Beverly Connor - Dust to Dust

“Tyler!” screamed his mother. “What did you do to him?”

“She shot him, you stupid bitch,” said Samuel Carruthers, jumping from his chair. He grabbed Tyler by his shirt and hit him across the face. “You piece of crap. You piece of waste.”

“Stop,” cried Wendy. She jumped up and grabbed Samuel around the waist. “Stop it. You’re a doctor; help him.”

Diane gave Tyler’s gun to Kingsley, took her phone, and started to dial the police.

“Stop right there. Just stop right there and put down that phone and those guns.”

They all jerked their heads up at the sound of the different voice. A man in his seventies stood in the doorway to the living room, well dressed in brown slacks and matching sport coat, and holding a Glock 9mm. Diane guessed this was Everett Walters. Well, great .

Everett Walters may have been in his seventies, but he apparently took his own advice about keeping in shape. He was well built and tanned. He appeared strong and his gun hand never wavered.

“You, Samuel, get off my boy and wrap up his leg. Ty, wipe the blood and snot off your face and stop whining.”

He looked at Diane. She expected his eyes to be the color of his sister’s, but they weren’t. They were a lighter blue, piercing, cold. She didn’t look away.

“You,” he said, gesturing his gun at Diane, “put your gun down on the table over there. You do the same,” he told Kingsley.

The two of them laid down their weapons beside Diane’s phone.

“Boy, didn’t you check them for guns?” he said.

Tyler said something that Diane didn’t understand. He was the kind of guy who was all bluster when he had the gun, but reverted back to being a child when someone took it away from him.

“Everett,” said Wendy, “they know.”

“Shut up, girl. They know nothing. It looks to me like the two of you came in and shot my boy here. That’s what I see. What this Nicholson boy said means nothing. Hell, he might have been in on it with Ryan Dance. They can’t prove anything. Everybody just keep your mouths shut and we’ll all get out of this. These two are a couple of thugs. That’s what we’ll tell the police. Who’s to say different?”

“Me,” said Marsha. “Your boy, as you call him, raped and killed my daughter.”

“Stupid woman, you’re not going to believe what Nicholson said? Sit down and listen. I’ll tell you how this is going to go down.”

Apparently he had been listening at the door, thought Diane. Tyler must have called him.

“Now, listen here,” said Samuel Carruthers. “Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here like this after what you’ve done?”

“I’m the guy with the gun. And I’ll always be the guy with the gun. Listen here. What they’ve said is a lie.”

“He admitted it,” said Samuel.

“Did not,” said Tyler.

“If you’ve finished tying up his leg, sit down,” said Everett Walters. “Everybody sit down or I start shooting, and fuck the consequences.”

Samuel had torn a piece off Tyler’s shirt and tied it around his leg. He tightened it so that Tyler yelped and he sat back down in the chair beside his wife. Diane didn’t think he really did much in the way of tending to the wound.

“We might just have a home invasion. Those are going around.” Everett grinned at Diane with nicotine-stained teeth.

“Apparently,” Diane said. “Sometimes, though, it doesn’t play out the way you expect. You’ve made some assumptions that aren’t supported by the facts. Now, you can tell me to shut up, like Tyler did. But I’m the one with the knowledge of all the crimes and what the police actually have. That’s why you sent the assassin to my house, isn’t it? To kill the person who could make the connection.”

Diane heard someone suck in a breath.

“Everett,” said Wendy, “this has gone too far. Look what you’ve done to my son. Don’t you have any conscience?”

“Shut up, woman.” He didn’t even look at her when he spoke, but stared at Diane.

“She got a text message on her phone,” said Tyler. His face was streaked with blood and tears, even though he made an effort to wipe it with his sleeve.

“Text message? Is that something we should be concerned about?” said Everett.

“There is so much you don’t know,” said Diane. “Yes, it is something you should be concerned about. But first, you need to tell Tyler how you played him. Tell him the truth… that he didn’t kill Ellie Rose.”

Diane attracted all their attention, including Kingsley’s. It was Marsha who recovered first.

“What? You mean Ryan Dance is guilty after all? After all this! Just what are you playing at?”

“Ryan is not guilty,” said Diane. “What Colton said is true, to a point. I tried to explain, but Tyler threatened to shoot me if I spoke. Mr. Walters, you need to tell Tyler the truth.”

Diane had a plan in mind. It wasn’t a particularly good one, but it seemed like very few of her plans were, in this kind of situation. Rushing either one of them was out of the question, so she would try the old divide et impera approach. It had worked for the Romans.

“What?” said Tyler. He rocked back and forth, still holding his leg, trying not to cry.

“Tyler raped Ellie Rose,” continued Diane. “He choked her to unconsciousness and she was badly hurt. She hit her head in a fall, I suspect, while Tyler was fighting with her. But then Tyler called his grandfather for help, and Everett Walters came, prepared with a hatchet, just in case he got the chance. And he did. When Ellie was trying to get up, he struck her down.”

“Oh,” whimpered Marsha. “Oh God.” She put a hand over her mouth and rocked forward. Her husband reached out to her.

“When he got rid of her body,” said Diane, “he struck her head against a rock to disfigure the wound-using blunt-force trauma in an attempt to hide the evidence of the sharp weapon that killed her.”

Diane stared Everett in the eyes. “You tried to make it look as if her head were injured when Dance threw her body down the embankment. And fortunately for you, Gainesville had a brand-new medical examiner with a track record of making wrong calls. But another medical examiner recently analyzed the photos of the autopsy and saw the sharp cuts in the skull that you tried to obscure.”

“You bastard,” said Wendy. “You freaking bastard-all this time…”

“Just your ME’s word against ours, seems like to me,” Everett said. “Don’t listen to her.”

“Tyler needs to listen. He can redeem himself,” said Diane. “It’s not too late.”

“You got nothing,” Everett said. He pulled a straight-back chair from its place near the wall beside the fireplace, sat down, crossed his legs, and looked very smug.

“You saying I didn’t kill El?” groaned Tyler.

“That’s what I’m saying,” said Diane.

“Don’t listen to her, boy. She’d say anything,” said Everett. “She’s desperate.” He grinned at Diane.

She could see her plan had little chance. Tyler was in too much pain, he was only half listening, and his grandfather had a big hold over him.

“What was the text message?” said Tyler. “What does it mean? Someone please get me some painkillers?”

“Please,” said Wendy. “Samuel, you must have something. Give him something.”

“He can take the pain for a little while,” said Everett. “Just until we figure this thing out. Everybody stays in the room so I can see them.”

“Pour him a drink,” said Kingsley. He nodded toward the bar in the corner where Wendy poured Marsha’s drinks.

Everett nodded and Wendy got her son a bottle of vodka and poured him a drink, which he downed in one gulp.