Live and Let Die (28 page)

Tracy licked her lips and stared at her captor. “You were really ready to splatter my brains all over the highway, weren’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered. “I would. If I can’t live without you, why should you get to live?”

Tracy took a deep breath. “You have to catch me first,” she whispered as she kneed him and ran for the door.

S
he ran straight for the highway. Maybe she could flag someone down, get them to take her to the police. The bottoms of her sensible flats were slick and she skidded across the gravel in the parking lot, landing on her butt. She scrambled up and, limping, started to run again. It had been so long since she had run that, at first, it hurt. Her lungs were greedy for air and she clutched the painful stitch in her side. The hem of the housedress she had on slowed her down some, so she gathered it in her fingers and lifted it until it was bunched around her thighs. She pumped her other arm rapidly and soon, her body began to cooperate, remember, that they had done this everyday for years, that this routine wasn’t so strange.

She flipped her head back to see Phillip staggering after her, the gun clamped in his hand. She looked straight ahead and tried to find the entrance ramp to the freeway, but it was too far. She saw what looked like a forest in front of her and darted into it. Her mother made her do Girl Scouts when she was a kid and she had aced the survival portion. Tracy laughed out loud. It felt so good to have memories again, memories that she could make sense of, that she could identify. She couldn’t see Phillip anymore and wasn’t sure what had happened to him.

The twigs and grass crunched beneath the soles of her feet and she could hear water. She crouched down as she inched toward it. She ran toward the water, and realized it must be the Mississippi. Her fingers trembling, she yanked the housedress over her head. She grimaced as she looked down at the industrial strength bra and panties Phillip made her wear. Nothing at all like the pretty, flimsy things she used to parade around in. She flung the shoes off and was about to step into the water when she heard Phillip’s voice.

“Tracy! Tracy, please, I had no choice. You’d hit your head on that stupid table in the hallway and you wouldn’t wake up. I thought you were dead and no one would believe it was an accident.”

Tracy stopped, listening to him. She could hear him sobbing, trying to catch his breath.

“I was just going to wait for you to wake up to make you understand that I didn’t mean to hurt you. Then you woke up and asked me who you were and where you were.”

He started laughing and crying all at the same time. “And in that one moment, I saw a chance, a chance for us to start over. I thought if I nursed you back to health and showed you how much I loved you and how much you meant to me, you wouldn’t leave.”

“So I carried you out to my car. I left you with Keegan. And then I killed you.”

By now she’d hidden behind a tree, alert and listening for the sounds of his feet snapping against the twigs and brush along the ground. She swallowed, waiting for him to finish the story.

“And I fooled all of them. Every single last one of them.” He chuckled. “It was lucky, really, the way it all worked out. I had decided to come home. My car was parked in back of the hotel, so the surveillance camera never saw me leave, which was good when the cops checked my alibi. They saw me come in from dinner and leave for the convention hall the next morning.” He laughed. “God. Who knew that would work out to my advantage? Sunday night, I called Cicely in a panic saying that I hadn’t heard from you and was calling the police. I drove back to Chicago and played the part of the frantic husband searching for his missing wife. Cooperated with the police in the investigation, was cleared from any suspicion right away since so many people saw me at the convention.” Phillip laughed again. “No one ever suspected I had you tucked away in Berwyn of all places. And then… Carol.”

Tracy blinked and scrunched up her face, remembering something Sondra had said at the house. “Carol?” she mouthed to herself.

“God, she looked just like you. You could have been twins. She used to come into the pharmacy all the time. It was funny though. I wasn’t attracted to her. And then you came in that day and I fell in love right then and there. And then I remembered. You were the same height, same skin tone, weight… I knew I had to do it just right so they would think it was you. I forced her to get in the car with me. We drove to Belmont Harbor. I made her put on your clothes—even your underwear—your wedding ring and then, I… got rid of her face.”

Tracy choked back silent tears as she waited for him to say what she already knew to be the horrible truth.

