“What the hell are you doing?” Enid screamed at Clayton, sitting in the driver’s seat. “Turn that off!”
But Clayton wasn’t paying any attention to her. He turned, calmly, to his left. He had a small smile on his face. He looked almost serene. The Impala was right alongside Cynthia’s Toyota, and he nodded at his daughter and said, “I never, ever stopped loving you, or ever stopped thinking about you and your mother and Todd.”
“Clayton!” Enid screamed.
And then Clayton looked at Grace, her eyes just visible above the door. “I wish I could have gotten to know you, Grace, but I know without a doubt that with a mother like Cynthia, you are very, very special.”
Then Clayton gave his attention to Enid. “So long, you miserable old cunt,” he said, and dropped the car into gear and hit the gas.
The engine roared. The Impala bolted forward toward the edge.
“Momma!” Jeremy screamed, and ran around the front of Cynthia’s car and into the path of the Impala, as if he thought he could stop it with his own body. Maybe Jeremy thought at first that the car was only rolling, as if Clayton had shoved it by accident into neutral.
But that wasn’t the case at all. Clayton was trying to see how fast he could go from zero to sixty in the thirty feet he had between himself and the quarry’s edge.
The car threw Jeremy up onto the hood, and that’s where he was when the Impala, with Clayton at the wheel and Enid screaming in the seat next to him, shot out over the edge.
It was about two seconds before we heard the splash.
49
I had to move Clayton’s windshield-shattered Honda out of the way to make room to get out of there in Cynthia’s Toyota. She got in the back so she could sit with her arms around Grace for the long drive back south to Milford.
I knew we should probably have called the police, waited there at the top of the quarry for them to arrive, but we thought the most important thing was to get Grace home, where she would feel the most safe, as quickly as possible. Clayton and Enid and Jeremy weren’t going anywhere. They’d still be at the bottom of that lake when we gave Rona Wedmore a call.
Cynthia wanted me to get to a hospital, and there was no doubt in my mind that I needed one. Both my sides were in intense pain, but it was mitigated by an overwhelming sense of relief. Once I had Cynthia and Grace home, I’d head over to Milford Hospital.
We didn’t talk a lot on the drive back. I think Cynthia and I were on the same page-that we didn’t want to go over what had happened, not just today but twenty-five years ago-in front of Grace. Grace had been through enough. She just needed to get home.
But I did manage to get the rough details of what had happened. Cynthia and Grace had driven to Winsted, met Jeremy at the McDonald’s lot. He had a surprise, he told them. He had brought along his mother. The inference being, of course, that he had brought along Patricia Bigge.
Cynthia, dumbstruck, was taken over to the Impala, and once she and Grace were in the car, Enid held her gun on Grace. Told Cynthia to drive the car to the quarry or she’d kill Grace. Jeremy followed in Cynthia’s car.
Once on the precipice, Cynthia and Grace were tied into the front seats in preparation for their trip over the side.
Then Clayton and I arrived.
Almost as briefly, I told Cynthia what I’d learned. About my trip to Youngstown. Finding her father in the hospital. The story of what happened the night her family disappeared.
Vince Fleming getting shot.
I would call, the moment I got home, to see how he was doing. I didn’t want to have to go into school and face Jane Scavullo, tell her that the only man in years who’d been decent to her was dead.
As far as the police were concerned, I hoped to Christ Wedmore believed everything I was going to tell her. I don’t know that I would have, if it hadn’t actually happened to me.
Something still wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t shake the memory of Jeremy standing over me, gun in hand, unable to pull the trigger. He certainly hadn’t shown that kind of hesitation where Tess Berman was concerned. Or Denton Abagnall.
They’d both been murdered in, well, “cold blood” I guess the phrase is.
What was it that Jeremy had said to his mother? While he stood over me? “I’ve never killed anyone before.”
Yeah, that was it.
When we passed through Winsted again, we asked Grace whether she wanted something to eat, but she shook her head no. She wanted to go home. Cynthia and I exchanged worried glances. We would take Grace to see a doctor. She’d been through a traumatic incident. She might be suffering from mild shock. But before long, she was asleep, and gave no indication that she was having nightmares.
A couple of hours later, we were home. As we made the turn into our street, I saw Rona Wedmore’s car in front of our house, parked at the curb, with her behind the wheel. When she spotted our car, she got out, eyeing us sternly with arms folded as we turned in to the driveway. She was waiting for me by the car when I opened my door, ready, I suspected, to start peppering me with questions.
Her expression softened when she saw me wince as I slowly got out of the driver’s seat. I hurt like hell.
“What happened to you?” she asked. “You look awful.”
“That’s pretty much how I feel,” I said, touching one of my wounds gingerly. “I took a few kicks from Jeremy Sloan.”
“Where is he?” Wedmore asked.
I smiled to myself and opened the back door and, even though a couple of my ribs felt as though they were about to snap, took a sleeping Grace into my arms to carry her into the house.
“Let me,” Cynthia said, now out of the car herself.
“It’s okay,” I said, taking Grace to the front door as Cynthia ran ahead to unlock it. Rona Wedmore was trailing us into the house.
“I can’t carry her anymore,” I said, the pain becoming excruciating.
“The couch,” Cynthia said.
I managed to set her down there gently, even though I felt I was going to drop her, and despite all the jostling and talking, she didn’t wake up. Once she was on the couch, Cynthia tucked some throw pillows under her head and found an afghan to throw over her.
Wedmore was still just watching, courteously giving us a moment. Once Cynthia had tucked the afghan around Grace, the three of us rendezvoused in the kitchen.
“You look like you need to see a doctor,” Wedmore said.
I nodded.
“Where’s Sloan?” she asked again. “If he assaulted you, we’ll have him arrested.”
I leaned up against the counter. “You’re going to need to call in your divers again,” I said.
I told her pretty much all of it. How Vince had spotted what was wrong with that old newspaper clipping, how that had led us to Sloan and Youngstown, my finding Clayton Sloan in the hospital, Jeremy and Enid’s abduction of Cynthia and Grace.
The car going over the cliff and down into the quarry, taking Clayton and Enid and Jeremy along for the ride.
There was only one small part I’d left out, because it was still troubling me, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. Although I had an inkling.
“Well,” Rona Wedmore said, “that’s quite a story.”
“It is,” I said. “If I were going to make something up, trust me, I’d have come up with something more believable.”
“I’ll want to talk to Grace about this, too,” Wedmore said.
