Had Dermot managed to seduce them all? Or had he been seduced at some point by each of them? Looking around at the women, Joyce considered it a sign of how the internet was changing the world. Not through the sharing of information or culture, but the sharing of bodies.
“What are we waiting for?” Laura asked. She had a petulant look, which made her appear younger. It was disturbing almost, to see her pretty face pouting like a four-year-old.
“Stop talking,” Susan said, waving the gun in the air. It annoyed Joyce no end that this halfwit was holding her gun. And it made Joyce burn with fury that Susan was able to out-maneuver her. She shouldn’t have assumed Susan was so stupid. That was Joyce’s first mistake, and her main one in life in general: Underestimating other women.
She’d found you could really never underestimate a man. They always disappointed you.
Joyce should have kept the gun on her. She couldn’t put it in the trunk, because that simpering graduate student had been there. She wished she could have hunted her down herself, but there was no time. Between juggling Susan and Simon, the police and Trina and Laura—good Lord this was a messy network—Joyce needed to delegate. Victor was a great friend, and good in bed when she needed an extra oomph. He hadn’t minded heading over to campus after confronting Laura at the hotel earlier that day. It had actually been perfect. He was able to retrieve Joyce’s favorite lipstick she’d left in the hotel room after a recent rendezvous with some nameless stud, all while giving Laura a good scare.
Joyce suspected there were more layers to Laura than she let on and her reaction to Victor’s visit suggested Joyce was right. She had her suspicions about Laura.
Joyce met Victor at his home before she drove to the park for her appointment with Susan. He lived in a gorgeous McMansion on the edge of town—Russian mafia money, Joyce had no doubt—and transferred Addy from his car to Joyce’s. She didn’t ask for details regarding how Victor successfully retrieved Addy, although he couldn’t help mentioning his luck at tracking her to her shared office and using a hard-earned set of campus janitorial keys for the service elevator. Joyce figured he was hoping for a quick lay, but there was no time.
She really needed a vacation.
As she drove Susan to Laura’s, Joyce should have realized her mistake. Susan was too quiet, too appreciating as she sat in her passenger seat. In fact, Joyce should have been suspicious when Susan climbed into the car with her to begin with. Her husband had just confessed to killing her brother!
Oh, Joyce was getting sloppy. This past year wore on her like a rough stone dulling a blade. Her mind was getting too frenetic.
Focus, she reminded herself. Do what you should have done when Susan opened the glove compartment, pulled out the gun, and demanded Joyce drive her to Laura’s house. Joyce hadn’t mentioned they were already headed there.
After failing to retaliate against Susan, grab the gun, and steer the car simultaneously, Joyce had resigned herself to being beaten. For the moment.
Somewhat.
“Do you even know how to use that?” Joyce couldn’t resist baiting her.
To which Susan promptly flicked off the safety and cocked the barrel.
“Would you like to find out?” she asked Joyce.
Joyce shut up and drove until they pulled up to the run-down trailer. It was even worse than Joyce had imagined. She’d only seen it from a distance, when Dermot met her on a trail to play out a “hiker in distress” fantasy. Of course, he’d taken her along a trail that brought Laura’s home into view. He’d pointed it out from the crest of a hill, and then Joyce kissed him and unbuckled his pants.
It’d looked like a small home from that viewpoint. Up close, though, she saw how derelict it was. Siding stripped off in parts, exposing the insulation like rolls of fat exploding from the inside. Cracks in the windows repaired with duct tape and seams along the roof gaping so wide she could see the one outside light through the ceiling’s edge from her current vantage point on the sofa.
Joyce looked over at Addy, who stared out into nothing. She seemed drained and woozy. Addy probably had a concussion, not that Joyce could do anything about that now. It was a shame, really, that Addy had to be involved. But if there was one thing Joyce learned over this last year, it’s that loose ends were the undoing of us all.
“What are you going to do with us?” Laura said. Her voice was steady, and a feeling flashed in Joyce that was close to appreciation. The girl was definitely tougher than she appeared.
Susan didn’t answer Laura. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and Susan pulled it out to glance at the screen, keeping the gun aimed at their small group. Her face instantly turned anguished. She pushed the button and silenced her phone, tucking it back into her coat’s pocket.
Joyce saw an opportunity.
“Is it your family?” she asked.
Susan refused to look at her.
Joyce kept her voice sweet and untarnished. “You can turn back from this. You haven’t done anything undoable. You could still go home to your family.”
It wasn’t entirely true. Kidnapping. Theft. Assault with a deadly weapon—that’s what Joyce would call this woman waving her own gun at her from the passenger seat of her Porsche. Joyce felt a bruise forming on her ribs.
But Susan didn’t need to consider all of that now. She just needed to think about her darling family, waiting for Mommy to come home.
Joyce was banking on motherly love to come through for her in the end.
Susan looked up at Joyce suddenly, her eyes flashing. “You know,” she said. “That’s easy to fix.”
Dermot’s sister turned to her left and shot Addy.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE SIMON
“We’re releasing you,” Bechdel told him, her face a neutral mask.
“What?” Simon hadn’t planned for this, which probably showed more his own naivety than his ability to anticipate the dark turns of life. If he wasn’t going to be taken into custody, then he would have to go home. A crack opened in his chest, and he wanted to scream out at the unfairness of it all.
“You are no longer a suspect,” Kirkpatrick reiterated. “You are free to go.”
“I don’t understand. I confessed. I have information for you.” Simon realized he was begging.
Bechdel moved to the door of the interview room and pushed it open with her right arm, her papers balanced in the other. “Actually, you don’t. You seem confused by the events of the last few days, and for some reason think confessing to a crime you did not commit would help our situation.” She looked pointedly at him. “Or yours.”
“I don’t understand,” Simon repeated to himself. “Why don’t you believe me?”
Kirkpatrick was clearly annoyed, sighing into his coffee cup as he bit into the soft lining of the Styrofoam and gathered his papers from the desk. He shoved them into his bag, along with his laptop. Simon waited, and the detective moved his cup from his mouth and stood up from the cheap metal table. “Because you couldn’t tell us how Dermot was killed. You were mistaken about the means of his death. And you were seen in video footage at another location, where another man was killed—not by you, around the time Trina Dell was murdered. Based on the updated coroner’s report, there’s no way you could have killed Trina, been a hostage in the shooting, and received the follow-up care at the hospital. The timeframe doesn’t fit. We need to find whoever is doing this and stop wasting time on you.”
A dark chasm opened up in front of Simon. He couldn’t go back home. He didn’t want to see Joyce, to climb in bed with her and listen to her breathing in her sleep while he waited to die. His work tortured him, leaving him vacant inside because he couldn’t tolerate the imperfection of it all. He drank to alleviate the despair of losing patients, and he lost patients because he drank. He’d killed Tom, if not by his own hands then by his own actions, and now Trina was dead and there was no point in trying to make up for what he’d done.
There was only resignation.
