Third Degree

Calling the police might be the most dangerous action she could take. Athens Point was a small town: sixteen thousand people. Avalon was outside the city limits, in Lusahatcha County, home to another ten thousand souls. That meant it was policed by the Sheriff’s Department. Laurel didn’t know how much training local deputies had, but she was pretty sure there was no state-of-the-art crisis management team or hostage negotiator. An image of the local sheriff standing outside her house yelling into a bullhorn came into her mind. What were the odds that this situation could peacefully be resolved by a man like Billy Ray Ellis? He’d been a petroleum land man before winning the post of sheriff, and he was a patient of Warren’s. How long would he wait before ordering an all-out assault on the house? His deputies would probably be ex-highschool jocks with an excess of testosterone. Warren could easily wind up dead or locked in Parchman Farm for the rest of his life. And even if he chose not to punish her for calling 911, she might be killed by a stray bullet or tear gas canister. She’d seen that kind of thing enough times on CNN. Such thoughts might be extreme, but he had threatened her with a gun. No … she needed to resolve this situation herself, and soon.

Before the kids got home.

I can text Diane! she thought with dizzying relief. Tell her to take the kids home with her rather than drop them here. Laurel was about to slip her hand into her pocket when she realized the risks that such a move would entail. She’d be texting from her clone Razr, which was registered to Danny’s helpful friend. The unfamiliar number might confuse Diane enough to make her call the house. Or what if Diane had something else to do after school? What if she tried to call back? Laurel’s Razr was set to SILENT, but if Diane got no answer, she might call the house phone. Warren would answer, and in less than a minute he’d learn that Laurel had just texted Diane from a cell phone. Game over. Laurel slid her hand away from her pocket. She couldn’t risk losing the clone phone yet.

I’ve got to get out of here, she thought. Could she hit Warren hard enough to disable him? If so, she could take back her car keys, which would seriously shorten the distance she had to run. She looked around the great room for a heavy object. A thick blown-glass vase on the console table against the far wall might do. But she’d have to choose her moment perfectly. If she tried to hit Warren and missed, there was no telling how he might react. At the very least he would tie her up, and then she’d be truly helpless when the kids walked into this horror show. With that thought came the first ripples of true panic, fluttery jerks in the heart muscle that made her swallow hard even as the saliva evaporated from her mouth.

Don’t give in to panic, she told herself. The phrase made her recall her days as a counselor at a girls’ summer camp, where she’d taught lifesaving to young teens. Panic will kill you. So do everybody a favor, remain calm, and focus on safety, even if you’re partying— “Safety,” she said softly.

“What?” asked Warren, looking over at her with red-rimmed eyes.

“Nothing. I’m out of it. My head’s starting to hurt bad.”

“The Imitrex will kick in. It’s working on those vessels now.”

Warren was talking on medical autopilot. She’d heard that robotic voice thousands of times, when nurses called the house at night for instructions. But Laurel wasn’t listening now. She was thinking about a room that she’d insisted be added to the house before they moved in. Some people called it a panic room, but the architect they’d worked with had simply called it the safe room. Located under the staircase, it was a windowless, eight-by-ten-foot cubicle with steel walls, a reinforced door, and an electronic lock that operated from the inside. The safe room also had a dedicated phone line that ran underground to a box at the street. Warren had stocked the safe room with canned food and water for use during hurricanes, and also with blankets and pillows for comfort. Grant and Beth had “camped out” in the safe room a couple of times; they called it their “fort,” the place they’d run to if “bad guys” broke into the house. Laurel had never imagined a day when the “bad guy” she would need to escape would be her husband. But that day had come.

She knew she could reach the safe room before Warren stopped her. He was so deep into her computer files that she could be halfway there before he got up off the ottoman—

Wait, she thought, already flexing her calf muscles beneath the comforter. Think it through. So I get to the safe room. Then what? Call 911? No. Call Diane and tell her to take the kids to her house without telling anyone else about it. If I say “family crisis,” Diane will handle it, no questions asked.

