Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

He wasn’t seeing Dale. No more than he’d seen Becky Clarke when he’d strangled her in the park. Or Eve’s daughter, Roxie, when he was drinking Glenlivet and slipping through her house. I was certain now. I could see the murder in his eyes. He was seeing the woman who’d broken his heart. I could tell that it was a sweet pain he was feeling. All of his hate flooded through him. The memories, fantasies, and impulses were a riot in his head. I pushed him harder, gagging, and we bumped into Gramp’s chair. Old Shep blinked twice and angled his chin at me. Dale came at us again, trying to break Grey’s grip on me. She held her own blade the wrong way, too tightly instead of loose across her fingers. She slashed at his back twice.

Grey grunte fuXd softly and whispered, “There’s no need for that. Everything’s going to be fine now.” His blade quit wavering and I knew he was about to kill my sister.

And then the knife wasn’t there anymore.

Grey didn’t notice. He stabbed forward with nothing in his fist. Dale squealed as if she’d been skewered, then looked down in surprise and started to back away in a run. I looked down at Gramp and saw the switchblade in his hand. He was snapping it shut. His eyes were still on the television.

I screamed something. I didn’t know what. I sounded crazy, much more insane than Grey. My belly was hot with pumping blood. I swung around behind my uncle and got the sweet silk tie around his throat, put a knee in the middle of his back, and pulled.

Dale screamed, “Terry, don’t!”

JFK spun in circles and howled as if in agony.

Grey twisted and fell aside and I dropped on top of him. The knife wounds in his back were spurting blood. Dale had done real damage. I held on. He contorted all across the floor and I held on. He whispered a word. It might have been “Why?” I’d never be sure. Dale kept shouting, her face wet, her hands red. Eventually I felt the cartilage in his throat beginning to crack. His struggles weakened. There might still be time to save him. Doctors, psychiatrists, maybe it was possible-and then? Prison? Then he started to convulse and I let go and watched him choke down his last breath.

His body relaxed and I sat up and drew him into my lap. I thought about Kimmy and wondered how I would ever look my father in the eye again.

I dropped over onto my back and JFK licked at my face and my belly. I sucked air in and tried to breathe even while I sobbed. Gramp snicked the switchblade open and then shut it again, and then opened it again.

Dale entered my field of vision. Her eyes were red-rimmed but she wasn’t crying anymore. She leaned down and gripped my shoulders. She said, “What happened? Tell me what the fuck just happened!”

“He killed Mal,” I said.

“No…”

“And Rebecca Clarke. He was sick… the Alzheimer’s… it… he-”

“No, it can’t be. Not Mal! Grey would never do that!”

“He couldn’t help himself.”

“Oh no, no… bullshit! Maybe it’s you who’s crazy!” She stared at the drying streaks of blood smeared up her forearms. “Maybe we both are.”

There was no reason for her to believe me. I was practically a stranger, whereas she’d seen Grey every day of her life. I’d done hardly anything to make her think of me as her older brother. I’d done nothing to make her believe in me. I looked and acted more and more like Collie. She already had one lunatic brother. She had to be wondering if she had two.

JFK wouldn’t come near us. He sat on the rug and stared at me with a harsher judgment than I’d ever felt before.

Dale’s eyes flashed with theories and blazing possibilities, trying to put it all together. I propped myself up against the wall, hands clutching my belly. I was leaking fast. I explained everything as quickly and quietly as I could. What I knew and what I suspected. If she didn’t buy it, she’d ca will the cops and that would be that.

“He was gushing blood,” she said. “I killed him.”

“You saved my life, Dale.”

She dropped her head back, the tears tracking down her face. I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking it too.

“Oh Jesus, oh God, poor Dad… poor Daddy. What’s Dad going to think? What’s he going to do?”

I struggled to get up and couldn’t do it on my own. She eyed me closely. She would always look at me like this from now on. She would never be completely sure of me again. The tears shimmered and slowed.

“Terry, you’re bleeding.”

“Not so bad.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Go get bandages.”

“Bandages aren’t going to stop this. You need to go to a hospital. We have to call the police.”

“No. Help me up.”

She did. I rested my weight on her and she groaned beneath me. She helped me to the bathroom. I tore a couple of towels into strips and made a bandage to knot around my stomach. The wounds hurt, but the black burden of what we’d done blunted everything else. The guilt was just beginning for us. I was drenched in cold sweat. Dale lathered up in the sink and washed Grey’s blood off, then helped me to clean up as well as I could. I found some outdated pain meds in the cabinet and popped a handful.

There was a lot to take care of. We’d already had too much tragedy in my family. My old man wouldn’t be able to handle losing another brother. He was about to lose his oldest son in three days.

Grey was going on the long grift. I wasn’t much of a forger, but I wasn’t going to have to be. Grey’s letter would be short and to the point. I had been gone for five years. Grey could vanish for a few himself. It was a better ending than the truth.

I opened a closet door and found an old black denim jacket. It was tight and hurt like hell to put on, but once I had it buttoned up, constricted against the shredded towels, I felt a little better. I picked the butterfly blade up off the floor and stuck it in my back pocket.

I checked the window. There was blood on the cracked glass. We had to do something about that. I examined the screen door. The latch was broken and would need to be replaced. The jamb looked fine. My old man would be glad to get out his tools. He wouldn’t even be curious. I could tell him I stumbled. I could tell him I got angry and kicked the door in. One stupid story was as believable as another.

“What are you doing?” Dale asked. “What are you going to do?”

“I need you to clean the house. Ma and Dad are out at dinner.” I checked my watch. “We’ve still got a couple hours.”

“They don’t go to dinner.”

“They went tonight, Dale. You’re going to clean the place. Put everything back the way it was. Wipe the blood up.” I pointed to the living-room window. “There too. Change your clothes. Throw everything bloody into a plastic bag and put it in my trunk.”

She looked over at Gramp. “Poor Old Shep, he saw it all. He filched the blade. He saved my life.”

“Both our lives.” Henimpl wouldn’t have snatched Grey’s knife if he had any doubts. “He’s still in there someplace.” I put my hand to his stubbled cheek. “Thanks, Gramp.”

Dale glanced at the corpse on the floor. “What are you going to do with Grey? We need to call… I mean… we can’t just-”

“I’ll take care of him.”

“Terry, no.” She reached up and took me gently by the collar, forced me to look into her face. “You can’t. You’re not going to-”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Not this too.”

“Yeah, this too.”

I blitzed out the back door and got a shovel out of the shed. I looked off at the woods. A shiver went through me so violently that I had to slap the shovel down into the dirt and prop myself up with the handle. I walked back in and Dale was smoking a cigarette.