“Shut up,” she said. “You made Jake do this.”
“It was his idea. All I did was nudge him along. See, I always wanted what was best for him. Not like you.”
“I gave him everything.” She turned to Jacob. “I gave you everything.”
The tears came and it was as if she was looking through greased glass. Jacob sneered at her and said, “You gave Joshua everything. You had Mattie for him.”
Her voice cracked like her mind was cracking. “I didn’t know.”
“I thought Christine would make up for it. But she wasn’t as perfect as Mattie. She wasn’t a Wells.”
“How could you?”
“Christine was easy. No whimpers with a plastic bag, no blood, no questions asked.”
Renee said nothing. She was next to die, but she didn’t care anymore. Perhaps in heaven she would have her children back. She could spend an eternity begging their forgiveness, and maybe one day on the far side of forever, they would love her again.
Johnny Cash went into a song about a highwayman, dying and coming back again and again. The vocal part was taken over by Willie Nelson, then by someone she couldn’t recognize. She lost herself in the slick guitars, a “Wish me” game of dissociation and despair.
Joshua finished his beer and tossed the can behind him. The car hit a rut and he bounced high enough that his head hit the roof. He cursed and slowed down a little. The night had become liquid and the Chevy moved through it like a bottom feeder.
“I mean, you’re sweet and all,” Joshua said to her. “But you ain’t as sweet as money.”
“You know what’s funny?” Jacob said to his brother.
“What?”
“You’re going to be richer than the old man.”
“Shit fire. That’s great. Maybe I’ll dig the old bastard up and prop his skeleton at the dinner table. Piss in his coffee cup.”
“He always did love you best.”
“Naw. That was Momma.”
“You would have killed her if I hadn’t gotten to it first.”
“Well, you beat me at one thing, I reckon.”
The Johnny Cash was winding down in a repetitive guitar riff. Joshua stopped the car and killed the engine. “Here we are.”
He opened his door and the dome light blinked on. Renee could hear the river churning below. She recalled her drive over the bridge and pictured the water thirty feet below. It wasn’t a far enough fall to kill her unless her head hit a rock. But bad luck followed the Wells family.
And, sometimes, you had to make your luck.
Joshua left the door open after he exited, and the dome light cast a dirty yellow glow. Jacob grabbed Renee’s wrist, his face a mask of wicked joy. She didn’t struggle. These two men had already torn her to shreds. There was nothing left worth fighting over.
Joshua opened the back door. “Bring her on.”
Jacob’s Southern accent returned, a bizarre replica of his brother’s. “Reckon we ought to bash her head in first, or just chuck her over the side?”
“You want to make sure. It ain’t the kind of thing you leave up to chance. What if she turns up alive six miles downstream?”
“That would be sand in the craw, all right.”
“You do it. You’ll enjoy it more than I will.”
“Why, thanks, Josh. I appreciate it.”
“I’m Jacob, remember? Don’t go getting all confused on me, or we’ll never get the story straight.”
“Right, Jake. You’re the Wells now. I’m just pig shit, rolling around with a Mexican whore in a Tennessee trailer park.”
“And you’re going to love every minute of it. I know I did, but now it’s time for the big switcheroo.”
Jacob’s hand tightened around Renee’s wrist, sending sparks of pain up her arm. Joshua handed his brother something, and Renee saw its rusty bulk in the dome light.
A pipe wrench.
She could almost see the police report: Blunt head trauma, followed by asphyxiation due to drowning.
Jacob’s latest accidental victim.
And who would be next? Joshua? Carlita? Or would he plant more seed, each sprout insured for a million dollars?
“Hold her for a sec.” Joshua got out of the driver’s side and went to the back door. He yanked it open and leaned in, his breath sour with beer and cigarettes and the lingering tang of salsa. “Come here, sweetie.”
Renee backed away, kicking, until she was across the seat. Joshua climbed in, and now she recognized that perverse grin, one glimpsed in the dim light of a night nearly a decade ago. The night of Mattie’s conception.
She shoved her foot toward his face. He caught it and his eyes twinkled in the greasy dome light, the cut on his forehead oozing blood again. “Hmm. She still got a little fight in her. Tempting me to go one more round. What say, brother, wanna watch just for old times’ sake?”
Jacob yanked her wrist. “I can fantasize about it later. Right now, we better get her in the river.”
Joshua’s face sagged, his smoker’s wrinkles deepening. “Reckon so. Give the water more time to wash away evidence.”
“Besides, we’ll still have Carlita.”
Renee wondered if they would play this sick game the rest of their lives. Swapping partners, playing with money and murder, tricking each other. But that was the future. She had none.
Joshua dragged her by the ankle. She grabbed for the armrest but it came off in her hand. Her fingernails broke as she clawed at the nylon seat covering. No saving grip there.
Jacob released her and got out of the car to join his brother. She knew this was her final chance. The passenger door was open, though it seemed miles away.
She twisted upward, reaching for the front seat, but Jacob had her other leg now and she was being worried between them like a butcher-shop bone in the mouths of two dogs.
“Treat her like a wishbone, brother,” Jacob said.
“I’m wishing for two million goddamned dollars. On three. One . . . ”
She wriggled, nothing.
“Two . . . ”
“Jacob,” she said. “Honey?”
But the word was a lie. Even his name was a lie. He had always been Joshua.
“Three.”
She was jerked into the moist night.
“Do her,” Joshua said.
He had Renee pinned to the rail, shoulders leaning toward the river, facing the whispering, frothing water below. Jacob tested the heft of the pipe wrench. How would she hit if she had actually fallen?
No, not “if.” When.
Think it out, Jakie, just like always. Momma’s cane . . . an accident. Could have happened to anybody. Anybody with a murderous son, that is.
Christine. That one had been the saddest. But she was barely formed, not even talking. All I did was save her from the life of a Wells. So that was a mercy killing.
Mattie. Too bad about her. But she was Joshua’s fault all the way, from sperm to burn victim.
The moon was out, the clouds like violet sheep counting down to a restless sleep. He wondered if blood would spatter onto the bridge railing. He’d have to strike her at an angle, so the pattern would fly out and into the water.
“Smash her up,” Joshua urged. “Just like you did the chickens.”
The wrench grew heavy in Jacob’s hand. “I didn’t do the chickens.”
Joshua, holding Renee’s arms behind her back, his crotch pressed against her rear, gave a thrust of his hips, causing the wooden railing to squeak with their combined weight. “Hell, yeah. You went donkeyshit, brother. Chopping their heads off, licking blood from the hatchet—”
“Stop it.”
Red. The night had gone from purple to red.
“You’re one sick fuck, all right.”
“Shut up. That wasn’t me. It was never me.”
“Tell it to the judge. I got a date with two million bucks.”
“I was only doing what you’d do, if you had the brains.” Jacob gripped the wrench so tight his hand hurt. The metal was slick with his sweat. He thought of the fingerprints he would leave behind. And the DNA, which he shared with Joshua. The DNA one of them had passed to Mattie.