An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena
“Is she wearing a coat?” David asks Gwen.
She shakes her head. Mumbles, “Just a sweater.”
David swears under his breath. They make their way along slowly. David can hear nothing but the howling of the wind. “Is anybody out there?” he yells. The wind tears the words from his mouth and they are lost.
“Anyone?” he tries again, cupping his hands around his mouth.
“I’m over here.” It’s Ian’s voice coming from somewhere in the direction of the drive.
“Anybody else?” David yells.
And then less faint, from not so far away, Lauren answers. “I’m here, on the east side, near the trees. I haven’t seen her.”
This is impossible, David thinks wearily. He can’t see the hand in front of his face without the flashlight, and the rest of them have no light at all. He can barely keep his footing. He turns to Gwen, “What do you think she’d do? Where would she go?”
Gwen looks at him blankly, her face close to his. “I don’t know. I don’t think she’s thinking at all. I don’t know if she’d run down the driveway to the road or hide in the trees. I have no idea.”
“There are trees everywhere,” David says miserably.
He cups his hands around his mouth and calls, “Bradley? James?”
“I’m here,” James shouts back. It sounds like his voice is coming from David’s right, west of the hotel. “I haven’t seen her either. But you can’t see anything out here. She’s not answering. Where the hell is Bradley?”
David suddenly feels anxious. Why hasn’t Bradley answered? Maybe he’s already made it into the woods and can’t hear them. He and Gwen make their unsteady way forward, toward the forest.
They’re almost across the lawn to the trees when David hears a muffled cry and the sound of someone falling down. And then it’s a penetrating cry of pure pain. Coming from somewhere behind them to their right.
“James!” David calls wildly. He turns and tries to hurry toward the sound. He hears Gwen panting and scrambling behind him.
“Bradley!” It’s James’s voice. The desperation in it makes a chill run along David’s spine.
David stumbles and slides faster and faster, frantic to reach them, leaving Gwen struggling to keep up. But when he finally sees James, he wants to close his eyes and block everything out. His weak flashlight picks out the dark shape of James bending over Bradley, who is lying still, apparently lifeless, on the ice-covered snow.
David comes closer until he is almost upon them. Bradley lies facedown in the snow. He’d run out without a hat, and there is an ugly, vicious gash at the base of his skull. Blood is spattered all over the snow.
James looks up at him, his face almost unrecognizable in his grief. “Help him!” he screams. “You have to help him!”
David kneels in the snow beside him and shines the feeble light on Bradley’s face. His eyes are closed, his lips are blue. He looks dead. David feels for a pulse—he can feel nothing, but for a moment he hopes that’s because his hands are shaking, frozen and numb. But it’s no use. There’s nothing. Bradley is dead.
James begins a terrible keening. It’s the most dreadful sound that David has ever heard—a loud, despairing wretchedness, the sound of a father mourning the loss of his only son. He can’t bear it. He looks up at Gwen and sees fear reflected back at him. He sits back on his heels and wants to weep himself.
He hears others approaching noisily. He shines the light toward them. He sees Matthew, and behind him is Lauren.
“What happened?” Lauren cries before she reaches them, before she can really see.
“Stay back,” David warns.
He rises unsteadily to his feet, and splays the light around. He spots something dark, dropped in the snow. He lurches toward it. Some dark shape, with blood on it. He’s seen it before. It’s familiar. He looks at it for a bit longer and then he recognizes it. It’s the iron boot scraper from the front porch. Someone picked it up and must have used it to murder Bradley. Who? When? A stranger? Or one of the people who came out here to look for Riley?
He whirls around again to face them.
Lauren steps closer into their little circle of light and stops abruptly. She looks down at Bradley in the snow, his father crouching over him.
“Oh, God,” she whispers, taking it all in. “Is he . . . ?”
“He’s dead,” David says dully.
“Oh, God, let me—”
“Stay back,” David says again. “There’s nothing you can do for him. It’s too late.”
“Are you sure?” She’s hysterical. “He can’t be dead! He can’t be!” She tries to get past him to Bradley. “Maybe he’s still alive! Maybe we can still help him!”
He shakes his head and stands in front of her, blocking the way. She begins to cry and beats her hands against David’s chest, sobbing. “There’s nothing you can do,” he says.
He hears someone coming closer, his breathing heavy as he approaches. Ian looms into view, takes in the scene.
“Oh, no,” he says.
* * *
• • •
Ian watches James weep, collapsed onto his son’s body. His shoulders jerk spasmodically as he sobs. It reminds him of his mother’s endless weeping, her relentless grief. He turns away.
“We can’t leave him out here,” David says finally, his voice low.
