Tom Piccirilli - The Last Kind Words

“That’s minor shit.”

“I know.”

“That’s nothing like this. I’ve never done anything like this.”

“I know.”

“Let’s go.”

“Leave her out of it. You can do that much.”

“It was me,” Dale said. “I did it. I stabbed him. But I had to.”

Grey probably would’ve survived the knife wound in the back if I hadn’t strangled him. I knew Dale was protecting me just like I was protecting her. Or maybe we were both intent on blaming ourselves.

Gilmore backed away toward the house. He gestured with his free hand for Dale to follow him and motioned with the gun for me to do the same. I did. I was limping now. The pain was quickly becoming agony. I could barely maneuver the back porch stairs. I got to the door and Dale hung my arm across her shoulder and led me inside. JFK stayed close by. He sensed the danger to our family. I thought he might go for Gilmore’s throat. One of us might have to.

We all stepped into the living room. Gilmore still hadn’t gone for his phone. He turned and stepped backward. I could rush him. JFK would probably do the rest. But Gilmore eyed me again and I had trouble seeing the outcome. I didn’t think I had it in me to murder him, not even to save Dale. I’d failed my family again. What in the hell was the point in coming back, I thought. I’ve done nothing but kick our home off its foundation.

Gilmore wagged the gun at me to get me moving again. At the edge of my vision I saw a flash of metal in Gramp’s hand. Some instinct was pushing him along as well, taking on the responsibilities I couldn’t handle. Beside him, JFK crouched like he was ready to leap.

I shoved Gilmore out of the way. He spun around and stuck the gun under my chin just as I plucked the switchblade out of Old Shep’s hand. I said, “Thanks anyway, Gramp, but we’re not going to do that.”

He blinked at his cartoons.

Gilmore pulled that tight, nasty grin again. He held a hand open and I put the knife in it. He snapped the blade shut and stuck it in his pocket. The false chuckle rang hollow in his chest. He said, “You know what this is going to do to your father?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t even care, do you, you little bastard?”

Enough was enough. I made my move. I lunged forward, swung wild, and connected with his chin. It was a beautiful shot, one I’d been waiting to give him since he’d sucker-punched me in the parking lot of the Elbow Room. It was the last bit of reserve I had. I went down on my face on the rug, groaning and panting.

I started to puke but Dale got a wastebasket and helped me to my knees. When I could breathe again, I reached into my pocket and took out the photo of the woman who had jilted Grey forty-five years ago and put the splinter in his mind that had gone deeper and deeper until it cut him in two. I hoped she was alive. I hoped she hadn’t been Grey’s first victim.

I handed the photo to Gilmore and said, “I don’t know her name or anything about her, but check on it. See if she was murdered. Grey… he might have…” I looked down and streams of blood were pulsing down the front of my jeans. Dale pushed her way in and said, “Oh God, Terry, you’re-” She grabbed more towels from the kitchen and pressed them to my stomach. My mother was going to wonder where the hell all these towels went.

Dale started tying off my wounds. Gilmore said, “They won’t hold.”

“Do something,” she begged. “Help my brother.”

He winced as he rubbed his jaw and finally came to a decision. Covering over Grey’s murder was the lesser of two evils. It was between that and the promise of a completely empty life. We Rands were all he had.

“All right,” he said.

“We have to get rid of some other things,” Dale told him.

“I know a place.”

We were going to be seeing a lot more of Gilmore from now on. He owned us, and we owned him.

He and Dale helped me to my feet. Maybe I would die anyway. Maybe I wanted to die. Maybe that was the perfect choice to make.

I visited Collie one last time. I requested that we meet in the area where I’d first spoken with him, where we could talk on the phone and there would be reinforced glass between us.

The screws brought him in and took their time unlocking his chains. He must’ve come straight from the gym. He was still sweaty and the veins remained knotted all across his arms, twisting red and black in his throat. He smiled at me through the glass but he knew something was wrong. I was a little heartened to realize he could still worry about something even now.

The screws left and Collie spun his chair around, sat backward as usual, and snatched up the phone. I took a brea#x2="1em" a

glass betwth and reached up to mine. I moved stiffly. It had taken twenty staples to close the jagged tears in my side. The emergency-room docs had done an excellent job patching me up. They told me the scars wouldn’t be bad. The dog tattoo would need some touching up, though.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again,” my brother said.

“I didn’t plan on coming back,” I told him.

“So why are you here?”

I could feel that old singular pain rising once again. My foolish mantra returned to me. It beat along with my pulse. I can do this. I can do this.

“You were right,” I said. “Someone else snuffed Becky Clarke.”

He let go with a chuckle that grew wilder until it became a whoop. It got the screws looking in at us. “I knew it. Lin was right. My girl is sharp as hell. Idiot cops couldn’t figure it out, but she did.” He raised his chin and eyed me. “Did you find him?”

“Yes,” I said.

He waited for me to continue. I didn’t. I decided there was no need to tell him that I thought Lin had been wrong too. I didn’t believe Grey was a serial killer. Instead, there was a world of mad dogs like him, husbands and boyfriends who couldn’t contain their rage, whose hands had learned how to batter and strangle. The world was littered with dead young brunettes.

His face emptied of its usual high-strung emotion. He looked at me with some real attentiveness. “Did you take care of it yourself? There’s been no word here. Nothing on the circuit. Lin hasn’t said anything.”

“I handled it. Nobody else knows.”

“Right. But I can see you’re holding back. You’ve got more to say.”

I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me about how you kissed them?”

Collie looked away in embarrassment. His face flushed until it glowed pink. I had never seen my brother embarrassed about anything. It was a revelation. I had learned something new about him on the eve of his death, and that disturbed me. I didn’t want to believe that there was more I might learn about my brother, if we had more time.

“I didn’t know they knew about that,” he said.

“Forensics did their job. Did you really think they’d miss that?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was in the files. Your attorneys should have used it.”

“I didn’t care. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want them to fight for me either.”

“You should have told me anyway. Maybe it would have helped convince me that you hadn’t iced Rebecca Clarke.”

“Nothing was going to convince you one way or the other. You were either going to help or you weren’t.”

He was right. I couldn’t argue the point. Right from the beginning I knew I was going to help. Even before he asked me. Despite my own protests. He called me and I had come running home.

“Why’d you put your lips on them, Collie?”

“I just did, Terry.”

We were bound by our rituals. The underneath forced him to kill with viciousness, but perhaps rev it couldn’t steal all of his love from him. Maybe it was his way of begging forgiveness from them. Or him forgiving them for allowing themselves to become his victims and the impetus for his own destruction.