Last to Know: A Novel(73)

The boy hung his head, made no answer. Len saw that his shorts and T-shirt were torn, his limbs covered in deep scratches, or perhaps knife wounds. From the shelter of the trees, he checked Bea for a weapon, saw a knife, six, seven inches he guessed, hanging from a cord around her neck. The same kind of knife she had stuck into her mother’s eye before she’d set her alight.

Len thought about the dead and dismembered animals he captured, animals caught for their beauty, killed to preserve them before they could be ruined by age and illness. Youth and beauty should always be preserved, including, in this case, the young Diz Osborne who, as far as Len knew, had never done anyone a disservice and whose only crime now, as far as Bea was concerned, was to be Rose Osborne’s beloved son. Len knew without a shadow of a doubt, right at that moment, Bea’s intention was that whatever Rose loved, whomever she treasured, was to be taken away from her. Unlike what she had attempted with Wally, this time it would be forever. Len had no doubt that Bea was going to kill.

He slid his knife from its sheath, tested its edge through his fingers. It brought a thread of blood to his skin.

An experienced stalker who had been known to catch even the highly tuned-in coyote unawares, Len skulked silently closer. He was out of the trees now. Bea stood fifty feet from where he was, at the very edge of the disused well, her arm resting on the boy’s shoulder. Len saw Diz turn his head, lift his face as though to look at Bea, even though with his bound eyes he could not see her.

“My mother says you are a bitch,” Len heard Diz say clearly. “And you know what, she’s right.”

Len’s heart sank. He should never have said that. Now he was done for. As if in slow motion he saw Bea release her grip on Diz’s shoulders, saw her face suffuse with anger, saw her give Diz a shove. Watched him disappear over the edge of the gaping black hole into the well.

Bea stood, with her head thrown back, listening; waiting, Len realized, to hear the boy’s screams. Concentrating on achieving every last drop of pleasure from his terrible death, she trembled, mouth agape in a smile that sent a chill through Len’s entire body. She did not even hear him coming at her.

He got her from behind, brought her down. She was on her hands and knees beneath him. His body pressed against hers, his hand searched for her knife, but she was too quick, it was already in her fist, already aiming at his throat as she rolled over. He moved out just in time. She swung at him again. Again he rolled, realized she was on her feet, that she was coming at him. The knife was at his neck. He grabbed it by the blade, felt his blood gush.

Len summoned all his wiry, mountain-man strength. He leapt to his feet the way a young animal would. Bea took a step back, looking at him, surprised. Disarmed now, her knife gone, she turned and ran. Len caught her easily. He put both his arms round her from behind, felt her frail ribs crack as he increased his pressure, heard her shrill whine of pain that this time brought him pleasure. And then he cut her throat, the way he did the animals.

He stood, panting, staring down at her as she bled out. Rose-red velvet blood.

A couple of minutes passed. Finally, he knelt, lifted her wrist, tested for a pulse. Bea was no longer beautiful. To Len all that was left was bones, the entrails, the pelt.

He looked at her face, at the beauty that had been the fa?ade all her murderous life. He leaned closer, inspecting her, wondering what had existed inside that blond head.

Suddenly her eyes opened.

For one last moment he was looking into the eyes of evil.

Then she was gone.

*

Len knew what he had to do. He moved Bea’s body farther into the undergrowth, cleaned up his slashed palm with a pad of leaves, and went to the well to look for Diz Osborne’s body.

Again, he found himself looking into a pair of eyes.

Diz was perched on a small outcropping about twenty feet down, held from tumbling farther by a sturdy fern which probably had been growing there for decades.

Diz said in a trembly voice, “Are you going to kill me too?”

“No,” Len said. Then, “Do not move. I will be right back.”

He jogged swiftly down to his boat, took out the fishing line he always kept there, jogged back to the well, where he doubled up the line until he was satisfied it would take the boy’s weight, then lowered it down the hole.

“I want you to tie this around your chest, right under the shoulders,” he instructed. “I want you to tie a knot so tight it will take shears to cut it off. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

Len thought it was good the boy obviously still had his wits about him. “Then here it comes.” He began to lower the line. “Do not make any jerky moves, do not reach out for it, trust me I’ll get it close to you.”

“Yes, sir,” Diz said again. He sounded frightened now.

The line touched Diz’s chest. “I got it, sir, thank you,” he called.

Len thought it a tribute to Rose that the kid remembered his manners even at a time like this. He thought of the dead bitch in the woods behind him, and of this poor innocent kid who she had meant to use to bring Rose Osborne down to her own evil level, to cut Rose to her heart, if not with a knife, then with despair and sorrow. And all under the guise of friendship.

“Now, tie it like I told you,” he said. He wasn’t sure but he had to trust his line would hold. “Test it, give it a tug, a real hard one. So, okay, now, swing your legs out first, then let the rest of your body follow, keep your hands on the wall, get any grip you can, push upwards with your feet against the wall … that’s right … that’s it. You got it, son,” he yelled triumphantly as Diz’s head appeared over the edge of the well.