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“You know I’m not at liberty to say.” Now distinctly uncomfortable, especially since she hadn’t notified anyone of her plan to visit Dawn, she began plotting a graceful means of escape.
“Calder has been concerned about you, Dawn. I know he’d like to speak with you. I’ll call him for you.” She reached for her handbag, but Dawn stopped her.
“No, that’s okay.”
Elle tried another tack. “Once Compton and Perkins learn that you’ve left the hospital, they’ll want to make provisions for your safety, too. They won’t approve of your being here alone.”
“I’m not alone. Mom’s here.” She glanced toward a hallway that Elle assumed led to bedrooms. “She’s resting.” She leaned back against the sofa cushion and fixed a hard stare on Elle. “Are you sleeping together?”
“Excuse me?”
“You and Calder. And don’t tell me no. I wasn’t born yesterday. Frank was actually jealous of him. He kept asking if he was going to be there in the safe house, too. Like he and I would be sneaking off to screw while cops were all over the place.”
She shook her finger at Elle. “But you two found a way. When the firestorm started, he was up in your bedroom, wasn’t he? That’s how you and he conveniently got away. That’s so romantic,” she said and fluttered her eyelashes.
“Dawn, I—”
She laughed. “Shauna Calloway would shit a brick if she knew. Or does she know?” Her eyes were agleam with malice. “I hope she knows. I hope the bitch knows and chokes on it.” She drew her feet up onto the edge of the sofa cushion and hugged her raised knees.
And that’s when Elle saw it: a starburst of blood on the toe of her white slipper. It couldn’t have seeped up from the bandage protecting the sole of her foot. The spot was bright red. Fresh.
Forcibly concealing her panic, Elle tried to keep her hands steady as she reached for her handbag again and took her phone from the side pocket. “My Uber driver said he would stay close by and come back for me as soon as I called him. I really shouldn’t have stayed this long. You should be resting.”
Dawn lunged off the sofa and snatched the phone from Elle’s hand. She threw it across the room at the fireplace. It smashed against the bricks and landed on the floor.
Elle didn’t hesitate, she elbowed Dawn in the stomach and pushed past her. She ran into the hallway, yelling “Help me!” and flung open the first door she came to.
But the older woman sitting propped against the headboard of the bed was beyond helping anyone. Her head listed toward her right shoulder. Her eyes were open. A hole marked the center of her forehead. Behind her, on the wall, was a grisly mosaic.
Elle clamped her hands over her mouth.
Dawntsked and said from behind Elle, “After Frank, after the safe house, she was getting cold feet. I told her a thousand times that everything was going to be fine, that they’d never suspect us.
“But, no. She said our luck was sure to run out. She started making noises about us turning ourselves in. She said maybe if we surrendered ourselves to Compton and Perkins, they’d go easier on us than if we got caught.” She laughed. “Have you ever heard of anything that crazy?”
Chapter 39
The deputy who’d been stationed outside Dawn’s hospital room was getting his ears blistered by Compton. Her tirade was interrupted midsentence by her ringing cell phone.
She yanked it from her belt, looked at the readout, and passed it to Perkins. “It’s Hudson. Tell him to stay at the house until we get there, or there’ll be hell to pay. Tell him it could be a while.”
Perkins took the phone from her and answered. “This is Perkins. I’m on Compton’s phone.”
“It’s Dawn.”
“What?” Perkins put a finger in his ear in order to hear Calder above the dressing-down his partner was giving the deputy.
“Listen to me. It’sDawn. I don’t know if her mother and husband were in on it, or if Dawn carried it out by herself, but she was behind it.”
“Behind—”
“The Fairground shooting,” Calder shouted. “All of it. In reprisal. Her father was one of the men in that picture. The one who died of the overdose. Smithson was his name. Jim. Mother Marjorie. Daughter Dawn.”
Perkins snapped his fingers several times. Compton stopped berating the deputy and turned to him. He hitched his head toward a storeroom, and she followed him into the tight space, which was stocked with extra blankets and bedpans. “He says Dawn Whitley is behind the shootings.”
“What?” Compton exclaimed.
“That’s what he says.”
