Chapter 21

21

Will ran through the woods. He was off the trail again, cutting straight across the Loop. Low-hanging limbs and branches sliced at his face. He held up his arm to block his eyes. He remembered last night, the blind confusion as he'd searched for the source of the screams. The locations hadn't been set in his mind yet. He'd gotten turned around, sent in two different directions. He'd smelled the smoke from the burning cottage. He'd run inside to search for Mercy. He'd rushed to the shore to rescue her. He'd stabbed his own hand trying to save her. And then he'd heard exactly what he'd wanted to hear.

Forgive him … forgive him …

Will kept his tread light as he climbed the stairs to the front porch. The door was ajar. He inched his way inside. Darkness had come, the moon obscured by clouds that held the promise of another storm. Will could see a figure in the bedroom. Drawers had been rifled. Suitcases were open on the floor.

Dave had figured it out a few minutes before Will. A spark of understanding had thrown the Jackal off his game. He had known Mercy since she was a child. He was her brother. He was her husband. He was her abuser.

He was also cunning and clever and manipulative.

The confession Dave gave Faith would be pristine. It would also be a lie. He had probably picked up enough details over the last twelve hours to answer every single one of Faith's questions. Everyone in the compound had been awakened by Will ringing the bell. Biscuits knew that Mercy had been found at the lake. Delilah had sat with her body near the burned-out cottage. Keisha had seen the broken knife handle. Dave probably knew where it had been kept before it was used as a weapon. The kitchen staff had watched Kevin open the empty safe. It wasn't hard to guess what Mercy would store inside. Dave knew where the Wi-Fi worked, where a call could be made or not.

Forgive him. Forgive him.

At the lake, Will had been on his knees begging Mercy to hold on for Jon. She had coughed blood into Will's face. She had grabbed his shirt, pulled him close, looked him in the eye, and spoken her last words. But her dying wish hadn't been to Jon. It had been to Will.

Forgive him.

You, a police officer, forgive my son for murdering me.

Will heard a zipper rake back. Then another. Jon was frantically searching Sara's backpack. He was looking for the vape pen Sara had bribed him into surrendering. Back in the dining hall, Will had just as good as told the kid that the metal could be swabbed for DNA, and that the DNA would link him to Mercy's murderer.

He waited until Jon had found the Ziploc bag in the front pocket.

Will turned on the lights.

Jon's mouth gaped open.

"I-I-I-" Jon stuttered. "I n-needed, uh, I needed to calm my nerves."

"What about your other vape pen?" Will asked. "The one that's in your back pocket?"

Jon reached for it, then stopped. "It's broken."

"Let me see it. Maybe I can fix it for you."

Jon's eyes darted furtively around the room—the windows, the door. He started to turn toward the bathroom because he was sixteen years old and still thought like a kid.

"Don't," Will told him. "Sit down on the bed."

Jon sat on the corner of the mattress, his shoes flat to the carpet in case he got a chance to run. He was gripping the plastic bag like his life depended on it. Which was true, because it did.

Dave wasn't Cecil's accomplice.

Jon was.

Sara had almost caught him right after the murder. Jon was carrying a backpack, ready to make his way down the mountain. He was also hidden in darkness. Sara had only been guessing when she'd called Jon's name. She'd assumed he was throwing up because he'd been drinking. She had no way of knowing that he'd just murdered his mother.

That the Jackal had made the realization before Will wasn't surprising. That he had tried to lay down his own life for his son was the only good thing the man had ever done.

Will peeled the Ziploc bag from Jon's grip. He placed it on the table and sat down in the chair. He said, "Tell me what happened."

Jon's Adam's apple bobbed.

"Sara told me she was looking right at you when your mother screamed for help," Will said. "Mercy didn't die immediately. She passed out. She woke up. She must've been in agony, disoriented, afraid. That's why she cried for help. That's why she screamed please."

Jon kept his silence, but he started picking at the cuticle on his thumb. Will watched the kid's eyes tracking back and forth as he desperately tried to think his way out of this.

Will asked, "What did you do to your mother?"

Blood welled around Jon's cuticle.

"Sara told me that you were carrying a dark-colored backpack," Will said. "What was in there? Your bloodstained clothes? The knife handle? The money from the safe?"

Jon pressed into the nail, squeezing out more blood.

"After you heard Mercy scream for help, you ran inside the house." Will paused. "What made you go inside, Jon? Was someone waiting for you?"

Jon shook his head, but Will knew Cecil's bedroom was on the ground floor.

"Your hair was wet when I saw you. Who told you to take a shower? Who told you to change your clothes?"

Jon smeared the blood down his thumb, across the back of his hand. He finally broke his silence. "She kept going back to him."

Will let him speak.

"Dave was all she ever cared about," Jon said. "I begged her to leave him. For it just to be us. But she always went back to him. I didn't—I didn't have anybody."

