“You know where we are, right?” Clayton asked.
“What? Of course I know where we are.”
“You know what we passed on the way down. North of here, few miles. I recognized the road when we went past it.”
The road to the Fell’s Quarry. Clayton knew, from my expression, that I had figured out what he was talking about.
“Don’t you see?” Clayton said. “You’d have to know how Enid thinks, but it makes perfect sense. Cynthia, along with your daughter, she finally ends up in the place Enid believes she should have been all these years. And, this time, Enid wants the car and bodies inside to be found right away. Let the police find them. Maybe people’ll think Cynthia was distraught, that somehow she felt responsible, was in despair over what had happened, the death of her aunt. So she drives up there and goes right over the edge.”
“But that’s crazy,” I said. “That might have worked at one time, but not now. Not with other people knowing what’s going on. Us. Vince. It’s insane.”
“Exactly,” Clayton said. “That’s Enid.”
I nearly rammed the car into a Beetle as I drove out of the lot, heading back in the direction we’d come from.
I had the car going over ninety, and as we approached some of the hairpin turns heading north to Otis, I had to slam on the brakes to keep from losing control. Once I had us through the turns, I put my foot to the floor again. We nearly killed a deer that ran across our path, almost took off the front end of a tractor as a farmer came out the end of his driveway.
Clayton barely winced.
He had his right hand wrapped tight around the door handle, but he never once told me to slow down or take it easy. He understood that we might already be too late.
I’m not sure how long it took us to get to the road heading east out of Otis. Half an hour, an hour maybe. It felt like forever. All I could see in my mind’s eye were Cynthia and Grace. And I couldn’t stop picturing them in a car, plunging over the side of the cliff and into the lake below.
“The glove box,” I said to Clayton. “Open it up.”
He reached forward with some effort, opened the compartment, revealing the gun I’d taken from Vince’s truck. He took it out, inspected it briefly.
“Hang on to that till we get there,” I said. Clayton nodded silently, but then went into a coughing fit. It was a deep, raspy, echoing cough that seemed to come all the way up from his toes.
“I hope I make it,” he said.
“I hope we both make it,” I said.
“If she’s there,” he said, “if we’re in time, what do you think Cynthia will say to me?” He paused. “I have to tell her I’m sorry.”
I glanced over at him, and the look he gave me suggested he was sorry that there was nothing more he could do than offer an apology. But I could tell, from his expression, no matter how late it would be in coming, how inadequate it might be, his apology would be genuine.
He was a man who needed to apologize for his entire life.
“Maybe,” I said, “you’ll have a chance.”
Clayton, even in his condition, saw the road to the quarry before I did. It was unmarked and so narrow, it would have been easy to drive right past it. I had to hit the brakes, and our shoulder straps locked as we pitched forward.
“Give me the gun,” I said, holding the wheel with my left hand as we rolled down the lane.
The road started its steep climb up, the trees began to open up, and the windshield was filled with blue, cloudless sky. Then the road started leveling out into a small clearing, and at the far end of it, parked facing the cliff edge, were the brown Impala on the right and Cynthia’s old silver Corolla on the left.
Standing between them, looking back at us, was Jeremy Sloan. He had something in his right hand.
When he raised it, I could see that it was a gun, and when the windshield of our Honda shattered, I knew that it was loaded.
48
I slammed on the brakes and threw the car into park in one fluid motion, undid my seat belt, opened the door, and dived out. I knew I was leaving Clayton to fend for himself, but at this point, I was thinking only of Cynthia and Grace. In the couple of seconds I’d had to survey the situation, I’d been unable to spot either of them, but the fact that Cyn’s car was still on the precipice and not in the lake seemed to me a hopeful sign.
I hit the ground and rolled into some high grass, then fired wildly into the sky. I wanted Jeremy to know I had a gun, too, even if I had no skill with it. I came to a stop and maneuvered myself around in the grass so that I was looking back at where Jeremy had been, but now he was gone. I looked about frantically, then saw his head poking out timidly from around the front bumper of the brown Impala.
“Jeremy!” I shouted.
“Terry!” Cynthia. Screaming. Her voice was coming from her car. “Daddy!” Grace.
“I’m here!” I shouted.
From inside the Impala, another voice. “Kill him, Jeremy! Shoot him!” Enid, sitting in the front passenger seat.
“Jeremy,” I called out. “Listen to me. Has your mother told you what happened back at your house? Has she told you why you had to leave so fast?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Enid said. “Just shoot him.”
“What are you talking about?” he shouted back at me.
“She shot a man in your house. A man named Vince Fleming. He’ll be in the hospital by now, telling the police everything. He and I went to Youngstown last night. I figured it out. I’ve already called the police. I don’t know how you originally planned this to go. Make Cynthia look like she was going crazy is my guess, make it look like she might even have had something to do with her brother and mother’s deaths, then she comes up here, kills herself. Is that it, more or less?”
I waited for an answer. When none came, I continued, “But the cat’s out of the bag, Jeremy. It’s not going to work anymore.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Enid said. “I told you to shoot him. Do what your mother says.”
“Mom,” Jeremy said, “I don’t know… I’ve never killed any one before.”
“Suck it up! You’re about to kill those two.” I could make out the back of Enid’s head, see her motioning to Cynthia’s car.
“Yeah, but all I have to do is push the car over. This is
Clayton had the passenger door of the Honda open and was slowly getting to his feet. I could see under the car, spotted his shoes, his sockless ankles as he struggled to stand. Granules of windshield glass fell from his trousers to the ground.
“Get back in the car, Dad,” Jeremy said.
“What?” Enid said. “He’s here?” She caught sight of him in the passenger door mirror. “For Christ’s sake!” she said. “You stupid old coot! Who let you out of the hospital?”
Slowly he shuffled his way toward the Impala. When he got to the back of the car, he placed his hands on the trunk, steadied himself, caught his breath. He appeared to be on the verge of collapse. “Don’t do this, Enid,” he wheezed.
Then Cynthia’s voice: “Dad?”
“Hello, sweetheart,” he said. He tried to smile. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this.”
“Dad?” she said again. Incredulous. I couldn’t see Cynthia’s face from my position, but I could imagine how
