Chapter 21

<<Trigger Warning – Violence, murder, discussion of crime scene>>

Hank called his father as he left the Dubois mansion. "Hello Dad, I need you to answer a few questions. Trina and Meri were packing away some things and found several pages Miranda wrote before her death. Char and Trina think they are a confession of sorts about Winston Winslow's disappearance. They think Miranda, Layne, and Mom killed him and..."

"Katrina and Charlene DuBois are traumatized young women who are grasping at straws to explain the delusional rants of their alcoholic mother," Albert interrupted.

"Really? Because it is possible Mom or Heather killed Layne and maybe started the fire that killed..."

"No. Your mother and sister haven't killed anyone." His father interrupted again.

"Listen to me. Did you know Heather escaped the rehab center?" Hank tried not to sound panicked. He was getting frustrated.

"Yes, I know she isn't in Sedona," Arnold answered in an annoyed tone.

"How?" Hank's breath caught in fear as he hurriedly went back to the front door and knocked.

"Because she is standing in front of me... She..." His words cut off with a strange choking sound.

"Hello, little brother,"

"Heather? Did you hurt him?" Hank demanded as Cody answered the door. Everyone was sitting in the living room looking at the pages as he waved for them to be quiet and switched the phone to speaker.

"No, Dad's fine. We're just sitting in his office talking." She sounded bored.

"Give him back the phone," Hank begged, knowing that tone was the one she always got when she was about to have a fit or had just had one. "Heather? Don't hurt our parents."

"Can you come home? There's something I need to tell you. Bring Trina and Meri with you... I know who killed Winston, I want to tell them in person." She hung up before he could reply.

"Heather!" Hank looked around the room in fear. "I have to go to my house. She might hurt our parents."

Adele stood up, "I'll go with you. She won't recognize me since I gained weight. Maybe we can talk her down."

Mikayla laughed, "Are you both crazy? This is Heather we are talking about. The worse things get for others, the happier she is. You need to call the SWAT team or a sniper or something." She trembled in wide eyed fear so Trina hugged her as they both remembered how Heather had tormented them.

"Don't go," Trina begged, "Just call the police."

"We are the police, and the rest of the department won't go to my parents house!" Hank reminded in anguish.

"We'll go with you. I have law enforcement training and am a part-time county deputy." Cody looked between Hank and his brother. "Colt, you need to put Meri, Trina, and Mikayla in the safe room in case she gets past us."

Adele held up her phone with a frustrated expression, "Dispatch says that they have orders not to respond because Heather's outburst are considered mental health issues, and the Richmonds have doctors on-call for that."

"Call the State Patrol then," Hank insisted. "The deputy chief is owned by my mother's bank and he is worse than Louis was, for doing what she and Dad want."

Releasing Mikayla from her embrace, Trina rushed after Cody, Adele, and Hank. She grabbed Hank's arm, pleading with him, "Don't go. You don't know that she won't hurt you too."

"I'm her brother, it's fine," Hank patted her hand, then pulled his arm free. He looked at her longingly for a moment, then got into his truck with Cody. He drove away with Adele following in her patrol vehicle.

Going back inside, she found Colt taking several firearms from her uncle's gun safe. Without uttering a word, she took two sidearms and loaded them, chambering a round before flipping the safety. With a grim expression, she handed third to Meri.

In the living room, Mikayla was on the phone. "I don't care how many laws it breaks, hack that house and find out which room that bitch, and call Marshal Murray, the local police won't do anything." She muted her phone then looked at the three of them, "My husband is going to try to get a peek inside, so Heather won't have the chance to kill them."

"I need to call Char, she can help him. She hacked them before," Meri said as she called her sister while walking into the kitchen.

Shaking his head, Colt asked, "Do you really think she would hurt her own parents?"

While Mikayla nodded, Trina answered, "She's tried to hurt or kill all of us more than once. She's pathological."

Mari walked back into the room, holding a glass, she looked livid. "Char says the only surveillance in the Richmond estate is outside and through the smart devices which Hank's parents never use. She says she can get into the system but if nothing is turned on she won't be able to look around."

Colt scowled and pointed at the master bedroom, "Wait in there, and if you hear anything at all, lock yourselves in the safe room. I'm moving Sam into the trees for his safety." Then he stomped outside, to release his horse from its temporary pen.

Every day he spent in Veil Falls reinforced his desire to see this place in the rearview mirror.