Will listened to his tone as much as his words. Jon sounded helpless. Will knew the particular anguish of being a child at the mercy of an unreliable adult's whims.

"No matter what Dave did," Jon continued. "Beat her, choke her, kick her—she would always take him back. Every time, she always chose him over me."

Will leaned up in the chair. "I know it's hard for you to understand now, but Mercy's relationship with Dave had nothing to do with you. Abuse is complicated. No matter what happened, she loved you with every piece of her heart."

Jon shook his head. "I was an albatross around her neck."

Will knew that Jon hadn't come up with that description on his own. "Who told you that?"

"Everybody, all my life." Jon looked up at him, defiant. "You guys said it yourself. Mercy was screwing guests, screwing Alejandro, getting pregnant again. Go on and talk to people in town. They'll tell you the exact same thing. Mercy was a bad person. She murdered a girl. She was a prostitute. Drinking and drugging. Letting somebody else raise her kid. Letting her ex-husband knock the shit out of her. She was nothing but a stupid whore."

Will said, "It makes it easier to call her those names, doesn't it?"

"Makes what easier?"

"The fact that you stabbed her so many times."

Jon didn't deny it, but he didn't look away, either.

"Your mother loved you," Will said. "I saw the two of you together when we checked in. Mercy practically glowed when you were around. She fought your aunt Delilah for custody. She got sober. She turned her life around. All for you."

"She wanted to win," Jon said. "That's what she really cared about. She wanted to beat Delilah. I was the trophy. Once she had me, she put me on a shelf and didn't think about me again."

"That's not true."

"It is true," he insisted. "Dave broke my arm once. Put me in the hospital. Did you know that?"

Will wished he felt less surprised. "What happened?"

"Mama told me I had to forgive him. She said he felt bad, that he promised he would never touch me again, but it was Bitty who finally protected me," Jon said. "She told Dave if he ever hurt me again, he wouldn't be able to come back up here. And she meant it. So he left me alone. That's what Bitty did for me. She protected me. She still protects me."

Will didn't ask him why his grandmother had never used this same threat to protect her own daughter.

"She saved me," Jon said. "If I didn't have Bitty, I don't know what would've happened to me. Dave probably would've killed me by now."

"Jon—"

"Can't you see what Mama drove me to?" Jon's voice strained on the last words. "I would've just disappeared up here. I would'a been nothing. Bitty's the only woman who ever loved me. Mama didn't care about shit until she saw that she'd lost me."

Will had to weigh his desire for a confession against Jon's mental health. He couldn't crush this kid into pieces. Jon would probably spend the rest of his life in prison, but at some point, he would have to look back at what he had done. He deserved to know his mother's last words.

"Jon," Will said. "Mercy was still alive when I found her. She was able to talk to me."

His reaction was not what Will had been expecting. Jon's mouth gaped open. His face went ashen. His body went still. He'd even stopped breathing.

He looked absolutely terrified.

"What—" Panic robbed Jon of words. "What did—did she—"

Will silently played back the last few seconds of the conversation. Jon had been passive when Will had accused him of murder. What had set him off? What was he afraid of?

"What she saw—" Jon had started panting again, almost hyperventilating. "It wasn't—we didn't—"

Will slowly sat back in the chair.

Can't you see what she drove me to?

"I didn't mean—" Jon gulped. "She had to go away, okay? If she had just left us alone so we could—"

Mama didn't care about shit until she saw that she'd lost me.

"Please—I didn't—please—"

Will's body started to accept the truth before his brain did. His skin felt hot. His ears buzzed with a loud, piercing ring. His mind spun back to the dining hall like a carousel of nightmares. He saw Dave's rattled expression when Jon ran out the door. The slow change in his demeanor. The nod of understanding. The sudden capitulation. It wasn't Jon's departure that had triggered his confession. It was hearing Bitty's soft whisper—

My precious boy.

Faith had joked that Bitty acted like Dave's psycho ex-girlfriend. But it wasn't a joke. Dave had been thirteen when he'd run away from the children's home. Bitty had aged him down to eleven. She had infantilized him, made him feel angry, frustrated, emasculated and confused. Not all sexually abused kids grow up to be abusers, but sexual abusers are constantly on the prowl for new victims.

"Jon." Will could barely get the name out of his mouth. "Mercy called Dave because she saw something, didn't she?"

Jon's hands covered his face. He wasn't crying. He was trying to hide. The shame was punching his soul out of his body.

"Jon," Will said. "What did your mother see?"

Jon wouldn't answer.

"Tell me," Will said.

He started shaking his head.

"Jon," Will repeated. "What did Mercy see?"

"You know what she saw!" Jon screamed. "Don't make me say it!"

Will felt like a thousand razor blades were slicing into his chest. He had been so fucking stupid, still only hearing what he'd wanted to hear.

Mercy hadn't told Will that Jon had to get away from here.

She'd told him that Jon had to get away from her.