Chapter 22

© Copyright 2005 by Elizabeth Delayne



“What’s going on, Vince?”

“What’s going on?” he mocked. “Anna, you want to tell him?”

Details began to click in her mind, like gears rolling and locking together inside an old safe. She watched as he trained the gun on her, spoke slowly, to buy them time. “He’s Loraine Thompson’s doctor. Has been her doctor for some time—I’d say, around twenty years.”

“That’s impossible—“

“Is it?” Vince lifted his eyebrows, his tone mocking. “You’re little woman didn’t think so, nor did Mallory. Yes, Lance, that’s right—don’t look so surprised. She knew. She had some interesting words to say to me when she found out; but she didn’t tell you. That’s always been interesting. Things weren’t so straightforward in your ideal world, were they?”

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie? Mallory didn’t like it. She told me so, threatened to report me to a number of councilmen, the like. As usual, she played it down, preferred to keep it quiet. Little did she know it would eventually work to my advantage.”

He frowned, and for a moment seemed to loose focus. Anna tried again to reach for her cell phone, but stopped the moment he seemed to come back and focused in on her.

“Fate took its turn again when Anna came to visit me this afternoon. She had some interesting questions. She would have figured it out eventually. That got me thinking,” Vince waved the gun in a sweeping gesture. “It’s never been hard. Loraine’s fairly easy to manipulate. She’s always been unstable, dependant on her medication—especially back then. I changed the dosage; put a poster of you in my office. Talked her through some easy steps.”

“You set her on Mallory.”

“I set her on you. You didn’t deserve Mallory. She wasn’t for you.”

He raised the gun, his hand trembling in anger.

“You’re not going to get away with this, Vince,” Anna watched as he turned his steely eyes on her. “Derek knows. And so does my captain.”

He lowered the gun slowly. “You really believe that it matters? My alibi’s tight, detective. Lily’s in the car, sleeping—heavily medicated. She thinks we’re heading down toward San Hosea. When she wakes in the morning, that’s where we’ll be, all curled in a warm bed. At precisely seven o’three tonight, a man will enter the condo; put a code into the security system as he has all week. A few drugs, a few dollars and he’s on his way across country. No one will look for him. No one will know.”

“The department is not going to be fooled by a simple code.“

“Don’t you think so?” His tone rolled with arrogance. “It worked with Maureen, though no one even looked twice at me—see, detective, you don’t know everything. You will now. You both will … before you die.”



“Are you sure this is everything you need?” Amy asked Chloe as they stood in the hallway outside the waiting room. She’d gone by Andrea and Chloe’s apartment, picked up a few things Chloe would need. It was the least she could do—and she needed to do something. Inside, Derek was talking to Mitch’s parents—she knew he was waiting on her, knew that they were already running on borrowed time.

“I’m fine. Mitch’s fine.” Chloe said, and though she looked exhausted, her eyes were clear and hopeful. “I’m sorry you had to be here earlier. I know … with everything, it was rough on you.”

Amy looked toward the waiting room, thought of all the words that stood between her and Derek tonight. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Chloe …” her name tumbled off her lips. “I broke up with Derek tonight … sort of.”

“What?”

“I just … it seemed like the right thing to do,” she closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her stomach, “it still feels like the right thing. I think. I’m almost sure.”

“Amy,” Chloe reached out and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well … until things are resolved … until I can talk to my dad, I just don’t think … There’s something psychological there—how I deal with my dad, how I handle relationships … and it’s spiritual as well. I’ve let things go with him for too long. I was using Derek to make myself feel stable. I can’t do that.”

“I’ll pray,” she squeezed Amy’s hand and then pulled her into a hug. How the two of them had become friends, how the two of them had begun to depend on each other, and to turn their troubles into faith … it gave Amy hope.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

Amy nodded. “Bright and early,” she tried to smile as she leaned back; instead, she felt like weeping. It seemed, despite Andrea’s plans, that they wouldn’t have their last Christmas together after all.

“Merry Christmas, Chloe.”



“Maureen?” The shock on Lance’s face was palatable. “Why?”

“Because she called me crazy, because she wanted out of our deal. We had a deal, you see. She was good at the talk, good at the planning, but she couldn’t implement. You were right in not backing her venture. She doesn’t have the guts to follow through.”

“You killed Maureen.”

“Don’t sound so shocked, Lance. She hated you,” the words rolled vile off his tongue. “You didn’t even know, did you, that she hated you? You used her, time and time again—and it was easy to manipulate you into doing it. That’s right. I’ve been able to play you against your women—Maureen, to Anna to Amy. You’ve always been easy. Poor Lance, poor, poor lamenting Lance. He’s all broken up. A sorry excuse for the man everybody thinks he is.”

“No one even looked at me. No one knew we were meeting out of town, having our own little secret dialogues, planning your demise while we both continued to play you. We were going to ruin you, expose you, with the truth and a few well placed fabrications. It was going to be the greatest deal of her career,” Vince got restless, began to pace back and forth.

Anna caught Lance’s eye. They would have to move, have to find a way.