He doesn’t have to say what they’re all thinking: if they leave him out here overnight the animals will get him. The coyotes, the wolves. And God knows what else, Ian thinks to himself.
Finally James slumps back in the snow, his eyes vacant.
“Does anyone have any charge left in their phone?” David asks. “I’d like to take a photo before we move him.”
They all shake their heads.
“Damn,” David says.
“What are we going to do with him?” Ian asks David quietly.
“I think we should take him to the icehouse,” David says. “It will be easier if we take him through the hotel, rather than all the way around the building.”
Ian nods wearily and turns to Lauren. “Help James back inside. We’ve got this,” he says, indicating him and David and Matthew.
She nods, and waits as David slowly nudges James back to his feet.
Once they’ve gone ahead, Gwen trailing miserably after, the three men try to pick up Bradley and carry him. But it’s impossible. They can’t carry him and remain upright on the ice. They end up dragging him. They leave a smear of blood along the snow. Then they lift him onto the porch and inside, into the lobby.
They put him down on the floor for a minute to rest. Ian straightens, catching his breath, and looks up to see Beverly and Henry staring aghast at Bradley’s body. They are both speechless with shock. Ian looks away, back down at the body.
David tells them, “We’re taking him to the icehouse.”
* * *
• • •
They go back out again to look for Riley, for as long as they can stand the cold. This time they all stay very close together; they are afraid of one another. But Riley is not answering their desperate pleas. It’s bitter cold and pitch dark and the going is impossible. They can’t find her. They will never find her. She doesn’t want to be found.
Sunday, 3:10 a.m.
Beverly watches them return, silently, without Riley. One by one they shrug off their coats and boots and slouch toward the fire in defeat.
Beverly thinks Riley must be dead, like poor Bradley. She’s almost glad they haven’t found her because she doesn’t think she can stand the sight of another corpse. She has never been so close to death. It feels as if death is standing over her, just waiting for the right moment. It’s an awful feeling.
Beverly thought she caught an odd look on Ian’s face in the shadows, when they brought Bradley in. Something cold in his eyes that she hadn??
* * *
• • •
Gwen slumps on the sofa, numb. Riley is out there, dead, or dying. It’s all Gwen’s fault; they shouldn’t have come. She looks down at her hands; they’re shaking. She’s beginning to realize that almost any one of them could be the killer.
* * *
• • •
Henry stares moodily into the fire. Three people are dead—and maybe Riley too—but his wife is still here.
He failed, interrupted at the last moment. He had hesitated for too long. Coward! But they might have come back just as he’d finished bashing her brains out, and then they’d have been on him like a pack of hyenas.
His wife appears silently at his side, kneeling down by his chair, making him jump. It’s almost as if she’s read his mind.
“Henry,” she whispers, her voice so low that he has to lean his ear down next to her lips to hear what she wants to tell him. He can smell her breath. He wonders if she can possibly know what he’s thinking.
“I think I know who the killer is.”
He raises his head and looks at her frightened eyes, gleaming in the dark.
TWENTY-NINE
Ian doesn’t like the way Beverly’s been looking at him. She’s gone over to her husband and is leaning close to him, whispering something in his ear. That’s interesting, seeing as usually she’s stayed a good distance away from her husband lately. He wonders what she’s saying. Maybe something about him.
Ian sits in the dark, thinking in the shadows.
* * *
• • •
Henry would like to figure out who is responsible for these murders. He really thought it was Matthew and David. Two unconnected murders. But Bradley’s murder changes things.
His wife has been whispering in his ear, has almost persuaded him now that it’s a madman who is doing the killings. And she thinks Ian is the killer. She thinks there’s something wrong with him. But if he committed the murders, Beverly thinks Lauren would have to know. They’re always together. She would have to know.
Henry gives this some consideration. His wife has a lot of irritating qualities, but stupidity isn’t one of them. He looks at Ian now with narrowed eyes, trying to see what his wife sees. Trying to imagine him killing someone.
He finds that he has no difficulty imagining Ian as a killer, because Henry has learned a thing or two this weekend. He’s learned that he himself has it in him to be a killer. He finds it’s not that big a leap, after all, to imagine anyone else as a killer either.
He wonders if Lauren is covering for Ian. He studies her from across the room with a new interest. He doesn’t know how far she would go for love. Love is so much harder to understand—and predict—than hate.
* * *
• • •
Lauren shifts uneasily in her spot on the sofa. The wind still howls and slams against the windows. It’s gloomy in the lobby, the oil lamp guttering softly on the coffee table, and the fire needing attention again.
How long will it be until the police come?
She surveys them all sitting around the fire. How different it is from when they first arrived, Lauren thinks, remembering cocktail hour Friday evening. How cheerful everyone had been, how relaxed. She thinks of Bradley gaily mixing drinks. She thinks of the handsome Matthew—now so changed—and his bright, shiny girlfriend, who is lying in the icehouse. She thinks of Candice, with her scarf wound around her neck.
