The Life We Bury (24 page)

“Here's what's going to happen, Joe,” Dan said. “You're going to get into your car and drive north on I-35, and make sure you bring that bag of trash you stole from me.”

I turned and ran down the steps as fast as my feet could carry me, my cell phone still pressed tight against my ear. “If you hurt Lila, I'll—”

“You'll what, Joe?” he said. “Tell me. I really want to know. What are you going to do to me, Joe? But before you tell me, I want you to hear something.”

I heard a muffled voice, a woman. I couldn't make out her words; it was more of a grunting sound. Then the grunting sounds gave way to a voice. “Joe! Joe, I'm sorry—” She tried to say more, but the words dropped behind a wall as if he'd put a gag into her mouth.

“So tell me now, Joe, what—”

“If you hurt her, I swear to God I'll kill you,” I said as I jumped behind the wheel of Lila's car.

“Oh, Joe.” There was a pause, then a muffled scream. “Did you hear that, Joe?” he said. “I just punched your pretty little girlfriend in the face, very hard. You interrupted me. You made me punch her. If you interrupt me again, if you do not follow my instructions to the smallest detail, if you do anything to try and attract the attention of a cop, your little Lila here will suffer the consequences. Have I made myself clear?”

“You've made yourself clear,” I said. A sickness welled up in my throat as I started Lila's car.

“That's good,” he said. “I don't want to hurt her anymore. You see, Joe, she didn't want to give me your name or your phone number. I had to persuade her that it was in her best interest. She's a tough little bitch.”

My knees felt weak and my stomach queasy at the thought of what he was doing to Lila. I felt utterly helpless. “How'd you find us?” I don't know why I asked him that question. It didn't matter how he'd found us. Maybe I just wanted to keep his attention on me, talking to me. If he was busy with me, he wouldn't be hurting her.

“You found me, Joe. Remember?” he said. “So you probably know I run security at a mall. I know the cops. I got the license plate number off her car when you went through my alley. That brought me to little Miss Lila here, and she brought me to you. Or should I say, she's bringing you to me.”

“I'm on my way,” I said, again trying to turn his attention back to me. “I'm turning onto I-35, like you said.”

“To make sure you don't do something stupid like call the police, you and I are going to talk as you drive. And I can't stress this enough, Joe: if you hang up, if you go through a dead zone, if your battery dies, if anything happens to disconnect us…well, let's just say you'll need to find a new girlfriend.”

I sped down the on ramp, one hand on the wheel, the other holding the phone to my ear, the car screaming as it ran through its gears. A tractor-trailer hogged the lane, so I floored the accelerator. The truck seemed to speed up, as if the driver were trying to assert some misplaced testosterone-fed dominance. I gripped the wheel so tightly my fingers ached. My merge lane grew thinner as I raced toward an oncoming viaduct rail, the truck's tires whining next to me, inches from my window. My lane turned into a shoulder as my car inched past the front bumper of the truck. I jerked onto the interstate, my back bumper narrowly missing his front bumper, his horn blaring his displeasure.

“I hope you're driving carefully, Joe,” Dan said. “You don't want to get pulled over. That would be tragic.”

He was right. I couldn't allow myself to get pulled over. What was I thinking? I slowed down to match the speed of the other drivers, blending in as just another set of headlights.

“Where am I going?” I said, once my pulse returned to a manageable pace.

“You remember where my old man's house is, don't you?”

I shuddered with the thought. “I remember.”

“Go there,” he said.

“I thought it burned down,” I said.

“So you heard about that. Terrible thing,” he said, his voice flat, uninterested, as if I was an annoying child interrupting his morning read.

I began looking around the car for a weapon, a tool, a scrap of anything that I could use to wound him…or kill him. Nothing lay within reach except a plastic windshield scraper. I flicked on the dome light and looked again—fast-food trash, some spare winter gloves, papers from one of Lila's classes, Dan's bag of garbage, but no weapon. I heard bottles clinking in the garbage bag when I was running from Lockwood's house. If nothing else, I could grab one of those. Then I saw a glint of reflection in the back seat, something silver, half tucked in the crack where the seatback and cushion met.

“You seem quiet, Joe,” Dan said. “I'm not boring you, am I?”

“No, I'm not bored, just thinking,” I said.

“You're a thinking man, are you Joe?”

I hit the speakerphone button and laid the cell on the console between the two front seats, turning up the volume. “I don't make it a habit, but it happens every now and again,” I said. I quietly pulled the lever allowing my seat to recline as far as it would go.

“Tell me, Joe, what's on your mind?”

“I was just remembering my visit with your dad. He seemed a little out of sorts when we parted.” I slid back in my seat, holding the steering wheel with the tips of my fingers, waiting for a straight section of highway. “How's he doing?” I asked the question partly to hear his reaction and partly to get him talking as my straight section of highway appeared.

“I guess you could say he's seen better days,” Dan said, his tone shifting cold.

I let go of the steering wheel, flopped back on my seat, and grabbed for the shiny metallic object on the back seat. I got one finger around one side and a knuckle on the other side and pulled. My fingers slipped off. I reset my grip and pulled again. Jeremy's cell phone slid out from between the cushions, spinning forward, stopping on the front edge of the seat.

“Of course,” Dan went on, “it's like they say: you shouldn't send an old drunk to do a man's job.”