Help me, she prayed—but not to Lance. She knew whom to pray to.

“Then she sobered up—chickened out, came to me, said it had all been a game, something to relieve the stress. She would never do it, had never planned to do it—had never thought I was serious. She called me crazy. Said I was out of line. That she would report me to the medical board. I couldn’t let her do it. I couldn’t let her stop me.”

“Why?” Lance asked. “What was so important …”

“You didn’t love Mallory enough to have her … and in the end you destroyed her.”



“You okay?”

Amy shot Derek a look across the top of the car before she opened the back door and picked up her packages. “No—but it’s early yet.”

Derek came around, took her overnight case from her.

“I’m got it.”

“Humor me.”

“You’re not acting like I’ve hurt you so much.”

Though he didn’t feel like it, he laughed. “You seem to be carrying enough torment for the both of us.”

Her gaze flicked to her father’s house, to the front door. “This isn’t where I grew up. This isn’t home. I’ve never really been welcome here—invited, ordered in, yes … but never welcomed. He might not want me here.”

Derek thought of the way Lance had looked at the hospital. He couldn’t, wouldn’t speak for the man. “He might surprise you.”

“It would be a surprise.”

“That’s the spirit.”

At the front door, she stopped. “Derek…”

The look in her eyes spun into him, stabbed into his heart. “It can wait,” he promised, and prayed that it would. She smiled and was smiling when she stepped through the door.



“Well, well,” Vince gestured with the gun, “everyone’s here.”

“Amy—“

Lance moved and Vince turned, fired. Lance staggered, pressed a hand to the wound at his side.

Momentarily stunned, Amy stood there ... watched in horror as her father held out his hand, covered in his own blood.

“Come on in, join the party.”

She flicked her gaze, stared at Vince ... felt her hands shake.

“Daddy—“

She rushed passed; ignored Vince.

He gestured to Derek, the gun steady. “Shut the door. It’s a little crowded, but I guess all the players are here now. I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d handled it myself. It seems your God, Anna, does know best. The truth is going to come out while all the players can benefit.”

Amy looked up at him from where she had dropped to her father’s side. Beside him, Anna pressed an arm covering to the wound to stop the bleeding.

“What are you doing?”

“Pulling the strings to close a very weary game,” he looked across at Derek, gestured the gun at Amy. “Why don’t you move away from that door? Have a seat.”

“It’s not going to work, Vince,” Anna tried again. “You’re thinking about killing four people. That kind of murder is hard to hide.”

“I have the alibi. And who would look at me, Lance’s best friend, best pal. We go way back, don’t we?”

Lance looked up from where he still knelt on the floor.

“To high school. Two players on the same high school baseball team. One sliding catch, a collision between two All-American players, and Lance is a hero, scooped up by the scouts, lauded by the elite. And I was out for the season with a bum injury that refused to heal; I lost my scholarship and had to struggle through the first few years of community college.”

“Is that what this is about?” Lance asked as Anna helped him to shift up, to sit on the sofa. She glanced across, met Derek’s eyes.

“Hardly. I was thankful, finally thankful. You were gone. I had what I’d always wanted,” Vince trembled. “Mallory was mine … until you came back. You kept coming back. It wasn’t enough that you had the scholarship, the praise, that you were going to have a great career, but you took all I had. You took my gold.”

Lance reached over, found Amy’s hand with his own. “That’s not quite how it happened.”

“You wanted her, you pursued her. It didn’t matter that she was mine.”

“You weren’t together at the time.”

“I wanted her,” Vince all but shouted. “And you knew it. You knew I wanted her.”



Amy held onto her father’s hand, felt it tremble. He was growing pale.

“And what did you do with your ransom? You wasted it. Does your daughter know? Have you told Amy how you destroyed Mallory? How you screwed up her happiness? How you screwed up everything?”

Lance turned, sought Amy’s eyes. She saw the pain, the fear … the shame. And she knew.

“It was a long time ago—before you and Ryan were born.”

“You cheated on her,” Vince shouted. “You threw away the gift, over and over again.”

“We fixed it,” Lance returned with heat. “We worked it through. I was wrong—” he looked at Amy, and his voice softened. “I was wrong.”

“I don’t understand,” Amy murmured. Did Vince really think that mattered? Maybe it would have, maybe it could have, but now … in the face of losing him?

“All of this, for what? So I would know that before I was born …”

“It’s not about you,” beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead. His normally healthily tan had taken on a red tint. He looked wild. “This is between me and your father.”

“Then let her go.”

“You’ll suffer because she suffers.”

“You’re behind all of this,” Amy muttered.

“Behind it? I’ve been here throughout it all—all those nights of torment, you running away night after night. Do you remember who first told you the story, of who told you about the races? Of where to go, of how to get in? The Back Bend’s been around a long time.”

Had it been him? She couldn’t remember.

“You put the drugs in my water, threatened Chloe … you were watching us in the mountains. You’ve been watching … the truck. You caused the accident. How did you cause the accident? What do you know about cars?”

