The Last Dead Girl Read online

  “Green green or green that looks like white?”

  “That’s what we have to decide.”

  Neil-in-the-mirror made an unhappy face. “It’s really your decision, isn’t it?”

  “It won’t kill you to help,” Sheila said. “You spend time here too.”

  “All right. Green seems fine.”

  She sat up in the tub. He heard the swush of the water.

  “Maybe we could order pizza,” she said. “You could stay, and we could look at samples.”

  “What for?”

  “To pick the colors.”

  “We already picked yellow and green.”

  “There’s different shades. I’ve got swatches from the paint store.”

  Neil-in-the-mirror ran his tongue over his front teeth. “I can’t stay.”

  “You could if you wanted.”

  “Then I don’t want to.”

  She let out a huff of air. “You’re impossible. I don’t think I’m that demanding.”

  “I haven’t said you were.”

  “Delivery pizza. Is that too big a commitment? Do you realize you’ve never taken me out to dinner?”

  Neil-in-the-mirror made the unhappy face again. The skin scrunched up at the corners of his eyes.

  “Sheila, I’m married. I can’t take you to dinner.”

  “Why not?”

  “Someone might see us.”

  “We could meet somewhere, out of town.”

  “I’m not going to sneak around on my wife.”

  She laughed. A high-pitched laugh, not at all throaty.

  “Neil, what do you think you’ve been doing?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I know. You mean you can’t take chances. Not for me. I’m not important enough.”

  “I don’t know what you want.”

  “I’m not important,” she said. “Not as important as your wife. And that’s pitiful. Because I’ve never had the impression that you care very much about her.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You never talk about her.”

  Neil turned away from the mirror. Directed the unhappy face at Sheila Cotton.

  “Why would I talk to you about my wife?”

  Sheila leaned forward in the water and hunched her shoulders. “Now you’re just being mean,” she said. “I don’t know why I put up with you. Serves me right for dating a married man.”

  Neil stared at her back. Her skin wasn’t as flawless as he remembered. He saw small blue veins just under the surface. He noticed a mole.

  “We’re not dating,” he said.

  “Again—mean. You know, you’ll have to choose eventually. Me or her. I’ve been waiting for you to come here one day and tell me that you’re choosing me. That you’re ready to treat me the way I deserve. How long do you expect me to wait?”

  “I’m not leaving my wife.”

  “No. Why should you? You get to have it both ways. Maybe I should go see Megan. That’s her name, right? Maybe I should tell her where you’ve been spending your time the last few months. That would stir things up, wouldn’t it? That’s what you need.”

  Tension gripped Neil’s shoulders. He tipped his head from side to side, trying to relieve it.

  “You don’t want to do that,” he said.

  “I don’t. But maybe it’s the only way to make you see what’s in front of your eyes. To make you appreciate me.”

  She reached for the chain to pull the plug, to let the water begin its slow drain. In a few seconds she would rise up. Neil visualized it. She would sweep her wet hair back. The water would flow down her body in a rush. The bottom of the tub would be slippery. She could lose her footing, crack her head open on the hard, rounded rim of the tub. He would see her blood turn the water pink. Her head would sink beneath the surface.

  It would be perfect. He’d be done with her and she would never talk to Megan.

  He thought about it. If he thought hard enough, maybe it would happen.

  Sheila stood up in the water. Brought her hands up to her head. As Neil watched, she leaned back slightly, squeezing the water from her hair. Her feet shifted; she started to lose her balance. She threw her arms out. Managed to steady herself.

  So very close.

  Neil rose from the straight-back chair and gave her a shove. She let out a startled cry and jerked backward. Bounced off the wall behind her. Her feet slid in the direction of the drain; the rest of her went the other way. She fell hard but her left arm and shoulder absorbed most of the impact. She groaned and pushed herself up out of the water, and he snatched a handful of her wet hair and slammed the side of her head against the rim of the tub.

  The impact knocked her out, long enough for Neil to push her head underwater. The level was falling, but he thought he had enough time. She came to—her eyes snapped open—and she gasped reflexively. Water filled her lungs.

  Fear in her eyes. Her body thrashed. He held her down by the shoulders. Felt the spasms tear through her, each weaker than the last. And in the end, stillness. He knelt by the tub as the water drained away. It left her skin pale and slick, her dark hair a seaweed tangle.

  The last of the water ran away through the pipes and the world went silent. Neil pulled himself up into the straight-back chair. He watched Sheila Cotton, expecting her eyes to blink, waiting for a tremor of life to pass through her. Nothing happened.

  Sound reentered the world: footsteps on the floor above. Neil knew he should be worried. People lived here. Someone might’ve heard, might’ve already made a call. At any moment there could be sirens. Cops pounding on the apartment door.

  Neil went to the bedroom and found his clothes, his shoes. He put them on. Patient, calm. He tucked his shirt in. No sirens. He opened the bottom drawer of Sheila’s dresser, because he had seen her stash money there once, when she thought he wasn’t watching. Under a stack of sweaters he discovered an envelope that held a little over fourteen hundred dollars. He tucked it in his pocket.

