Linwood Barclay - The Accident

It was quite a sight that greeted her. Marcus, red and shaking, holding on to Kelly. The child crying, her eyes wide with fear.

“Grandma!” she shouted, straining to get free, but Marcus would not let go.

“What’s going on?” Fiona demanded. “Marcus, let go of that child.”

But he did not. Kelly continued to cry.

“Marcus!” she shouted. “I told you to-”

“Shut up, Fiona,” he said. “Shut the fuck up.”

“Have you lost your mind? What are you doing?”

He bellowed at her. “What did I just say? Did you hear what I said? I told you to shut up. And if you don’t, I’ll snap her neck. I swear to God I will.”

Fiona took a few tentative steps into the room. “Marcus, just tell me-”

“Where are your keys?”

“What?”

“Your car keys. Where are they?”

“Marcus, whatever you’re thinking of doing, this is crazy.”

Marcus put his arm around Kelly’s neck.

“They’re in the car. I left them in the ignition.”

“Get out of my way. Kelly and I are leaving.”

“Please, Marcus, just tell me what this is all about.”

“It’s about Emily’s mom,” Kelly blurted.

“What?”

“Don’t listen to her,” Marcus said. “She’s just a stupid-”

Outside, the sound of a truck door slamming.

The first thing I saw when I ran into Fiona’s living room was Marcus with his hand around Kelly’s neck. Then Fiona, her face white with fear.

“Stop right there,” he said, and I did.

“It’s okay, honey,” I said. “It’s going to be okay. Daddy’s here.”

“Did you block Fiona’s car?” Marcus asked. “Because we’re getting out of here.”

“It’s too late, Marcus. I know. The police know.”

“They don’t know anything,” he said.

“Know what?” Fiona asked. “What is it?”

“Ann went out to meet you that night, didn’t she?” I said. “Because she was blackmailing you. You lured her out that night to kill her.”

Marcus’s eyes blazed with anger. “That’s not true.” He looked at Fiona. “It’s not true.”

Fiona looked at me and back to Marcus, disbelieving. I said, “Oh, it was you. Ann says your name. On the video.”

“I only wanted to talk to her,” he said. “She fell. It wasn’t my fault. It was an accident. You ask the police. The tire was flat. She got out to check it.”

I wondered how Marcus could possibly know that, unless he’d set things up to look that way.

Fiona, standing next to the coffee table, said, “Marcus, this can’t be true.”

“It’s over, Marcus,” I said. “I’ve emailed that video, where Ann says your name, to everyone on my mailing list. Everyone’s going to know, Marcus. Let Kelly go.”

But he hung on to her.

“Please,” I said. “She’s just a little girl.”

“I want a head start,” he said. “I take her with me, you give me half an hour, I’ll drop her off somewhere.”

“No,” I said. “But I’ll give you a head start if you let Kelly go. And if you answer one question for me.”

“What?”

“Sheila,” I said.

“What about her?”

“Why Sheila?”

Marcus screwed up his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know how you did it, exactly, but I need to know why. Did she know? Did she know you were having an affair with Ann? Did she threaten to tell her mother? Is that why you did it?”

Fiona’s mouth opened. She was too stunned to speak at first, but finally, in a whisper, she said, “No.”

His eyes met hers. “Fiona, it’s all bullshit. Glen’s lying, that’s-”

“You killed Sheila? You killed my daughter?”

Marcus tightened his arm around Kelly’s neck. She coughed, put her hands on Marcus’s arm and tried to free herself, but she was no match for the strength in a grown man’s arm.

“Stand aside and let me leave,” he said.

“You can’t run,” I said. “The police will find you. Hurt Kelly and it’s only going to be worse for you. You’re not leaving here with her. It’s not happening.”

Kelly struggled some more, kept pulling on Marcus’s arm. I glanced again at Fiona. She was a lit firecracker with an inch of fuse left.

Marcus nodded. “Yes, yes I am. If you take even a step toward me, I’ll twist her head right off. I swear- Jesus! ”

Kelly had brought up her right leg, then driven her heel down into the top of Marcus’s foot with everything she had. When he screamed, his grip on Kelly slackened.

In that same moment, Fiona grabbed the wineglass on the coffee table and swung it against the table’s edge. She held on to the base of the glass, which was now a mass of glistening, jagged edges.

Kelly squirmed free and ran toward me.

Fiona lunged, thrusting the glass forward, a primal scream escaping from her throat. Even before she reached Marcus, there was blood spilling from her fingers where the broken glass had cut her. But she was oblivious to any pain of her own. She had only one thing on her mind, and that was to kill her husband.

I would have moved to intervene, but Kelly had thrown herself around me.

Marcus raised his arms to deflect Fiona, but she was possessed of a strength that was not her own. She kept coming at him, thrusting the shards of glass toward his neck.

Caught him, too. Blood began to spurt from his throat in several places. He made anguished gagging noises and clutched his hands to his throat. Blood dribbled through his fingers.

I screamed, “Fiona!” and pulled Kelly off me. I grabbed Fiona from behind as she continued to wave the broken glass in the air.

Marcus dropped to the carpet.

I looked at Kelly and said, firmly and without panic, “Hit the police button on the security system.”

She ran.

As Marcus continued to clutch his neck, trying to stanch the flow of blood, I said to Fiona, “It’s okay, it’s okay. You did it. You did it. You got him.”

Fiona began to weep, to wail, as I held her. She dropped the glass to the floor, turned, and wrapped her bloody arms around me.

“What have I done?” she wept. “What have I done?”

I knew she wasn’t talking about what she’d just done to Marcus. She was talking about having brought this man into her life and unleashing him on her family.

Seconds after Kelly hit the emergency button on the security system, their monitoring people phoned. I took the call and told them to send an ambulance as well as the police.

I’d barely hung up and the police were there. But they’d been dispatched as a result of Sally’s call to the police in Milford, who in turn got in touch with their counterparts in Darien.

The paramedics went to work quickly on Marcus and, to my amazement, managed to stabilize him. I figured he was a goner. The ambulance wailed as it tore out of the driveway.

Even while Marcus was still gurgling and writhing on the floor, I got Kelly out of the house. I didn’t want her to see any more of this than she already had. I picked her up and she wrapped her arms around my neck as I took her out the front door. I kept patting her back softly, moving slightly from side to side to soothe her. “It’s over,” I said to her.

Her mouth pressed close to my ear, she said, “He killed Emily’s mom.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“And Mom?”

“I don’t know, sweetheart, but it kind of looks like it.”

“Was he going to kill me?”

I wrapped my arms around her more tightly. “I would never have let him hurt you,” I said. Not mentioning that if I’d gotten there five minutes later, things might have worked out very differently.

In the minutes before the paramedics arrived, Fiona stayed in the house with Marcus. I caught a glimpse of her at one point, perched on the edge of the coffee table, just looking down at him, waiting, presumably, for him to die. I was worried she might do something rash-not to Marcus, but to herself. She was in a highly agitated state for a while there, screaming about what she had done, what she had allowed to happen, and it would have been good if I could have stayed with her. But I had only one priority, and that was to get Kelly out of the house.