I don’t turn around. I don’t know if he’s closing in on me or not. I can’t risk it. I just keep pumping my legs and screaming. But now I’m reaching the end of the corridor, that same checkpoint we had gone through earlier. No one is there.
I ram the gate. Nothing. I try to pull it open.
No go. It’s locked.
Now what?
“Help!”
I glance back over my shoulder now. Curly is closing in. I’m trapped. I turn to face him. I keep screaming for help. He stops. I try to read his face. Confusion, anguish, rage, fear — it is all there. Fear, I know, is always the overwhelming emotion. He is scared. And the only way to not be scared anymore is to silence me.
Whatever led him to this, whatever doubts he may have had, they are no match for his need to survive, to save himself, to worry about his self-interest above all else.
And that means killing me.
I am backed up against the gate with nowhere to go. He is about to lunge for me when a voice from behind me says, “What the fuck is going on here?”
Relief courses through my veins. I am about to turn and explain that Curly here is trying to kill me when I feel something hard smack the back of my head. My knees buckle. Blackness closes in around me.
And then there is nothing.
Chapter 8
Cheryl grabbed a cup of coffee and a section of the morning paper and sat in the breakfast nook across from her husband Ronald. It was six a.m., and this had become her blessed morning routine. She and Ronald wore matching one hundred percent cotton spa robes with thick shawl collars and cuffed sleeves; Ronald had ordered them during a luxurious stay at the Fairmont Princess Hotel in Scottsdale.
Most people had moved on to online papers, but Ronald insisted on going old-school with an actual daily newspaper delivery. He started with the front section while Cheryl preferred reading the business section first. She didn’t know why. She didn’t know much about business, but something about the dynamic read to her like a great soap opera. Today, no matter how hard she tried to focus, there was zero comprehension. The words swam by in meaningless waves. Ronald, who normally offered a running commentary on whatever he was reading — an act she found endearing and annoying in equal measure — was quiet. He was, she knew, studying her. She had not slept well after her sister’s call. He wanted to ask what was wrong, but he would not ask. One of Ronald’s strengths was his wonderful sense of when to pry and when to let it be.
“What time is your first patient?” he asked.
“Nine a.m.”
Cheryl’s practice saw patients three days a week starting promptly at nine a.m. The other two weekdays were saved for surgery. Cheryl was a transplant surgeon. It was, without a doubt, the most interesting field of medicine. She mostly worked on kidney and liver transplants, which was both high-stakes and challenging, but her patients, unlike other surgeons’, always needed a great deal of follow-up, often years’ worth, so she could see the results of her labor. In order to become a transplant surgeon, you start with general surgery (six years in her case at Boston General) plus one year of research plus another two years of a fellowship in transplant surgery. It had been staggeringly difficult, but after the disasters, after the tragedy and the fallout, the medical center — her education, her occupation, her calling, her patients — had sustained her.
Her work. And Ronald, of course.
She met her husband’s eye and smiled. He smiled back. She could see the concern etched on his handsome face. She gave her head the smallest of shakes as if to say all was fine. But it was not fine.
Why was Rachel at Briggs Penitentiary?
The answer was obvious, of course. She was visiting David. On one level, okay, fine, do your thing. David and Rachel had always been close. He’d been up there for nearly five years now. Maybe Rachel felt that was enough time. Maybe she felt she should reach out, that he deserved some level of, if not support, sustenance. Maybe, with all the professional and personal heartache in Rachel’s life over the past year, Rachel would find — what? — comfort in visiting a man who had always believed in her and her dreams.
No.
It had to be something else. In the same way Cheryl loved being a surgeon, Rachel had loved her job as an investigative journalist. She had lost it all in a snap, fair or not, and now she wasn’t the same. Simple as that. Her sister had been wounded. The experience had changed her, and not for the better. Rachel used to be reliable. Now her judgment was something Cheryl constantly questioned.
But why would she be at Briggs?
Perhaps she saw David as an opportunity. David had not spoken to the press. Not ever. He had never told his side of the story, as though there was one, or tried to elaborate on his own theory about what had happened that awful night. So maybe that was Rachel’s game. Her sister was still an investigative journalist at heart, so maybe she went to visit David on the pretense of caring about him. She was good at being a sympathetic ear, at getting people to open up. Perhaps Rachel could get a story out of David, a huge headline-making, true-crime-podcast type of story, and maybe, just maybe, Rachel could use that to regain her professional standing and get “uncanceled.”
But would Rachel really do that?
Would Cheryl’s own sister dredge all this horror up again, rip apart Cheryl’s sutures (to use a surgical analogy) just to get back in the game? Could Rachel be so cold?
“How are you feeling?” Ronald asked.
“Great.”
He smiled at her. “Is it corny or romantic to say my wife looks extra-hot pregnant?”
“Neither,” she said. “More like you’re horny and trying to get some.”
Ronald faked a gasp and put a hand to his chest. “Moi?”
She shook her head. “Men.”
“We are a predictable lot.”
She was pregnant. Such an all-consuming marvel. And it had happened so easily this time. Ronald was watching her again, so she forced up a smile. They had redone the kitchen last year, knocking down a wall, expanding the space by fifteen feet, adding a mudroom (for when they had muddied little feet traipsing through the backyard), putting in floor-to-ceiling windows, and topping it off with a six-burner Viking stove and oversized Northland Master Series refrigerator and freezer. Ronald had designed the kitchen. He liked to cook.
Maybe, Cheryl thought, it was simpler. Maybe Rachel had figured that it was finally time to reach out to her ex-brother-in-law. Cheryl could sympathize with that. Hadn’t she wanted to stand by her then-husband too? Hadn’t Cheryl stayed by David’s side, even when the investigation began to circle back to him? The idea of David hurting Matthew was preposterous. At the time, she would have believed space aliens had been responsible for the brutal murder over her husband.
But as the evidence mounted, doubt started to burrow its way under her skin and fester. The two of them hadn’t been good for months, their marriage a plane on nosedive though Cheryl told herself they’d gain control of the aircraft in time and pull out of the plunge. They had been together a long time — since their junior year at Revere High. Good times, bad times, they always stayed together. They’d have made it.
But would they have?
Maybe not this time. That’s the thing with trust. Once David lost it in her, nothing was the same. And once she lost it in him...
As the suspicion started to circle in, Cheryl tried to maintain a supportive facade, but David saw through it. He reacted by pushing her away. The strain of it became an unbearable weight. By the time the trial rolled around, by the time the courtroom surprises came to light, the marriage was over.
In the end, David had murdered their son. And Cheryl was a big part of the reason.