Once the kids were safe, Laurel could call the police. Or better yet, a lawyer she knew who was friendly with the sheriff. He would get a more serious hearing. And when the law arrived at the house, Warren would have no hostage to threaten. He would effectively be alone with his gun and his wife’s computer.

The most likely risk at that point, Laurel realized, would be suicide.

She closed her eyes, wondering if Warren could really be that far gone. He seemed more angry than depressed, but more was going on inside him than she knew. There had to be. But now wasn’t the time to question him about it.

Leave that to the TSTL girls …

She flexed her fists beneath the covers, then her forearms. When she felt the blood flowing, she tensed her biceps, shoulders, and abdomen. Then her thighs. Flex, release, flex, release. It was like warming up for one of those classes at Curves, only her life might depend on this little exercise. She wasn’t about to spring up off her sofa like a lioness and then collapse in a heap because her feet were asleep.

Should I grab the computer? she wondered. That would be a tacit confession of guilt. Plus, Warren might tackle her before she could get clear with it. She could wait until he walked farther away to make her move, but that might not happen for hours. Warren could go for most of a day without urinating, and he might well be expecting her to try to damage the machine.

While she debated when to run, Warren stood without a word and walked away from the Sony. Laurel didn’t follow him with her eyes. She flexed her calves but maintained the illusion of a woman at rest. His footfalls stopped, then started again. She risked cutting her eyes to the left. Warren had walked most of the way to the door that led to the master bedroom, but now he’d stopped again. He was watching her with obvious suspicion.

What the hell is he doing? she thought.

As if in answer, he muttered something, then took the blown-glass vase off the sideboard, unzipped his pants, and began to urinate into the vase. He looked straight at Laurel as he did this, a cloud of self-disgust over his features. See what you’ve brought me to? he seemed to be saying. Laurel didn’t give a damn. She used his primitive act as an excuse to sit up. Then she gave him a withering glare.

“That’s gross,” she said, listening to the steady splash of piss in her expensive vase. “Can’t you use the toilet?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to get up.”

She shook her head as though this were beneath contempt. Warren often peed for more than a minute, but she wasn’t counting on that. As though battling nausea, she hung her head between her knees. Then she exploded off the couch, snatched the Sony off the coffee table, and raced for the front stairs.

The AC cord nearly jerked the computer out of her hands, but it popped free as Warren screamed. The urine-filled vase rang against the maple floor as she reached the first door and cut left. Warren roared with anger, and heavy footsteps pounded after her.

“Go, go, go!” she cried, darting through the foyer and snatching open the wooden closet door that concealed the steel entrance to the safe room. Joy flooded through her as she grabbed the handle and pulled—

And almost ripped her shoulder out of its socket.

At first she thought Warren had yanked her arm back, but the truth was simpler: the safe room was locked. A racking sob burst from her throat as she wrenched the handle once more, but it was no use. Then she realized what was wrong. There was a child-protection mechanism to keep children from inadvertently getting locked inside the safe room: a three-digit code that could seal the safe room from outside but not override the master lock, which was controlled from the inside. Laurel frantically punched 777, then jerked the handle again. It didn’t budge.

Horrified, she whirled to try for the front door, but Warren was already standing outside the little closet, staring at her with a malevolence she had never suspected in him.

“I changed the code,” he said.

She felt tears on her cheeks.

“You’re like a five-year-old caught in a lie,” he went on. “Totally predictable.”

Nothing he could have said would have enraged her more.

“Give me the computer,” he demanded, holding out one hand.

She lifted the lightweight Vaio and hurled it at the floor with all her strength.

Warren’s foot shot out to deflect the computer, and the machine hit the carpet with no more force than her cell phone did when she dropped it at the market. Laurel balled her hands into fists and screamed at the top of her lungs. She didn’t know what she was saying, but whatever it was, it was the wrong thing. Warren raised the gun, aimed at her face, and pulled the trigger.

Fire spurted from the muzzle, and something stung her face. She reeled back in shock, her ears ringing from the blast in the confined space. Her left cheek hurt badly, but she didn’t think she’d been hit by a bullet. The pain was in her skin. Warren must have aimed just to the right of her ear. She wanted to slap him, but she didn’t dare risk it.

