“You said you helped her,” I say, my voice sounding as if it is coming from far away. “What do you mean?”
Uncle Gavin puts his glass down, then gives it a quarter turn on his desk. “I tried to help her find him,” he says. “Sent her money if she needed it. She would check in every month—it was my rule; she had to call at least once a month. Sometimes she’d call and just say she was fine, then hang up. Other times she would need cash wired to some town in the middle of nowhere, or ask me if I had any contacts in Kansas City, or Saint Louis, or Biloxi.” He shakes his head. “Here in Atlanta, I know lots of things, the right people to call. Out there …” He sighs again, gives his glass another quarter turn.
“What happened with Marisa?” I murmur.
He holds the glass still and looks down into it. “Susannah called me late that night,” he says. “She needed help. I couldn’t send anyone; I had to come myself. She was on Roswell Road, all the way up near Dalrymple in the parking lot of some strip mall. Most of the businesses were shuttered. I drove up there and pulled into the parking lot, and she was standing at the far end of the strip, as far away from the main road as she could be. Almost didn’t see her, but she called when I turned into the lot and told me where she was. She took me behind the building to the service bays. There was a red Audi parked in one. Marisa was in the car, sitting behind the wheel.” He turns the glass another quarter turn. “She was dead.”
I drink the rest of my whiskey, my hand shaking ever so slightly, then put the glass down and drop my face into my hands again. Suze, I think.
“Susannah told me what Marisa had done to you, to her. Marisa found that article about those men from Jacksonville in your sister’s backpack. That must be how she learned their names. I don’t know how your sister found her, but she got Marisa to agree to meet her after … the situation at your house. They met, and argued, and Marisa told her what she’d done, how she was looking for Donny Wharton and the others.” My uncle looks directly at me, and for the first time ever his face is completely unguarded—he looks old, old and tired, like a rock face etched and worn down by wind and weather and time. “Your sister told her to stop, and Marisa started yelling, going berserk, tried to claw out your sister’s eyes. So your sister hit her, in the throat. She told me she just wanted to shut her up. Instead, she crushed her windpipe.”
My sister killed her, I think. Murdered her. I want to tell my uncle to stop, to not tell me anymore, and yet I’m drawn to listen, to hear, no matter how sick it makes me feel.
“We put Marisa in the trunk of her car, and I drove it onto 285,” he says. “There’s an industrial district on the Chattahoochee south of Six Flags. I left her car behind one of the warehouses down there, tucked behind a dumpster. If I’d had more time, I could have maybe made her vanish, but this was the best I could do. Susannah followed in my car, picked me up, and we left. Then I drove her to Birchwood and she checked in.”
I stare at the blue carpet on the floor, trying to discern some pattern in the threads. “What about fingerprints?” I say. “Hair, all of that?” I look up. “Jesus, Uncle Gavin, you could both go to prison. Get the death penalty.”
He actually smiles. It holds more sorrow and bitterness than humor, true, but he smiles nonetheless. “I know how to clean a car,” he says. “But they found hair. Just not mine or Susannah’s.”
I look blankly at him, and he looks back at me, waiting for me to figure it out. It doesn’t take too long. They found other evidence, Johnny Shaw told me. “Donny Wharton’s,” I say. “You … you planted his hair in Marisa’s car?”
“Your sister did,” he says. “She’d been following Donny Wharton a long time. Had some of his hair in an evidence bag in her backpack. I asked her why and she said she didn’t know, just thought it might come in useful someday.” He says this last as if he’s proud of her.
“Wait,” I say, because realization has washed over me and I’m struggling for air as if I’ve been pulled underwater by a sudden riptide. “You lied to me,” I continue. “You … you already knew Susannah had killed Marisa when I came to you. You fucking asked me if I’d done it.” Uncle Gavin begins to open his mouth, and I talk over him. “Don’t you tell me not to curse in front of you, Goddamn it. You don’t get that option. How long were you going to string me along?” Then another wave of realization hits me. “Did Susannah fake everything? The suicide attempt, all of it?” I grip my head as if that’s the only thing keeping it together.
Uncle Gavin gets up from his chair and makes his way around his disaster of a desk until he is standing next to me. “I lied because I was protecting Susannah,” he says. “No one could know. Not even you. She wanted to tell you about what she’d done, but I said no. And I’d do it again. I let Caesar check Marisa’s phone to make sure there wasn’t anything connecting either your sister or you to her death. I didn’t want to drag you into it any more than you already were.” He lets out
