Laura Lippman - The Last Place

I am the link. Not geography or cause of death. The five were not connected to one another until I came along.

The list had been the lure, leading her toward something, to someone. She needed to know who, she needed to know why. But Luisa O’Neal had already refused to tell her either, and who could blame her? Killing her daughter would be nothing to this man. He had killed Julie Carter just to remind Tess that he was not done.

She unfolded from her crouch, listening to her knees crack. She was happy to have her legs at all, instead of the atrophied appendages beneath the blanket in Luisa’s bed. She was happy to be alive and wondered how much longer she would be. She heard a furious scratching sound and looked up to see Luisa writing hurriedly. Her handwriting was almost indecipherable now.

You must not tell anyone. No one. No police.

“But-”

My daughter,Luisa wrote. MY DAUGHTER. He will kill my daughter if you go to the police. And if you send the police here, I will deny everything.

With that, she ripped the pages from the tablet and shredded them as best she could. Her hands may have been shaky, but they still had some strength.

“But he wants to kill me, Luisa. Right? So are you saying your daughter’s life is more important than mine?”

Not necessarily,she wrote-and promptly tore it up.

“Are you disputing my first premise or the second?”

Both.This note, too, was torn up. Then: Go.

Tess did, feeling as she always had when she faced someone from the O’Neal family-defeated, crushed, decreased. But when she reached the door, a voice called after her. It was a sad voice, slurry and soft, unable to make consonants, but a voice all the same.

“Nushingish ran’um.”

“What?”

“Nushing… nushing.” Tess could hear the fury in Luisa’s voice, could see how she loathed her imperfections. Her face was flushed from emotion and effort as she held up a hand, spreading her fingers the best she could. Her fingers curved, slicing the words into the air.

“Fi-” she said. “Fi-”

“Five? Five what?”

But she gave up, returning to her pad.

Tiffani Gunts Lucy Fancher Julie Carter Hazel Ligetti Michael Shaw

Five names. Five homicides. And nothing was random. Absolutely nothing.

As soon as they signed out of the Keswick Home for Incurables, Tess called Crow on her cell phone and told him to bring her case files to their local coffee shop, the Daily Grind.

She also asked for her Smith amp; Wesson.

“You’re going to strap your gun on here in the Grind?” Whitney asked, sliding into the back booth with a large coffee and a pumpkin muffin. Tess had no appetite.

“Luisa O’Neal just told me that a serial killer-a man who has killed three, maybe five, people-wants me. I’d call having my gun nothing more than prudent.”

Whitney fussed with her coffee, adding three packets of sugar and half-and-half until was more lait au café than café au lait. “What is it between you and Luisa? Why did you ask me to leave the room?”

Tess hesitated. Part of her mind told her all bets were off. Luisa had helped this man lay a trap. The fact that she had done it out of fear for herself and her daughter was not a wholly satisfying excuse, although it was an understandable one. She had set this plan in motion, indifferent to the fact that Tess was a killer’s quarry.

But seeing her old nemesis so reduced had changed the nature of their relationship. Where once Luisa had made Tess feel inconsequential and helpless, Luisa was now the helpless one. Tess, who once kept Luisa’s secrets out of fear, continued to keep them out of habit.

Besides, she had never wanted to test Whitney’s loyalties. Whitney loved Tess, but she also had a fierce loyalty to what Mrs. Talbot would call, without irony, “our kind of people.”

Whitney, mistaking her silence for out-and-out refusal, said, “I bet you told Crow.”

Tess nodded. He was the one person she had told.

“I can keep a secret too, Tesser.”

Her use of the old nickname was strategic, a reminder of how long they had known each other.

“It wasn’t just about keeping secrets,” Tess replied. “I didn’t think you’d believe me if I told you the O’Neal family was capable of murder. But yes, after Crow and I began dating, I told him. I needed to tell someone.”

“The first time or the second time?”

“Huh?”

“Did you tell Crow the first time you hooked up-the time you fucked it up and he left you-or when he took you back?”

Whitney must be hurt if she was going out of her way to remind Tess of past mistakes.

“The first time. In fact, I told him before we slept together.”

“You are easy. I mean, I always knew you were a first-date kind of girl, but I didn’t know you gave everything up so readily.”

“Look, I’ll tell you the whole story right now if you like. But don’t argue with me, say it couldn’t have been that way, or tell me I must be mistaken.”

“I don’t argue-”

Tess held up her palm. “You’re arguing now.”

Whitney settled back, as close to contrite as she could ever be.

“Remember Jonathan Ross?”

“Speaking of being promiscuous-you slept with him even after you stopped dating.”

“Thanks for reminding me. Remember how he died?”

“He was hit by a car.”

“Luisa’s husband, Seamon, arranged that. Jonathan was getting too close to uncovering a true scandal. The O’Neals had paid a man already on Death Row to confess to a murder their son had committed. A go-between was used, a lawyer, so the killer never knew which prominent family he was helping. But there was money in it, which went to his mother. He also assumed his ”sponsors’ would keep him from being executed.“

“Did they?”

“He got two extensions before he was put to death last fall. Tucker Fauquier.”

“The psychopath who wanted to kill a boy in every county, but only made it as far as the Bay Bridge?”

“The very same.”

“And he never knew about the O’Neals’ involvement?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

Whitney was thinking, chin cupped in her hand. “Could anyone else know about all this?”

“Possibly. But I don’t see how. Seamon O’Neal, Tucker Fauquier, his mom, the lawyer who made the deal-they’re all dead. As far as I know, Luisa and I were the only two people left on earth who knew this story.”

“And Crow,” Whitney reminded Tess.

“And Crow.”

“I always hoped you talked about me when I wasn’t around.” Crow slid into the booth alongside Tess and, with one easy gesture, dropped her gun into her lap as he squeezed her left thigh. She looked down and almost laughed out loud when she realized he had wrapped the gun in a dish towel.

“That’s why it took me so long to get over here. I couldn’t figure out how I was supposed to transport it. You may have a license to carry, but I don’t, and I had these visions of me being jacked up on Cold Spring Lane. But I loaded it, per your instructions So.” He surveyed the bustling coffee shop. “A little heist? You picked a good day to knock over the Grind. They do a lot of cash business on a Saturday.”

His light mood disappeared when Tess told him everything that had happened that morning.

“You’ve got to go to the police, Tess. I don’t care what she said. You can at least call someone you trust, Detective Tull in homicide. This guy wants to kill you.”

“Not necessarily,” she said, echoing the words on Luisa’s pad. “Besides, how’s he going to get to me? His pattern is to insert himself into women’s lives, establish himself as the perfect boyfriend, the one who picks up the pieces left behind by some asshole. I already have the perfect boyfriend.”