“That shut you up,” he said, his eyes like blue ice. “And don’t think the police will come running because of that shot. Not even the Elfmans heard it, and they’re the closest to us. Now, pick up that computer and hand it to me.”

She blinked away tears of impotent rage. “No.”

He stepped forward and laid the hot barrel flush against her forehead. She jerked away from the scalding steel and stared back at the man she had slept with for more than a decade and saw no one she recognized. She bent at the waist, picked up the Sony, and handed it to him.

“What now?”

Warren smiled like a wolf at cornered prey. “Let’s see what you’re hiding.”

Danny McDavitt turned his pickup truck east off of Highway 24 and rolled into Avalon. He drove as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself. In this neighborhood, in this truck, everyone would assume he was coming to cut someone’s grass or to fix a faucet.

Danny had been to a few parties in these palatial houses. Some moneyed folk in Athens Point didn’t mind mixing with the common people, and he had actually been making some pretty good money himself for the past year. He’d sold two songs before March, but that was chicken feed compared to what he was making on his oil deals with John Dixon. The geologist had invited Danny to buy into a couple of wildcats he felt good about, and one had come in with twelve feet of pay. At $60-a-barrel oil, even Danny’s one-eighth interest was worth real money. But the timing was bad, maritally speaking. That oil well—plus the four others they were working over now—was the main reason Starlette wanted to stay married to him.

Danny turned left onto Lyonesse Drive and slowed down. The Shields house was a big Colonial set well back from the road on a wooded lot. If the garage door was shut, he wouldn’t be able to tell a thing. But three seconds later, Danny saw Laurel’s midnight blue Acura parked behind her husband’s gray Volvo, which stood halfway out of the open garage.

They’re both at home, he thought. In the middle of the day.

He knew from experience that this almost never happened. For one thing, Laurel should still be at the school. For another, Dr. Shields didn’t usually get home until after his evening rounds, unless his kids had an athletic event scheduled. Danny could hardly believe that he’d coached soccer with Warren Shields only last year, but he had. Their daughters were the same age, and since Danny had been teaching Shields to fly, the doctor had suggested that they coach a team together. All in all, the experience had been good, but Danny had discovered that Warren Shields approached everything with deadly seriousness, even soccer for five- and six-year-old girls.

Danny drove to the end of Lyonesse, then executed a three-point turn and rode back by the house. Nothing had changed, of course. He felt like a high school boy cruising past the home of a girl he had a crush on. As a teenager he’d swing past a girl’s house five or six times a night, just on the off chance of catching a glimpse of her. Stupid, and yet as primal as the mating rituals of Cro-Magnon man.

“Jesus,” he muttered, pulling to the curb. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Laurel’s message had been too vague. Warren knows. How about a little detail with that, lady? Warren knows what, exactly?

Did he know that his wife had recently had an affair? Or did he know she’d had an affair with Danny McDavitt? Danny had to assume the latter; otherwise, why would she warn him to get out of town? And to take his son with him? That was the worrisome part. Why the hell would Laurel think Michael was at risk? Maybe she knew Danny wouldn’t leave town without his son, so she’d named Michael in the message. But then again … maybe things were worse than Danny was letting himself believe.

He craned his neck over his shoulder and looked at the house. Worst case, what could be happening in there? Shields could be beating the hell out of his wife. He might even be threatening her with a weapon. Truth be told, Danny thought, he could have killed her already. But that was nuts. Warren Shields was no killer. Danny hated to make assumptions, but Shields wasn’t going to shoot the mother of his children—not for screwing somebody on the side. Maybe if he’d walked in on Danny doing her doggy-style in the conjugal bed … maybe. But certainly not based on hearsay evidence, which was all he could possibly have, barring a confession. Someone must have seen Danny and Laurel together somewhere. It could have been the hug they’d risked this morning. And that was easily deniable. Danny had coached Laurel on what to say in this type of situation; she knew to deny everything, no matter what.

