Peak Road - A Short Thriller (Jon Stanton Mysteries Book 10) (11 page)

26

I sat outside as Las Vegas Metro took Dolly Briggs, whose previous name had been Michael Harken Briggs, out of her mother’s home. She walked out in cuffs with an officer on either side of her. I had fired six shots into the ceiling, and bits of plaster still stuck to her hair. She looked at me before getting into the police cruiser.

She had undergone a sex change after leaving Peak Road and had returned as Dolly Briggs, the former sheriff’s eldest daughter whom he never spoke of. No one in the town had ever questioned it—if they had, they didn’t tell us. In a small town with so many secrets, not a single person thought it was odd that the sheriff would have a daughter he hadn’t raised there and never talked about. I wondered if it was intentional blindness: that trait in humanity that makes us reluctant to get involved in other people’s problems.

We found Kathleen’s body in the basement of the home. She had died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. Dolly had probably been nervous that her mother would reveal who she really was and had decided a bullet was easier than living with that uncertainty.

Mickey had been taken to the hospital. I was planning to head there after giving my statement.

One of the detectives came up to me. He was chewing gum, and he spit on the ground before shaking his head. “Damn crazy shit up here,” he said. “They found a mechanical mouth at the sheriff’s home. Metal teeth and everything.”

I looked out at the cruiser as it pulled away. Dolly was still staring at me.

I’d wanted to leave Peak Road immediately, but I had to stay for Mickey. He had been shot in the collarbone and needed surgery. His wife wasn’t scheduled to arrive until that night, and I didn’t want him to be alone until then. I sat next to his bed that second night and read
A Tale of Two Cities
to him. He stopped me once and said, “I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”

“No you’re not.”

“What do you mean?”

“You saw something in me. Something I didn’t acknowledge. You knew it’d get to the point that I would destroy myself or find who killed those families, and that’s what you wanted. Maybe not consciously—maybe you didn’t admit it to yourself—but that’s what you wanted. You wanted me to get obsessed, even if it killed me.”

He didn’t respond. He acted as though the massive amount of pain medication had affected his ability to talk, but I think he knew it was true. That monster had killed families, and Mickey felt like I was expendable in the face of that, or that maybe I would find who did it when no one else could.

I left Peak Road that night, after making one more stop. I stopped at Jennifer’s house, and her mother let me in. She had drunk herself into oblivion, and instead of speaking with me, she just went back to the couch in the living room and collapsed in front of the television.

I went up to Jennifer’s room. I stood there for a second and took in Jennifer’s scent. It was still there, just barely. I removed the thumbtacks from the volcano poster on the wall, rolled it up, and headed out. My flight back to the islands was scheduled to take off in a few hours, and I wouldn’t miss that plane for the world.

27

Back on the island, the first place I went was Julie’s. She answered wearing rubber gloves, and she had wet spots on her shirt. She smiled when she saw me and said, “Back already?”

I didn’t say anything. I grabbed her around the waist and kissed her. At first she was surprised, then she wrapped her arms around my waist.

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling away.

“No,” she said, blinking several times. “No, I’m glad you did it.”

I heard barking, and Hanny ran out of the other room. I bent down, and he jumped on me, nearly knocking me back.

“He would go to the window every morning and watch for you,” she said. “I don’t think you can leave him very often.”

I shook my head, rubbing the fur behind his ears. “I don’t think I’ll be leaving again.”

EPILOGUE

Nine months passed before I heard from Mickey again. He just sent a postcard, which I received on a Saturday before heading out to surf. On the front was a photo of a beautiful little alcove in the Virgin Islands. It said “Greetings from Paradise” on the corner.

I turned it over:

Jon,

If you’re interested, Dolly Briggs underwent a neuro-psychiatric evaluation, and a tumor the size of a quarter was pressing against her cerebellum. It was removed last month, and I hear her therapy is going better now. She claims the violent thoughts have left her. She’s more honest, too. She wore a wolf-fur suit when she killed, and told them where she hid it. She wasn’t attracted to women. That’s why there was no penetration with foreign objects or sexual torture. The psychiatrist thinks the tumor maybe caused her violence. Her lawyers are going for a mental health defense and hoping to get her into the state hospital.

I’m sorry for what I did to you. I mean that.

Your friend,

Mickey Parsons

I tossed the card into my trash. He didn’t need to ask for forgiveness. The truth was, in his spot, I would’ve done the same thing. For men like us, the obsession ran both ways: we could see it in others only because we had it in ourselves. Mickey and I weren’t much different.

Julie came into my kitchen and began making breakfast. I could see the engagement ring on her finger from here, and I hoped she genuinely loved it as much as she said she did.

“Be back in a bit,” I said.

“K, love you.”

I put on my sunglasses and headed to the beach. The sky was clear and blue.
Today’s going to be a good day.