Page 70 of The Vacancy In Room 10

“And I’d give it all up for her. I was glad to do everything for her, and look what she does to me!” he says, and I wonder for a moment if what he did to her was out of sheer hatred or for the life insurance or maybe some of both, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. “Look how I’m repaid,” he says.

“It’s not fair,” I try to agree with him, but my words come out soft and hoarse, and my throat throbs in pain.

“She had weeks left. What I did was a mercy,” he says, and I want so badly to say, Then what was Henry? but I need to try to make him believe I understand.

“So if that’s true, then you don’t have anything to run from. You don’t have to do this,” I say again, and I hear the water crashing against the rocks thirty feet below, and in my panic I try another angle. “Will anyone believe that you were this close to three mysterious deaths with no involvement? Lily was ill, Henry isn’t tied to you if we hide that video, but me? You add me, and it’s over for you. This would be stupid to do. I told you, they have no proof.”

“It’s okay. I made sure it was clear how distraught you were over Henry and that you didn’t know how you’d go on, and there are suddenly lots of searches for depression and suicide on your phone. I’ll make sure the phone is found this time,” he says, and then he stands and starts toward me.

“That’s fucking stupid,” I say, stopping him for a moment. “That will just show you did it hours before I died. Are you that stupid?” I say with nothing left to lose now, because he’s ready to make his move.

“Oh, no. I found little ways to search things each time I saw you. I mean, you wouldn’t stop coming over for God’s sake. It was really pretty easy. I watched you plug in the very secure Z shape to unlock your phone the first day, and then every time you left your phone sitting at the pool, used the bathroom, whatever... You should look at your history sometime. It’s quite interesting...and why do you think you’re here? I saw that Cass sent you the video today when you left your phone behind. Pathetic, really. It didn’t have to be this way.”

My fear in this moment is oddly mixed with such confusion looking at this man who I thought I knew and admired for what he’d gone through—his strength in the face of it all. My God...how could I be so wrong about everything?

And then my life truly flashes before my eyes when he advances on me. It’s weird, the things you think about when shock paralyzes you—thoughts that have no business in this moment. A pair of wool mittens with hearts on them I got for Christmas one year, lying in a field of dandelions in South Carolina one summer, leaping through the sprinkler as a kid, with the soft drops falling down around us like cane sugar, running barefoot down our porch steps in a yellow sundress to throw my arms around Henry when he came home from a trip. Henry’s beautiful face.

My stomach heaves. My adrenaline surges, and I feel suddenly weak with terror. I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I have to get away from him. I have to try.

He senses that I shift right and get ready to run, and that’s when he grabs me. He plasters a piece of duct tape across my mouth, and I try so hard to fight him, but I’m so weak. Then, he pulls a plastic bag from his pocket—a flimsy supermarket grocery bag—and with one swift move, he covers my head with it, but he doesn’t pull it tight. I wait for the air to be sucked from my lungs, but he’s just tied a loose knot at the bottom of the bag so I can breathe, but I can’t shake it off, either. I can’t use my tied hands, so I start to run, but I stumble; I can’t see which way to go. I run in circles, and I fall to my knees when I trip on some brush. I can feel the hot blood running down my calf, but I get up again, and I’m disoriented, so I don’t know which way the cliff’s edge is, and he knows that.

He knows I can’t get away, and this guy I thought was a desperate, grieving husband who lost it in a rage of jealousy, maybe just snapped...is something very different than I could have ever imagined. He’s a calculating sociopath.

As I sob and try to run away, I fall and become dizzy and turned around, I hear the crack and hiss of a beer bottle being opened, and he sits and laughs. He’s watching and laughing at me like I’m entertainment as I hopelessly fight for my life.

And that’s when I know I’m dead.

28

CASS

When I called the police station earlier in the day and asked to talk to the detective on the Henry Hartley case, they certainly didn’t rush to help me, but of course I didn’t tell them what I had. They said I could come in after dinnertime, whatever arbitrary time that is, and he’d be in his office, but that he was out during the day. So after I leave Anna, I drive down with a racing heart and a nauseous stomach to tell them what I have and pray to God it all goes to plan; that I’ve crafted this all perfectly. That I’m safe.

When I sit in Detective Harrison’s office, he gives me a skeptical look when I tell him I think a man named Callum Brooks is responsible for three deaths. I think I even see a smirk, but he keeps a professional demeanor and sits across from me, willing to listen.

I hand him my phone first and let him watch the video of Henry explaining what Callum did to Lily and that he fears for his life. He watches. His cheek twitches a couple of times, I see his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows. It’s difficult to watch someone bawling and saying how sorry they are for anyone, probably. Even a cop, but he finishes the video and lays my phone face down next to him—I guess it’s evidence now.

“Where did you get this?” he asks calmly.

“I’ll be honest...”

“That would be a good start,” Harrison says.

“I went through his phone one night. He stayed at the apartments I work at. I suspected the affair he was having with Callum’s wife.” This part is a lie. I had no idea, but I don’t need him asking why I go through a guy’s phone for no reason. “So one time when he passed out at the pool, I looked at his phone. Shitty thing to do, but I’m nosy, and I sent this to myself. And I know! Before you ask, yes, I did confront Callum, and of course he told me Henry is a depressed, manic guy who couldn’t handle Lily’s death and is hopped up on meds or drunk or whatever to cope and told me to just think about how crazy what he’s saying is.”

“So you believed him?”

“I don’t know what I thought. I told him I deleted the video and that he was probably right. When Henry died and it was ruled suicide, I thought he probably was right, and I tried to put it behind me. But I just found out it wasn’t a suicide, and so the other weird shit that happened started to come together,” I say.

“Okay, like what?” he asks, and fidgets with the small notepad in front of him. I can’t tell by the look on his face if he thinks I’m batty or is excited that all this just dropped in his lap, but I continue on.

“I work at The Sycamores, like I said. I do handyman stuff,” I say, and he looks up from his notepad and tries to hide a quick scan, looking me up and down, quickly assessing if that could be true because I sure don’t look like it. I already know. It happens all the time.

“Handyman?” he says.

“I like to say handy ma’am, but yeah. Anyway, I’m in everyone’s apartments because I set mousetraps and fix clogged drains—that sort of thing, so I work out of the front office, and I have something you might want to see,” I say, pushing a thumb drive across the table to him.

“What is it?” he asks, keeping the control. He’s not letting me run how this will go, I can tell.

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