all. She whined that she was too young, that her parents would
be hurt if she ran off with me. I told her that she had to marry me,
that no one else would, that I was the only one who really loved
her.” He shook his head then, frowning at something he was remembering,
at what he was seeing. He said slowly, “She became
afraid of me. She tried to get away from me, but I caught her.”
She could see him with Melissa in her Calvin Klein white jeans,
the cute little pink tank top, see him, hear him trying to convince
her, then screaming at her, then killing her. She knew she had to
keep him talking. She couldn’t let him stop now. When he stopped
talking, he would kill her. She didn’t want to die. She remembered
then that Sheriff Gaffney was coming over, at least he’d told her he
was. Sometime during the evening. Dammit, it was evening, right
in the middle of evening. Where was he? What if he just left when
no one answered the door? She was so afraid, she stuttered. “B-but
Jacob Marley was here, wasn’t he?”
“True enough.” He shrugged. “I put her in the shed out back,
and then the next day, I got Jacob Marley out of the house with
a phone call. He had a very old sister who lived in Bangor. I
called and told him she was dying and asking for him, begging
him to come to her. The old jerk left and I dug out the wall and
put Melissa behind it. Then I bricked it back up. My dad was in
construction before he fell off a building and he taught me a whole
lot. I knew all about bricklaying. Then I left. You want to know
something funny? Jacob Marley’s ancient sister died the very day he
showed up at the old folks’ home in Bangor. He never even realized
that it had been a fake call.”
“Tyler, why did you bury Melissa in the basement wall? Why Jacob
Marley’s house?”
He laughed, and that laugh chilled her. “I was thinking maybe
I’d call in an anonymous tip, tell everyone I saw Jacob Marley kill
Melissa, then saw him with cement and bricks.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. Maybe I’d left fingerprints somehow on her. I couldn’t
take the chance.” Then he slashed his hand through the air. His
voice lowered, his eyes darkened, became as intense as a preacher’s
in a revival tent. “I wanted you to marry me, Becca. I would have
taken care of you all your life. I would have loved you, protected
you, kept you close forever. You could have been Sam’s mother.
But once you were with me, you wouldn’t have spent all that much
time with him. Sam would have understood that you were mine
first, that he really had no claim on you, not like I did.”
She was cold, so cold her teeth would soon be chattering. This
lovely man who’d seemed so kind, so gentle–he was crazy, probably
he’d been born crazy.
“Melissa was only eighteen, Tyler. Both of you were too young
to run off.”
“No,” he said. “I was ready. I believed she was. She was faithless.
She would have left me, just like Ann did.”
How many other women had he believed to be faithless? How
many others had he killed, then hidden their bodies? Becca looked
around for some sort of weapon, anything, but there was nothing.
No, she was wrong. There were about half a dozen bricks stacked
against the gaping open wall, about six feet away from her.
She took a step sideways.
He said thoughtfully now, “I think I’ll bury you close to Ann. Out
under that elm tree. But you don’t deserve a nice service, Becca, not
like the one I did for Ann. She was Sam’s mother, after all.”
“I don’t want to be buried there,” she said and took another step.
“I don’t want to die,Tyler. I haven’t done anything to you. I came
here to be safe, but I wasn’t ever safe, was I? It was all an illusion.
You were just waiting, waiting for another woman to love, to possess,