She touched him, but he pulled back a little. “Please don’t hurt me ever again,” she said, looking at him as she tried to understand.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His words came at her, hollow and empty.
“I love you,” she said.
“I know.”
In that moment even Jeremy Howell’s kid sister could see that there was nothing to her brother’s apology. He had meant to hurt her. He wanted to hurt her.
Years later after Cecilia married and found fewer and fewer excuses to come home she told her husband about the time her brother tried to choke her with a belt.
“I don’t want that sick SOB around our kids,” Kirk Morris said.
“I don’t, either, but I don’t blame him. Not really. I think that the stuff my mom was doing to him was making him that way.”
“What was she doing to him?”
“Not that,” she said emphatically. “She was always whispering in his ear. Telling him things.”
“What was she saying?”
“Empowerment stuff. I watched her lean next to him and say, ‘You’re better than the rest. You are special.’ ”
“What’s so creepy about that?”
“It wasn’t in the words,” she said. “It was in how she said things and how he reacted. It was like something secret, maybe forbidden, dark. I don’t know.”
“Now you’re acting weird.”
“Maybe I am. I was a kid. Maybe I just didn’t get it. But on more than one occasion I remember my mother telling him that being the best was a lonely endeavor, one that few could understand. She said, ‘Your work will only be known if you get caught.’ ”
“Get caught?”
“Something like that. I don’t know for sure. It was a long time ago. Really, when I look back, my brother never really had a chance.”
“I don’t feel sorry for him and I don’t want him around our kids.”
“I do feel sorry for him, but I agree. I don’t want him around the children, either.”
Although the Morrises lived only across the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Gig Harbor, they never saw much of Uncle Jeremy. Their mother said he was too busy. A recluse. He had a demanding job. She never told her children that their grandmother actually lived with their uncle. Oddly, they never asked about her. They assumed that she, along with their grandfather, was dead. After all, why wouldn’t their grandma come to see them if she was alive?
The crack. The way out. The source of the air. Emma Rose woke up, her mind still zeroing in on what she needed to do above all other possibilities. Her head throbbed and she wanted to throw up. But more than that, she wanted out of the apartment. She wanted to go home. She pulled herself up from the mattress and found her way to back to the wall with the crack. At least, that’s where she was certain it had been the day before. On her knees, she ran her hands over the wall, but she couldn’t find the opening. Had she gone the wrong direction? The room was not that large. How was it that she couldn’t find the source of the airflow? It was dark as always, but she’d found it before by feeling the air pass through the opening. How was it that she couldn’t find it now?
God, help me. Where is it? Where did it go?
The Howells had moved to a nice middle-class neighborhood in Tacoma, on North Howard, not far away from where Ted had grown up. Donna Howell had taken her relocation money from the old neighborhood in Ruston and paid cash for the two-story house with the brick facade and bright green louvered shutters-a house that Peggy had insisted was the perfect location. After Donna died in 1994, the house was willed to Peggy, who was already living there with her adult son, Jeremy. While none of the neighbors liked Peggy, they did appreciate Jeremy’s dedication to keeping the yard in perfect shape. He never missed a mowing and, better yet, kept it sprinkled in the summer.
“I haven’t seen you in years. Since you were a child. But I know who you are,” Peggy said, when she answered the door. “You look a lot like Tricia, not quite as pretty, but a lot like her.”
“Hi, Peggy,” Grace said, looking her over. Peggy wore jeans and a sweatshirt. Her skin was wrinkled and her hair was long, but very thin. It dawned on her that her sister would be showing signs of aging by then-had she not been murdered. “May I come in?”
Peggy nodded. “If you must. I’m surprised you’ve come by. Your mom pretty much disowned me. Shoved me to the side when all I wanted to do was help bring Tricia back home.”
“That was a long time ago, Peggy.”
“Yeah, well, it still hurts,” Peggy said, searching for her cigarettes. “I worked my ass off putting up flyers, you know. I did everything I was asked to do and then some.”
“I came here to talk about my sister.”
“You want a cigarette or a beer or something? I have some thick-cut potato chips if you’re hungry.”
“I’m not hungry, Peggy. But I am here for something.”
“For what?”
“The truth.”
“What kind of truth?”
“The truth that only you know. The truth that the only living witness knows.”
Peggy, still looking for her cigarettes, gave up. “You’re talking in riddles. Can you get to the point? I have to take my son out for a haircut later.”
“Jeremy?”
“Yes, Jeremy.”
“Is his father home?”
“No. His father is dead. Now you’re going to have to leave. You’re making me uncomfortable and I don’t like feeling that way in my own home,” Peggy said.
“I thought that this was your mother’s house.”
“She’s dead. It’s mine now.”
“Right. She was bought out by The Pointe developers, is that right?”
Peggy nodded. “She was. And they really screwed her over. They were supposed to give us six months before they tore down the house so we could salvage those gorgeous old leaded windows by the fireplace. But no, they didn’t. Really made my mom mad.”
There were several ways to conduct interviews. One way was to build up to the key question, one little drop at a time, until there was a bucket of water to toss over the witness. The other tactic was to just go for the jugular.
Grace used the second technique.
“You killed my sister, Peggy. Didn’t you?”
Peggy stepped backward. “Jesus! Where did that come from?”
Grace had Peggy where she wanted her.
“Tricia wanted you to stop messing around with the professor, didn’t she? Did she say she was going to tell? Did you kill her because of that?”
Peggy looked flustered and angry.
Where were those damn cigarettes?
“I have no flipping idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do. I think you killed her and buried her at your mom’s house on Ruby Street in Ruston.”
“What are you talking about? Killed her? Buried her? You are really going to have to leave now. My son is at work and when he gets home he’s going to rip you a new one for treating me like this.”
“The bones found at the beach were full of lead and arsenic. They came from your yard. You know what I’m talking about. I can see it in your eyes.”
Emma Rose could hear yelling going on above her. It wasn’t the TV. It was louder, continuous. Two women
