No One Can Know(99)
“No one can know.”
Emma said nothing.
Just as she always had.
52
EMMA
Now
Emma missed out on the most intense questioning, thanks to being once again in the hospital. She had a torn ligament in her shoulder and a racking cough from breathing in the water, which made the doctors worry about pneumonia, but she was alive and the baby’s heartbeat kept up its steady whooshing. She stayed overnight for monitoring just in case, aware that somewhere else in the building, Rick Hadley was clinging to life.
He did live. Or at least, he hadn’t died yet.
Rick Hadley’s house was searched. Hidden in his garage, they found a revolver with a white grip. Cleaned of prints, but its ballistics matching the weapon that killed Irene and Randolph Palmer. That killed Nathan Gates. And with the gun, a flash drive.
The flash drive was almost fifteen years old, but still functional. It contained records showing that Palmer Transportation had been falsifying its shipment records to hide extra loads—cargo that matched up with robberies in the area, around the same time. It also contained photos of two men forcing Kenneth Mahoney into a car. Driving him to the old quarry. You couldn’t see Hadley’s face in any of the photos; couldn’t even really tell it was him. But it was his car they were driving, his old blue Impala, and the photographer made sure to get a clear shot of the plates.
They’d even tracked down the guy who took them. He thought he was going to get a shot of Randolph Palmer and some twenty-five-year-old mistress. He’d gotten the fright of his life instead.
So this is the theory the police suggested: Rick Hadley finds out about the flash drive. He knows that one of the Palmer girls has seen the evidence. He knows Randolph isn’t going to let him do what needs to be done. Maybe they argue, maybe there’s other bad blood already—maybe Hadley’s taking the opportunity to eliminate his mistress’s husband. Whatever the reason, he goes over to the Palmer house and puts a bullet in Randolph’s head. But he can’t find the drive. He can’t find the girls. Irene finds him instead. He doesn’t mean to kill her, probably, and when they struggle with the gun, when it goes off, he drops the gun in horror. He flees.
But Juliette picks up the gun. Daphne makes a logical conclusion. They all conspire to silence, thinking they are protecting themselves and one another.
Perhaps they could be forgiven.
For years, they all stay quiet. Hadley knows that one of them has seen the drive, but he doesn’t know which. He sends his threatening letters, he hounds Emma so she knows she’ll never be safe. Life goes on.
But then Nathan finds the drive. He calls Ellis. And the past isn’t the past anymore, and Hadley has to do something. He drives to the house where his lover and his best friend died. Nathan has seen the photos, of course, but he wouldn’t recognize Hadley, not steeped in shadow. He has no reason to be afraid. Let me see what you found, he says, and Nathan hands him the gun.
It explained why he came after Emma and JJ, afraid of what they knew. Or perhaps he was beyond all reason by then, and that was why he attacked them, threatened them, was certainly going to kill them if Daphne hadn’t intervened. If she didn’t bring that rock down as hard as she could, until she was sure he wouldn’t get up.
It was a good story. People need stories to make sense of things, after all.
So they were safe. And they were free.
And it was time to go home.
53
JJ
Now
They went back to the house. They always ended up back at the house. It was like a gravity well, a black hole from which nothing could escape, not even light. JJ hadn’t been back here since the river. The accident. Hadley. She’d stayed at the hotel or the hospital. With Christopher Best at her side, she’d sat again in a cold room and recounted what had happened the night her parents died.
Most of it, at least.
She’d told them about the pills and the drinking, Logan Ellis and the Saracen house, the strange state she’d been in when she wandered back into the house. She’d told them about the gunshots and picking up the gun from the ground. She hadn’t killed her parents.
It should have been a relief.
Remembering that night was like seeing light bend through water. The angle kept changing when she moved her head. She remembered the water, the bridge, the blood, the gunshots, the gun. And if she held still, and tilted her head just the right way, she remembered the moment she turned toward the hallway.
Her mother is holding a gun. Juliette sees her, but despite the fact that she is standing only a few feet away, her mother doesn’t seem to see Juliette. She doesn’t seem to see anything at all.
Irene Palmer lifts the gun, turning her hand to rest the barrel against her sternum. Juliette steps forward. Reaches out for her, letting out a wordless cry. Her mother pulls the trigger. Hot flecks of blood burst across Juliette’s cheeks.
Like a glimmer of light, it fractured as the water rippled. She couldn’t be sure of it.
But she knew.
She sat in her childhood bedroom. The yellow wallpaper was the color of pus.
She had watched her mother shoot herself in the chest. Part of her had preferred her own guilt.
Irene had told Hadley she was afraid of Randolph. That she was getting ready to leave him. And then he’d found out she was preparing to turn him in. She must have thought she had no choice but to kill him.