“She didn’t touch your computer, you asshole. I did.”
He whipped around, still holding Heather pressed up against the counter, that same stupid stunned look crossing his face. “Where the fuck did you come from?” And then his eyebrows rose as I heard Julie and Sarah step into the room behind me. He looked from us to Heather. “You let them into my apartment? You stupid bitch!” He slapped her again, a casual backhand that knocked her sideways.
It was just like my father had lashed out years ago, that same animalistic anger, fueled in his case by alcohol and the sense that the world owed him. I didn’t know the demons driving Ray, but Heather cowered from him just like my mother had done, trying to shield herself, helpless in the face of that rage.
“Let go of her!” I screamed, my own rage, the rage of the scared child I’d been finally bursting free. I grabbed the wine bottle from the island and this time there was no hesitation as I swung.
Fortini moved and the blow only clipped him, but it was enough for him to drop Heather and clutch his head, yowling in pain. He stumbled back, scrambling to get away from us, trapping himself in a corner of the countertops.
“Get away from me, you crazy bitch,” he said as I advanced on him with the bottle raised for a second blow.
“You’re going to give us our money,” I said. “Pass me your wallet and your bank card.”
“I’m not giving you anything.” He tried to laugh, but he looked nervous.
“You’ll give it to me or I’ll tell the police you shot Viktor Lysenko.”
He snorted at that. “You think they’d believe that I shot him? She’s the one who stood to gain from killing him.”
“You have no proof that you didn’t,” I said. “We’d tell them that you were the one. You did it.”
“They’re not going to believe that, because it’s a crock of shit. She killed him because he found out about the affair. Cut and dried. Your average domestic homicide. They’ll know the truth because I’ll tell them the real story. I’ll tell them how I told Viktor.”
Heather cried out, and I saw that she’d gone pale.
“Told him what?”
“I told him his wife was cheating on him, that’s what.” He laughed. “She wasn’t ever going to leave him so I helped speed up the process.”
There was a strange sound, a snick as Heather pulled a knife from the block on the counter, and before we could stop her she ran toward Ray with the blade raised.
“You bastard! You killed my baby, you asshole!”
He stopped her, grabbing her wrist and trying to turn it, and Julie was screaming, a tinny, high-pitched hysterical sound, and I tried to stop them, pulling Heather back, but she was immovable. Then, all at once, she gave a strange “Oh!” and her weight fell against me and I stumbled back with her in my arms. And that’s when I saw that the knife was stuck in her chest, and blood was pouring from it, a stream of crimson across the blush pink sweater.
“Call 911!” I cried, folding onto the kitchen floor still cradling Heather. Sarah hurried to phone the police as Julie grabbed dish towels and we pressed them against Heather’s chest, trying to stop the bleeding that was now a bright red river gushing from the wound.
“No,” Ray Fortini moaned. “No, Heather, no, baby, no.” He pushed past Sarah, who tried to block him, dropping to his knees by Heather and trying to take her from me.
“Get away from her!” Julie screamed, hysterically shoving and kicking him. “Don’t you touch her! Don’t you touch her again!”
He backed away, hands raised, trying to block her onslaught.
None of us heard him leave. All I know is that he was gone before the ambulance came screaming up the hill, before the paramedics raced into the kitchen, equipment clanking and radios squawking, before they transferred Heather from my arms onto the stretcher, careful not to dislodge the knife. But it was too late. I think we all knew that, watching her face turn gray as each dish towel we pressed against her soaked through with blood. It traveled down her body, mingling with the baby’s blood that stained her jeans. Heather was gripping my hand and staring, unseeing, up at us when the paramedics reached her side.
chapter forty-three
ALISON
Funerals for murder victims are distinguished from other services by the curiosity seekers. Those who come even though they have no real relationship with the victim, but have been fooled by the publicity surrounding the death into thinking that they had a personal connection.
We watched them, these sobbing and wild-eyed men and women, and endured the long service in stiff pews, part of the much smaller crowd of the truly bereaved. We were very aware, in the way the others weren’t, of two guests who didn’t pass by Heather’s casket, the men standing at the back of the chapel in forgettable suits, watching us with gimlet eyes.
They waited until we rose, stiff-legged, and followed after the coffin, which rose and fell on the shoulders of the pallbearers like a small ship at sea. They waited until we’d stepped into the cold chill of that winter morning, all of us blinking in the hard light, wind whipping the corners of our coats as we grabbed the hands of our children. They waited until we’d loaded into our cars behind the hearse, queuing up to follow Heather’s body to its final resting place, high on a hill on the outskirts of town. And then they got into their nondescript sedan and joined our procession slowly wending its way through slush-covered streets toward the gravesite.
The estate paid for Heather’s funeral and she was buried next to Viktor, which surprised me given her mother-in-law’s hostility. Julie assumed it had been done for the sake of appearances, but Sarah had a different theory. “Every time Anna looks at her son’s grave she has the satisfaction of knowing that his wife didn’t outlive him, at least not by much.”
Perhaps that’s too harsh—it might have been a simple act of charity given that Heather’s parents probably couldn’t afford a funeral for their daughter. They were there, at the front of the church, looking both devastated and confused, and just as out of place in Sewickley as they’d ever been. I remember seeing Heather’s mother reaching for her grandson’s hand, but he wouldn’t take it and took Anna’s instead. She didn’t even pretend to mourn, but that was no surprise and who could blame her. I saw her smile as she walked away from Heather’s grave, firmly holding on to Daniel. She no longer had her beloved Vitya, but she got all of his money and her grandson.
We worried about Daniel, of course. Heather had been the only mother he’d ever known, but our attempts to arrange playdates were rebuffed by Anna, and I have no doubt that she’s doing her best to rewrite history as if Daniel were actually her son.
Sarah was the one who gave the cops a description of Ray Fortini and his motorcycle. I don’t remember that, but she told me later. We were asked to explain the scene to the police many times; it all blurs together.
Later that long night, we heard that Ray Fortini died. He raced away from the house on his Harley, trying to run from the murder or his guilt, going well beyond the speed limit, making it all the way to Route 65 before he heard the first siren pursuing him. It was the sort of death he might have appreciated, high-intensity and cinematic, crashing through a guardrail and plunging thirty feet into the river. A swift end to a short life, but people like that seem destined to die young.
I remember Detectives Tedesco and Kasper arriving in Heather’s kitchen, their narrow-eyed appraisal of the three of us standing there, bloodstained and shaken, but it wasn’t our first murder scene. We’d had time, before the paramedics arrived, to figure out what we were going to say and what we weren’t.