The Last of the Moon Girls(106)

Evvie had been standing in the doorway. She stepped forward now, clearly troubled by what she was hearing, but perhaps more uncomfortable with the fact that there was a little girl in the room. “Maybe Kayla would like to go out to the garden with Rhanna and me,” she suggested pointedly. “While the grown-ups talk?”

Helen looked confused at first, then glanced at Kayla and seemed to understand. “Oh, right. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“She’ll be fine with us,” Rhanna assured her, smiling that smile women reserve for children under three. “Kayla, is it? What a pretty name.”

Helen mouthed a silent thank-you as she relinquished her daughter. “That’s a good girl. Go with the nice ladies. Mommy will be right here.”

“We’ll be right out back if you need us,” Evvie called as they headed for the mudroom.

Helen looked suddenly bereft without her daughter. She glanced from Lizzy to Andrew, and back again. “I’m sorry. I should have thought about Kayla. She won’t remember her daddy, but she doesn’t need to hear the rest of this. I’m just so . . . I haven’t been sleeping well since Dennis moved in.”

Lizzy didn’t bother to hide her surprise. “You and Dennis were . . .”

“No.” Helen shuddered visibly. “Nothing like that. But he moved in a few weeks ago. He said it was so he could help with Kayla, but I think it was to make sure I stayed quiet.”

“Dennis knew that you knew what happened to the girls?”

“He did. Hollis told him about getting drunk and spilling everything. Dennis was furious. That’s when he started watching me.”

“You said Hollis went looking for Darcy when she didn’t come back,” Lizzy prompted, wanting to get back to the night the Gilman girls died.

Helen closed her eyes, as if preparing herself. After a few minutes, she blew out a breath and squared her shoulders. “It took a while, but he finally found her. She was bent over, throwing up from all the smash. She started crying when she saw him, and took off running. Hollis went after her. Not to hurt her, just to keep her from going where she shouldn’t. But it was too late. By the time he caught up to her, she wasn’t in the cornfields anymore. She was in the back fields, where Hollis’s daddy didn’t let anyone go.”

“Because of the marijuana,” Lizzy said quietly, stealing a glance in Andrew’s direction. Not a flicker of surprise. Had everyone known?

“Yeah,” Helen said, nodding. “The pot. There was this big shed out there where they used to dry the stuff. Darcy ran toward it. I guess she thought she could hide. All of a sudden the door opened and out came Mr. Hanley, drunk as a skunk and waving a shotgun. Darcy started screaming. The old man didn’t bat an eye. He just stepped up behind her and smashed in the back of her head with the butt of his rifle. She went down like a ton of bricks.” She paused, a hand to her mouth. “Hollis said he used to hear the sound of her skull cracking when he closed his eyes at night.”

Lizzy fought an unexpected wave of queasiness. Helen’s story fit perfectly with the coroner’s findings. Blunt force trauma to the occipital and parietal regions. But that was what killed Darcy. The ME’s report said Heather had been strangled. “What about Heather?”

“She and Dennis must have heard Darcy screaming, because they came running. Heather took one look at Darcy facedown in the dirt, and started wailing her head off. Even drunk, the old man could see he was in trouble. He told Dennis to shut her up. When Dennis didn’t move, his father pointed the gun at him. He said if Dennis didn’t shut Heather up, he’d do it himself, and then he’d shut the boys up too. Dennis didn’t realize the old man was serious until he pointed the gun at Hollis. He knew Dennis’s weak spot.”

Andrew’s mouth dropped open. “He threatened to shoot his own son?”

Helen nodded. She looked paler now than when she’d first arrived, drained and shaky. “He would have done it too. Dennis knew it, even if Hollis didn’t, so he wrapped an arm around Heather’s throat and just . . . squeezed. She fought but he was too strong. Hollis was horrified at how long it took—nothing like it happens in the movies—but finally she stopped fighting.”

Lizzy remained silent, shaken by the gruesome scene Helen had just painted—and by the realization that Dennis’s determination to keep the truth buried had more to do with his own guilt than with either his father’s or brother’s.

“The pond,” Lizzy said numbly. “How did the girls wind up in the pond?”

“Mr. Hanley told them to fill the girls’ pockets with stones from the wall behind the shed, and then drag them into the pond. When they didn’t snap to, he told them to stop acting like girls. He said a man does what he has to. I guess it worked, because they did what he said. Not that they had much choice. They were in it too by then. It was Dennis who called in the anonymous tip, to make the police think it was your grandmother who’d killed them.”

A man does what he has to.

Lizzy suppressed a shudder. Dennis had used the same words yesterday. His father’s words. That had been his father’s legacy—the murders of two young girls and then covering up the evidence. She frowned suddenly. “You said they were in it—Hollis and Dennis—but Hollis wasn’t in it. He didn’t hurt either of the girls.”