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Heather walked to the wall and slid back the fake bookshelf that hid the walk-in safe. The code lock had been replaced by a fingerprint lock. She exhaled in an annoyed way then dragged her nearly-dead father over. She pressed his right fingers onto the panel, it glowed red each time. Arnold groaned, clutching his throat with his left hand as she manhandled him, trying to resist. Rolling her eyes, she kicked him away.

"Really, Mom?" Scowling, Heather walked leisurely to the south wing and up the stairs to her mother's rooms. Standing over her mother's bed, she looked at Catherine's body without any emotion before she began cutting off her fingers. She was surprised to hear the sound of the gate alarm chiming.

Heather glanced out the front window and was surprised to see Hank's truck sliding to a stop on the leaf covered front drive, instead of going to the parking space next to the guesthouse. A police SUV stopped beside him. Hank and a tall red headed man got out of his truck, while a female deputy got out of the patrol vehicle. Heather wondered who she was, she didn't look like anyone she knew from Veil Falls or Valley View. The three cautiously approached the house like they expected to be ambushed outside the dark house.

Rolling her eyes, Heather hurried back to her father's office. As she stepped through the doorway, something like thunder echoed in the room as she was punched into one of the many bookshelves lining the walls. Her mother's fingers fell from her hands as she clutched at the burning sensation in the middle of her chest. Hot, thick blood pumped out around her fingers.

"Daddy?" Looking up with tear filled eyes, she saw her father lying on the floor next to an open cabinet.

Arnold pointed his grandfather's antique six-shooter at her. One bloody hand still clutched his throat as the other aimed the revolver at her. She realized he had stuck his fingers in his arteries to keep from bleeding out.

His voice was a strange, rasping whisper, "I'm sorry sweetie, but I can't let you kill my only son."

The second shot echoed in the room, but Heather's life was already over.

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Hank had just typed in the security code and started to open the door when a shot boomed in the house. They froze for a moment then he, Adele, and Cody entered cautiously with their firearms raised.

Hank whispered to Adele as he pointed, "My mother's rooms are on the second floor of the south wing." He pointed in the direction she needed to take. "Go past the kitchen and formal dining room, through the great room, then turn right... Please find her and keep her safe."

Adele started in the direction, but there was a second shot. She paused but Cody pointed at her with a hushed, "Go, I'll back up Hank." The two men rushed in the direction the shot came from with extreme caution.

They paused at the entrance to the hallway down to Arnold's office. Moving as quietly as he could, Hank hated that his father had moved his office to the unused wing of the house beyond the library. They edged down the long hallway cautiously until they reached the door. After a glance at his dead sister, Hank rushed to his father.

"Dad... Dad! What happened?" Hank begged with uncharacteristic desperation as Arnold's inhales became stilted. Blood soaked the right side of his shirt and the left sleeve to the elbow

Using his boot, Cody slid the antique revolver away from the older man's hand then backed away. He walked over and bent to check the pulse of the strikingly beautiful woman with bullet holes in the center of her forehead and chest. He knew she was dead just by looking at her, but he didn't want to intrude on the younger man's last few moments with his father. He searched her pockets and found a long folding blade covered in blood. It was then he realized the pale pink sausages around her were not dog treats as he first assumed. They were human fingertips. She had cut them off someone. Looking over his shoulder at the blood smears on the floor, he realized she was trying to get into a large safe and that she had probably already killed her mother.

Swallowing his disgust, he said, "I'm going after Adele." As a veteran, he had seen many horrific things in the war, and he hoped Heather had killed Katherine quickly before cutting off her fingers.

Hurrying down the long hallway away from the murder scene, he looked through the tall windows at the moonlit valley below and the pale waterfall the town was named for. The beauty he had first been enthralled with seemed tainted and he wondered what evil truly lived here.

There was nothing Hank could do as he kneeled in his father's blood but watch him die. Arnold couldn't speak but he mouthed the words, "I'm sorry." Before pulling his hand away from his throat. Clutching his father's shoulder, Hank wept for the man he loved despite the evil he knew his parents' wealth had hidden. Standing slowly, he walked over to his sister. He felt strangely cold as he noted the two gunshot wounds. In a daze, he reached down to pick up the finger beside his sister trying to figure out what it was, and recognized the manicured nail.

"Ohgawd..." He gasped in horror, then sprinted toward the south wing of the house.

Running up the stairs, he saw Cody holding Adele as she vomited in the hall. Cody moved to intercept him and blocked the door to Hank's mother's bedroom. There was a strange smell like acrid chemicals and burnt, pickled meat.

"Don't." Cody warned, "Ya'll don't want to go in there now. You don't want to see what your sister did to your Mama." His strong arm stopped Hank from entering the room.