  Returning to the bathroom, he spotted the remnant of the joint on the sink. He dropped it in the toilet and flushed. He found a small towel and wiped the handle of the toilet. He wiped the straight-back chair. He moved around the room and then around the apartment, wiping everything he remembered touching.

  His cleaning spree ended with the shoe box under the couch. He wiped it down and started to push it back into its hiding place, then reconsidered.

  At the apartment door, with the shoe box clutched under his arm, he listened for sounds out in the hall. He pictured the hall empty, thought about his route down the stairs and into the lot. Imagined it devoid of people. When he was ready he used the towel to open the door; he twisted the lever in the knob to engage the lock. He pulled the door shut behind him.

  He moved through the hall and down the stairs unseen. Out into the sunlight.

  His car had been baking in the July heat. He dropped the shoe box and the towel on the passenger seat and turned the key. He felt sure the engine wouldn’t start. It started. Hot air blew from the vents. He pressed the button for the air-conditioning and made himself wait—wait for the air to turn cool. No one came for him. No one rushed from the building to stop him.

  The air was blasting cold when he drove away from Sheila Cotton’s apartment.

  • • •

  On Monday morning, Sheila Cotton’s apartment manager knocked on her door to collect the rent, which was overdue. He tried again on Tuesday. On Wednesday he used his passkey to let himself in, because he’d had tenants skip out before and he was losing patience. When he got inside, the smell led him to the body.

  The story topped the news at eleven on Wednesday night. A spokesman for the police declined to say whether the death was an accident or the result of foul play. Neil watched the report on the TV in the bedroom, with Megan beside him,
reading a book. He hoped the book might distract her. It didn’t.

  “Did you know that woman?” she asked him.

  “No,” he said. “Why would I?”

  “They mentioned she worked as a sub. I thought you might’ve run into her at school.”

  “I don’t remember her,” he said. “Maybe I’ll ask Gary.”

  Gary was always good for a distraction these days—Gary and his infidelity.

  “Don’t talk to me about Gary,” Megan said.

  And Neil obliged her. He clicked the remote to switch off the TV. Rolled over onto his side. But she didn’t let it go.

  “You haven’t said what you think.”

  “About that woman?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I told you, I didn’t know her.”

  “You can still take a guess,” Megan said. “Was it an accident, or foul play?”

  • • •

  When a week passed without any visit from the police, Neil Pruett began to hope he might be safe.

  He’d been careful never to give Sheila his home phone number, and he didn’t own a cell phone. He’d first made contact with her the previous fall, when he spotted her in the teacher’s lot at the high school, lighting up in her car at lunchtime. They’d done their communicating one-on-one, in person. People might have seen them together at school, but not recently. After their arrangement began, he’d made a point of staying away from her in public.

  He supposed she might have kept a list of her customers, but he didn’t think so. She wasn’t in the kind of business where you kept lists. She might have talked about their relationship with a friend, but it wasn’t really the kind of relationship you talked about.

  Which left one person who could draw a connection between them: Luke Daw.

  In the evenings of those days in mid-July, Neil found himself stepping out onto his porch in the fading heat. He’d watch the passing cars. Sometimes he’d walk up and down the block. It took him a while to realize he was waiting for Luke.

  On the eighteenth of July, a Thursday, nine-thirty, the black Mustang stopped at the curb in front of the house. Luke Daw leaned over and opened the passenger door. Neil went down from the porch, slow and deliberate as a sleepwalker. He got into the car.

  He didn’t worry about Megan. She wouldn’t see; she wasn’t home. She had gone to console Cathy, because it looked like Gary was starting up his affair again—the one with the eighteen-year-old.

  Luke pulled away from the curb, driving with one hand on the wheel. The other hand held a popsicle stick. He spun it around slowly with his fingers.

  “Kev,” he said. “You don’t look happy.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you want?” said Neil.

  “I thought we should talk. Things have been happening.”

  Neil leaned back in his seat and waited.

  “Crazy news about Sheila,” Luke said.

  “I don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  “You’re always wrong about me, K. We’re on the same page.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I get it. I know what she was like. There were plenty of times I felt like drowning her too, believe me.”

  “I didn’t drown her.”

  “I know. That’s the first thing I thought when I heard the news. I’m sure K didn’t drown her. They found her on Wednesday and she’d been dead a few days. So figure she died sometime around Saturday afternoon. And you were there every Saturday. I bet it’s surreal for you, thinking how she must have died right after you left.”

  “I had nothing to do with it.”

  “I know. It had to be an accident. She was a gorgeous girl, but needy. She was bound to have an accident sooner or later. I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish you had let me look out for you. If I’d known you were bored with her, I could’ve found you another. Then you wouldn’t have been around—when she had her accident.”

  Luke pulled the Mustang to the curb. Neil looked through his window and saw that they had driven in a circle and arrived back at his house.

  “Here’s the problem,” Luke said. “She made me money. Now that money’s not coming in. You see where that puts me.”

  Neil tipped his head back against the headrest and braced himself for what he knew was coming.

