Chapter 59

Sitting at her desk, Holly waits for Detective Rivers to return her call. She has no qualms over sharing her deepening suspicions about Reese. After all, the bounds of client-therapist confidentiality don’t apply to homicide.

Her phone lights up with a call, but it’s not from Rivers. It’s from Walter’s landline. Holly answers on the second ring. “Hi, Papa.”

He doesn’t reply, but Holly hears what sounds like heavy breathing for a few seconds. Then the call abruptly ends.

She calls him right back, but it goes straight to voicemail. Five minutes later, she tries again. Still no answer. Holly grabs her keys and heads down to her car.

Holly drives aggressively, weaving through the moderate highway traffic and growing more worried by the minute. She reaches his house in under fifteen minutes. It’s quiet on his street, but that doesn’t bring her any reassurance.

She lets herself in through the front door. “Papa?” she calls out.

No answer.

Holly heads straight to his office but finds it empty. Heading out toward the back door, she hears a sound from nearby. A low-pitched moan. Then she’s hit by the acrid stench of DMT.

Papa, you didn’t!

Holly rushes for the solarium. At the entrance, she stops dead in her tracks. Her breath catches. Walter is sprawled out on the beanbag. His eyes are open, but he stares at the ceiling, oblivious to her presence. Reese sits beside him on the floor, one long leg tucked up against her chest. A gun rests on the floor by her right hand. An old-fashioned, carafe-shaped, steaming hookah pipe stands on the floor between Walter and her with yellow rubber tubing curled up beside it. Old towels and rags are scattered near the base of the hookah. The bitter odor of the burnt DMT is even more intense than in the vaped form.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” Reese says.

Reese.

“Papa!” Holly cries, taking a step toward him.

Reese lifts the gun and lazily points it at her. “Let him be. He’s just tripping.”

Holly stops, but the panic in her chest keeps rising. “Please, Reese. He’s very old. He’s all I have left.”

“He’s fine.” Reese turns to him. “Aren’t you, Walter?”

Walter flashes a lopsided, goofy smile but says nothing.

“Exhibit A,” Reese says simply.

“Why?” Holly demands.

Reese shrugs. “In two words? Alcohol cessation.”

Holly is having trouble processing what she’s saying. She can only focus on her grandfather’s narrow chest, rising and falling, wondering what she’ll do if it suddenly stops.

Glancing over her shoulder, Holly considers trying to flee to get help for him but realizes she probably wouldn’t get far before Reese took a shot.

“Closer!” Reese waves her inside the room with the barrel of the gun, and Holly takes a few reluctant steps forward. “I meant it when I told you I didn’t think I’d ever stop drinking. That I’d die an alcoholic. I haven’t failed at anything I’ve set my mind to. Except sobriety. I couldn’t stop failing at that. Until I found you and ketamine.”

“What does this have to do with him?” Holly whispers.

“This?” Reese grunts a laugh. “This is the culmination of some horrible luck. For all of us.”

Holly gapes at Reese, to show she’s giving her full attention, but she’s desperate to find a way to get to the pepper spray in her purse.

“I didn’t want any of this,” Reese says. “And I certainly had no idea it would spiral so wildly out of control. But when that helpless moron confused her childhood trauma with our group therapy…”

“Elaine?”

“And her bizarre fucking paranoia. How couldn’t she realize that even an apex predator wouldn’t molest someone in a room full of witnesses?” Reese scoffs. “But do you think she’d listen to reason? Even after the whole group confronted her. Selfish cow! Determined to take us all down with her. An attention-seeking activist like that! What a mess it would’ve been. And all our work… my one shot at sobriety… would’ve blown up with her.”

“So you overdosed her?” Holly says, playing along while calculating when best to make her move. “To make it look self-induced?”

“We talked about it, JJ and I. How easy it would be to make it appear as if Elaine had relapsed. Which, let’s face it, was a foregone conclusion with that hopeless mess.” Reese exhales. “JJ and I went back to see Elaine after the group intervention. To take one more stab at making her see the light. And I thought…” Her voice trails off.

If only I can get a bit closer.“Thought what?”

“That JJ knew what I was prepared to do. I told her I’d brought fentanyl.” Reese shakes her head. “Predictably, Elaine wouldn’t listen to a word of reason… Actually, it was even worse than that. She accused us of complicity in her molestation. Ridiculous! Apart from screwing the whole group over, all Elaine was ever going to accomplish with her hysterical charges was to discredit real abuse victims.”

