“Listen to me, Carmen. I didn’t kill your mother. It was him.” I jabbed a finger at James. “He did it.” Turning to address him, I continued, “I know it was you, you son of a bitch. I found Eric Joiner. Remember him? He saw everything. He told me what happened. John Robinson, Eric Joiner—they know you’re the one who killed her. And Olaf. And now I know you did it, too. I’m here to make you pay for the lives you took.”
James shook his head sadly, like I was a dumb kid who just didn’t understand the day’s lesson. “Now you’ve really gone off the deep end. I’m worried about you, Ben. So many fantasies playing through that skull of yours. It must be hard to be so tangled up in your own lies.”
“They saw you, James! Witnesses saw you do it. They saw you covered with your own wife’s blood. What did she do to you to deserve to go out like that?”
“Ben, Ben, Ben, come on now. Do you really expect either me or my daughter to believe you? You’ve always been a piece of shit. Now you’re a lying piece of shit on top of that.”
“You’re the murderer, James. Not me. Carmen, you have to believe me.”
She hadn’t budged from where she sat, rigid with fury, glaring at me. If looks could kill, my ghost would haunt this patch of desert until the whole damn planet exploded.
“Why would either of us believe such a despicable lie, Ben?” James asked softly.
“They saw you, James. They fucking saw you.” I felt sickeningly desperate. I decided to bluff. “They’re going to go to the police and tell them everything,” I said. “You aren’t going to be able to hide from you what you did anymore.”
“Who is going to talk to the police?” He chortled. “Oh!” He put a hand on his chest as if he’d just remembered something. “Do you mean…these men?”
I turned around in my seat as the front door flew open and two of James’s burly henchmen dragged John Hunter and Eric Joiner into the house. Their hands were bound behind their backs and gags were strapped over their mouths. They looked utterly terrified, like sheep at the slaughter. I couldn’t blame them. I’d be terrified, too, if the man I’d spent years running from, the one I’d seen with my own eyes as he murdered two people, had finally snapped shut the trap around me.
The men roughly arranged John and Eric on their knees at the side of the table. “Let’s hear what they have to say,” James suggested. The gags were unbuckled and both men drew in long, rasping breaths.
“I didn’t see anything, I swear,” Eric sobbed immediately. “I’m nobody. I’ll disappear right now. Say the word and I’m gone. Just please don’t hurt me.”
John was white as a sheet. “I’ve never seen you in my life, sir,” he said soberly.
“John, Eric,” I said. “Tell the truth. Tell them what you told me.”
They turned to look at me with the blankest expressions I’ve ever seen.
“Who are you?” John asked softly. “I’ve never met you before.”
“You’re lying!” I said. “Tell them! He can’t hurt you!”
James chuckled. “It is a pity to see you so desperate, Ben. I’d always had a lot of respect for you in the past. You had such a reputation for being cool under pressure. But I guess I was wrong. Up close, you’re nothing but a sweaty, nervous wreck. Look at him, Carmen. Is this a man you’d take at his word?”
I looked at my wife. She was distant already, her mind miles down the road, leaving me in the dust. “Carmen…” I said, trailing off. I was out of words. Out of hope. Rock bottom was even less comfortable than I’d feared. It was cold and dark down here. No matter how hard I tried to clamber out, James kept shutting me down, knocking me back to the bottom of the well. Maybe I’d done this to myself. Maybe I should have kept both my nose and my dick out of James’s business. I’d been such a fucking idiot. My head hung heavily.
“I didn’t think so,” James finished. He looked supremely at ease, like a king surveying his kingdom and admiring how goddamn high and mighty he was.
“Just let them go,” I said in a whisper.
He nodded. “You heard the man,” he instructed his soldiers. “Let them go.”
The henchmen tugged John and Eric up to their feet and guided them to the back exit. The screen door screeched open and shut as they stumbled through. I heard the distant clank of the gags being dropped onto the wooden porch, followed by desperate feet slapping the earth. They must be running out of the yard.
Then I heard two shots.
“You… you…” I stammered. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so lost for words. I always knew what to say. I was Ben Killmore, goddammit, not some stuttering pussy. I was cool under pressure. I had ice in my veins, steel in my heart. I was the baddest son of a bitch in this city, county, state.