  Luke Daw laughed. “Honestly, K, you should see your face. Always thinking the worst. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s a good thing. You just have to trust me. Here’s what we’re gonna do.”

  • • •

  Two days later. Saturday. Five o’clock. Neil Pruett rounded a curve on Humaston Road and saw the trailer. He slowed and made the turn onto the gravel, his tires throwing pebbles up under the car.

  He had five hundred dollars in his pocket, part of the money he had taken from Sheila Cotton’s dresser. He had it ready when Luke stepped out of the trailer. Luke took the money carelessly, as if it meant nothing.

  “K,” he said. “Take a walk with me.”

  They passed along a lane overgrown with weeds. There were ruts in the lane that would have been muddy in the spring, but the mud had baked in the sun. Neil saw the roofline of a barn in the distance, a matchstick structure open to the sky. He was aware that they had moved out of sight of the road.

  “I can’t stay,” he said.

  Luke kept walking. He pointed out the pond on their right, and the barn. He said something about his grandfather. He guided Neil up the slope of a hill toward a heap of timber that had been a house. They stopped near a wagon wheel half-sunken in the ground.

  “This is it,” Luke said.

  “What?” said Neil.

  “What I wanted to show you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will.”

  Neil saw a black moth in the grass by the wheel. Watched its wings rise and fall.

  “I gave you the money,” he said. “Now I need to go.”

  “You won’t go yet,” said Luke. “And when you do, you’ll come back. Next Saturday. You’ll bring me another five hundred.”

  The moth flitted from one blade of grass to another.

  “I can’t,” Neil said. “You have to realize—I don’t have that kind of money. I can’t go on paying you. Not week after week.”

  “You will, though. I know you, K. We’re the same. That’s what you need to get through your head. You think I’m threatening you, but I’m not. I won’t make you come back. You’ll come back on your own.”

  The moth fluttered over the grass and landed on an iron ring.

  “Why would I come back?” Neil asked.

  The moth flew away. Luke bent to take hold of the ring. He lifted it with an effort, and the ground came up with it.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  44

  I should feel bad about this,” said Neil Pruett.

  No one heard him. Megan’s heart had stopped beating. He touched the shaft of the arrow in her chest. It no longer shivered.

  Outside, lightning flashed. Neil saw it as a thin, bright line in a gap between two curtains. The boom of thunder came five seconds later. Which meant the lightning strike was about a mile away. Basic physics: the speed of sound versus the speed of light.

  Neil took a candle and went to find the things he needed. Paper towels, a blanket, scissors, a roll of twine. He came back and opened the blanket on the floor. He started to move Megan onto it and realized the arrow would be a problem. He broke off the shaft and left the rest inside her.

  He rolled her onto the middle of the blanket. Used the paper towels to wipe the blood from the floor. Lightning struck again and automatically he counted down to the thunder. The bloody paper towels and the arrow shaft went into the blanket with Megan. He tossed her shoes in as well. Then bundled everything together and tied the bundle with lengths of twine.

 
; He touched Megan’s cheek through the blanket.

  Said, “Tell me again how I was never much for housekeeping.”

  He should feel bad. He knew. Just as he should have felt bad about Sheila Cotton—and about the time he spent with Jana Fletcher in the wooden room at the farm on Humaston Road.

  He had one regret about that time. He wished there’d been more of it.

  • • •

  That first Saturday, he spent an hour with her. When he came up from underground, the sky was brighter than any sky he had ever seen. The world was in sharper focus.

  Luke Daw was waiting for him.

  “See?” Luke said. “I told you.”

  Neil didn’t respond.

  “K, I swear. You should look in a mirror right now. See what you look like when you’re happy.”

  Smug satisfaction in Luke’s voice. Neil tried not to let it bother him.

  “Who is she?” he said.

  “Do you really want me to tell you?”

  Neil decided he didn’t. “But how did you—”

  “None of that matters, K.”

  Neil gazed at a white cloud in the too-bright sky.

  “She saw my face,” he said.

  “Don’t worry,” said Luke. “The stuff I’m giving her—she won’t remember.”

  “But she looked right at me.”

  “Trust me. When are you gonna trust me?”

  Luke told him he could come back in a week with another five hundred. Neil didn’t think he could wait. He arranged to come back Wednesday—and again the following Saturday.

  That second Saturday, the twenty-seventh of July, it all went wrong.

  Blame it on Megan. Megan, who trailed Gary to a hotel like a cheap private eye and caught him with Angela Reese. Megan, who couldn’t keep it to herself, who had to tell Cathy. Did she think Cathy would be grateful? Anyone should have been able to predict how that would turn out.

  But to be fair, Neil hadn’t predicted it. He never thought Cathy would follow him. Afterward, when he tried to work out her motive, he came to believe that she’d done it out of spite. As if to say: You spied on my husband? Fine. I’ll spy on yours.

  Neil could only guess what Cathy must have thought when he drove to Humaston Road and met up with Luke Daw. Maybe she thought she’d struck gold. Neil has a gay lover.