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“You look sort of washed out,” Dawn remarked.
Elle looked toward the television. Shauna was opening the interview with her falsely warm greeting. Elle did look washed out. She said, “We were under fluorescent lighting.”
“Hmm.”
“Dawn, what about the death threat?”
She giggled. “Oh that. I planned that soon after the shooting. I was certain no one would ever suspect me, butjust in case, Mom and I worked out the wording of a threat on my life—being sure to mention that kid’s tattoo—which would have eliminated any suspicion that I was the culprit.
“Mom got this simpleton who walks the neighborhood looking for her lost cat—who’s said to have been dead for ten years at least—to buy her a burner phone that she could use to call me, leave a message, then ditch the phone. We rehearsed it a lot. As you heard, she got real good at disguising her voice.
“When blondie there”—she nodded toward the TV—“broadcast our names, I thought it would be a good time to pull out the death threat. It would practically force the police to round us up, which would give me access to him.”
“Calder?”
“You, too. See, by then, I’d already decided that the two of you together might not be the safest thing for me, and that I… well, you know.” She ran her index finger across her throat, then returned her attention to the television.
Elle’s hands were beginning to tingle with the lack of blood circulation, and her mind was reeling. But, to buy time, she must keep Dawn engaged.
“So, your mother shot up the safe house?”
She continued to watch the TV. “Uh-huh. She had a busy day and night and was really cranky when I arrived at the hospital here in Dallas.”
Elle mused out loud, “You weren’t calling Frank from the safe house. You were calling your mother, giving her directions there. Information on the layout.” Then, “Dawn, how did she know she wouldn’t hit you in the barrage?”
Dawn looked across at her and frowned, seemingly over Elle’s stupidity. “Practice. We brought all of Daddy’s guns with us when we moved down here. We’d go out in the country and practice. She and I both became very proficient.”
“Did Frank know what you intended?”
“God, no. Frank would never shoot anybody. He didn’t have the nerve. I only married him so Mom and I would have a scapegoat if we ever needed one. But he was a good husband. He liked taking care of me. A little too much sometimes. He hovered, you know?”
“How did you—”
“Shh. I want to hear this.” She focused on the TV, where Elle was talking about life after Charlie. “Just getting up in the morning was a challenge,” she was saying. “I didn’t want to face another day without him. I would think about all the days to come that I would have to face without him, and grief would paralyze me.”
Dawn looked across at her. “I didn’t mean to kill your little boy. I was going for Calder Hudson. I fired a nanosecond too late. He’d already moved past you. The bullet struck that old man next to you instead. I fired several more rounds—I lost count of how many—in Calder’s direction, but they were misses, too, because he had hit the deck.
“Of course, by now people realized there was a shooter among them. They were panicked, running crazy in every direction. I figured I’d blown it, missed my chance, so I ran, too. That’s when I banged right into your stupid stroller.
“But it actually turned out to be fortunate. Because when I glanced back to see if anybody was coming after me—no one was—there was Calder Hudson, hero, trying to catch the stroller before it went over. As he reached for it, I got off a lucky shot.
“Figuring he was dead, I thought, ‘Yea! You son of a bitch.’ But,” she sighed, “the shot wasn’t as lucky as I’d thought. He didn’t die. The damn bullet went straight through him. So he’s to blame for your kid dying, Elle, not me.” She turned her attention back to the TV.
Elle was thinking that by now they would all be looking for her, but how much time did she have? How much of the interview had Shauna edited out? How long would it run? Time enough for rescue to arrive? When the interview was over and Dawn was no longer distracted by it…
She had to keep her talking.
“How did you know that Calder would be at the fair that day?”
“We followed him. All the time. Well, whenever he was in Dallas. He went out of town a lot on his jobs to fire other people from theirs. Sometimes we’d have to wait months at a time for him to come back. But when he was in town, he kept a fairly routine schedule, and we kept track.”
“There must’ve been nights when Calder was out late. Didn’t Frank become suspicious of your… excursions?”
“I’d tell him that Mom was having one of her spells and that I had to stay with her.”
“What kind of spells did she suffer?”
“She didn’t really suffer spells, silly. I only told Frank that.”
