Live to Tell (Detective D.D. Warren, #4)(120)

“My dad hesitated,” I whispered now, “shocked by my mother’s death. It gave Sheriff Wayne the time he needed to bolt from the house to his car. Service firearm, locked in the glove compartment. He had to work the key, hands trembling. Get the door open. Retrieve the nine-millimeter. Check the chamber.”

More images. A fourth presence, joining me in the hall.

“While he was gone, Natalie stuck her head out of her room. Johnny made a mad dash for the stairs. And my father started walking down the hall toward my bedroom.”

The air currents again, shifting. Hot and cold. Light and dark. Swelling.

“Sheriff Wayne saved my life,” I said loudly. “He shot my father. He carried me from the carnage. Then he called for backup, never telling anyone what really brought him to the house that night. No point in harming his family with his dirty secret, now that my family was dead. As the officer in charge, he controlled the crime scene. That made it easy for him to write it up as a one-man rampage—my father killing most of his family before turning his gun on himself.

“Sheriff Wayne carried his guilt to his deathbed, where he finally confessed to his son. Is that what brought you to find me? Is that what convinced you I had to face my past, Andrew?”

I wondered if I’d see a spark of recognition in his eyes, a reaction to his name. But the swirling darkness around him remained impenetrable.

Evan’s voice crested inside the closet, summoning the final angel, calling for the light.

“You didn’t have to kill anyone,” I told Andrew. “Your father’s soul was freed the moment he confessed. He wasn’t trapped in the void between the interplanes. But my father was….”

Andrew snarled. Fresh rage as he understood what I’d finally figured out. He raised his knife.

And I curled my fingers around the handle of the gun I’d found in the master bath. From my father’s ashes dumped down a sewer, to his old service weapon taped to a toilet. In these last few seconds, it all started to make sense.

Andrew stormed down the hall.

And I had seen my father staring from his eyes.

My mother always smelled of oranges and ginger. She would feed me strawberry Popsicles on hot days, and stay up with me when I was sick. She loved the Sunday comics and used to pore over Vogue magazine, debating which expensive outfit she would one day love to buy.

Natalie liked to snack on fresh lemon slices sprinkled with sugar. She’d eat out the pulp, then curl the yellow peel over her teeth and smile at everyone. That last summer, she’d started using lemon juice to bleach out the freckles spattering across her nose. Though I never told her, I secretly loved her freckles and hoped every day to see some on my own face.

Johnny’s favorite game had been hide-and-seek. He could contort his body into the tiniest spaces, and we couldn’t find him. One day, he wedged himself behind the water heater and couldn’t get out. Natalie laughed, but I could tell he was scared. I held his hand while my mother doused him in vegetable oil. Later, after he’d taken a bath, he shared his favorite comic book with me just to say thanks.

Andrew, charging. Six yards away, five, four …

My father, a crush of darkness roaring down upon me like a freight train.

… three, two …

“Evan!” a man cried behind Andrew. Michael Oliver, cresting the stairs.

“Michael, Michael, the police. They’re here, they’re here!” Victoria screamed from downstairs.

“Mommy!” Evan yelled from the bedroom closet. “Mommy, Daddy!”

And then Andrew was upon me.

“Look out!” Michael roared.

A crash of breaking glass from the entryway.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!”

Love and light. Light and love. A family’s last stand.

“Die!” Andrew howled into my face, knife arcing down.

I thought of my mother’s love. I remembered my siblings’ goofy grins. And this time I didn’t hide.

I pulled the trigger.



The recoil snapped my arms up. The gun connected with Andrew’s chin, knocking him backwards. Did I hit him? Was he bleeding? I couldn’t tell. My ears were ringing, my eyes tearing from pain. My right hand throbbed, burnt from the ejecting brass.

Evan still screaming. Footsteps pounding up the stairs.

“Police, police! Drop your weapons!”

Andrew picking himself off the floor, shaking his head.

I noticed two things at once. His right side was bleeding, and he still held the knife.

He looked down at me and started to grin, just as Michael Oliver tackled him from behind.

“Son of a bitch. How dare you hurt my family. Son of a bitch!”

“Drop your weapon! For God’s sake, drop it!”

Sergeant D.D. Warren had topped the stairs, blonde curls flying. She had her drawn weapon pointed at me, and her gaze locked on the tangle of grown men. Her partner, and Victoria, poured into the hall behind her.

“The police, Michael,” Victoria was trying to say. “The police.”

“Mommy?” Evan cried from the closet.

“Drop your weapon!” D.D. screamed again.

I put down the gun, my gaze still on Andrew.

“Kick it away. Behind you,” D.D. ordered.

I did as I was told. Michael was on top of Andrew now, bashing Andrew’s forehead into the floor.