Now You See Her

THIRTY


THE OLD HOUSE WAS dark and smelled of abandonment. Thin streaks of light slithered through the cracks in the thick planks of wood covering the windows, competing with the dull glow radiating from a fireplace in one of the interior rooms, the normally comforting odor of burning wood wrestling with the pervasive stench of decay. A baby’s cries permeated the dank air, seeping through the walls like a slow leak and beckoning Marcy to come closer. She felt Jax’s hands on her back, pushing her forward.

There was no furniture, no appliances, nothing to differentiate one room from the next. Just a series of stone walls and dirt-covered floors. “Follow the screams,” Jax said ominously as Marcy passed through one doorway and then another, the baby’s cries growing louder with each step, the smell of smoke heavier and more acrid, the light from the fireplace flashing like a dying disco ball, illuminating nothing. “Duck your head,” Jax said, his hand in her hair, pushing her into the next room.

The first thing Marcy saw was the shadowy figure of a young woman sitting in a high-backed chair in the middle of an otherwise empty room. The second thing she saw was a flash of strawberry-blond hair falling into small, terrified eyes. The third thing was the gag in her mouth, followed almost immediately by the gnarled rope that was wound tightly around her torso, securing her to the chair.

“Oh, my God. Shannon!”

“Shut up,” Jax said, silencing Marcy with another push.

Which was when she saw the baby lying in a cardboard box between Shannon’s tethered feet and the fireplace. The baby’s face was awash with tears, glistening like a shiny red balloon in the indifferent flicker of a fire that was now more ashes than flame. It supplied little light, even less heat.

“God, that’s one noisy little f*cker,” Jax exclaimed, shaking his head in dismay and scratching his curly brown hair.

“Took you long enough,” a voice announced from the shadows.

Marcy’s eyes shot toward the sound, her heart pounding, her legs threatening to buckle under her. She saw nothing. “Devon?” she whispered, the word trampled beneath the baby’s piercing cries.

“I was expecting you an hour ago.”

“Yeah, well, have you seen what’s doin’ out there? Besides, your ma had to make a pit stop,” Jax said with a sneer, and Marcy had to grip the floor with her toes to keep from falling over.

“Devon,” Marcy said, louder this time.

“She prefers Audrey,” Jax said.

“What’s the matter, Mommy?” the voice asked provocatively. “You don’t look very happy to be here.”

Marcy spun around in a helpless circle. “Where are you?” she pleaded, her eyes skirting the bare gray walls. “Please, baby, let me see you.”

“I’m not your baby.” The voice was flat, full of all-too-familiar disdain.

Marcy’s eyes grew slowly accustomed to the dim light, like a camera lens subtly adjusting its focus. She could see Shannon more clearly now, the frightened girl securely fastened to her high-backed chair. She noted the almost imperceptible movement of Shannon’s feet as they struggled to loosen the rope at her ankles and saw her shoulders straining against the ties that bound her torso to the chair. She read the plea in the girl’s terror-filled eyes as Shannon glanced toward the large iron poker leaning against the jagged, irregular stones of the fireplace, then followed those eyes to a back door at the opposite end of the room.

“Please, won’t you let me see you?” Marcy begged softly, her whole body aching to take her daughter in her arms. Even now, she thought. Despite the almost surreal tableau in front of her. Despite Devon’s part in it. Despite everything.

“You’ll see me when I’m ready to be seen.”

“I just want to hold you.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea.”

“Why not? What’s going on? What are you mixed up in?”

“Oh, I think you already know the answer to that one. Don’t you, Mommy? Understand you gave the gardai quite an earful. Understand they think you’re as mad as the proverbial hatter.” She laughed. “Which fits into our plans rather nicely, actually.”

“What plans?” Marcy saw a shadow flicker on the wall, a shake of long dark hair.

“You want details? You’re not going to like them.”

“I think you owe me at least that much.”

“I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

“Look,” Jax said impatiently. “We’re wastin’ time, Audrey. We’ve got the money. Let’s just shoot ’em and get out of here.”

A muffled scream escaped the gag at Shannon’s mouth. Her struggles became more obvious and desperate. She began furiously rocking her chair back and forth, back and forth.

A distant memory echoed through Marcy’s brain—a closet door being opened, then closed, opened, then closed, opened, then closed—as Audrey suddenly emerged from the shadows and walked purposefully into the center of the room, her long dark hair obscuring most of her face, although a gun was clearly visible in her right hand.

