standoff.
Jackson held the knife over his head but he didn’t drop it. He stared at Crawford, weighing his options. Crawford read his mind. “You don’t have any options, Jackson. Let’s do this the right way.” He inched closer to the hedge. “She cheated on you, right?”
Jackson looked around, hearing, like I did, the sirens in the distance.
“Cheated on you a lot. With Ray even.” Crawford continued his baby steps across the yard, his arms held out in front of him, the gun in a two-fisted hold.
Jackson nodded, his eyes filling with tears.
“You’re in over your head here, man,” Crawford said. “Drop the knife.”
The sirens got closer. But Jackson stayed where he was, the knife at shoulder height.
“I have a gun, you have a knife. You know how this is going to end, right?” Crawford asked. “It’s like rock, paper, scissors, except when you lunge at me, I shoot you. That’s how it ends every time. The one with the knife always dies. I’ve done it before, Jackson. It’s not hard. And you’ll never surprise me.” He was close enough to touch the hedge now and I felt my heart pounding in my throat.
But surprise him he did, because just as every police car in Dobbs Ferry congregated at the end of my driveway, Jackson plunged the knife into his own chest, spraying blood farther than I ever would have imagined blood could travel. The look on his face was utter surprise at his own action, as if he hadn’t had any idea that he was going to do it. He disappeared behind the hedge.
Crawford burst through the hedge and vanished, as well. I heard him yell to me to get the cops over the cacophony of sirens. I opened the back door and ushered Trixie in, catching sight of Brendan’s younger brother in the hallway, his eyes wide and tear-filled. I grabbed a dishtowel from the counter and wrapped my hand as I made my way down the driveway, where I did exactly as I was told before collapsing into a heap on my front lawn.
Chapter 32
My left hand looked like a giant Q-tip, wrapped in more gauze than I had ever seen. The microsurgery to reattach some of the cut nerve endings was successful, but any career as a concert violinist had now been cut short by my coming into contact with a giant fowl-deboning implement.
Jackson had managed to severely wound himself but he didn’t die. When he started to recover, he was questioned by the Dobbs Ferry detectives, cranky Joe Hardin and even crankier Catherine Madden. Turns out that Jackson thought he had hit on something good with the old dismemberment modus operandi; he could kill Terri, cut off her hands and feet, and cast more suspicion on the Miceli clan while he took off for parts unknown. Ray and Terri had truly been kindred spirits, because like Ray, Terri had amassed quite the little black book of conquests. She was a serial philanderer and Jackson had had enough. Everything she had told me about him had been true; he had spent a good deal of their marriage in rehab and, obviously, had the “anger management” issues that she had alluded to. I’ll say.
The worst part of the story was that he had killed her in the house. They had left town the day that I had come to own Trixie; they had gone to Massachusetts to their summer house in the Berkshires in an attempt to rekindle their relationship and decide whether or not they would stay together and in Westchester. Terri, however, had left something in the Dobbs Ferry house and implored Jackson to return before they made any permanent moves. It wasn’t Trixie she was after. And when Jackson found out what it was—a necklace that had been given to her by Ray—he had snapped. And just like I suspected and had told Crawford when I called him at work, someone had called 911 that rainy morning. It wasn’t the wacky 911 system going haywire like the cop had told me; Terri had been bleeding to death in the house and managed to make one last call. A luma light and the appropriate chemicals revealed blood spatters in the family room and kitchen, consistent with someone being stabbed to death.
Jackson had stolen the red car from the Stop & Shop in the center of town and had dumped his own car there as well; he wanted to be anonymous when he took off. Poor Mrs.