Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

I clenched in anticipation of the blow, but it didn’t come.

“Cut the shit, Brightman,” Barto said, “and let’s get this over with.”

“Where’s Katy?”

“Goodness, Moe, you sound like a broken record.”

“CD.”

“What?”

“There are no records anymore, Brightman. It’s CDs and soon there won’t be any of those. That’s your problem, you’re living too much in the past.”

“Oh, yeah, do you think so? I’ll show you what your problem is.”

He went back into the tent and came out dragging Katy by her hair. She didn’t struggle. That scared me. She was trussed up, hands to ankles behind her, a strip of duct tape across her mouth. He pulled her up onto her knees. She wasn’t bleeding and there were no obvious cuts or bruises on her, but her eyes were impassive. I hoped it was just shock, but I knew it was more, much more. The last month had plunged her into a deep well with slick and

very steep walls. Brightman had an automatic in his waistband, but asked Barto for my 38.

“ This is your problem, Moe,” he said, pulling back the hammer of my. 38 and pressing the short barrel to Katy’s temple. He didn’t pull the trigger. It wasn’t time. He hadn’t gone through all of this to shoot her within two minutes of my arrival. That was good. The longer he took, the better our chances of getting out of this, if not unscathed, then alive.

“I’m not playing, Brightman.”

“Yeah,” Barto seconded, “shoot the bitch so I can kill this asshole. Let’s get outta here.”

“Quiet! I want to savor this. Once she’s dead, I don’t care what you do to him. That’s the deal.”

“Whatever,” Barto said.

Brightman got on his knees next to Katy and wrapped his free arm around her shoulder. “I just want you to know that this is all your ex-husband’s doing. Did he ever tell you about what really happened between us? Shake your head yes or no.”

Katy, her eyes still impassive, shook no.

“I didn’t think so. Moe does like his secrets, doesn’t he?”

Silent tears began rolling down Katy’s cheeks and I nearly collapsed. Secrets, the gifts that keep on giving. The pain my silence had caused seemed endless. In a voice barely above a whisper, Brightman explained to Katy how instead of accepting my gold detective’s shield and living happily ever after, I had reopened the investigation into Moira Heaton’s murder. He told her how I had backtracked and discovered that he, Brightman, not Ivan Alfonseca, had murdered Moira.

“Moira knew too much,” he said. “She knew that I had killed a neighborhood boy when I was a kid. I hadn’t meant to kill him, not really, but what do intentions ever have to do with anything, especially in the face of murder?”

The flow of tears was much heavier now and Katy’s body shook, the tape muffling her sobs.

“But did your husband go to the police with the truth? No, he didn’t. Moe, tell Katy what you did.”

“I told you, Brightman, I’m not playing.”

Barto shoved me in the back. “Do it!”

“No.”

“Okay, then I’ll do it,” Barto said. Brightman’s eyes got angry, but Barto had the bigger gun. “Moe set Brightman up and goaded him into a confession. Even made him piss his pants. What Brightman didn’t know was that his wife and Thomas Geary had watched and listened to the whole thing. There. Now, can we get this over with?”

I could see in his eyes that Brightman was getting ready for the finale.

“How could I go to the police?” I said. “I had no proof and all the witnesses were dead.”

“I thought you weren’t playing,” he said.

“I waited until you started lying.”

He shoved the. 38 into Katy’s ribs so hard she crumpled in pain. He pulled her back up. The passivity was gone from her eyes.

“That’s right, instead of being satisfied with ruining my career, he had to hurt my wife. Ruining me professionally didn’t really cut it for Moe Prager. No, he wanted to punish me in a personal way, so he used my wife.”

“I always regretted doing that. I realized I’d punished her more than you.”

“Katerina divorced me in about thirty seconds. She couldn’t understand how she could have shared her bed with a murderer and not have known. That question haunted her for the rest of her life. Did you know she-”

“-died last summer. Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Katerina was really sweet and one of the most stunningly beautiful women I’ve ever met,” I said. “Cancer, right?”

“No, it wasn’t cancer, it was the haunting and the guilt.”

“Guilt?”

“Oh, so there are things you don’t know?” Brightman taunted.

He whispered something into Katy’s ear that I couldn’t hear. There was immediate and crushing ache in Katy’s eyes. I hadn’t seen anything like it since the miscarriage, since Connie Geary’s wedding day, when Katy sat sobbing in a stall of the women’s bathroom at the Lonesome Piper County Club. She sobbed now so that even the tape couldn’t contain the sound of it. She cried so hard that her body seemed to convulse.

“Do you want to know what I told her, Moe?”

No. “Yes.”

“I told her that a week after you confronted me on the street and got me to confess my sins, Katerina had an abortion. She was empty after that, empty ever after. That’s what killed her, not cancer.”

More than anything, I wanted to call him a lying motherfucker. I wanted to accuse him of fabricating that story so he could torture the both of us with it, but I knew he was telling the truth even before the words were fully out of his mouth. And now, finally, I understood why he had gone to such elaborate means.

“Kill me,” I said, spreading my arms out. “Just leave her alone. Don’t repeat my mistake.”

Brightman aimed my. 38 as his mouth formed the word no, but I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t hear anything above the thwap thwap thwap of the helicopter blades. The downwash kicked up a storm of dirt and rocks. An intense and blinding spotlight encircled us. I shielded my eyes. There was the bark of gunfire. I spun. Barto’s head rocked back. Crimson spray danced in the light. A flash. Several flashes. Something bit hard into my ankle and burned its way into the bone. I went down. More shots. I pushed my face out of the dirt. Brightman was no longer standing. He was on his back, arms thrown out, one leg bent completely beneath him. I crawled over to Katy.

The pain in her eyes was gone, with it had gone the light. I pulled the tape off her mouth and put my lips to hers. They were still warm, but the pressure of my weight on her body forced blood out of her mouth and onto my lips. I smeared her blood across my face. I hoped my tears would never wash it away. I was wrong about my destiny. It didn’t lay in front, but behind me.

There was a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see Agent Markowitz standing at my back, a mournful, pleading look on his face. He was speaking but it was all just twisted lips and a jumble of noise. He pointed at my wrecked ankle, the blood gushing out of it, mixing with the dirt, mixing with the blood of the dead. Markowitz pulled off his shirt and pressed it hard against my leg, his mouth moving the whole time. I was starting to catch words now, a few at a time. He was shouting the same thing at me over and over again. Finally, I understood.

“How do you feel?”

I didn’t answer. Brightman’s words were so loud in my head, I didn’t think I would ever hear anything else again. How does it feel? How did I feel? How would I feel?

Empty.

Empty ever after.

Sarah received the videotape about a week after we buried Katy. The tape was from Brightman, mailed by proxy-maybe his lawyer, but probably Connie Geary-shortly after his death. On the tape, he confessed to the murders of Carl Stipe, the little boy from his home town, Moira Heaton, and Patrick Farner, the other Patrick Michael Maloney impersonator. Ralph Barto, he said, had murdered John James, Fallon, Martello, and Mary White. He explained to my daughter why he had murdered her mother. It was, he said, my fault for having slowly killed his ex-wife. He took great pains to discuss the details of my involvement.