He didn’t envy her having to bluff it out with her husband. Warren Shields was smart, and not just regular-doctor smart. Danny had known doctors who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with the instructions printed on the heel. But Shields wasn’t one of them. He was obsessive about everything he did. He had only been flying for a year, but he probably knew more aerodynamics than Danny did after thirty years in the cockpit. If Warren really suspected that Laurel was cheating on him, he’d tear at it like a bulldog until he was satisfied. On the other hand, he was like any other man. Deep down, he didn’t want to believe that his wife would open her legs for anyone but him. It just went against the grain of the masculine mind. If Laurel stuck to the plan and denied everything, she would be fine.

Danny wondered if he should risk sending a reassuring text message. If Warren had possession of Laurel’s secret cell phone, it was all over anyway. He would already have seen Danny’s message about “Star” going to Baton Rouge for the day. From that alone he could figure out everything. Even if Laurel had deleted that message as soon as she read it, Warren could trace the phone to Danny’s obliging friend. So where was the additional risk in texting her? Another possibility was that Laurel’s clone phone was stashed safely in her car, as it should be. But Danny knew from experience that she sometimes risked taking it into the house with her. At least on those occasions she always set it to silent. His only other option—the only one that didn’t involve losing Michael—was reporting a Peeping Tom at the Shields house. Or better yet, a bomb threat. The Sheriff’s Department would have to go inside, then. But if Laurel had things under control, that kind of intrusion would only make things worse. Best to leave it at sending a reassuring text message.

“Hey there!” called a scratchy male voice in the upper register. “You lost or something?”

Danny looked across the passenger seat at the sunburned face of a bald man in his late seventies. “No, sir. Just sitting for a minute.”

“You making a delivery out here?”

“Nope.”

“I thought you might be bringing me my crossties.”

“Pardon?”

The man spread his arms as far as they would go. “Railroad ties! To border my garden, shore up the bank.”

Danny smiled. “No, sir. But I’ve used some of those myself, now and again.”

The man stared at him as though awaiting an explanation of what Danny was doing on this street.

“Well,” Danny said, grinding the truck into gear. “I guess—”

“Do I know you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Sure! I saw you in the newspaper. Something about the war. Iraq or somewhere. You won some medals over there, right?”

Military fame is a funny thing. You can leave a town as a pimply faced teenager and not come back for anything but funerals, but as long as you have a living relative there, or somebody still remembers you, your picture will pop up in the Sunday paper above an announcement of your latest promotion or, rarely, an item trumpeting the receipt of a medal for bravery under fire.

“No, sir,” Danny lied. “I’m over from McComb, checking out sites for cellular towers.”

The man’s face scrunched into a near parody of suspicion. “Cell towers? Here in Avalon? Now listen, we got restrictive covenants against that kind of thing.”

“Is that right?”

“Damn straight we do! That’s why these lots are so expensive. You need to just drive on down to Lake Forest or Belle Rive, mister. Ain’t gonna be no cell towers round here.”

“I reckon not,” Danny said, smiling. “My mistake. Thanks again.”

“Don’t thank me. You get on out of here.”

Danny drove off, wanting to make a last pass by Laurel’s house, but knowing he was already late for a flying lesson with a lady lawyer. He wondered if the old man had noticed that his truck had Lusahatcha County plates.

Warren held the barrel of his revolver against Laurel’s right ear as he searched a pantry drawer with his free hand. His motions were jerky, his breath bad. He hasn’t brushed his teeth since yesterday, Laurel realized. Her left cheek stung as though someone had poured acid over it, and when she ran her fingers over the skin, she felt hard particles embedded in her flesh. Gunpowder. The idea was too surreal to fully accept. Then Warren lifted a heavy roll of duct tape from the pantry drawer.

He’s gone over the edge, she thought. I’m in serious fucking trouble here.

“Get back into the great room,” Warren said, shoving her ahead of him, driving her through the kitchen and back down to the sectional by the coffee table. When Laurel reached the sofa, he forced her down onto it.

“Lie on your back,” he ordered.

