'She drove to Grand Rapids. She went inside the doctor's house. She got Callie.'
'And then?'
'And then she got lost in the fog.'
Chapter Fifty-three
'Are you crazy?' Maggie screamed. 'Kasey, what did you do?'
The gun smoked in Kasey's hand. The burnt powder briefly rose above the stench of the dead. She watched him lying there with the gray tissue of his brain blown against the wall behind him. Bloody, dazed, she found a concrete pillar and slid down to the floor, laying the gun beside her. She turned the flashlight toward Maggie's face.
'He knew,' she told Maggie.
'What are you talking about?'
'He knew about Callie.'
Maggie stared at her, and her mouth fell open. The confusion in her eyes became something else. Recognition. Horror. Anger. Kasey felt Maggie judging her, and she hated it, because she liked Maggie. She had never wanted it to end this way. All she had wanted to do was drive away to the desert with her husband and her daughter.
'Why?' Maggie asked.
Kasey shrugged. 'God took away my son for no good reason. He just let him die. I didn't deserve to lose my baby like that. There was no reason I got a sick baby, and Valerie Glenn got a beautiful, healthy baby. I decided that I wasn't going to live with it.'
It was a relief to say it out loud. To tell someone the truth. She had accepted what she was doing, accepted who she was. She had made up her mind that she would do whatever it took to erase the previous year and all the hell and suffering she had gone through. She had faced the truth about herself that night in the fog, and once you choose to cross the line, you can't go back.
Maggie understood. She was smart. 'Susan Krauss,' she said quietly. 'What really happened?'
'Callie was in the back seat of my car that night,' Kasey explained. 'I was almost home. Can you believe it? I was a mile from home when I got lost. And suddenly there I was in the woods, and Susan Krauss was bleeding outside my car. She saw Callie. It's not like I could let her go. I had to go after her. And after him, too.'
'Nieman didn't kill her.'
Kasey shook her head. 'No, she was still alive when he ran for the highway. He dropped the garrote. She was barely breathing. I went over to her, and I thought, I can save her. That's what I should do. But then she would see the pictures of Callie on TV, and she'd know what I'd done. After all that sacrifice, I couldn't let that happen. I figured that this woman was almost dead anyway, and he'd be blamed for it. So I took the garrote, and I finished the job.'
Maggie struggled against the bonds that held her to the wooden chair. 'My God, Kasey.'
'I know. I've disappointed you. I'm sorry.'
'Nieman knew you'd killed that woman, not him. That's why he was hunting you.'
'Yeah. He knew I was a bad girl. What can I say?'
The light on the flashlight dimmed. Kasey jiggled it, and the brightness came back. Her head snapped round as she heard a noise beyond the crumbling walls of the classroom. She waited, but nothing moved.
Except the ghosts. There were plenty of ghosts here to haunt her.
Kasey stared at the bodies near the wall and their lifeless eyes. Every night, Susan Krauss had visited her in her dreams with those same dead eyes. She had stood over her in the field behind the dairy, and her eyes had pleaded for help. For rescue. She had looked at her as if Kasey had brought her salvation. And then the look had turned to panic and disbelief as Kasey tightened the wire around her neck.
Once you cross the line, you can't go back.
'What about Regan Conrad?' Maggie asked.
Kasey's face flushed with anger. 'Regan and I planned the whole thing, but she couldn't keep her mouth shut. I realized she had lied to me all along. This wasn't about me and my baby. It was about her hating the Glenns. She started taunting Valerie, and I knew she would ruin everything. Serena told us that night at dinner that she was getting a search warrant. If she did, she'd find records about me and Regan and our son. So I had to take care of Regan first. I pulled my file so no one would find it. I assumed Nieman would get the blame for that murder, too, but I never thought he'd be watching me. He must have seen me go in, and then he stole the body. To drive me crazy.'
Maggie stared at her as if she were seeing her for the first time. 'Kasey, what happened to you?'
Kasey eyed her with regret. Her heart hardened, the way it had time after time in the past year. 'Just imagine watching your little boy slowly waste away. Day after day, night after night, and all he does is get worse, and there's nothing you can do. You just have to watch him die. And you're alone. No God. No mercy. All you can do is blame yourself and tell yourself what a worthless excuse for a mother you are. You try living through eleven months of hell…' she began to shout, 'and then you tell me why Valerie Glenn should have Callie, and I should have fucking nothing nothing nothing.'
She slammed her fist repeatedly on the concrete. The rats scampered in fear. She breathed hard in the aftermath, and the room was silent except for the sound of her breath and the ceaseless dripping of water overhead.
Then, in another room, she thought she heard a noise again. Her eyes narrowed. Her imagination ran wild.
'I'm sorry,' Maggie murmured.
Kasey shrugged. She was anxious to get away from this place. 'Don't patronize me.'
'What happens now?'
'You know what I have to do. I wish there was another way. I've gone too far to go back now.'
'You can't expect to escape. They'll figure it out. They'll find out about Callie and about everything else.'
'It's too late now,' Kasey told her. 'Believe me, I never wanted you in the middle of this. It was between me and him. But now I have no choice.'
'Kasey, you're not like him. If you kill me, you're no better than he was.'
'You're right. I'm not.'
Kasey picked up the gun, which was still warm. Tiredly, she pushed herself to her feet against the concrete pillar. She jiggled the flashlight again and watched the beam flicker. She went over to Nieman's body and dug a hand in his pocket and found his keys. Her escape route. When she turned back to Maggie, her hand trembled. She knew what she had to do, but she didn't want to do it. She was in a corner with nowhere to go. In the last week, she had killed three times. This was just one more murder. The last. And then she was finally free.
Six feet away, Maggie struggled, squirming to get free. 'Don't do this,' she told her. 'Kasey, I know you, this is not who you are. Don't do this.'
Kasey realized that no one knew who she really was. Not Bruce. Not Regan. Not Maggie. The man on the floor, the man who had chased her, the man she had killed, had boasted that he understood her. He had claimed to be able to see into her head. Claimed that they were kindred spirits. The terrible irony was that he was right. In the end, he had known her better than anyone.
'I'm sorry,' she said.
She raised the gun and pointed it at Maggie's head. She took a step closer.
Then she froze. The noise was real and unmistakable this time, not the product of her wild fear. She heard the echo of footsteps on glass, getting closer. Someone else was in the building.
'Stop,' said a voice from the darkness across the ruined space.
Chapter Fifty-four
Serena's Mustang was a cocoon of perfect silence. Just her and Callie. In the mirror, she could see the little girl sleeping in the car seat she had taken from Bruce Kennedy's Escort. She slept the way an angel sleeps, in peace and innocence, unaware of anything that had happened to her. That was the bliss of being so young. She would never remember Kasey lifting her out of her crib or getting lost in the fog, never remember being left alone in the back of the car as Kasey chased Susan Krauss through the woods. She would never remember the days spent in a strange house. In her sleep, she had probably already forgotten and was dreaming of being back home in Valerie's arms.