She would like to know who David thinks the killer is.
She doesn’t know what’s going to happen next.
* * *
• • •
James reels with shock and grief. He keeps turning things over in his mind. He remembers how a couple of years ago Bradley had begun dealing drugs. He thought he’d seen an opportunity to make some easy money, but it hadn’t turned out the way he’d expected.
Suddenly, James shakes off his apathy, and springing up out of his chair, cries, “Who did this? Which of you killed my son?” He feels an overwhelming grief and rage. “Why? Why in God’s name would anyone kill my son?” His voice is wild, accusing, as he looks at each of them in turn. He can see that he has frightened them.
David rises and approaches him, tries to calm him, but James doesn’t want to be calmed. He wants an answer.
“I don’t know, James,” David says. “I’m so sorry. But we will find out. You will know who murdered your son.”
“One of you killed him!”
“Unless there’s someone else here,” Lauren reminds him shakily.
“There’s no one else here!” James screams. Then he collapses back into his chair, puts his face in his hands and sobs.
Sunday, 3:30 a.m.
Despite how late it is, Lauren is wide awake. Everyone is glancing uneasily at everyone else and then looking away again. Everyone but Henry and Beverly. Henry and Beverly are sitting side by side now and watching her and Ian intently. She finds it unnerving. She wonders what they’re thinking.
“Why are you staring at us like that?” she says to Henry at last, her voice sharp.
“I’m not staring,” Henry says, quickly averting his eyes.
“Yes, you were,” Lauren accuses him. “Is there something you want to say?”
The air is sharp with tension. She doesn’t care. She wants to know why he’s looking at them like that, and she wants him to stop.
But it’s Beverly who speaks up, surprising her.
“I thought I saw something.”
David turns to Beverly. “What? What did you see?”
“I saw something on Ian’s face,” Beverly says.
“What are you talking about?” David asks impatiently.
“I saw Ian looking at Bradley when you brought him in.”
“We were all looking at Bradley,” Lauren says sharply. “So what?”
“It’s the way he was looking at him,” Beverly says nervously.
“What the hell do you mean?” Ian asks.
Now Beverly looks at Ian more boldly and says, “You were looking at him—as if—as if you were glad he was dead.”
“What?” Ian looks shocked. “That’s ridiculous!” he protests.
“How dare you!” Lauren exclaims, turning from Ian to glare at Beverly. “I was right there beside him. He did no such thing.”
Beverly turns on her, and says with conviction, “I know what I saw.”
“You were imagining things,” Lauren says. She flicks her eyes toward Ian.
“My wife wouldn’t make something like that up,” Henry says in her defense. His face flushes in the firelight, and he sounds belligerent. “Why would she?”
Lauren can’t think of an answer.
* * *
• • •
David is startled at this outburst of Beverly’s. He doubts the reliability of what she says. No one knows better than he how notoriously unreliable eyewitnesses are. They see a black car and think it was red. They miss things that are right in front of them and see things that aren’t there at all. How much is she projecting her own fear? Beverly had seemed fairly solid until now.
Yet he had himself been suspicious of Ian, ever since he sensed he might be lying about the death of his younger brother. He’d wondered about the sleeping pills, how much they could rely on Lauren even knowing where Ian was the night Dana was killed. He, too, would like to know more about Ian. He would like to press him.
* * *
• • •
Gwen watches this exchange, appalled. Beverly seems to be accusing Ian of being the killer. It seems impossible—he’s so charming, so easy to get along with, and he has that wonderful smile. She thinks suddenly of that line from Shakespeare—where was it from?—One may smile, and smile, and be a villain
She looks across the coffee table at David but she can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“Something’s been bothering me,” David says. And now they all turn to look at David, who is watching Ian. “Something about the story about your brother.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Ian asks sharply.
“It’s just that something didn’t quite ring true,” David says.
“What makes you think that?” Ian asks, licking his lips nervously.
Gwen, watching, feels sick.
“I can usually tell when someone is lying,” David asserts. He leans forward, out of the shadows. “Was there something more to that story? Something you aren’t telling us?” He waits a beat and adds, “If there is, maybe you’d better share it with us now.”
* * *
• • •
Ian swallows nervously and considers his position. David had caught him in a lie. He had lied about his brother. He feels cornered.
“Okay,” Ian says, his voice low and distraught. He looks up at the attorney. “You’re right. I didn’t tell the whole truth about my brother.”
“I don’t see how that matters much, right now,” Henry says. “Who cares about your brother?”
David sends Henry a look to shut him up. “I want to know why he was lying.”