“Relax,” she said to Shannon, laying her free hand forcefully on Shannon’s shoulder, bringing the girl’s wild rocking to an abrupt halt. “We’re not going to shoot you.” She glanced toward Marcy, an unexpected spark from the fireplace dancing across her face, illuminating her cruel smile. “My mother is.”

Marcy gasped and fell back, as if she’d been struck. Shannon resumed her frantic struggles with her restraints. The baby continued howling at her feet.

“It’s really very simple, Mommy. You had most of it figured out already. Except your part in it, of course.” Audrey’s smile widened as she warmed to her subject, clearly pleased for this opportunity to show off. “You see, the original plan was to kidnap cranky little Caitlin here, hold her for ransom, and make it look as if Shannon was responsible. But then you entered the picture, showing your stupid photographs to half the populace and telling your ridiculous sob story to anyone who’d listen, so we had to improvise. I mean, your timing really sucked. We’d been planning this for months, and the last thing we wanted was to draw attention to ourselves just when we were ready to make a move. At first we thought we could just ignore you, and maybe you’d go away. But you wouldn’t be ignored and you wouldn’t go away. Then we tried to distract you, but you’re rather single-minded in your focus, aren’t you, Mommy? Then we thought we’d scare you. Turns out you don’t scare all that easily either. We thought of killing you, but then we realized we could actually use you to our advantage, that you could be our—what’s the word for it? Scapegoat? Yeah, that’s it. Poor Marcy, undone by grief over her daughter’s untimely death, fixates on dumb, naive Shannon, and when Shannon rebuffs her pathetic attempts at friendship, she goes off the deep end and hires someone to kidnap her and the baby. Increasingly desperate and delusional, she kills them both, and then, overwhelmed with guilt and remorse, turns the gun on herself. Meanwhile her accomplice disappears with the ransom money.”

“That would be me,” Jax said, an audible swagger in his voice.

“Well, not exactly,” Audrey said sweetly, raising the gun in her hand and pointing it directly at Jax’s head.

“What the hell are you doin’?” Jax asked, all traces of swagger suddenly gone.

“It’s just so much easier to divide five hundred thousand euros by two than by three, don’t you think?” she asked.

Then she pulled the trigger.

Caitlin’s screams filled the air as the bullet lifted Jax off his feet and propelled him backward, his arms shooting up and over his head, his legs extending straight in front of him, blood gushing from the gaping hole in the middle of his forehead as he came crashing to the floor. In the next second Shannon was hurling herself in Audrey’s direction, the chair to which she was tied catching the side of Audrey’s hip and knocking them both to the floor, the gun flying from Audrey’s hand. Marcy grabbed it just as Audrey was about to, their fingers brushing up against each other, sending shockwaves up Marcy’s arm, directly to her heart.

“Don’t move,” she warned Audrey, pulling back and away, one hand fighting with the other to steady the gun.

“Could you really shoot me, Mommy?” Audrey asked plaintively as the baby’s cries miraculously shuddered to a halt.

Marcy stared deep into the young woman’s eyes. “Don’t call me Mommy,” she said forcefully. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but you’re not my daughter.”

“Marcy!” a man shouted, his voice resonating throughout the room, her name bouncing off the walls like a stray bullet.

Marcy didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. She’d been expecting him. “Liam,” she said, her head angling toward him while she still kept Audrey firmly in her sights.

“It’s okay, Marcy,” Liam said soothingly, emerging from the doorway. “I’ve been right on your tail all afternoon. The gardai are on their way.” He moved closer. “You can give me the gun. It’s okay now.”

“Stay back,” she warned, steadying her hand on the weapon.

He laughed. “Marcy, what are you doin’? It’s me, Liam. I’m on your side, remember?”

“You’re not on my side.”

“What are you talkin’ about?”

“It was you all along. You planned this whole thing.”

How else could Audrey have known about her visits to the garda station, that the gardai had dismissed her as delusional with grief, unless Liam had told her? How else could Jax have known about her mother’s suicide and her sister’s many marriages? Or that Devon always called her Mommy? All confidences she’d shared with Liam. Just as she’d told him about her guilt at having yelled at Devon for scribbling on the walls and not practicing her piano lessons correctly. Things she’d never told anyone else.

“You think this was my idea?” His eyes swept the room. “You think I’m the big criminal mastermind here? You really think I’m that smart?” He took another step forward. “Come on, Marcy. Give me the gun.”

“You really think I’m that stupid?” Marcy asked in return.

“Marcy—”

“Please don’t make me shoot you.”