“So you injected her with fentanyl?”

“What else was I supposed to do? To save six other lives, we had to take hers. It’s utilitarian when you think about it. You know, greatest good for the greatest number. And I thought I’d convinced JJ… but then she lost it. Acting as if overdosing Elaine wasn’t even an option, let alone the only one. I had to practically wrestle the phone out of her hand to stop her from dialing 911.”

Holly’s insides go cold hearing Reese explain the mechanics of Elaine’s murder in such a detached tone. Suddenly, Holly remembers Reese’s cool detachment when she talked about retaliating against the cousin who blabbed at school that Reese’s dad had died of alcoholism. Reese, the smart, quiet girl who became the ambitious, successful lawyer. The first of the group to admit falling off the wagon. Wise indeed to mix truth with her lies.

Holly glances down at her purse. “And that’s why you had to get rid of JJ, too?”

Reese’s eyes are glassy. “JJ was my friend! My only ally in the tribe. Someone who understood the grip of alcohol. The others?” Reese rolls her eyes. “Salvador is a man-child. Baljit, a bully. Elaine was a ‘woke’ nutbar and Liisa an uptight know-it-all—both of them lost causes. And Simon? Just an abuser who views himself as some kind of victim. Not JJ, though. She and I found sobriety together. It was as if I’d stumbled across a long-lost sister. Do you know what it’s like to be alone in the world? Really and truly alone? JJ and I did. Until we found each other, and your treatment. But she just couldn’t stop panicking about Elaine. And then your fucking husband had to accost JJ outside the museum. It made her lose her mind.”

“You didn’t really have a choice, did you?” Holly says gently, stalling for time. She scans the room again, looking for any distraction as she surreptitiously slides her other hand closer to her purse.

“Not after your fucking husband got through with her. You know, I’d expect you to have better judgment than to be with someone like him. JJ came back from that museum fundraiser absolutely convinced you already knew about us and Elaine. She was sure she had blabbed it all under ketamine, but she couldn’t remember thanks to that goddamn midazolam.” Reese takes a long, slow breath. “I didn’t go over to JJ’s intending to kill her. Christ, she picked me up and drove me there herself.”

Which explains why you weren’t seen on the lobby’s security cameras.

“We were supposed to talk things through. I tried to reassure JJ that, if necessary, we could leverage your DMT use against you. But she wouldn’t listen to reason! Her conscience was killing her, and she thought her only hope was to come clean with you.” Reese runs her free hand through her hair.

“I’m not a fool, though,” Reese continues. “I did go there prepared for other contingencies. I brought a couple bottles with me. And once it became clear I couldn’t talk her out of her plan to turn us both in… well… JJ was such a trembling, guilt-ridden, helpless mess… it was dead easy to convince her to have a drink with me. Of course, she didn’t realize I was drinking alcohol-free wine to her twenty-six ounces of pure vodka.” Her gaze falls to her lap. “JJ was so drunk that I had to prop her up just to lead her out to the balcony. It didn’t take much of a push to get her over the railing… In a way, I think it might’ve been a relief for her. You know?”

Holly swallows the lump growing in her throat. As frantic as she is to get her hand on the pepper spray, she can’t help picturing JJ’s last moments, and it’s undoing her. She doesn’t want to think about JJ’s shock or her confusion—the wind in her hair on the way down—or worse, the moment of impact.

“And Liisa?” Holly croaks.

“Liisa!” A burst of laughter. “Could that have been a bigger comedy of errors? How was I supposed to know JJ had already confided in Liisa? Behind my back, no less. JJ had turned to that sketchy psychologist to ease her own conscience. She told her about Elaine and the fentanyl. And then after, of course, Liisa suspected I had to be involved in JJ’s ‘jump,’ too.” Reese shakes her head. “But did that fucking know-it-all fraud turn me in? No. Instead, she decided to blackmail me.”

Holly closes her eyes and thinks of Liisa’s client who had accused her of extortion. It fits. As sympathetically as she can, Holly asks, “What did Liisa want from you?”

“Money. And lots of it. Oh, our Liisa liked money. Apparently, her legal fees were through the roof. And something about her daughter’s expensive medication. She just assumed that a greedy lawyer like me would have millions of dollars in disposable income lying around. But a, I don’t have those kinds of funds. And b, I’m not partial to blackmail. But I didn’t share any of that with her until she showed up to collect her blood money.”