“Warren—”

“Shut up!” He ripped a long strip of tape off the silver-gray roll and wrapped it tight around her ankles.

“Why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”

“You understand, all right. It’s because I can’t trust you. You’ve proved that.” Another long strip of tape tightened around her ankles. “All that remains is to find out how deeply you’ve betrayed this family.”

“Warren, you don’t have to do this. Can’t we just talk?”

“Sure we can.” A false smile split his lips. “Tell me why you’re so afraid of me looking into your computer, and I’ll send you on your way right now.”

Send me on my way? What the hell does that mean? Freedom? Or death?

“More love letters?” Warren asked. “Pictures? What? Just tell me where the files are, and you can sit with me and have a glass of pinot noir while we look at them together.”

She couldn’t think of a thing to say.

He nodded slowly, as though settling something in his mind. “Every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie.” He wrapped two more lengths of tape around her calves. “I ought to tape your goddamn mouth shut. Hold out your arms.”

Laurel began to cry. She didn’t want to, but the realization that she was now helpless was overwhelming. Not in her deepest troughs of guilt had she imagined something like this. Warren bound her wrists with the thick tape, then pulled her into a sitting position.

“Don’t move unless I tell you to.”

He dropped the tape roll onto the coffee table and retrieved her Vaio from the kitchen, where he’d left it. He set it up on the coffee table again, carefully plugging in the AC cable, which looked as though it had suffered minor damage when Laurel ripped the computer loose. “Let’s see if this baby survived your little escape attempt.” He pressed the power button, avidly watching the screen.

Laurel prayed that the Sony’s hard drive had been smashed, but a moment later she heard the halting mechanical sounds of the computer booting up. Then the clicking stopped. Prematurely, she thought. Warren’s face was taut. He unplugged the Sony, removed its battery, shook the computer, then reinserted the battery and plugged the AC cord back in. This time the Vaio booted normally.

“You just dazed it,” he said with a smile.

Laurel smelled adhesive as her skin warmed the duct tape. When she moved her wrists farther apart, the tape tugged painfully at the hair on her arms.

“You may as well come clean now. I know there’s something on this computer, or you wouldn’t have tried to stop me from looking at it.”

“You’re wrong,” she said in a shaky voice. “That’s my computer. Mine. Those are my things on it. My personal things. I have a right to my own things, you know. My own thoughts. You don’t own me. I’m your wife, not your property.”

He shook his head. “I’ve treated you like a queen for twelve years. And this is how you repay me.”

She closed her eyes, trying to find some way to break through to him. “Warren, what were you looking for when you found that letter? Will you please tell me that? You were awake all night. You must have been looking for something related to the IRS audit, right?”

The skin around his eyes tightened. “What do you know about that?”

“I know what you’ve told me, which is almost nothing. As usual.”

His stare intensified.

“Why won’t you tell me what’s really going on?” she asked.

“You’re the only one in this room who knows what’s really going on.”

Laurel shook her head in frustration. “I know nothing. Please tell me what you were looking for last night.”

He was studying the computer screen again. “The letter. That’s what I was looking for.”

“Why would you be looking for a love letter?”

His gaze came back to her, and his eyes smoldered with fury. “Because someone in this world actually cares about me. A lot more than you do, obviously.”

This floored her. “Are you saying someone told you to look specifically for a letter in this house?”

Warren snorted. “You don’t get it, do you? I already know who wrote the letter. And I already know who you’re fucking behind my back.”

Cold sweat popped out on her neck. Had someone spotted her and Danny together after all? Maybe. Because no one—not even Danny—knew she had kept that letter. Laurel paid a cleaning lady to come in once a week, but it seemed unlikely that her maid would flip through her collection of Jane Austen. Cheryl Tilley had got married in the eleventh grade and, by her own admission, had read nothing since her graduation two decades earlier but Star magazine, which she bought religiously after her weekly grocery shopping at Wal-Mart. Even if Cheryl had accidentally found Danny’s letter, would she have told Warren about it? The two had hardly spoken to each other since she began working at the house, nor was Cheryl a patient of Warren’s.