"Heather... she wouldn't... sh-she wouldn't hurt M-mom." Hank stammered his denial then looked after Adele who ran down the stairs toward the front of the house.

Cody took the younger man by the arm and steered him away from the second murder scene. "I'm sorry for your loss, Hank. We need to wait outside."

As they left the mansion, Hank collapsed on the steps and wept into his hands. The landscape lighting cast warm golden halos around him. His entire family was gone, and he somehow knew that if his father hadn't killed Heather that she would have killed him too and then gone after Trina, Meri, and Charlene. He had always prayed she would somehow heal and go back to being the big sister that had long ago, stayed up all night watching anime with him without their mother knowing. He ignored how cool it was getting, ignored how dark it was, ignored the sounds of the night and his fellow deputy's pleas as he grieved.

Adele was yelling into the radio of her patrol vehicle. "I'm telling you Heather killed them both. We need the coroner and the state crime lab hazmat team. It's some kind of chemical reaction that's still eating Mrs. Richmond's body!"

As the feeling of control that always came in combat faded, Cody called Colt. "It's over. The girls are safe. That girl murdered her parents, but her daddy shot her before he died... I don't know when I'll be back... Bye." He shuddered. He had seen many things in war, but never had he seen anything as horrific as the way Heather Richmond had killed her mother.

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It took three days for the murder scene to be cleared and released by the local Police Department and State Crime Lab. A CBI agent came to confirm that Heather, Catherine, and Arnold were all dead and close the investigation that Louis DuBois had instigated. He spoke to Hank diligently about if he had any knowledge of his parents and sister's final evening. But Hank did not know anything and Adele as a fellow deputy gave him the alibi that he had been with her and several others while the murders were taking place. The injuries on his family members bodies were so horrific that Hank only had a closed coffin burial at the cemetery with no memorial service or dinner.

As the last living Richmond in Veil Falls, Hank tried to ignore all of the rumors, suspicions, and accusations. Everyone knew Heather was unstable, though most didn't know why. The whole episode was portrayed as the actions of a mental patient and many showed sympathy, believing Katherine and Arnold were simply the victims of the daughter they had tried so hard to help. Only a few knew the truth and none of them wanted to speak of it.

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One Month Later...

After another long night shift, Hank parked next to the guesthouse. He had not entered his parents' mansion since the day of their funeral. As the investigation continued, Mikayla's husband and US Marshall Murray had managed to track Heather's movements proving she had been involved with the deaths of Adele's grandmother and Mikayla's parents. Lisa, who was Hank and Heather's half-sister, confessed that Heather had been the one to murder Layne and caused Selene to overdose in a way that looked like a suicide. They knew Heather was also unaccounted for when Louis, Miranda, and Chuck were run off the road but no one knew if it was Heather, Katherine, or both of them who did it. Since all the suspects were dead or presumed dead, the case of Winston Winslow was closed.

Hank was about to go take a shower when his phone rang.

"Hey Trina, what's up?" He asked tiredly.

"Did I wake you?" She sounded unusually tense.

"No, I just got home." He regretted that he had not been able to see her or talk to her as much as he wanted but he couldn't resolve the conflicting feelings that his sister had sought to kill everyone who knew what happened all those years ago. He thought, What does one say to the woman he had always loved, when his sister murdered her mother?

When the hospital in Sedona had mailed Heather's belongings back to him, he had found several journals written in his sister's looping script. The doctors told him she had a form of dissociative personality disorder and blamed it on her childhood trauma. The diagnosis was something that he couldn't reconcile with because Trina, Charlene, Mikayla, and Vanessa, or Adele as she was called now, did not struggle with the same homicidal mental health issues. His tired brain wandered from the conversation while comparing the different personalities of Winston's victims.

"Hank?" Trina's voice brought him back to the present.

"Sorry, what did you say," he wondered aloud through a yawn.

"I asked if you could come over this evening for dinner. Colt and Cody were pulling up the carpet in my dad's basement office and found a floor safe we didn't know was there."

Hank suddenly felt like he was jolted awake, but he hadn't fallen asleep yet. "I'll be right over."

"Don't come over yet; we're still waiting on the locksmith to come and open it. We haven't been able to figure out the combination," Trina sounded discouraged.

"Did you try the dates of the weekend it happened or the day of Winston's death?"

"Yes and they didn't work and no, because we don't know it." Trina sounded like she was gritting her teeth. "Just get some rest. See you at dinner."

He stared at the phone for a long time after she hung up. He knew nothing good would come from whatever Louis had hidden so carefully.