“I know,” said Tyler, “but if he keeps his hands in his lap, it won’t be a problem.” He held out his gun toward his grandfather and took another drink of vodka.
“Very well, then, Tyler,” said Diane. “Please, let me tell you what we have. You have a way out of this.”
“That little creep doesn’t deserve a way out,” spat Marsha.
Diane locked gazes with her. “If he isn’t at fault, he does deserve a way out,” said Diane.
She hoped she could telegraph to Marsha to keep her mouth shut and not infuriate the little creep holding the gun on all of them. Her husband seemed to get the message. He reached over to her.
“I said not to move,” said Tyler.
“I’m just holding my wife’s hand,” said Samuel evenly.
Diane saw him squeeze it and put his own back in his lap. Kathy Nicholson glared at her. She and Colton kept quiet.
“You see what they’re doing, don’t you, boy?” said Everett.
“Would you stop calling me
“Why would Granddad have killed El?” said Tyler, not taking his eyes off Everett. “Not to save me.”
“Did your grandfather tell you why he wanted to kill Marcella Payden or Mary Lassiter? I’m sure you thought his killing Stacy was to hide what the two of you did to frame her brother. Stacy had Ellie Rose’s diary pages and she was beginning to decipher them. But the other two must have mystified you.”
Diane was careful to accuse Everett Walters of the killings, although she thought that it was Tyler who choked Stacy to death. That conclusion was based, weakly perhaps, on the fact that he had done it before, and that his overlapping boot prints were lifted from the spot where Stacy actually died. But right now, she wanted Tyler to believe that he could clear himself.
“Ellie’s diary?” said Marsha. “She had Ellie’s diary?”
“Yes. She was a musician and good at math,” said Diane. Like Frank, she thought. “Stacy was probably translating the parts that told her how Ellie was afraid of Tyler and his grandfather. Did Stacy call you, threaten you?”
“She called Granddad,” said Tyler. “Stupid thing to do.”
“What about Lassiter and Payden?” asked Diane. “Weren’t you curious why they had to die?”
“He said it needed to be done,” said Tyler. “You haven’t answered my question. Why would he kill Ellie Rose?”
Diane eyed Everett. He looked smug. He didn’t know she knew about his sister. Showtime.
“Some killers get off on the terror of their victims,” said Diane, not taking her eyes off Everett. “Sometimes it’s a sexual-control thing. Is that right, Ross?”
“Often,” he said.
“But not you,” said Diane. “It was a god-control thing with you. I imagine as a boy staying over at your big sister’s, playing among all the statues of fauns, gargoyles, and dragons, it was like a little kingdom, a little Olympus. And what you really liked to do, what really made you feel powerful and in control, was to sneak up behind the unsuspecting prey and strike them dead, like a god in his dark realm. They never knew it was coming. You had the power to snuff out their life, and just like that, they were no more.”
Everett’s face slowly dropped its smug expression. He looked worried. Finally.
“What?” said Tyler. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Didn’t he tell you?” said Diane. “Your grandfather is a serial killer from way back. Not the ordinary kind, I don’t think. He had more control than others of his kind. He prided himself in that.”
“Not all serial killers lack control or feel a compulsion to constantly seek out victims,” said Kingsley. “Some are opportunistic killers. I suspect your grandfather is one of those.” Kingsley looked Everett in the eyes. “You can go for years without killing, can’t you? You’re like the smoker who can just stop and not look back and not obsess about having another cigarette.”
“But I’ll bet Everett couldn’t resist the possibility of killing Ellie Rose,” said Diane. “It was an opportunity presented to him, so he brought the hatchet. It’s not that easy for a fourteen-year-old, like you were, to strangle someone. He knew there was a possibility she was still alive. And the pull of nostalgia was just too great, even for a man of his control.”
“Are you serious?” said Tyler. He briefly took his eyes off his grandfather, and Everett started to reach for his ankle gun. “Watch it, old man. Is this true?” he asked him.
Everett straightened up. “Rubbish. Fantasy.”
“Not according to your sister, Maybelle,” said Diane.
Everett looked sharply at Diane, his eyes wide with surprise. He paused for many long moments, staring at Diane.
“Mags has to be a hundred and ten by now,” he whispered.
“Not quite a hundred. Ninety-seven, I believe,” said Diane.
“Senile,” said Everett. Some of his smugness came back into his face.
“Actually, quite lucid,” said Diane. “Creepy as hell, but her story is consistent with what we found in the well.”
The smug look was short-lived. His mouth turned down into a frown.
“You know,” said Diane, “I’ll bet when you had your fingerprints taken at the time you were bonded for your business, you worried. You worried if they were on the items you dropped in the well when your father was coming to take your sister away. It was a long shot that they would ever be found, but it had to give you pause. And then came Dr. Marcella Payden, archaeologist and curious homeowner. She was looking for the artist who had created the broken pottery that she discovered in the fire pit in her yard and painted the portraits she found hidden in the walls. What if Marcella found your sister, Maybelle, and she told about the well? There goes your reputation. And here your son is about to run for U.S. congressman. You couldn’t do anything when your father sold the property- you couldn’t tell him it should stay in the family because of what was in the well, but you could do something now to keep the current owner quiet. Had you planned to try and buy it back? Maybe clean out the well?”
Everett said nothing. He stared at Diane so hard, she thought he was trying to will her to shut up.
“What well? What’s this about?” said Tyler.
“It’s about why you are innocent,” said Diane.
That kept his attention on her story. Tyler was looking for a way out. When he first came into the room, he didn’t think there was a way out without more murder, and his having to leave behind everything he knew. He had hope now, and Diane was counting on his hope to get them out of this alive.
“At first I wondered about Mary Lassiter,” said Diane. “How did she figure in this? Of course, when we found out that she worked at the historical society where Marcella Payden was asking questions about who lived in the house in Pigeon Ridge, I realized that Mary Lassiter was your age. You both were contemporaries in Rosewood. Marcella sparked a memory in Mary Lassiter. She knew something about an artist who disappeared when she was a girl. The artist had a brother, Everett. She remembered you. She probably looked you up on the Internet. People do that a lot these days, trying to get in touch with people they used to know. For her it was probably a lark, maybe a chance for a little romance late in life. She didn’t know you would consider her to be a loose end to be tied up, along with Marcella Payden. That’s why Mary Lassiter’s purse was stolen when she was killed. You wanted her cell phone, but didn’t want the police to focus on the phone. You didn’t want them looking at her call records. But Sheriff Braden is very thorough, and he’ll check the call records as well as the Internet history records where she worked at the historical society.” Diane paused a moment, letting it sink in.
“You see, Everett Gauthier,” Diane continued, “we’ve been really busy at the crime lab.”
“Gauthier?” said Wendy and Tyler together.
“That was Everett’s family name before they moved from Rosewood, before it was changed to Walters-the Anglicized version of Gauthier. Everett’s father’s attempt to hide the family skeletons, as it were, by changing his family’s last name. Everett’s sister, Maybelle, did to him what he did to your son. She hated her father and his new wife, and she decided to ruin her half brother, Everett. She turned him into a killer.”
“No,” whispered Everett. “No. My sister loved me. She wouldn’t have said those things.”
“Well, when she discovered that you lived in luxury while she lived as an indigent in insane asylums and