“I smashed her face in with a rock. Just enough so it looked like it could be you, but not so much they would have to do any DNA or anything. I tossed your wallet near the body—took out all the cash, but left the license in there. We had a big blizzard that night. She wasn’t found until Friday. They called me to make the ID. And I did.”

Tracy was suffocating on her tears as it sunk in what he was saying to her. He had killed another woman to cover up that he had kidnapped her.

“Don’t you understand that I had to? I couldn’t have them looking for a body for God knew how many years. I had to be with you so we could start our new life. I had to let everyone think you were dead. Don’t you understand now what I would do for you?” He stopped talking and Tracy strained to hear him. His voice still sounded far away. She blinked her eyes and searched for his silhouette in the darkness.

Tracy looked to her left and saw she was just steps from the river. There had to be a park or campground nearby. It had been ages since she’d been swimming but she thought she could probably make it. Taking a deep breath, she crept toward the water, silent moans of terror and disbelief racing through her body.

Suddenly Phillip let out a tortured howl. “God!” He carried on with his one-sided conversation. “You wouldn’t even take my last name.”

She looked behind her as she remembered that conversation. She had told him how much it meant to her to keep her name since there weren’t any brothers on her father’s side of the family.

“Well, what about my name?” Phillip screamed, enraged, as if he too was thinking back on that conversation. “You were my wife. You cared more about everyone else than you ever cared about me!”

Tracy stopped, keeping her ear cocked for him.

“Oh, God, Tracy… ” Phillip said, his voice suddenly soft. “That day you came walking into the pharmacy, those little high heels you had on, that pink shirt and that perfume that smelled like roses. You were just… you were so beautiful. Never in a million years did I think I had a chance with a woman like you. But I thought, why not, take a chance, even though I never take any chances. I couldn’t believe it when you said you would go out with me. And then when you kept going out with me… I kept waiting for you to leave me. Every day, I lived in fear that you would leave me and it just… it made me crazy.”

Tracy sniffed. “If only you had trusted me,” she whispered to herself. “We would have had a chance.”

“You didn’t leave me any choice. You started being so secretive and I knew, I knew I was losing you.”

Tracy dipped her toe in the rushing waters of the river in front of her. “Now or never, girl,” she muttered as she filled her lungs with a huge swallow of air and jumped in. It was like diving into a huge tub of ice. There was only darkness underwater and she finally had to come up for a few breaths. She poked her head through the surface and looked around. She wasn’t sure what direction she was going in, but she began to breaststroke, her arms and legs moving in perfect smooth unison, slicing through like a propeller in the water. That had been her best event. She turned her head to the side for a spare breath and saw Phillip running alongside the bank, waving the gun at her. He must have heard the splash. She stopped and ducked beneath the bobbing waves and began to butterfly underwater so he couldn’t see her. She had gone several feet when she thrashed her arms above her head in an effort to make it to the top. Heaving, she smashed her head into the air, gulping, gasping for oxygen. She looked around and didn’t see Phillip. She rubbed her eyes and circled around, searching for him.

“Keep going,” she said as she submerged herself once again beneath the water. She continued to swim with as much force as she could find, pushing herself to go as far as she could. Finally, neither her lungs nor her limbs would carry her any farther. She would have to chance getting out. She waded to the shore where she collapsed on her back among the rocks and twigs. She placed her hand over her forehead, violent coughs shaking her insides. She shivered in her wet underwear, but her entire body was on fire from the physical torture she’d just put herself through. She opened her eyes and saw Phillip standing over her.

“I
forgot you were a swimmer,” he said.

Tracy tried to make her legs go, to run from him again, but they wouldn’t, and she couldn’t. She scoured her brain for something, anything. All she could do was stare at him, her body teeming with fear and limp with exhaustion. He was holding the gun with both hands and had aimed it right for her heart.

He crouched down over her and gave her a sad smile. “I love you so much,” he said. “I’d do it again, you know,” he whispered as he looked down at Tracy, his eyes shimmering with tears. “If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. These past two years with you has been magical.”

“What are you going to do with my body?”