“Shoot me? Come on. You’re talkin’ crazy.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you did a great job of convincing the gardai that I’m nuttier than a jar of cashews.” She laughed, thinking of Judith.

“A jar of cashews? Do you hear yourself?” Liam asked, as if she’d taken total leave of her senses. Marcy could almost close her eyes and hear Peter. The only difference was the Irish accent. “Come on, Marcy. Put down the gun. You’re hysterical. You don’t know what you’re sayin’.”

Which was when they heard the sound of sirens approaching in the distance.

My God, Marcy thought, momentarily distracted by the siren’s abrasive wail. Could she be wrong? Had Liam called the police after all?

Liam suddenly shot toward her, wresting the gun from her hand and pushing her roughly to the floor. She tripped over Jax’s body and rolled toward the fireplace. “Get the baby,” she heard Liam shout.

Marcy watched Audrey snatch Caitlin from her box and bolt for the back door, Liam right behind her. Struggling to her feet, Marcy grabbed the poker from beside the fireplace. What the hell am I going to do with this? she wondered.

She heard Sarah admonish her. Don’t think. Just swing.

Don’t think, she repeated silently. And then, aloud, “Just swing.”

She raised her arm, heard the whoosh of the poker as it sliced through the air, absorbed the echo of steel impacting on bone as it connected with Liam’s back, then watched him pitch forward, the gun dropping from his hand as he crumpled to the floor. Marcy grabbed the gun and jumped over his unconscious body, the outside wind snapping at her face like a damp towel as she chased after Audrey. The police sirens were getting closer, filling the air with their caterwauling and harmonizing with Caitlin’s angry screams. Marcy searched frantically through the fog for Audrey, finally spotting her running down the side of the steep hill. Marcy struggled to catch up to her, stumbling repeatedly over the uneven terrain and falling twice. In the distance, she could make out at least half a dozen police cars making their way up the winding road. “Audrey,” she shouted toward the fleeing woman. “Stop! The gardai are here. You can’t get away.”

Audrey’s response was to edge even closer to the side of the cliff, the wind causing her long hair to dance wildly around her face, highlighting her superficial resemblance to Devon.

“There’s nowhere to go,” Marcy told her over the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below. Although they were standing no more than ten feet apart, they had to shout to be heard.

“One more step and it’s bye-bye, baby.” Audrey extended the arm holding Caitlin, dangling the infant over the side of the cliff.

Marcy pictured her mother in the seconds before she took her fatal plunge, imagined her flying through the air to the concrete below. “Just give her to me, Audrey,” Marcy pleaded. “That way at least you’ll have a chance of getting away.”

“And what are the odds of that, do you think?” Audrey said. “Think I can just disappear into thin air?”

“Maybe.”

“Like your daughter?”

Tears stung Marcy’s eyes. “My daughter didn’t disappear,” she said, acknowledging the truth aloud for the very first time. Her mother and her daughter, she thought, flip sides of the same tragic coin. “She’s dead.”

“Thought you didn’t believe that.”

“I didn’t want to believe it.”

“Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you what,” Audrey said as somewhere behind them cars screeched to a halt and doors slammed shut. “I’ll make you a trade—the baby for the gun. What do you say?”

“It’s a deal,” Marcy agreed quickly.

“You first,” Audrey directed. “Toss the gun over here.” She pointed with her free hand to a patch of grass near her feet. “No funny stuff or I swear the kid takes a very nasty tumble.”

“No funny stuff.” Marcy gently pitched the gun in the appointed direction, watched it disappear into the tall, wet grass next to Audrey’s feet. “Now give me the baby.”

Audrey stared at Marcy for several long seconds, as if debating her next move. Then she advanced slowly forward, extending the baby toward Marcy.

Just like my dream, Marcy thought, holding her breath. Here’s the girl you’ve always wanted, Devon had said, just before releasing the baby in her arms and letting her fall.

My baby is dead, Marcy thought. I couldn’t save her.

“She’s all yours,” Audrey said now, dropping the crying baby into Marcy’s grateful hands.

“Marcy!” a voice shouted as Vic Sorvino emerged from the fog and ran toward them.

Audrey jumped at the sound of his voice. She lunged toward the gun in the grass, tripping over her feet and losing her tenuous grip on the bumpy ground. Marcy watched helplessly as she stumbled backward, unable to control the muscles in her legs, her arms flailing wildly at her sides as her feet lost contact with the earth and she plunged off the side of the steep hill, her screams echoing in the wind, accompanying her into the frigid waves of Roaringwater Bay below.