Jocelyn clenched her jaw. Her arms ached. Francine mentioning Olivia made her want to vomit, but no way was she giving Francine the satisfaction of showing it. “You left the door unlocked,” she said quietly. Francine didn’t respond, so Jocelyn asked, “What did you give Knox?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me. Tell me.”
“Let’s just say it was something far more potent than Listeria—it’s amazing what you can get from the internet these days. Anyway, he’ll be dead in a few minutes. Even if you could get him to a hospital, there’s nothing they’d do. If he’s terminally ill as he claims, he’s probably a DNR.” She must have seen the confusion on Jocelyn’s face because she said, “Do Not Resuscitate.”
Francine’s arms shook with the effort of holding her weapon aloft, pointed at Jocelyn. She lowered it slightly. Jocelyn kept her own gun in position.
“So,” Francine said. “Here we are. You evidently know my secrets. I have an interest in keeping them. Because I like you, I’m going to make you an offer.”
At Jocelyn’s feet, Knox groaned and coughed. It took everything she had to keep her focus on Francine and not drop to her knees to try to comfort Knox in his last moments.
“Put your gun down, Francine,” Jocelyn said.
Francine laughed. “I’ll put mine down when you put yours down.”
“Not a chance.”
A smile snaked across Francine’s face. “Do you want to hear my offer?”
“I don’t make deals with Satan.”
“Not even for your daughter? Don’t you want to go home tonight?”
“Put your fucking gun down, Francine,” Jocelyn shouted in what Olivia called her ‘Scary Mommy’ voice. “Now.”
Francine’s smile flattened out. Bewilderment or disappointment, maybe. It was impossible for Jocelyn to know. The woman had spent a lifetime fooling people, acting the part of a warm, kind, oftentimes pitiful human being. None of it was real.
“You’re being completely unreasonable, Miss Rush.” She shook her head. “I’m very disappointed in you.”
Francine raised her gun, and this time, Jocelyn’s eyes were drawn to her index finger as it curled around the trigger. In that instant, Jocelyn fired her own gun. The shot was deafening in the confines of the kitchen, its echo reverberating off the walls. The bullet hit Francine square in the chest. Her body jumped, and the gun in her hand clattered to the floor. She stumbled backward, crashing into the kitchen cabinets and sinking to the floor. She looked down and watched blood spread across her sternum, staining her white shirt, a slow-blooming flower.
Jocelyn kicked Francine’s gun away from her and kept the Glock trained on the woman. She stepped closer. Francine looked up, her face the perfect picture of complete and utter shock. Her eyes followed Jocelyn as she rushed over to Knox, but she didn’t try to move.
Jocelyn pulled Knox’s head into her lap and slapped his cheeks lightly. Tears streamed down her face. He opened his eyes. It took a few seconds for them to focus on her.
“Knox,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t get here in time.”
He smiled. He reached up and clamped a hand over her forearm. “You did good,” he said. “You did good.”
There was a heavy silence. She could only tell he was still alive by the occasional jerk of his body fighting for every breath. “Thank you,” he told her.
Then his eyes went glassy, staring upward. A smile spread across his face. He lifted his hand from her arm and reached for the ceiling. “She’s there,” he gasped. “She’s there this time.”
“Who’s there, Knox?”
Stillness claimed his body. She felt him relax, his struggle over. His eyes remained fixed upward, a beatific smile on his face. On his last exhale, he said, “Sydney.”
Chapter 40
November 17, 2014
Jocelyn didn’t know which of them died first. Sometime while she was holding Knox in his final moments, Francine passed as well. A wide-eyed look of shock was carved into her face. Blood pooled around her. The house was disturbingly silent. Jocelyn sat on the floor, Knox’s head in her lap, tears falling faster than she could wipe them away. She stared across the kitchen at Francine’s body. She almost expected the woman to move or to break out into the creepy grin she’d given Jocelyn during their standoff. But there was no movement, no noise. No sirens in the distance. It didn’t surprise her that the gunshot had gone unnoticed or unacknowledged by Francine’s neighbors. This was Philadelphia, after all.
She reached across Knox’s body to where she had put her phone down. With quaking fingers, she found Kevin’s smiling face in her contacts and pressed the little green phone next to it. He picked up after three rings. “Rush?”
“Kev,” Jocelyn sobbed.
“Rush? You okay?”
“Kev? Something bad happened.”
It only took Kevin fifteen minutes to get to the Rigos’ house, but it felt like an eternity. She couldn’t stop crying. Her body shook so hard that her teeth chattered. Finally, Kevin was there, lifting her, pulling her away from Knox, sitting her down in one of the kitchen chairs. He knelt in front of her and gently gripped her shoulders.
“Rush,” he said, trying to capture her gaze. “Tell me what happened here.”
A tissue appeared in his hand and she took it, wiping the tears and snot from her face. “I fucked up, Kev. I fucked up. I should have just called 911. I couldn’t have saved Knox anyway. I should have just hung up and called 911. Oh my God, Olivia. All I could think of was her face—what if I go to prison for this just like Francine said?”
She was on the verge of hysteria. Kevin took one of her hands and squeezed. “Rush,” he said. “Look at me. Look. At. Me. I need you to take a breath. Start at the beginning. How did you get here?”
She looked into his hazel eyes and did as he said, sucking in a deep breath and exhaling slowly. Then she told him what had happened beginning with Knox walking out of the confession and ending with her shooting Francine. “Then I was sitting here and I realized how this would look. She was right. I shot her in her own kitchen. I’m not a cop anymore, Kev. I wasn’t responding to a call.”
“But you thought she was going to shoot.”
Jocelyn sniffled. “She raised the gun. Her finger was on the trigger.”
“Okay,” Kevin said, looking all around the room. He stood and walked over to Francine’s gun. He peered down at it. “I think the shooting was clean,” he said. “You thought she was going to shoot you first.”
“Kev, we’re in her house.”
He turned. “Knox called you. He was poisoned. You kept him on the line. The door was open. You’re a former detective. You’re credible, and you’re the last one standing. Rush, no way is this bitch worth going to prison over. It’s not gonna happen.” Kevin pulled out his phone. “I’m calling it in. I’ll get Trent and Inez down here.”
Her best friend as the first responder and Trent to investigate the homicides. Trent wouldn’t recommend pressing charges against her, not once he heard the whole story. Not once he found out that Francine had killed Knox. Jocelyn was lucky, even though that was the very last thing she felt. She’d been careless, reckless even. Now Knox and Francine were dead, and a man was staring down the barrel of a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. How had everything gotten so fucked up so quickly?