“Tracy, didn’t you hear me? This time we’ve had together has been wonderful.”

“Wonderful for you. I didn’t know who I was.”

“I did it for us. It was all for us.”

“It was for you, Phillip.”

“No.”

“You killed and lied and drugged and God only knows what else.”

“Tracy, why can’t you understand?”

“I’ll never understand. Never.” She paused. “You didn’t answer my question. What are you going to do with my body?”

He twisted around. “I guess I’ll roll it into the river.”

“What are you going to weigh it down with?”

Phillip looked around as if he hadn’t thought of this. “I guess I’ll figure that out later.”

“What about you? You said you couldn’t live without me. How are you going to kill yourself?”

He shrugged. “I haven’t thought about that either. I only have one bullet. For you.” He sighed. “Maybe I’ll jump in after you to weigh you down. Then we’ll be together forever. Like it always should have been.”

The shore was flooded with lights and Phillip clamped his hand over his eyes to shield them.

“Put your hands up, Phillip. We’ve got you surrounded.”

Tracy tilted her head back and, sure enough, saw a swarm of troopers, lights and bullhorns. There must have been an army of guns pointed at Phillip. She closed her eyes in silent, thankful prayer, wondering how they’d found her.

Phillip tapped the hard, cold metal against her chest and Tracy found herself flinching, terrified the gun would accidentally discharge.

“Back off!” he yelled. “This is between me and my wife.”

“Phillip, drop the gun, stand up and put your hands in the air.”

Phillip pressed the gun closer into her chest until the end of it fell neatly into the groove of her collarbone.

“I’m a better shot than you are, son. I guarantee you won’t make it out of this alive unless you drop the gun right now.”

Phillip’s gaze fluttered down to Tracy and he looked deep into her eyes. “You have no idea how much I hurt,” he said, his voice cracking. “I have to stop it now.”

“Phillip, please—”

“I just wanted you to love me again,” he sobbed. In one swift motion, he shoved the barrel of the gun into his mouth.

“Phillip, oh, God, Phillip—!”

Phillip yanked the trigger and his head exploded like fireworks on the 4
^th
of July. Tracy choked as he fell forward, blood spattering and running in rivulets down her chest, bits of brain and skull flying backwards and raining down on the tops of her feet and legs like confetti. His body slumped on top of her, pinning her to the ground. She tried to push him off, to run, far, far away. He was too heavy and all she could do was screech in hysterics for someone to help her as she tried in vain to shove away his dead weight. The troopers rushed in and lifted him while simultaneously pulling her from beneath the wreckage that used to be her husband. Someone rushed to throw a blanket around her shoulders, but Tracy barely noticed.

S
he was underneath the water, thrusting her arms in front of her like Ginsu knives as she drove forward. She felt her lungs filling up with water and she struggled to get to the surface before it was too late, before the water filled her up and suffocated her. She popped up and screamed when she saw Phillip flapping around in the water right in front of her, his hand digging into the flesh of her arm. She flailed and tried to push away from him, but he was too strong. He raised his other hand out of the water and she saw the gleam of a small gun in the moonlight. He smiled at her calmly before he pumped a single piece of lead into his brain…

Tracy jumped up screaming, trying to rip out the IVs that were attached to her veins. Sondra, who had been dozing in the lone chair in the room, flew to Tracy’s bed and punched the on-call button as she tried to calm her sister down.

“Tracy, Tracy, it’s okay, he’s gone and he’s not coming back.”

Tracy stopped screaming and gripped Sondra’s forearms and looked at her, still hyperventilating. “Oh, God. Is this ever going to stop?”

The doctor came busting in. “Ms. Ellis,” he said as he eased Tracy back down onto the bed. “Please, calm down. You need your rest. We need to continue detoxing you; your foot is still infected from that cut you took on the bottom of the Mississippi. Please, settle down.” He pulled the pink blanket up to her chest and made a notation on her chart. Sondra stood by the doorway fidgeting before she stalked out into the hallway, waiting for the doctor.