He kicked me over onto my back. My bound hands dug into me, but Matt didn’t appear to be concerned about my comfort. He tucked the gun into his belt and stood over me, one leg on either side of my chest. If I’d had control over my limbs I’d have tried to kick him in the balls, but it was not to be.
He ripped off a length of duct tape, then bent over long enough to slap it over my mouth, and stepped away.
“I want you to understand something from the get-go,” he said. “Give me a moment’s trouble and you’re dead. You get that?”
I managed a nod as I shifted to my right side to take the weight off my wrists.
Matt said, “The tape’s temporary. I’m gonna explain some things and I don’t want you interrupting. And don’t think of shouting when it comes off.”
I nodded again.
“Okay,” he said, taking a step back. “Don’t go away.”
As he walked back toward his Suburban, I tried moving my various parts. He hadn’t bound my legs, and when I tried to move them, I was successful, if you can call being able to drag them across the ground like they were logs a success. And I was now able to wiggle my fingers, although for how long was anyone’s guess, given how the plastic cuffs were cutting off the blood flow.
Matt came walking back. He was holding a shovel. He pointed the blade into the ground, rested one foot on it, cupped his hands over the end of the handle, and turned it into a resting place for his chin.
“You’re gonna dig a hole.”
I listened. He stepped around me, leaving the shovel, deep enough in the dirt that it remained standing, and looked at my bound hands.
“You’re clearly a workingman. You got the hands. There’s a lot of digging, and I don’t need you whining about blisters.”
I made some noise behind the tape that sounded something like, “Why me?”
“This whole thing’s kind of a shot in the dark,” Matt said. “Hoping to confirm something for myself, and I might need help with that. That’s where you come in. Even for you, might not be easy, given all the time that’s gone by.”
He paused, gazed out into the woods, appeared thoughtful. “I hope I can find the spot. It was right close to a rock. Long as that rock’s still there, we should be okay.”
Matt turned his attention back to me. “I’ve got a reputation to maintain, you know? Word of mouth is everything, no matter what you do. So I get a call that I botched a job, that concerns me.”
I’m going to die. That’s the only way this ends.
“Get on your stomach and I’ll snip the cuffs off. Don’t try anything funny. You can take the tape off yourself.”
I rolled onto my belly, my head turned so I could catch a glimpse of him standing over me. He reached down and I heard a snip and my wrists fell apart. Matt took a quick step back as I slowly rolled onto my side, then got up onto my knees. I peeled the tape off my mouth, balled it up, and tossed it into the tall grasses by the road.
“Up you get,” he said.
I stood. There was a good ten feet between us. If I tried to rush him, I wouldn’t get halfway there before he pulled the trigger on the Glock. And let’s say I got lucky and he missed. He was still a big guy. Wrestling the weapon away from him would not be easy.
Then I thought, what if I simply turned and ran? A moving target wasn’t that easy to hit, unless Matt was a real sharpshooter. And if I ducked and weaved the whole time, I might have a chance. A slim one, but a chance.
And yet, there was a part of me that wanted to know why I was here.
“Grab the shovel,” Matt said.
I pulled it out of the ground and held it, horizontal, with both hands.
“Don’t hold it like that,” he said.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re some fucking gladiator getting ready to take a swing. Hold it with one hand.”
Hanging on to it with one hand, I let the shovel swing earthward. “How’s that?” I asked.
Matt fixed his eyes on me and didn’t say anything. We had a little staring contest for about five seconds before I said, “You killed my wife.”
Matt said, “I thought so.”
I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
He pointed his thumb at the woods. “Let’s go, pardner.”
Forty-Two
The woman with the black Volvo looked shaken.
“What did you say?” she asked Tyler.
“You heard me,” he said. “Are you Brie Mason?”
“Why would you ask me that?” she said, her voice shaking.
That was when he knew for sure. The way she said it. The look in her eye.
“Jesus, it’s not a hard question,” he said, his voice cracking as well.
“No, I’m not Brie Mason. Now leave me alone.”
“If you’re not her, then who the fuck are you?”
“You can’t talk to me that way. Who the hell are you? You’re from the market. Why are you following me?”
“Because you look like her. Like from the news stories, and you’ve got the same kind of car.”
“The same kind of car as what?”
“The same kind of car that came to my sister’s boyfriend’s place. His old place.”
The woman struggled for what to say next. “If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police.”
“Maybe you should,” Tyler said.
She grabbed some of her bags and headed for a door at the side of the house. Tyler picked up the remaining bags.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
“I don’t want your help,” she said, her back to him. When she got to the door, she set the bags down so she could free up a hand to unlock the door. But as she inserted the key she looked at Tyler.
“I can’t talk about this,” she said. “I’m sorry if what happened upset anyone, but I just... You have to leave.”
“What are you saying?” Tyler asked. “Was it you?”
She had the door open, set the groceries inside, took the other bags from Tyler, then stepped into her house and closed the door. He heard the turn of a dead bolt.
“This isn’t over,” he said.
He walked back to his bike, hopped on it, and started pedaling away. When he was several houses away, the side door opened again and the woman took half a step out, tears in her eyes, her jaw quivering.
Tyler didn’t know what to do next. As he rode his bike back in the direction of Whistler’s, he considered his options.
He could do nothing, pretend he never even saw her, say nothing to Jayne or Andrew. But he didn’t think this was the kind of thing he could keep to himself. So maybe he could call that detective. He’d heard her name — Hardy — when he’d listened to Jayne’s conversation with her and, later, with Andrew.
Yeah, he could do that.
But Tyler didn’t much want to talk to the cops. He didn’t actually know if the police were looking for whoever knocked over those gravestones, and slashed those tires, but you didn’t exactly want to walk into a police station when you’d been doing stupid shit like that. What if someone had actually seen them? What if there were descriptions out there of him and Cam?
There. That’s what he’d do. He’d call Cam.
Cam was his only real friend in Stratford or Milford, the only one he could talk to. When they’d been out last night, he’d told him all about what had been going on at his place. The visit from the cop, all the stuff about Andrew’s wife going missing. So Cam knew the backstory. He’d be as good as anybody to talk to about this, even if he wasn’t the brightest bulb in the marquee.
Another thing he knew for sure. He wasn’t going back to Whistler’s to finish his shift, and he was not going back to school.