Her father’s hand trembled within her own.

“He worked in an auto mechanic shop to put his way through college,” Lance said slowly—pulling his hand from Amy’s. He stood, his gaze dark … his eyes … Amy had never seen his eyes so void of life. “He liked to play around with cars. Liked to race them, change them.”

“After all these years,” Vince murmured, “you finally catch on.”

“You did it. You were behind it.”

“It was supposed to be you. It was for you,” Vince’s voice quivered. “She wasn’t supposed to die. She wasn’t supposed to be in your car. She was supposed to be safe and away from here.”

“My mother?” Amy understood; she saw it clearly. “You killed my mother?”

“She wasn’t supposed to be in his car—“ he sobbed. “She wasn’t supposed to die.”

Lance pounced, but Derek was faster. He grabbed Vince, shoved his arm. Anna pushed at Amy, shoved her down.

“Stop—!” Amy shouted. She heard the struggle—twisted around. She pushed at the coffee table, at Anna. She needed to see, to get to him.

To fight for him.

Anna held her down. “Stop—don’t you get it? Vince will go for you—to hurt your—“

The shot rang out. Amy screamed. She looked over. Her father had dropped to one knee. His breathing labored.

Vince’s arm was twisted back. Derek held him down.

There was blood. So much blood.

“We need to call an ambulance,” Amy struggled to her knees. Her legs didn’t cooperate; she couldn’t stand. She crawled across, reached for her father.

Lance opened his arms, drew her in and she leaned against him. For the first time in forever, she leaned against him and sought out his heartbeat. He was alive, so very much alive. They sat on the floor as she began to tremble, as the hurt washed over her. She felt his lips on her hair.

“Daddy.”

“It’s all right, baby.”

“He killed mama,” she leaned back as far as he would let her, watched Anna rip at his shirt, deal with the wound. It felt lovely to have his arms around her, to know even though he was weak, he was strong enough to hold on. “He tried to kill you. He was in love with her … all this time.”

“He thought he was.”



Derek watched as Amy climbed in the back of the ambulance with her father. They were headed back to the hospital, but Derek had to believe she could handle it better this time … at least they would have each other—he could only pray that they could hold onto that.

He could still see them, huddled on the floor, rocking each other. He could still see Vince trying to aim the gun, going for Amy.

Derek lifted up another prayer and concentrated instead on the jumble of information.

From Vince’s mother’s death ...

His obsession for Mallory ...

Loraine Thompson’s illness ...

Mallory and Ryan’s death ... the deception and murder of Maureen Childs.

From what Derek had pieced together from the interviews inside, Lance had run into Vince after Mallory and Ryan died. Vince was a doctor, Lance thought, he knew what it was like to loose a mother. The panic attacks were fierce back then, and not medically documented or understood. Lance had hoped Vince could help.

Instead, Vince had been using the relationship to twist together as much damage as possible. He no longer had to break into Lance's home, he was given his own key.

Anna stepped out on the front stoop beside him, slid her arm around his waist and leaned against him—whether to offer strength or because she needed it, Derek didn’t know. They stood there in silence as the ambulance pulled away. While they both wanted to follow, they had not been cleared from the scene.

It was still Christmas Eve … the longest one of his life.

“There’s something I don’t understand,” he watched the rotating lights that flashed from police cruisers that sat dormant in the lawn. “How did Vince cause Mallory’s death?”

“Ryan was in the middle of visiting colleges … Mallory was known for her cherry red restored convertible—she loved it, refused to drive anything but it. But Lance had just gotten a new Lexus. Ryan begged him to let him take his car. CD systems were fairly expensive back then and Lance had it tricked out with the best of everything … Ryan didn’t have the same appreciation for a classic T-Bird convertible that I’m guessing Amy will have.”

“Vince doctored Lance’s Lexus …”

“And at the last minute, Lance gave Ryan the keys. He was known to be a dotting father … for so long that’s how people around here saw him. When he was home, his family was everything … and he had just retired from baseball. He was enjoying being a father.” Anna crossed her arms across her chest, rubbed her arms as if to get warm, “he’s always held onto that guilt … if he hadn’t of given the keys to Ryan … He’s always blamed himself. I hope he can finally transfer some of the blame to where it belongs.”

“He held onto Amy tonight—when they couldn’t hold each other earlier, at the hospital.” Derek thought of Amy’s words, of her desire. She’d called it off with him, because she’d need to put her father first. Maybe he needed to be moved out of the way so she’d be free to turn to her father.

“It’s a good start,” Anna agreed. “They’re going to take the T-bird in. I have a feeling when it’s checked out they will find that he tampered with it as well—in the same way Amy’s truck was reworked. Lance promised it to Amy, but has always refused to let her have it ... has toyed around with selling it because he couldn’t face turning over the keys. He could never forget the day he put the keys in Ryan’s hand. It was the last day he saw his son alive.” She shivered. “It could have happened to Amy. It could have happened again.”



HEY! and don't forget to e-mail me if you have a comment!







Return to Basin Springs Table of Contents