Crease didn't. He couldn't. He had never loved anyone the way Sarah Burke had loved the one-legged gambler Purvis. Maybe his father. He'd been willing to give up a lot of his life to his father, but only because he hadn't known what else he could possibly do.
"And then?" he urged.
Sarah began to coil again. Her fingers tightened on the arms of the chair, the tiny legs started swinging once more. They were getting down to it now, to the real venom. He knew that in a very real way he was finishing her off.
"And then?" he repeated.
"And then came the part you're most eager to hear about, thirteen," she said. "Daniel and I wanted to trade her back for the money up at the old sawmill. It was the perfect setting, no one could possibly sneak up on us there. They were morons to try. My tightwad brother cared more for his money than his daughter, and far more than me. He called the sheriff. He sent that drunk, stumbling thief of a sheriff after us and we were all doomed after that. All of us."
Crease said, "It was your fault it went down the way it did. Purvis didn't call your brother soon enough after the snatch. They didn't know it was a snatch at first. They thought she might've just wandered away. That's why Sam called the sheriff. He was there when Purvis finally phoned. Your brother couldn't play it any other way, he had to work with the police. You botched it from the go."
Another pregnant pause in the room of the needy. Maybe he should check in next door for a while, catch up on his cool, be the thirteen. Nobody even came around to make sure the loonies were tucked into bed.
Sarah Burke's mouth opened and her tongue slid out like a leech. She had spent seventeen years trying to soothe her guilt with the idea that her crime of passion had made it worthwhile. There was enough blame to go around. The bent sheriff, her spiteful brother. She didn't like hearing that Purvis had screwed the pooch from the start. Six-year-old Mary Burke had never stood a chance.
"How do you know so much?" she asked.
"A Ouija board told me. You and Purvis took Mary to the mill together?"
"Yes, we were there, the three of us. We thought-I thought-that my brother would arrive and drop off the money and I would push Mary out to him. He would look in my face and see my love for Daniel and he would leave the ransom behind and go home. I would leave with Daniel and never see either of them again. That's why I kept telling Mary that I loved her and she should always hold in her heart, forever and ever, that Aunt Sarah loved her. I told her that even when she was much older she could always rely on it, you see? That Aunt Sarah was thinking of her, that she would always love her Mary."
Crease reached down and grabbed the side of the box spring, and his grip tightened until the material began to rip and the springs inside squealed. Sarah looked at him and said, "Are you sick?"
"Yes, I'm sick."
"Me too, thirteen. I have some pills here. Would you like some?"
"No," Crease said.
"Good, they're poison. For me anyway. They're killing me. I'm allergic but they keep giving them to me and I keep taking them. It will make things easier in the end for everyone."
He shut his eyes and released the mattress, took a few deep breaths until the fever began to pass. "You were waiting at the mill. You saw the sheriff pull up."
"Of course. He parked over the ridge but he was heavy-footed. He couldn't hear himself, how loud he was."
No, Crease thought, because the first thing that goes when you're drunk is the hearing.
"What did you and Purvis do then?"
"We left," she said.
"What?"
Her gaze locked with Crease's and she nodded. "That's right, I pushed Mary forward and told her to go see the nice policeman. Daniel said he spotted someone else in the woods, and we left. There are logger trails criss-crossing the entire hill. We drove away on one of them."
"Without the money? You couldn't have walked away from it that easily."
"But we did," Sarah Burke said. "I didn't want my niece to be hurt, and I couldn't afford to lose Daniel, not under any circumstances. As I said, this wasn't a kidnapping. I didn't want ransom. I wanted a gift. A gift from my brother. When I realized I was to be denied, we left."
"Where did you set her free in the mill? The far side? The north side?"
"Yes, that's right."
Way on the opposite end of the factory. His father should've seen a little girl walking up on him, at that point. But he was there for at least five hours before he noticed she was there, and when he did, he shot her.
Crease tried to see it from different angles. Maybe Mary fell asleep and only awoke at sunset, when Edwards started his move on the mill. But no, it made no sense. Could she have tried to follow after Sarah and Purvis after they left? Wandered around in the woods, lost for hours, before she found herself back at the mill? Just in time to snuff it. Too big a coincidence. It didn't really play.
He eyed Sarah Burke. She wasn't lying.
"Daniel drove me into town. He let me off in front of my brother's store, and then he just kept driving. I never saw him again. Perhaps he was only using me to get money. Or to have someone to care for him, at least for a while. Maybe he had grown tired of me. I realized that was possible from the start. Perhaps he did it to protect me from the men who would soon be coming for him. But it-"
"It didn't matter," Crease said. "You didn't care."
"I didn't care, it didn't matter. Nothing did. Surely you see that."
He shook his head, kind of sadly, the way he did when he saw somebody about to do something stupid during a deal. Some idiot reaching for a gun, Tucco moving, Crease raising his. 38, shaking his head.
"Not even the consequences," Sarah Burke said. "I understood what they would be. Even if we'd gotten the money and run away together, sooner or later he would've abandoned me. I'd have nowhere to go but home again to my brother's house. And then I'd go to jail."
"The police never questioned you?"
"Of course they did," she told him, "but Sam covered for me. You see, he knows I did it. He's always known, although he can't admit it to himself. That's why Vera left him. That's why he's so mincing and clean and proper. He can't relax. He can't let go. If he does, even for an instant, in any way, he'll vanish. That's what he says."
"Yes."
"That's what he's most afraid of-disappearing, the same way Mary did. The truth would destroy him. It may still." She let out a rictus smile that was no lip and all teeth. "As I've vanished. I suppose in my heart I always knew I'd wind up here or a place like it. There's no bars on the windows but I'm trapped. I dwindle. Where can I go? Where could I ever possibly go? I live in expectation. Every morning, every night, I fully expect him to walk through that door and kill me. I dream of it. I hope for it, you see. He thinks vanishing is a torture. For me, it would be a blessing. A godsend. Is that why you're here, thirteen? Did God send you after me?"
"No."
"Are you sure you won't share my poisonous pills?" she asked.
"No," he said, and started for the door, "you keep them all."
Chapter Twelve
The rearview drew his eyes. The sense that someone was following him, or worse, hiding in the back seat, was overwhelming. Was it his old man, sitting there with a pint in his hand, vomit crusted on his shirt front? His father sobbing, wishing he had another chance to do things right, or maybe just to steal a little more. Crease couldn't tell.