Last to Know: A Novel(74)

“Jesus H. Christ,” Diz said, sprawling on the ground next to Len. “You’re f*ckin’ amazing.”

Diz heard Squeeze barking. He looked over his shoulder. Saw Harry heading up the hill toward him, and behind him came his brother, Roman.

“Oh look,” he said, turning to Len, his savior. “They’ve found us.”

But Len had gone.





56


Diz couldn’t help crying, sitting on the ground next to the gaping hole of a well where he had so nearly died. Len had simply disappeared into the thick undergrowth. He hadn’t even been able to say a proper thank-you to the man who saved him. And he was scared because he didn’t know where Bea was either.

Squeeze loomed suddenly over him, giving his face an encouraging lick. Then Harry appeared, running, with Rossetti and Roman, like a pair of fullbacks coming in for a touchdown, Diz thought. It brought a smile back to his face.

Panting, Harry inspected him. “You’re a friggin miracle, y’know that?” he said. “All you’ve gone through and now you’re smiling?”

“I’m smiling because you and Rossetti looked so funny puffing up the hill,” Diz said, almost becoming his old perky self again. “Only thing is I lost my binoculars.”

Roman glanced around for them.

“In there.” Diz pointed to the well.

The men went and looked down it. “Was it Len got you out of there?” Harry asked.

Diz nodded. “Yes, sir. He did.” He explained about the fishing line still tied around his chest. “He saved my life,” he added. “That and the old fern, growing in there. It stopped my fall after Bea pushed me in.”

Harry did not allow his feelings about what might have happened to Diz to show on his face. He knelt next to the boy and began hacking off the fishing cord with his Swiss Army knife, rubbing Diz’s shoulders to ease the cramp, wishing he could also erase the pain that, despite Diz’s bravery, he knew the boy must be suffering. The mental anguish of almost being murdered was the kind of trauma few people survived to remember.

“Diz, if you can, if you are able to even think about it right now, to remember, I would like you to give me some idea of what happened.”

Roman was holding on to him, and Diz saw the tears in his eyes. He hid his face in Squeeze’s thickly furred neck. “It was Bea,” he said. “She knew I’d seen her, with my binoculars, y’know, and that I’d guessed what she had done to her mother, and to Jemima, and what she wanted to do to my mother. I don’t know it all, only what I caught in my glasses. But I couldn’t be sure. And then she said she wanted to talk to me, she had something special to tell me. And I listened and she did. She talked about my mom, said what an angel she was … and then…” Diz stopped. He buried his face deeper into Squeeze’s fur. He began to sob. Harry glanced at Rossetti. “It’s okay, Diz,” Harry said quietly, “You can talk about it later.”

“No. I must tell you now, because what Bea said was she hates my mother, she said she was going to kill me so she could watch my mom suffer, then she would kill her too. And now I don’t know where she is and I’m afraid she’s going to do that.”

On the shore road, Harry saw the flash of lights on the sheriff’s car. He picked Diz up and carried him carefully down the hill.

“Jeez,” Diz said, awed. “You mean I get to ride in a cop car?”

You couldn’t, Harry thought, keep a small boy down for long.

When he’d sent Diz off home, he called Rose.

“Where is he?” she demanded, frantic.

“On his way to you, and then you’ll take him to get checked out. He seemed okay to me, Rose, no real need for worry. Except for the mental anguish of what he’s been through.”

“And where is she?” Rose asked, in a voice so quiet it was, Harry thought, almost a threat.

“That’s what we intend to find out, right now. Take care of your son, Rose.”

He turned to Rossetti, who had spotted a trail of blood. He’d pulled back the undergrowth and they both looked at the large red stain, almost beautiful in its scarlet depth.

“Somebody died here,” Harry said, already on his phone to summon reinforcements, and forensics, and ambulances. “Either Bea, or Len Doutzer. Personally, knowing the clever Bea, I’m betting it was Len.”

The two men waited until the reinforcements came wailing along the shore, bringing vacationers out of their cottages once again, wondering what was going on. Within the hour cops were combing the hillsides, going one more time through the wreckage of the Havnel house, searching the guest cottage where Bea was living, the woods, the fields, preparing to dredge the lake if necessary.

Standing on the hill, looking at the damage that young woman had wrought, Harry grieved not only for those she had killed, but for his beloved tranquil Evening Lake. The place where he had once come to rest his troubled soul.

*

A couple of hours later, he and Rossetti drove the dust-embraced BMW up the path that led to Len’s cruddy A-frame, swirling to a stop with a honk of the horn right outside the always-padlocked front door. Squeeze was first out.

The dog stood for a minute, nose pointed in the air, sniffing, then without so much as a backward glance, he headed behind the house, to the shed.