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“I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”
“You wouldn’t, Davis. Of course, you wouldn’t.”
He looks up at me with sharp, intelligent eyes that crease slightly at the corners from years of easy going smiles. He doesn’t look like himself. He doesn’t look like a zombie, either. Quite frankly, he looks like someone capable of murder. “You saw them?”
“Yes,” I say. “I saw them.”
“Johnny never liked her.”
“I don’t know. I guess he liked her well enough.”
“You!” he shouts. He sits upright in his chair and toys with the knife. “You never liked her.”
“Davis,” I say, backing away. “I’m going to ask you one more time. Where is Roy?”
He scoffs, and I realize how much I sound like my mother. His eyes narrow, and when he speaks, he does it in a way that scares me. “What’s it to you?”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you. If anyone is going to handle this situation, it needs to be Roy.”
“I’m a dead man, Ruth. You should go now.”
“It’s understandable,” I tell him. “What you’ve done. Anyone would have that reaction—after what you found.”
He eyes me with a furrowed brow. “I didn’t protect her. Not from Johnny and not from him.”
“Davis—”
“This is my fault.” He breaks down in hurried sobs. “It is. All of it, it’s my fault.”
An uproar of laughter comes from the foyer. Guests chat on the other side of the kitchen door. The noise level tells me they’re increasing in number, and it’s just a matter of time before one of them comes looking for me.
“What am I going to do, Ruth?” He cries. “Just tell me what to do?”
Just beyond the top of Davis’s head, I see people congregating in the garden. I want to tell him that I tried that already. That I saw this ending badly a thousand ways to sundown. But I know that won’t help. I know it’s too late to matter. So, I say, “We can fix this,” even though I don’t think we can.
My lie calms him, albeit only momentarily. “Maybe we should call Mike,” he tells me. “He knows the law. He’ll know what to do.”
He’s right about this. You should never make a statement to police before you’ve had the chance to talk to your attorney. Police have a job to do and you need to be cooperative, but you don't want to say too much because anything you say will be used against you. “If you’ll tell me where Roy is, I’ll have him get rid of the guests. Then, the rest, we can figure out.”
“They’ll eat me alive in prison. You have to know that.”
He’s right about this, too. I know it without a doubt. I also know that my little brother has proven twice recently that he isn’t that good in a fight. It makes me sad for him. If only he’d heeded my warning back when he still had a chance.
“It’ll all work out,” I lie. “I don’t know how, but it will.”
“This isn’t Runaway Bride, Ruth. Ashley’s dead.” He slips as he says her name and the sobbing returns.
“I know,” I answer, speaking under my breath. “I saw.”
“I should have protected her.”
I don’t know what he means, and I don’t think to ask because that’s when I hear a commotion coming from the cellar.
My brother’s eyes grow wider than I’ve ever seen them. “Oh, God. He’s up.”
“Who? Roy?” My eyes search his.
This time it’s my eyes that widen. “You locked him in the cellar?”
