Coldwater Revenge, James Ross [books for 9th graders txt] 📗

with Susan Pearce as the common catalyst. This time the answer came easily. He had come for the truth.

Willow leaned unsteadily on the edge the reception desk, flanked by a young man in an un-pressed white shirt, clear plastic pocket protector and about three inches and a hundred pounds on Tom. “Leave,” said Willow.

Tom addressed the hulking youth at Willow’s side. “He pay you to get hurt, too?”

The young man turned to the receptionist. “Amanda, call the police now.”

“Go ahead. It’ll make his day.”

While the receptionist called the Coldwater police station, the door behind her desk opened, and a mixed group of business suits and lab coats came through it. Tom sidestepped the group and entered the corridor behind them.

Hustling down hallways, room-to-room, focused and fast, he paused at a metal door where a thick glass porthole framed a long white lab coat and a mane of honey hair draped like a lampshade over a polished microscope. Coherent thought dissolved until he remembered that he was looking at a probable killer who may have poisoned and then drowned her own brother. The Apostle Paul had warned that ‘he who increases knowledge increases pain.’ Tom opened the door, hoping that Paul was wrong.

Susan looked up. “I knew you’d come back.”

Words can be pain too, when they come too late.

“There’s a posse of state troopers at your house, Susan. Did you know that?”

“Yes, they showed up early this morning.”

Something that looked like a picnic cooler sat on the floor next to Susan’s feet. He watched her remove a slide from the polished metal cylinder and add it to the stack of others inside the cooler. She was packing.

“How long, do you think, before they find out that you killed your brother? And that you fooled mine into helping you get away with it?”

“What!” She looked genuinely shocked and surprised. “How could you think that?”

“I found your little garden, Susan. Your brother’s autopsy found some of it, too. Inside him.”

She laid a slide back on the lab table. “That’s not possible.”

“Is that your story?”

Susan leaned on a corner of the lab table and lowered herself onto the stool beside it. Then raised her eyes to look at her long ago lover. “I didn’t kill Billy.”

Tom recited the contrary evidence. “Joe found Billy down at the boathouse sick as a dog. He called you here and told you that Billy needed to be in the hospital. He said that if you couldn’t get him to go, he’d come and drag him there himself. Billy was dying, but you didn’t want him going to the hospital and getting saved. You wanted him dead.”

Susan met his cold stare with one of her own. “That’s right. But I didn’t kill him.”

“So you made him some tea or soup or something, from one of those Rosary pea plants. Then you dragged him down to the boat and took him out into the lake.”

“No.”

“Joe came by as you pulled away. He heard you and followed in the police boat. It took a while for him to get through Wilson Cove. And before he got close enough to come on board, he heard a splash. That was you dumping Billy overboard. Alive.”

“You’ve got it wrong.”

Tom laughed. “Which part?”

“The part that isn’t there.” Susan’s voice recovered a measure of volume and animation. “The Frankie Heller part.”

Surprise and suspicion swirled in equal measure through Tom’s sleep-deprived brain. “You’ve got one chance to get this right, Susan. Tell me some fairy tale now and improve it later… and I’ll see you fry.”

“You’ve gotten cold.” Her voice was a whisper.

“What I know says I’m talking to a killer. Show me I’m wrong and maybe I’ll thaw.”

Susan stepped away from the lab table. “Alright. Billy and Frankie were arguing about something all week. Billy was getting scared… and sick, too. I think he finally told Frankie about Suliman and what he was doing for him. I think Frankie saw immediately what Billy didn’t. That Suliman came from a bigger pond than the one that floated Frankie and his little cannabis business. And Frankie was smart enough to be scared of the bigger fish.

“And you’re right. When your brother stopped by that night, Billy was in bad shape. I’m pretty sure he was dying. Joe called me at work and told me to get Billy to the hospital. But by the time I got home, Frankie was back again, and he and Billy were down at the boathouse going at it like they were in a bar fight: screaming, breaking things. I wasn’t going to go anywhere near there. When the noise stopped and I heard a boat engine start up and pull away, I went down to check.

“The boathouse looked like a bomb had gone off. Billy and Frankie were gone. Billy’s bird was screaming. I could see it was injured, but it wouldn’t let me come near. Then I heard your brother drive up. I didn’t want to see him, or anyone else, right then. I needed time to think. So I took Daddy’s boat and headed out into the cove.”

Tom’s voice was hard. “Where was Frankie’s car?”

Susan hesitated. “I don’t know. He must have come in his own boat. From the sound of it, that’s how he and Billy left.”

“Why didn’t you want to see Joe?”

“Think about it!” she hissed. “My brother had gotten himself and God knows who else exposed to some lethal neuro-toxin! He’d been running drugs from Canada with Frankie Heller, and now they’re at each other’s throats. He’s dying. But for the moment, he and Frankie have gone off someplace and maybe, just maybe, they won’t be back.”

Tom pressed. “When Joe came out in the police boat and found you in the middle of the cove, why didn’t you tell him then?”

“I didn’t know then that Billy had been killed. I just knew he’d gone off someplace with Frankie. And that maybe he’d die there.”

“And what about the abrin?” Tom’s voice was throttled by calm. “How did a bit