No way was she going back down there. She looked behind her. The embankment kept going up, though she thought she could detect the top of the hill in the dark. Tough to say. But far better to run deeper into the woods and wait this thing out than to do what he said. Trevor was probably right, too – Mullins wouldn’t be doing any status update, and the police would send another car out to investigate. Maybe.
If so, Trevor would probably shoot at them.
I’m gonna kill him – Trevor must’ve meant Mason.
How was Trevor even here? Anita was supposed to be home with the two kids but her car was gone.
Panic.
Maybe Trevor had hidden Anita’s car somewhere on the property. She could be in the house along with Mason and Hailey. Trevor had shot a cop. He’d murdered Harriet. He was a killer. It could be bad in there, a nightmare.
But I’m gonna kill him meant someone was alive.
Her emergency call was still attempting to connect. The green icon flashed repeatedly: Calling… Calling… Calling…
Trevor remained in the backyard; she could just make him out in the light of the windows. She searched the house. Several windows were lit, others dark.
She could continue to push up the hill, keep away from Trevor. Wait for the police to come. It had to be soon. If they were coming.
Her phone chirped three times. The screen said, Failed to connect.
“Alright, Bobbi,” Trevor said. He sounded disappointed. “That’s fine. I’ll just go in and finish this thing up.”
“Wait…”
She spoke before coming to really decide on things, like part of her mind was going ahead without consensus.
“Yeah?” He sounded hopeful, eerily childlike. “You coming down?”
“Don’t hurt anyone.”
She started down through the trees, her fingers numb, grasping at roots and tree branches as she lowered herself back down the embankment. “Don’t hurt anyone, Trevor, okay?”
“Hey, no… You… Are you really coming out? Oh shit, there you are.”
She braced for the rifle shot. If she lived to tell about anything, she would report how the moment she stepped out of the woods she had resigned herself to death. It was the oddest thing, she would say, if she got the chance. As if every other thing she had done in her life was a slight forgery, not quite real, and this was the only genuine thing she’d ever done.
“Bobbaaayyy,” he intoned. “Good of you to rejoin us. Now, if you ever try that shit with me again, I’m going to put this thing in your mouth and pull the trigger. Okay?”
All the introspection had passed through her mind in a second or two. “Okay,” she said. It sounded like someone else had spoken for her, like someone else controlling her movements as she walked crisply to the rear entrance of Anita’s house.
She arrived there before Trevor did, and he told her first to slow down, and then he was just a voice floating behind her, and said, “Open up.”
* * *
The music was louder inside. The song had changed.
“You like that?” Trevor asked. “That’s my man Jim. I plugged in my iPhone. Pretty sweet, huh?”
He was behind her, but Bobbi wasn’t focused on him – as she walked in she was looking for signs of the children, or Anita.
The rear entrance was off the kitchen. There was a light on over the stove, providing enough glow to see how neat and clean everything was.
“Who’s in here, Trevor?”
“Let’s go. Go on, I’ll show you. You know this house; you were here just a couple days ago. Go up the stairs.”
She moved from the kitchen into the hallway. Living room to her left – she glanced into the darkness as she passed the doorway. Didn’t see anyone in there, just some toys scattered on the floor. Turned to her right and started up the stairs to the second floor. She heard his footsteps creaking up behind her. He was keeping a nice gap between them, not taking any chances. Her legs were shaking.
“Why are you here?”
“I followed you, you know. To Harriet’s house. To talk to her husband, or whatever you did. Why am I here? You mean this house? Yeah, Roy and I came to an understanding. He’s not a fan of what you people do.”
“Roy let you in?”
How did Trevor know Roy, Carrie Lafler’s drunken ex? But she figured it out: Trevor knew Roy from snooping around in the DSS files. The information she worked so hard to protect was ultimately vulnerable because someone like Trevor had access to their system. Roy and his kids were one of her first cases.
“I made it my business to know him,” Trevor said, confirming it.
“Where are Anita and the kids?” She reached the second floor.
“Hold up, go slow, take it easy; he’s in the second bedroom there, on the left. Go ahead. Nice and slow.”
“Trevor? Where are they?”
“Don’t worry about it. She went to her sister’s or something. Took the kids. I wouldn’t hurt them – they’re who I want to help.”
Thank God. The relief made Bobbi weak in the knees as she stopped in the doorway, looked into the bedroom. She thought it was the room Trevor had been shooting from. Her relief was short-lived.
Lennox was in the corner, tied to a chair. His face was purple and swollen. He looked unconscious, his head down, chin to his chest, with a tendril of saliva hanging from his mouth.
“There we are,” Trevor said softly. “All together again. A little after-work party.”
Bobbi rushed to Lennox, lifted his head, and he moaned. Still alive. The music thumped below, vibrating up through the floorboards. Jim Morrison was now singing about breaking on through to the other side.
“Len,” she said. “Lennox. Can you hear me?”
“He can hear you, he can hear you. Okay, I want you to sit right there on the bed.”
Trevor loomed in the doorway. God, he was big. He seemed bigger in here – maybe the ceiling was low, the doorway smaller than normal. He had the rifle gripped so that the barrel was pointing toward the open window.
“Come on. Move to the bed.”
Since reaching the bedroom, Trevor’s voice had changed. The lamp from the bedside table illuminated his face – something was different in his expression, or maybe it was just the light.
She moved cautiously toward him and he snapped the rifle at her. “Don’t. Do what I say and sit on the bed.”
“How… Let’s talk about this. Okay?”
“Stop stalling. Sit on the bed, Bobbi. You have only yourself to blame for this.”
His voice now came over fully inhuman now. Like whatever in Trevor Garris that could be called his soul had stayed downstairs. This was just a shell. Synapses firing, nerves and cells grasping for their blast of chemicals.
He wanted her to feel regret for something. Remorse. He wanted her to feel pain.
“You’re going to watch,” he said. And he swung the rifle toward Lennox.
* * *
“All units, all units,” dispatch came over the radio. The dispatcher relayed Anita Richardson’s address; Mike was already on his way there – she lived between Lake Haven and Tupper Lake. He’d found out that Bobbi Noelle was paged, called to that location. It would take ten minutes. Maybe less, with the Impala doing over 100 miles an hour in the dark.
His hands clutched the wheel. If a deer jumped out into the road, it was hamburger.
* * *
She didn’t scream.
Trevor blocked the doorway. He pointed the rifle at Lennox. “You’re going to watch me kill this son of a bitch. You’re going to watch, you’re going to see what happens. When you interfere with people’s lives, there are consequences.”
“Something happened to you,” she said.
His finger moved against the trigger.
“What happened to you, Trevor?”
“Don’t try that bullshit.”
“I want to know. What did he do to you? Tell me. Let me help.”
His eyes came over blank, his lips cracked, and he lowered the rifle, just a hair. “All of you do it. That’s why after I kill him, I’m going to kill you, and you can never do it to anyone else. You can never take anyone away from their mother like they took me away from mine.”
He jerked the rifle back into place, his eyes still drifty, and Bobbi ran toward him, grabbed the barrel, and shoved upward.
As the tip arced toward the ceiling, she reached in and grabbed the gun stock. She pulled down toward her chest with everything she had and pried the weapon from his grip.
She had it. She had the rifle in both hands.