I sat up to find the car drifting off the road, heading toward the shoulder. I grabbed the wheel, correcting with a slight squeal of the tires. Had there been a cop anywhere in the area, I would have been pulled over. I watched the rearview mirror for cherries. I watched, waited—nothing. I breathed.

“But he meant well,” Dan finished.

“He meant well…by trying to kill me?” I said, trying to keep him talking. I pulled the seat lever, allowing the seatback to shoot into the upright position.

“Oh, Joe,” Dan said. “You're not getting naive on me, are you?”

I reached back, picked up Jeremy's cell phone, and turned it on. “Was it his idea to kill me?” I said. “Or was that yours?” I arched my back, reaching into my pocket to pull out Max Rupert's card.

“The bottle to your head, that was his idea,” Dan said.

I put my finger on the first digit of Rupert's personal cell number, held the phone against my leg to silence the tone, and pressed the button.

“Imagine my surprise,” he continued, “when he called me to tell me what you found in Crystal's diary?”

I continued pressing numbers.

“After all this time, you figured it out,” he said. “You really are a thinker, aren't you, Joe?”

I checked the number one last time and hit send, holding the phone to my ear, praying that Rupert would answer.

“Hello?” Rupert's voice came through. I clapped my thumb over the phone's speaker so that Dan Lockwood wouldn't hear Rupert, but Rupert would hear my conversation with Dan.

“I'm not as smart as you think,” I said, holding Jeremy's phone near my phone. “All this time I thought DJ stood for Douglas Joseph Lockwood. You can imagine my surprise today when your wife told me that you were DJ. I was shocked. I mean, your name is Daniel William Lockwood. Who would think that anyone would call you DJ?”

I tried to be obvious enough with my words to clue Rupert in on my plight without clueing Dan in on my plan. I had to trust that Rupert was listening and understanding what was going on, that this call in the middle of the night was more than a misdialed number. I needed to engage Dan Lockwood and force him to tell his secret.

In the minutes that I spent driving north to face Dan Lockwood, an errant thought had been lurking in the shadows of my mind—mercurial, unformed, hiding behind my fear. I sensed its presence but paid it no heed while I scrambled to come up with a plan to save Lila. Now that I had Rupert on the phone, and hopefully listening to my conversation with Dan Lockwood, I calmed down and gave voice to that errant thought, allowing it to grow in clarity and volume until it screamed—Dan Lockwood had no choice but to kill us.

Why had I been panicking? I knew what lay ahead. He would bring me to him and then he would kill us both. He couldn't let us live, not with what we knew. I felt a strange solace wash over me. I knew his plan, and he needed to know that I knew.

“Dan, you ever play Texas hold 'em?” I asked.

“I'll bite,” he said. “Sure, I've been in a tournament or two.”

“There's that moment when you have your two cards, and I have my two cards, and the dealer throws down the flop.”

“Yeah…and?”

“And I go all in. I lay down my cards, and you lay down yours. I know what you have and you know what I have, and now we just wait for the dealer to play it out, to see who wins. No secrets.”

“Go on.”

“Well, I'm going all in,” I said.

“I'm not sure I follow,” Dan said.

“What's going to happen when I get out to your dad's place?” I said. “Surely you've thought this through.”

“I have an idea or two,” he said. “The better question is: have you thought it through?”

“You're bringing me out there to kill me. You're using Lila to make sure I come, and after you kill me, you'll kill Lila.” I took a breath. “How am I doing?”

“And yet you're still on your way. Why?”

“The way I see it,” I said, “I have two options. I can run to the police, give them the DNA, tell 'em you killed your sister—”

“Stepsister!”

“Stepsister,” I repeated.

“In which case,” he said, “poor little Lila here dies tonight.” His voice grew cold again. “And what is your second option?”

I took another deep breath. “I can come out there and kill you,” I said.

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“You see,” I said, “I'm still on my way because you have Lila. If she's not alive when I get there, I have no reason to stop, do I? You'll have another murder on your hands, but I'll have you. The cops will hunt you to the ends of the Earth. Lila will be avenged. You'll die in prison, and I'll piss on your grave.”

“So you're going to kill me, are you?” he said.

“Isn't that what you're planning to do to Lila and me?”

He paused.

“And then what?” I said. “Dump us in a river or burn us in a shed?”

“A barn,” he said.

“Ah, that's right, you're the firebug. You torched your dad's place, too, didn't you?”

He went silent again.

“I'm betting you also killed the old man to save your ass.”

“I'm gonna enjoy killing you,” Dan said. “I'm gonna do it so damned slow.”

“Your old man cleaned up your mess by going after me, but in the process he made himself the perfect scapegoat. He tells you about the DNA, about the diary, about the evidence that led me to him instead of you. It's perfect. So you kill him, hide his body where no one will ever find him, and burn his house down to keep the police from testing his DNA. I gotta hand it to you, Dan, that was clever—fucking twisted, but clever.”

“Oh, it gets better,” Dan said. “When they find your body in this barn near his house…” He waited for me to connect the dots.

“They'll blame him,” I finished. “That is, unless I kill you first.”

“I guess we'll see in about ten minutes,” he said.

“Ten minutes?”

“I know how long it takes to get here. If you're not here in ten minutes, I'll assume you made a colossal mistake and tried to bring a cop to our little party.”

“Don't worry,” I said, “I'm coming. And if I don't see Lila standing on her feet and alive when I drive up, I'll assume that you made a colossal mistake. I'll drive on by, and I'll bring the world down on you.”

“Then we understand each other,” he said.