“You fucking son of a bitch,” I exclaim. “You kill that boy, too? You take Benny out and hang him, a goddamn twelve-year-old kid?”
“He shouldn’t have come out here. Mitch shouldn’t have. I knew Mitch. He saw me. There was nothing I could do.” Jay stands over me as if not sure what to do next.
“Then you killed the boy.” I wipe my eyes with the backs of both hands.
Confusion flickers in Jay’s eyes. He has a problem with the boy. The rest of us don’t bother him, but the boy does.
“How could you stand there and watch him hang? A kid? A kid in his Sunday suit.”
Jay swings back his hand and slaps me across the face. It happens so fast I don’t even feel it at first. My mouth and nose go numb and begin to sting, and something wet drips. Blood drips into my lap. I let it drip as 1 tremble all over and stare up at Jay. Now it is easier for him. He has begun the process. He pushes me down on the bed and straddles me, pinning my arms with his knees, and my healing fractured elbow screams in pain as he forces my hands above my head and struggles to tie them with the rope. All the while he is snarling about Diane Bray. He is mocking me, telling me that she knew Benton, and didn’t Benton ever tell me that Bray had a thing for Ben-ton? And if Benton had been a little nicer to her maybe she would have left him alone. Maybe she would have left me alone. My head pounds. I barely comprehend.
Did I really think that Benton had an affair only with me? Was I so stupid to think that Benton would cheat on his wife but never on me? How fucking stupid am I? Jay gets up for the heat gun. What people do is what they do, he says. Benton had something with Bray up in D.C., and then when he dumped her, and he did it pretty quickly, to give him credit, she wasn’t going to let that pass. Not Diane Bray. Jay is trying to gag me and I keep jerking my head from side to side. My nose is bleeding. I won’t be able to breathe. Bray got Benton good, all right, and this is partly why she wanted to move to Richmond, to make sure she ruined my life, too. “Quite a price to pay for fucking somebody a few times.” Jay gets up from the bed again. He is sweating, his face pale.
I struggle to breathe through my nose and my heart is hammering like a machine gun as my entire body begins to panic. I try to will myself to calm down. Hyperventilating will only make it harder for me to get air. Panic. I try to inhale and blood is dripping down the back of my throat and I cough and gag as my heart explodes against my ribs like fists trying to pound down a door. Pounding, pounding, pounding and the room turns grainy and I can’t move.[“_Toc37098936”]
CHAPTER 34
Two Weeks LaterTHOSE WHO HAVE ASSEMBLED IN MY HONOR ARE ordinary people. They sit quietly, even reverently, almost in shock. It is not possible that they have not heard everything that has been in the news. You would have to live in the hinterlands of Africa not to know what has gone on in recent weeks, especially what happened in James City County at a cesspool of a tourist trap that has turned out to be the eye of a monstrous storm of corruption and evil.
All seemed so quiet in that rundown, overgrown campground. I can’t imagine how many people have stayed in tents or in the motel and had no idea what was raging around them. Like a hurricane blown out to sea, the raging forces have fled. As far as we know, Bev Kiffin isn’t dead. Neither is Jay Talley. Ironically, he is now considered a red notice by Interpol: The very people he once worked with are after him in a furious full-court press. Kiffin is a red notice, too. The supposition is that Jay and Kiffin have fled the United States and are hiding abroad somewhere.