Sandra did.
A few minutes later, she came into the trailer in her dirty work clothes, saw my face, and immediately did a double take. “Jesus Christ, Rebecca, are you in labor?”
That was the first time Darrell saw me — really saw me — and realized that something was very wrong. But I shrugged off her comment with a forced smile. “I’m just a little uncomfortable.”
Sandra gaped at me as if to say, Honey, do you want your baby born on the floor? But when I didn’t say anything more, she sat down and wiped her brow. “I don’t know what you want, Darrell, but if Norm’s not here, I’m not answering questions.”
“Then how about you just listen?” he said.
She grabbed a cigarette from her pocket but didn’t light it. She waved it in the air and fiddled it with her fingers. “Whatever. Go ahead.”
“We confirmed what we suspected,” he informed her. “Brink met with Kip and Racer. Ajax was the one who introduced them.”
Sandra made a little spitting noise between her teeth. “Ajax, huh? Nice.”
“Now all four of them are dead.”
“Well, that’s a big loss,” she commented with heavy sarcasm, ignoring her intention to stay quiet.
Darrell passed her the photograph. “Someone left this picture on Ruby’s door. It shows Brink, Kip, and Racer together outside Norm’s trailer. Sometime not long after this picture was taken, Kip and Racer were murdered.”
Sandra studied the men in the picture. Her face bore no expression, no anger, no disgust, no sadness, no regret. Silently, she passed the photograph back to Darrell. “So what?”
“Did you take the picture? Did you leave it for Ruby to find?”
“No.”
“Did you kill Kip and Racer? And Brink? And Ajax?”
“No, I didn’t.”
Darrell ignored her denial.
“We received this tape, too,” he said.
He produced the cassette recorder and again played the conversation with Brink and his partner in Milwaukee. This time, strain overtook Sandra’s eyes as she understood the meaning behind what the men were saying. The lines of her hard life deepened on her face. Like me, she knew this conversation was not about scaring her off or roughing her up. This was about men who were planning to kill her, to treat her like a helpless animal, abused and then thrown away. They wanted to send a message to any woman who might follow in her footsteps by working at the mine: Don’t even think about it.
When the tape ended, Sandra nervously peeled the wrapper away from the cigarette and let the tobacco fall to the floor.
“Remember what I told you?” she said, eyeing me. “These people are evil.”
“I remember.”
“Did Ruby know?” she asked me.
I didn’t answer, but she read the truth in my silence. She curled her lip with disgust as if she were chewing on something foul. “Ruby may be the worst of all, you know. The others were men. I expect that shit from them. But Ruby lied to protect them, even knowing what they did. She threw me and all the other women to the wolves.”
Darrell put his hands on his knees and adopted a fatherly tone. “Sandra, it’s clear that Brink intended to do you harm. He said you would regret turning down the money. In light of this tape, that was obviously a threat. Did he tell you that your life was in danger if you didn’t quit the mine?”
“No. He didn’t say anything like that. I just figured the harassment would get worse, and the mine wouldn’t do shit to stop it. I was right.”
Darrell eased back in the chair and stared at her, letting the silence draw out in the trailer. Although there was really no silence around us. The ground vibrated. The metal walls shook. Men shouted. Engines rumbled. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut, as if my brain could block everything out. It was cold in here, but sweat poured down my face. A spike drove through my back, or at least, that was what it felt like to me.
“You know what I think?” Darrell asked.
He used that calm voice I’d heard many times, the voice that lulled a suspect into confessing everything. Tell them a story. Use a few little bits of evidence to tie everything together, and hope they didn’t realize that he couldn’t prove anything he was saying.
Sandra shrugged. “Tell me. I can’t wait.”
“I think Brink underestimated you,” Darrell said. “Everyone underestimated you, didn’t they? They figured you’d fold. Quit. Run away. But you were tougher than they thought. A lot tougher. You had your kid to think about. So you stuck it out, no matter what the men did to you. After everything you’d been through at the mine, you weren’t going to let some lawyer scare you out of your job.”
In my head, their conversation began to go in and out, like poor reception on a television set. My breathing got ragged. I opened my mouth wide to suck in more air. I clutched the sides of the chair.
“See, I think you turned the tables on Brink,” Darrell went on. “You followed him from the resort. You saw him meeting with Kip and Racer, and you knew what that meant, didn’t you? The three of them were planning how to get rid of you. Right? Is that how it happened? You knew they’d come after you sooner or later, and you figured you’d better strike first. It was kill or be killed. It was self-defense.”
The pain inside me nearly lifted me out of my seat, shot me through the roof, sent me into space.
“How did it go down, Sandra? Did Brink leave? Once the plan was done, he wasn’t going to hang around in Black Wolf County. He’d want to be long gone when Kip and Racer grabbed you. Did you stay in the woods and wait for your chance? I studied the crime scene, so I know Racer was killed first. That makes sense. You wouldn’t have wanted to take them both on at the same time. Did you wait until Kip left, and you had an opportunity to confront Racer one on one? He was probably drunk. Easy prey. Easy to kill. And when that was done, you hung around until Kip came back, and you did the same thing to him.”
Sandra didn’t say anything. I’m not sure she was even paying attention to Darrell anymore. She was staring at me in horror.
“I don’t blame you,” Darrell went on. “I really don’t. Believe me, I know the kind of men Kip and Racer were. If they’d managed to get hold of you, they weren’t going to make it quick. Brink probably told them to enjoy themselves. Did you hear him talking about what they should do to you? Did they laugh about it? There just comes a time when you snap, Sandra. I get it. A time when you’ve taken all the abuse you’re going to take. Is that what happened? Is that why you killed them?”
I couldn’t stay quiet anymore.
The pain between my legs crashed toward shore like a tidal wave, and when it cascaded over me, I screamed. With my face beet red, I screamed. I lurched to my feet and screamed.
That’s the last thing I remember, Shelby. Everything else is black, until much later that night, when I was in the hospital and you were in my arms.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Two weeks.
We had two weeks together, Shelby. The wonder of that time is emblazoned on my brain. When I’m lonely, when I’m bereft, when I’m crying, I go back to those days and replay the scenes of that movie. It’s like God gave me a consolation prize of perfect recall for the brief moments we had.
I spent three days in the hospital. Everyone visited. Darrell. His girls. Ben. Norm. Will. Sandra. They brought flowers, gifts, stuffed animals, and my favorite cherry-nut fudge. They marveled over you, and you didn’t cry at all when they held you. Nothing about this new world seemed to frighten you, which I loved. I hoped you would stay that way your whole life. Fearless.