“Where is she, Reese?”

Reese shows a tight smile. “Liisa’s in Big Sur now.”

“Dead?”

“It’s a fair assumption. Liisa wasn’t exaggerating. She can swallow a ton of Xanax, that one. They’ll probably find her car first. Not sure her body will ever surface.”

“Koala!” Walter mumbles, and Reese glances over to him, unconcerned. His eyes drift back to the ceiling.

“Why, Reese?” Holly motions to Walter. “This isn’t necessary.”

“I wish,” Reese says wistfully. “But you weren’t ever going to let this go, were you? I thought maybe if you found out your husband had ambushed JJ on the night she died, that might divert you. I even called his office from Liisa’s phone to muddy the waters.” She sighs heavily. “But no. You kept pressing and pressing. And once Salvador let it slip to you that I had plans to meet JJ that night… well, if you hadn’t already figured out my connection, you would’ve soon enough. I saw it in your eyes yesterday. Your single-mindedness. It’s like mine. Unrelenting. And I couldn’t take the chance. Not with that detective already poking his nose around.”

Holly takes another step toward her grandfather. “I don’t care about any of it. I just want to make sure he’s OK.”

“Get back,” Reese growls.

Holly again notices the old towels and rags on the floor near the hookah. And then it hits her. A fire! From a hookah pipe. That’s how Reese plans to cover up their deaths.

“Now that I’ve poured out my soul, I have a few questions of my own.” Reese levels the gun again. “I’m going to borrow your technique for cutting through all the BS. Like how you did with JJ and Simon. Your little truth serum.”

Reese opens a small container beside her hip, scoops up a spoonful of whitish powder, and feeds it into the hookah. As she’s focusing on the task, Holly slips a hand into her bag until her fingers wrap around the pepper spray canister. She eases her fist out of the bag, praying Reese hasn’t noticed.

As the stink intensifies and the smoke begins to rise from the top of the hookah, Reese gets to her feet and takes a few steps away from Walter. She motions with the gun. “Please, Dr. Danvers. Have a seat beside Grandpa.”

Keeping her fist closed, Holly lowers herself down beside the beanbag. With her free hand, she rubs his shoulder. “It’s OK, Papa.”

“More than OK, Koala,” he says, slurring his words, a thin line of drool running from the corner of his lip.

Reese tosses her something that Holly recognizes as a blindfold as soon as it lands by her leg. “Put it on, please. But don’t cover your eyes yet.”

Holly struggles to keep the canister tucked in her palm with her fourth and fifth finger, as she slips the blindfold over her forehead.

Reese motions to the tubing with her gun. “Grab ahold of it, please.”

Reese is still too far away to be sprayed. Reluctantly, Holly lifts the tube and brings the tip to her lips.

“Blindfold down, please.”

Holly reluctantly complies, plunging the room into darkness.

“Set and setting, Dr. Danvers. Isn’t that what you always tell us? Go to your happy place now. Maybe best to pick a time before the tribe, huh?”

This used to be my happy place, Holly thinks with bitter irony.

“It’s time to smoke,” Reese instructs.

Holly hesitates.

“The gun is pointed at your head!” Reese barks. “Grandpa’s next.”

Holly inhales a tiny breath, pretending to take more.

“Deeper!” Reese cries.

Holly inhales again, this time feeling the burn travel all the way down her throat. She coughs, and the smoke seeps out of her mouth and nose.

“Another!”

Holly complies. And she chokes again. As the DMT kicks in, Holly sees flashing lights in her periphery.

“Who have you told about me?” Reese’s voice sounds as if it’s coming through a tunnel.

“No one.”

“Have you mentioned me to that detective yet?”

The room is spinning faster now. “No. I haven’t reached… him.”

“Have another drag, please.”

Holly feigns inhaling, but this time she keeps her lips open. “It’s not working,” she croaks.

“It’s working fine.”

“No. It’s plugged.”

Holly hears movement and, sensing Reese’s approach, shoots out her hand and squirts the pepper spray while she swings her arm wildly.

Reese shrieks. “You bitch!”

Holly hears something clatter and fall. She pushes herself to stand up. But her legs won’t cooperate.

And then colored lights explode across her visual field as her trip launches into orbit.