Page 72 of The Last One You Loved
“We’re on our way. Don’t let anyone near the scene.”
When Bruce and I pulled up with our lights blazing, Uncle Phil was pacing by the dumpsters, looking decidedly green. When we joined him, we found Slider slouched against the brick, his eyes wide and soulless, with a gunshot wound at his temple. I didn’t want to disturb the body before we had everything photographed, tagged, and bagged, but it was obvious he’d known his killer, because I could see the grip of his own piece peeking out from his waistband. He hadn’t felt threatened enough to pull it.
Bruce called the medical examiner, who was also the chief of internal medicine at the local hospital, while I requested help from a few part-time crime scene folks we had on call for the rare times we needed more than the basics my staff and I could handle. Once they arrived and were thick into processing the scene, Bruce and I started canvassing the area.
We talked to the customers at the bar, businesses around Phil’s, and knocked on doors. The duplex McK used to live in had a clear shot of the parking lot and rear entrance to the bar, but no one there had seen anything. At least, nothing they were willing to talk about. I was back outside, arranging a time for the autopsy with Doc Frank when Bruce radioed me from inside McFlannigan’s.
“Sheriff, Sybil just walked in, sat at the bar, and ordered a two-hundred-dollar bottle of scotch. Ted wants to know if he should serve it? Want me to take her in?”
I lifted my hat, brushed my hand over my hair, and replaced it, all while wondering if this nightmare day was ever going to end. Hit after hit. Leave it to Sybil to be the cherry on the top of the cake.
“I’m on my way back in,” I said, knowing Sybil would raise hell if anyone else tried to arrest her.
When I got inside, she was sitting in a dress that screamed money with jewelry dripping off her neck, wrists, and fingers. She looked and smelled like she’d just stepped out of a salon, and her entire attitude was so relaxed it was almost uncanny.
“Sybil,” I said. “Surprised to see you just strolling in when you know there’s a warrant out for you. Doesn’t happen to have anything to do with Slider, does it?”
She raised a brow. “It’s not my job to keep tabs on him, so why would I know where he’s at?”
“That wasn’t exactly my question, and I figure the laundry line in Willow Creek is short enough you’ve already heard I got his dead body out back. So, why don’t you try again. Where’d you and Slider go after you left The Nest yesterday?”
“Slider dropped me at Stonemill Mall. After I was done shopping, I spent the night at the Heartland. Alone. Spent all day in their spa. They got surveillance cameras there, right? You can check it out,Sheriff.”
My jaw ticked as it always did at the sneer she put on my title, but I wasn’t going to rise to her bait. As far as I could tell, she was the last person to see Slider after they’d left The Nest, but it would be easy enough to check her story, just like she said. The mall and the hotel both would have cameras. It made me itchy again. Too convenient. Too tied up.
Did I believe Sybil was capable of murder? I couldn’t be sure. She was evil, cruel, and violent, but she’d never taken anything that far before, and I’d never known her to carry a gun.
“I gotta take you in, Sybil. You’re in violation of your probation.”
She swallowed the scotch from the single glass Ted had placed in front of her, likely to placate her until I arrived. She didn’t respond to me. She just slid off the stool, turned around calmly, and placed her arms behind her back.
Her silent acquiescence was eerier than her rants had ever been, and my skin continued to prickle as it had all day. I Mirandized her, cuffed her, and hauled her back to the station. She didn’t say a word until I was sliding the holding cell shut.
Then, she looked up at me with a weird-ass smile and said, “I’m going to enjoy this.”
I rubbed my beard, hating myself for giving in and asking, “Enjoy what, Sybil?”
“Watching everyone who’s ever wronged me get what they deserve, including those little bitches I tore myself apart giving birth to.”
My chest squeezed, anger flaring along with a healthy dose of disgust.
“Jesus, Sybil. Mila’s a baby, and McK…” My throat bobbed. “She was just a kid when you hurt her.”
“She was a selfish leech, an iron chain dragging me down below the surface. I had to stay in Willow Creek because of her! Trap left me because of her! If she’d never existed, I would have been able to go after him. I’dstillbe with him.” Her calm veneer started to crack in the middle of her tirade. “I wouldn’t have lost him to those other Gear whores. But no, he stuck me in that shithole duplex to raise a daughter neither of us wanted.”
“You know what I think?”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what you think,” she said as she tried to pull herself back together.
“I think you would have lost him whether or not you’d had McK. I bet you got pregnant just to trap him,” I said.
Her face paled, and her eyes went wide as if I’d uncovered her deepest, darkest secret. I gave her an ugly laugh because I finally knew the truth.
“He didn’t want you, was probably leaving you, and you pulled one last stunt to try and tie him up. When it didn’t work out the way you’d planned, you took it out on McK.”
She rose and slammed a hand against the bar near my face. “You don’t know shit. She ruined everything, and I’ll ruin her and everyone around her, including you. I’ve kept a tally, and every single person who hurt me is going to regret it, including Trap, Chainsaw, and the West Gears.”
Her words stirred up the vision I had stuck in my head of Slider’s soulless gaze. If she was on a vendetta, had that included him?
