit! Why hadn’t he seen this coming too?
He ran back to the dining room. Casey was sitting as he’d left her, head lolling, eyes shut. If she wasn’t unconscious, she was close to it.
“No, goddamn it,” he said to her, “you won’t die this time either. Not
THREE
HER PULSE RATE WAS irregular, her breathing shallow but not overly labored-no trachea blockage. He felt her forehead, her cheeks; her body temperature didn’t seem to have dropped. Again he slapped her face, rhythmically, back and forth, back and forth, the sound of the slaps echoing in the stillness. She moaned, rolled her head from side to side, finally began to struggle feebly. One of her eyelids lifted partway, then the other; her eyeballs had rolled up, showing mostly blood-flecked whites. She slurred the word “Stop.”
He dragged the chair back, hauled her out of it, swung her into his arms. In the bathroom again, he put her down on her knees in front of the toilet, held her there with one hand and slapped her several more times to make sure she was still conscious. Then he tilted her head over the bowl, opened her mouth and shoved the first two
