Those sea blue eyes held mine.
“I gave him what he needed. He’d do anything for me.”
Pause.
“Anything.”
I had a feeling Tony proved that in spades.
He shook his head, looked off into the distance, then back to me.
“I didn’t like him fucking Betty, you know. That messed with my head. He was mine. But no one gave that first shit about her. She was just some guy’s wife. I’m not sure anybody even knew her name until they found out she got herself addicted to Tony. She was perfect. The cops didn’t pay her a lick of attention, even when she was being interviewed. She didn’t matter. She was just another mom. She was nobody.”
She had been treated that way.
Like nobody.
And as the ladies had a habit of doing in Misted Pines, Betty sure proved that was a mistake.
“He obviously wasn’t supposed to get caught,” he bit out. “Eventually, once I had her primed, I was gonna introduce him to Shelly, and it would be my boy, my baby and me. But for some fucked-up reason, Bohannan took you and his daughter up to where the FBI was hanging. He wasn’t supposed to be there. You weren’t supposed to be there. Tony saw Bohannan’s SUV, but we had a plan, and Tony’s good with carrying out orders and thinking on the fly if there’s adjustments that need to be made. He even thought you all being there would be a bonus. He called me, told me what was up, and we agreed. He took his shots, and those three tore off out of there. He didn’t expect Bohannan to come out the back, though. Tony had to veer the wrong way. His escape route impeded, he couldn’t adjust quick enough and get away without being seen.”
“You-you had him…do all the killing?”
He shook his head. “Not Alice. He was up in Canada. I snatched her. Funny thing, the government trains these guys to be killers. Straight-up, dead-set killers. Trains ’em, and then sends them out and orders them to kill. Put their eye to the sight, get a bead, pull the trigger. Dead. Then they come home and what? What are they good for? You kill somebody, it doesn’t matter who, you could hate ’em, it’ll still fuck you up.”
He blew out a sigh, upset about this, though he was right in what he said, and it was upsetting.
“It fucked him up. I told him what we needed to do with Alice, he told me he couldn’t do it. First time he refused me anything. Only time. But I got it. You had to draw the line somewhere. That was his line. And I gave that to him.”
Which meant he killed Alice.
Inept, Bohannan had said.
And gruesome.
He scooched closer to me.
I fought vomiting.
“It was genius, the setup he had. Like I said, he liked it a lot of ways. So he starts that business in Wyoming, all guys all the time. These big corporate players who walk around thinking they’re swinging their big dicks, snap your fingers, they’ll drop to their hands and knees. He was free, making up for lost time. He was fucking so much ass and sucking so much cock, he was up to his neck in that shit. Obviously, I heard of this guy who takes you out and shows you a good time, Brokeback Mountain with guns and good hunting, I had to see it for myself. And he was perfect.”
His voice dropped, a new expression hit his face.
“Fucking perfect.”
Good God.
He loved him.
He’d loved Tony.
And if I was reading it right, he also loved Shelly.
“He was so lost,” Ray told me. “She was so lost. In me, they were found.”
Yes, he loved Tony and Shelly.
And yes, he thought he was god.
Because when he said that last, I could swear, he felt like light was shining from him as the savior of the fucked-up-by-life souls.
“Was gonna find a new one,” he shared. “Marry Shelly and tie her to me forever, and we’d find a new one we both liked. But I need time. It’s gonna take time to get over Tony.”
“So, he, um…killed Malorie?”
He brightened.
I fought grimacing.
“Yeah, he liked doing that for me. Shelly, she tries to like everybody. That’s the way she is. She’s just a good girl.” The next came through a leer. “A good girl who likes it rough, but that makes it hotter, when she’s a good girl.”
With ease that was chilling, he transitioned back to conversational and continued to tell his story.
“But she couldn’t like Malorie because no one liked Malorie because Malorie was a know-it-all bitch. She knew what everyone should be doing and didn’t mind telling you. She even came to the rec center once and told me what programs I should be offering. Like she and she alone had some lock on all the needs of a community. Swear to fuck, about a dozen times almost burned down that locker where everyone puts their used boxes. Sick of hearing how great that is. Like that locker is single-handedly gonna save us from climate change. Seriously?”
When it seemed he expected a response, I shook my head like I agreed with how moronic that was, although I thought every town could benefit from having a recycling center like that.
That said, I was getting it.
Malorie got attention. Malorie earned respect. Malorie did something people admired.
And he couldn’t have that.
He was the rec center community guy who got grants for kids’ programs.
She was competition.
My head shake was what he needed, because he kept talking.
“So, Tony went down and got her. And Tony killed her and brought her up. I took her out on the lake.” His gaze on me intensified. “I tied her to Bohannan’s pier. That was me.”
He was proud of that.
He was proud of invading Bohannan’s space like that.
That meant everything to him.
I needed this story not to be complete with that.
I needed more time.
I needed to keep him talking.
So I asked, “Did Shelly do Betty’s hair?”
He smirked. “Put that together, did you?”
He knew I did. That was why I was sitting right there.
“Did you…did the people at The Joy of Joy let you borrow their boat?”
“Now,” he started, like he was admonishing me. “Don’t be thinking bad thoughts about Mick and Zelda. They’re good people. I did borrow their boat. But they didn’t know it.”
So he took it and didn’t ask them.
And if it was registered, and they were questioned about it, they could in all honesty say, No, officer, it’s been parked at our shop the entire time.
I wondered, if he thought Mick and Zelda were good people, if he understood on some level he was bad.
I didn’t ask that.
“Did he…did he, that is, I mean, did Tony stalk Malorie at Berkeley?” I went on.
He stared at me like I was crazy. “And maybe get my boy caught? Fuck no. I went down there and set that up.”
“So you hired someone to throw them off?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you pick someone who looked like Tony?”
He didn’t like that question, so much I tensed.
“He didn’t look like Tony. He didn’t look shit like Tony.”
“All right. I didn’t see him,” I placated.
“Well, he didn’t fuckin’ look like Tony,” he muttered, and I sensed he’d slept with that guy too, which could be why that guy helped out.