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“Shhhh!” He shot up his finger. “How fucking hard is it for you to keep your damn mouth shut?” He twisted the mallet between his fingers. “Just once, one Sunday, I’d like to read my paper, enjoy a quiet breakfast … Is that so much? Is that so fucking much?!?”
There was a half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the end table next to the couch—five thousand pieces making up a bird’s nest filled with baby sparrows. He grabbed the corner of the table and yanked it up, sending it somersaulting across the room. It cracked against the wall; pieces rained over the floor. Man, that felt good! He made a fist, flexed his arm. The muscles tensed and flexed like a freshly primed hydraulic jack. No sign of the arthritis that had been there as recently as this morning when he crawled out of bed. Aside from that, he hated puzzles. If that was the last one in his life, he’d be perfectly okay with that.
Eisa had taken advantage of his momentary reverie to skitter across the floor and get herself upright on the opposite end of the living room. The blood from her nose covered her mouth and chin and had done a number on her favorite muumuu. That stain would not be coming out. She kept looking at the stairs, then the front door, then back again.
Norman took a step closer. “Make up your damn mind, you indecisive bitch. I’ll give you a three-count. Then I’m comin’, ready or not.”
That did the trick.
Her hand slick with blood, Eisa fumbled with the dead bolt and managed to get the door open. She nearly fell again coming off the front stoop, but once she got her feet under her she crossed their lawn and got to Pollard Street quick enough. It wouldn’t be the chase he’d hoped for. Eisa just didn’t have that kind of speed in her anymore, but it would be better than tagging a buck from the blind like that lazy prick, Henry Wilburt.
Unlike his wife, Norman had no trouble with speed, or energy, or frail old bones. With each step he felt younger, more virile. He went after her with the vigor of a twenty-year-old, cocking the arm holding the mallet like a shotgun.
18
Matt
MATT SAID NOTHING AShe eased down the steps at the Tatum house, carefully placing his feet as close to the wall as possible to avoid any noisy boards. He pulled back the slide on his gun to chamber a round, cursing himself for not readying the weapon earlier. In the otherwise silent house, there was no mistaking that sound, and he expected to hear something from Josh—movement, the draw of a breath—something, but the downstairs had gone as quiet as the second floor.
When Matt reached the bottom step, he came around the corner into the living room cautiously at a low crouch, hugging the wall, his finger on the trigger guard. Josh wasn’t in there—Matt spotted him outside through the open front door, sitting on the stoop with his back to the house.
Matt slipped his finger from the guard to the trigger and tried to steady his breathing. He’d never shot anyone and didn’t want today to be the first. “Josh, I need to see your hands! Raise them slowly, put them behind your head, and interlace your fingers!”
Josh didn’t do that. Instead, he turned and faced Matt. The man’s face was red and streaked with tears. He tried to speak between sobs. “Why … would Lynn do that?!? How could she? I was only gone for maybe twenty minutes! If I’d known … I … I never would have left her alone. Never! You gotta believe me!”
He spotted the gun in Matt’s hand and swallowed; quickly started shaking his head. “It wasn’t me, Matt! I’d never hurt them!”
Matt kept his finger on the trigger, but lowered the weapon, pointing the barrel at the ground. He reached behind his back with his free hand, took out his handcuffs, and held them out. “I don’t know what happened here, Josh, but we’ll straighten it out. Until then, I need you to put these on.”
Josh glanced at the cuffs but didn’t take them. “Lynn was in a bad place. She hated her job, wasn’t sleeping well. I finally got her to see a doctor in Portland, and he put her on a slew of medications. I thought they were helping, they seemed to—for a little while anyway. But the last couple days …” He faced Matt dead in the eyes. “If I thought for a second she’d ever hurt the children, I never would have left her alone.”
Matt’s mind flashed to what he found upstairs—both children facedown, under the water. Lynn crouched over the side, her head submerged. “So Lynn … drowned Gracie and Oscar, and you …” He let that word hang in the air.
“She drowned them, then herself,” Josh told him. “When I came home, I found them all like that and I called you. I didn’t even go in the bathroom. I could tell they were …” His face twisted, he tried to choke back the tears, but couldn’t. Josh buried his head in his hands and sobbed.
Or you drowned all three.
Or she drowned the children, and you killed her.
Lynn’s problems were no secret. You couldn’t hide something like that in a town this small. But kill her own kids?
She wouldn’t be the first.
People did some terrible things under emotional distress.
Matt had known Josh since grade school. Lynn nearly as long. He couldn’t picture either of them killing anyone. When they were kids, Josh cornered a mouse in Matt’s garage. Matt had a shovel out, ready to bash it into its next life, and Josh had stopped him, trapped it in a bucket, and walked it a half mile up the mountain before letting it go.
Josh was crying again.
Matt holstered his weapon and went to the man, gently cuffing his wrists. “Just until we get to the station, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.”
Josh didn’t protest as Matt helped him to his feet, walked him down the sidewalk, and placed him in the back of his cruiser.
He took out his phone and checked the screen—two bars. Not as strong as usual, but better than nothing. He dialed Ellie—she picked up on the third ring, and he told her what happened. When he finished, neither of them spoke for a long time.
“Did you Mirandize him?” Ellie finally said.
