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“He tried to kill her,” Davis says.
My fingers make contact with the key. I fish it out and hold it between my fingers. “What’s he doing down here?”
Davis’s eyes meet mine. “He finally succeeded.”
Cole bends over the man. With one hand he holds a flashlight, with the other he covers his nose and mouth. “He’s dead.”
Davis chokes out a sob. “He killed them. He literally beat them to death.”
I don’t believe him. Not for a minute. I want to know how he ended up down here. It doesn’t add up, and I want more detail. But this doesn’t feel like the time to ask.
“He’s damn well nearly decapitated,” Roy says.
Davis nods. “I wanted to see the look in his eyes when he knew it was over.”
Chapter Forty-One
Ruth
It’s difficult to explain what it was like coming out of that cellar. For the most part, what took place after was, and still is, a blur. It could be the spectacle aspect of it that has caused me to block it out. No one likes to sit with shame, and to say the entire town was watching would be putting it mildly. And if recent events are any indication, they won’t be looking elsewhere anytime soon.
As they say in the press, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Killing someone, no matter if you claim it was in self-defense, makes a great news piece. Kill several people, mix in a little love triangle, an allegedly deranged ex and well, you have all the ingredients for a real show. Gossip and speculation are one thing Jester Falls excels at.
That doesn’t mean I’ve been able to put it out of my mind entirely, just because my memory is hazy. Of course, I haven’t. It’s in my face every single hour of every single day.
That night brings up a lot of things. I wake sometimes, sitting straight up in bed, in the dead of night, certain I see flashing lights. I dream about standing around, watching Magnolia House being roped off with yellow tape. It’s always the same. Someone wraps a scratchy blanket around my shoulders as flashes catch my eye from the second floor. The nightmare is the same as the reality. It takes me a second to understand what I am seeing when I look up at that window. Flashes from the camera photographing my brother’s corpse. It’s the strangest things you remember. It’s the strangest things that haunt your dreams.
The usual characters make their appearance. Ryan Jenkins and his lovely wife. The thoughts about those people, they don’t change. I remember thinking that Ashley had, in fact, pulled off what she’d set out to do and how ironic that was.
That night outside Magnolia House, police pushed us back, beyond the yellow tape. Ryan and his wife stood close to where Cole and I were. At this point, Davis had already been placed in cuffs, and Roy was being assessed in the back of an ambulance. I turned to look over my shoulder, and my eyes caught his for the briefest of moments. His wife was leaning into him, whispering in his ear. I couldn’t hear most of what was being said, just this one thing. She said, “I bet you’re glad you didn’t marry into this family.”
That was when our eyes locked, Ryan’s and mine. He held my gaze for a beat, and then he looked back at her. “Huh?”
“I said, this family, they’re crazy.”
“Oh,” he told her. “Yeah.”
Cole squeezed my arm. “It’s going to be okay. Not tonight. But it will be.”
Tears snuck out of the corners of my eyes. “How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
“This is a fucking nightmare.”
“Yes,” he said. “For me, too.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Ruth
For a second, I think I might be actually losing it, and I wonder if this is what they mean by the term psychotic break. I consider calling someone. But who? What kind of friend do you call to get you out of a jam like this?
Problem is, I know exactly what kind of friend.
But I won’t go there. I can’t go there.
Bad things happen when I go there.
