Page 21 of One Cry Too Loud
“Him dying is the point! Isn’t that obvious?” Michelle screamed. “What are you doing anyway? He was going to kill you! He’d probably still kill you now if he could, and you want to save him? How lame and altruistic are you idiots anyway?”
“A life is a life,” I said flatly.
“You’re one of those. I should have known you were,” Michelle said, rolling her eyes. “It’s my own fault. I was hoping all the tv specials and magazine articles about you were wrong. No such luck. Jack Harrington really is a boyscout.” She shook her head. Long earrings shook from her lobes as she did. “I hope you’re not too much of a boyscout to know what’s good for you.”
“And whatisgood for us, Michelle?” Kat asked. “You said you wanted to have a conversation. You said, if we didn’t, we’d die. Can I assume the conversation is about something you want us to do?”
“Absolutety correct,” she sighed. “I knew I should have been talking to the woman this entire time. It would have gone a lot smoother.”
“You’re talking to the woman now,” Kat said. “Tell me what you need.”
“I want what Nefarious was offering us. Well, he was offering it to Cliff.” She motioned toward the man bleeding out on the ground, leaving us to assume that was his name. “I guess I was just a gift with purchase.”
“And what did he offer Cliff?” Kat asked.
“Exactly what he said,” she replied. “Freedom.”
I looked over at the man on the ground. He had gone still. He was gone. Or, at the very least, he was so close to gone that nothing could help him now. I stared at the gun in Michelle’s hand as she continued, still pointed in our direction.
“But I wanted freedom too. I want real freedom, and Cliff never understood that I couldn’t get that with him.” Michelle shrugged. “Maybe he did realize it. Maybe he just didn’t care.”
“Why don’t you have freedom, Michelle?” I asked. “What did you do?”
“Shut up and let the ladies talk!” She screamed. Looking over at Kat, she continued. “I didn’t do anything, by the way. I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was our third date when ithappened. I barely knew him. He was still an accountant then. We had only kissed twice for God’s sake!”
“When what happened, Michelle?” Kat asked.
“He wanted me to meet his brother,” Michelle said. “I told him that I thought it was too early, but he insisted. So, we went to his brother’s house for dinner one night. It was a real pigsty; the kind of messy bachelor pad you never really want to see on a date. You know the kind I mean.”
“What happened when you went to his brother’s apartment?” Kat asked.
“Right to the point. I like that,” Michelle smiled. “We had dinner. It was awful; canned spaghetti and meatballs that he tried to convince me were homemade. Anyway, it turns out that the real reason Cliff wanted to go see his brother that night was to get some money that he owed him. His brother didn’t have it, and the whole thing collapsed into a really, really terrible argument. I tried to leave, but the door was locked with a key and I couldn’t.” She shook her head. “Still, I didn’t know Cliff was going to end up stabbing his brother with a kitchen knife.”
“He killed his brother?” Kat gasped.
“Kind of,” Michelle said. “You see, after he stabbed him, after Cliff’s brother fell to the floor and bled until he went quiet, we thought he was dead. I was crying. I was beside myself with all of it. I had never even seen a dead body at that point. I was a farm girl from Tennessee. The only corpses I’d ever seen belonged to horses. Anyway, while Cliff was in the other room trying to figure out what to do, his brother jumped back up. He wasn’t dead after all. He was frantic, though,and really upset. He came at me. His eyes were so crazy. He picked me up off the ground and started choking me. I couldn’t get away from him. I couldn’t do anything.” She took a deep breath. “The kitchen knife was still on the counter though. It was right beside me. So, I-I-”
“Finished the job?” I asked.
She looked at me with glassy eyes. “I told you I was talking to your friend, but yes. I finished the job. I did what needed to be done.” She shook her head. “It was all over after that. Cliff told me that we would both go down for the murder. He said we had to run. He said we had to disappear. So, that was what we did.”
“What you did was self defense,” Kat said.
“I know that, but it sure didn’t feel like it at the time,” Michelle replied. “It felt like I was trapped. It felt like my life was over. Honestly, most of the time I wish it had been over.” She shook her head. “It turns out disappearing isn’t as easy as you might think it is. We couldn’t go back to our families. We couldn’t go back to our jobs. We couldn’t even go back to our apartments to hear Cliff tell it. We had nothing. We had to survive, though, and that meant doing things we didn’t want to do. It meant becoming the kind of people we didn’t want to be. At least,Ididn’t want to be one. Cliff didn’t seem to mind though. There was a part of him that enjoyed the killing. He had been a world class hunter before. He certainly had the skillset for it, and you heard him talk about his bloodlust.”
“So, you were with him?” I asked. “Just-just swept up in it?”
“I was,” she said. “Lost to it, and then-to be honest with you, I gave up. I never loved what we did the way Cliff did. I never wanted to be a killer, but I stopped thinking there was anyway out. Then Nefarious came along. He offered help to anyone who could bring you three in. I convinced Cliff that it was time to stop. It was time to have actual lives. Nefarious has the power to give us that. With a few strokes of his keyboard, he can create entire identities for us. He can create generational wealth where there used to be nothing. He could do that, and I wanted that.”
“So why not just kill us then?” I asked. “It was right there at your fingertips.”
Her eyes slid over to the man on the ground, now undeniably dead. “Because he wanted it too, and he wanted it with me. Inever wanted to be someone else. I liked my life. I love my family and friends. I have been gone for two and half years now. They have no idea where I am, no clue as to what happened to me. Even if I could have been happy with Cliff-which I couldn’t, I could never be happy with never seeing them again.”
“And you want us to help you with that?” Kat asked.
“I know who you people are. The whole world knows who you are and how powerful you are,” Michelle said. “Jack Harrington is an American hero. You’ve got more connections in government than most presidents, and Nathan VanPelt has enough money to smooth out any rough edges. I want my life back. I want to be Michelle again, and you people can give that to me.” Her eyes steeled over. “If you can’t, though, or if you refuse, I suppose a new identity and enough money that I never have to worry about anything again for as long as I live is better than nothing though.”
“So, if we don’t promise to get you exonerated from whatever charges you might have drummed up, you’re going to kill us?” I asked.
