Mercy (Atlee Pine #4)(52)

“Of course not. We’d go to prison if she did.”

“But I don’t understand. If you had the gun, why didn’t you stop her?”

“Joe grabbed her but she slugged him, and he fell and hit his head on a rock. Blood was everywhere. He tried to get up but I think he had a concussion. He fell back to the ground and didn’t move. Mercy saw the blood and him lying there not moving, and she ran like a damn racehorse. I don’t think her feet touched the dirt.”

“What happened next?”

“I fired twice at her, both barrels. But she was already into the trees. I was going to go after her and finish her off. But then Joe came to, got up, and tried to stop me. He tried to take the gun away.”

“Why?” said Blum. “He must have known what would happen if Mercy got away.”

“He was soft,” Atkins said in a disgusted tone. “He didn’t want to kill her. He wanted to let her get away instead, if you can believe that. Said enough was enough. The idiot!”

“That must have upset you.”

She smiled maliciously. “So I told him, ‘Look, Joe, there she is, she’s coming back.’ When he turned, I picked up the stone and hit him in the head. Knocked him cold. I wanted to shoot him, but the shotgun was empty. So I ran into the house, got a knife and . . .”

“ . . . finished the job?” said Blum.

“When it was done, I wiped my prints off the knife and called Wanda. I told her Becky had killed Joe. And then I grabbed my stuff and they helped me disappear.”

Pine swallowed nervously and asked in a tentative voice, “And Mercy got away? She was alive?”

“Yes, the bitch damn well did.”

Pine gripped the bed post hard, her eyes shut, her heart soaring with hope.

Atkins suddenly looked alarmed, as though she had just come out of a trance. She stared at them stonily. “But I’ll deny everything I just said, and you can’t prove otherwise.”

“Oh, I think we can,” said Pine, opening her eyes. She held up her phone and then hit the Play button on the recorder function. Atkins’s voice came through loud and clear.

Realization of what had just happened spread over Atkins’s features, and then her face hardened. “You can’t do that. You . . . you tricked me. It’s illegal.”

Pine shook her head. “Technically, I’m not the arresting officer. You’ve been read your rights, including the right to remain silent. If you choose to spill your guts that’s up to you. And you haven’t engaged counsel yet nor stated that you wanted one. This wasn’t an interrogation. You just spoke of your own free will. And I just happened to have my recorder on.”

“I’ll get that thrown out, you bitch!”

“Well, you can try,” Pine said. “I’m sure the Georgia police will be in touch. Particularly since you made their job of convicting you so much easier.”

Pine stepped forward and leaned down so she was eye to eye with Atkins.

“And just keep in mind that Mercy took the best you had and still kicked your ass. And she’s out there somewhere free and living her life. And you’re going to spend the rest of your sorry life in a place a lot worse than this. And I wish you many, many more years of living.”

Pine called the jailer, and she and Blum left.

As they were walking down the corridor Pine said, “Great job on getting her to open up.”

Blum unexpectedly sighed. “I still wish you could have kicked her butt.”

Pine put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Oh, we did better than that. Way better.”





CHAPTER





34


CAIN PULLED HER CAR UP TO THE CURB and looked over the modest rancher in a working class neighborhood outside of Huntsville, Alabama. It was a place where Cain could have grown up. Playing with dolls and riding bikes and kicking soccer balls in the backyard, having barbeques and running under the sprinkler in the summer, roasting marshmallows and building snowmen in the winter, although she doubted it snowed all that much this far south.

Normal.

She snorted at the thought.

Right. That was some fantasy.

She had blown out a tire in a remote area halfway through her drive from Georgia. Cain had no spare, and it had taken well into the night to first find a tire shop and then for the shop to get a replacement tire, since her car was so old. After that she had driven until she was exhausted. She finally spent the night in her car just outside of Huntsville before waking up, having a hot cup of pretty bad coffee, and finishing her journey. And now here she was.

The air was warm, the sun shining, the birds were swooping around, and Cain felt like she was on the way to attend her own funeral. She headed to the front door.

She knocked and waited as footsteps approached. She wasn’t sure how she was going to handle this, but maybe that was a good thing. Ever since her escape from the Atkinses she’d been winging things for the most part. Sometimes it had worked and sometimes it hadn’t. But why change now?

Wanda Atkins opened the door with an e-cigarette in one hand. She stared up at the towering Cain and her free hand flew to her mouth, almost dislodging the cannula in her nose as she recognized her visitor.

“Oh my God, it’s . . . you.”

“It’s been a long time, Wanda. And even with the lack of hair and the years piled on I guess I haven’t changed so much.”