done it with poison. He’d swallowed cleaning fluid.
It’s not clear how he managed to get his hands on it. One of the guards was quoted—anonymously, of course—as saying that inmates who work on janitorial duty have been known to smuggle chemicals into their cells.
But Jerry worked in the prison library. According to the guard, he wouldn’t have had access to cleaning fluid.
So what does that mean? That he convinced someone to get it for him? God only knows what he had to do in return.
So what? He was an animal. He deserved whatever he got, and then some.
Another guard reported that it wasn’t an easy death, or a pretty one.
Yeah, well, neither was Kristina Haines’s.
Allison closes out of the last screen, leans her head back, and exhales slowly through her nostrils.
Okay.
Now she knows.
Now are you satisfied?
She listens for an answer, but all she hears is a dog barking someplace outside and the ticking of the clock in the next room. It’s an antique. Mack’s sister, Lynn, gave it to them when they bought the house.
“It used to be our grandmother’s,” she told Allison, “and then it was in our house when we were growing up. I took it when Mack and I were packing up the house to sell it. I took just about everything, because he was afraid to.”
“What do you mean?”
Lynn shrugged. “Carrie didn’t want old things around. I guess since she didn’t have a past, she didn’t want to be reminded that Mack did.”
“Everyone has a past” was Allison’s reply, and she was relieved when Lynn changed the subject.
She’s never been comfortable discussing Carrie with anyone but Mack himself. She knows that Ben and Randi didn’t like Carrie, and that Lynn merely tolerated her to keep the peace. But she doesn’t intend to be one of those second wives who badmouth the first, especially since the marriage ended in death and not divorce.
What does it matter now, anyway? Carrie is gone.
So is Jerry Thompson.
It’s time you let this rest , Allison tells herself, stretching.
On that note . . .
It’s time you went to bed.
She closes the laptop, puts it on the coffee table, and immediately thinks better of it. J.J. will be on the move first thing in the morning.
Carrying the laptop over to the built-in shelves beside the fireplace, she wonders if Mack is still awake upstairs. She’d half expected him to resurface—or at least, expected to hear creaking floorboards overhead.
Is it possible he’s asleep?
Please, please, please let him be asleep.
He was in such a foul mood tonight. She knows he’s overtired, but sometimes she feels like she’s dealing with a fourth child—one who can be even more unreasonable than the others at the end of a long day.
She usually opts to give Mack a pass when he’s so obviously exhausted. Considering all that’s gone on this week, he deserved one tonight. But it took every ounce of patience she possessed not to snap right back at him earlier, when they were talking in the sunroom.
Oh well. If he really does get a good night’s sleep, tomorrow will undoubtedly be a better day.
Allison tucks the laptop away on a high shelf, then turns off the table lamp. She feels her way back across the pitch-black room, thinking she should have remembered to turn on a light over by the doorway, or near the foot of the stairs.
She’s rarely the last one up at night. Mack is usually down here when she goes to bed, unless he’s away on a business trip. Though lately, there are times when he’s still at work, and she leaves the lights on and a foil-covered plate in the oven.
Tonight, the dark, quiet house isn’t feeling like quite the safe haven it should be.
Reaching the front hall, Allison spots a human shadow looming just inside the door. A tide of panic sweeps her back to a Manhattan bedroom ten years ago, and a hooded figure is lunging at her with a knife . . .
She cries out and jumps back—then realizes that it’s not a human shadow at all; it’s
It’s not clear how he managed to get his hands on it. One of the guards was quoted—anonymously, of course—as saying that inmates who work on janitorial duty have been known to smuggle chemicals into their cells.
But Jerry worked in the prison library. According to the guard, he wouldn’t have had access to cleaning fluid.
So what does that mean? That he convinced someone to get it for him? God only knows what he had to do in return.
So what? He was an animal. He deserved whatever he got, and then some.
Another guard reported that it wasn’t an easy death, or a pretty one.
Yeah, well, neither was Kristina Haines’s.
Allison closes out of the last screen, leans her head back, and exhales slowly through her nostrils.
Okay.
Now she knows.
Now are you satisfied?
She listens for an answer, but all she hears is a dog barking someplace outside and the ticking of the clock in the next room. It’s an antique. Mack’s sister, Lynn, gave it to them when they bought the house.
“It used to be our grandmother’s,” she told Allison, “and then it was in our house when we were growing up. I took it when Mack and I were packing up the house to sell it. I took just about everything, because he was afraid to.”
“What do you mean?”
Lynn shrugged. “Carrie didn’t want old things around. I guess since she didn’t have a past, she didn’t want to be reminded that Mack did.”
“Everyone has a past” was Allison’s reply, and she was relieved when Lynn changed the subject.
She’s never been comfortable discussing Carrie with anyone but Mack himself. She knows that Ben and Randi didn’t like Carrie, and that Lynn merely tolerated her to keep the peace. But she doesn’t intend to be one of those second wives who badmouth the first, especially since the marriage ended in death and not divorce.
What does it matter now, anyway? Carrie is gone.
So is Jerry Thompson.
It’s time you let this rest , Allison tells herself, stretching.
On that note . . .
It’s time you went to bed.
She closes the laptop, puts it on the coffee table, and immediately thinks better of it. J.J. will be on the move first thing in the morning.
Carrying the laptop over to the built-in shelves beside the fireplace, she wonders if Mack is still awake upstairs. She’d half expected him to resurface—or at least, expected to hear creaking floorboards overhead.
Is it possible he’s asleep?
Please, please, please let him be asleep.
He was in such a foul mood tonight. She knows he’s overtired, but sometimes she feels like she’s dealing with a fourth child—one who can be even more unreasonable than the others at the end of a long day.
She usually opts to give Mack a pass when he’s so obviously exhausted. Considering all that’s gone on this week, he deserved one tonight. But it took every ounce of patience she possessed not to snap right back at him earlier, when they were talking in the sunroom.
Oh well. If he really does get a good night’s sleep, tomorrow will undoubtedly be a better day.
Allison tucks the laptop away on a high shelf, then turns off the table lamp. She feels her way back across the pitch-black room, thinking she should have remembered to turn on a light over by the doorway, or near the foot of the stairs.
She’s rarely the last one up at night. Mack is usually down here when she goes to bed, unless he’s away on a business trip. Though lately, there are times when he’s still at work, and she leaves the lights on and a foil-covered plate in the oven.
Tonight, the dark, quiet house isn’t feeling like quite the safe haven it should be.
Reaching the front hall, Allison spots a human shadow looming just inside the door. A tide of panic sweeps her back to a Manhattan bedroom ten years ago, and a hooded figure is lunging at her with a knife . . .
She cries out and jumps back—then realizes that it’s not a human shadow at all; it’s
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