The Palm Beach Murders by James Patterson (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

Teal held both hands out in front of her and said, “I don’t know what you’re doing, Martin, but this has gone far enough. Put the gun away and we’ll forget about this whole stupid encounter.”

That sounded good to me. Maybe we hadn’t ruined everything. I was about to tell Marty that I wanted to leave when I heard two loud pops. They dissipated in the wide-open space and didn’t sound the way I thought gunshots should sound, but the noise, coupled with the bright flashes from the barrel of the gun, told me Marty had snapped.

For a moment, I just held my breath. Time felt like it had stood still. The two of them stood facing each other and hadn’t moved a muscle since he’d pulled the trigger. Then Teal slowly turned to face me and I could see two red stains on her pretty yellow floral print dress. One was just below her sternum and the other was along the top of the dress, closer to her right arm.

Teal’s mouth moved like she was trying to say something, but no words came out. For a moment I just heard an unsettling bubbling sound; then she kept turning until she fluttered to the hard gravel of the driveway in a heap. Her long hair drifted behind her and settled around her face like a soft blanket.

Slowly I looked at Marty, who was still frozen in place with the gun out in front of him. He looked as if he was as surprised as anyone that the gun had gone off. But he still didn’t move. He just stared at the lump of flesh that was his ex-wife, Teal.

Maybe I should’ve been in shock longer, but immediately the practical part of my brain kicked into gear. I’ll admit I had let out a quick scream as soon as Marty fired, but my first real thought was to wonder if anyone had heard the gunshots.

I turned my head, quickly scanned the soccer field behind us, and saw that there was no one outside the church. There were those vacant lots on each side of Teal’s house, and when I looked up the street I saw nothing but one car passing on US 1. I didn’t think the sound of the shots would’ve carried very far. They’d happened so close together that it would be difficult for someone to pinpoint where they had come from.

Taking everything in and making a quick assessment led me to yell at Marty, “We need to go, right now!”

God forgive me, but it wasn’t until we were in my car and Marty was driving south on US 1 that I even thought about whether we should have checked Teal to see if she was still alive.

Chapter 25

“Holy shit, what have I done? Holy shit, what have I done?” Marty kept chanting that same phrase like it was some kind of mantra that would bring him back to reality. Or maybe it would keep him from reality. Because at this moment, as we tried to gain some perspective and figure out what we would do next, we knew that we were both involved in a murder.

My car swerved as Marty overreacted to a car pulling up to a side street.

I screamed, “What the hell are you doing? We need to draw less attention to ourselves, not more!” I immediately regretted being so sharp. I was on edge, and looking at Marty, who was perspiring uncontrollably and leaning into the steering wheel, I knew he was, too.

He took the turn onto Kings Highway, and I knew we’d be cutting through some odd little neighborhoods just north of Fort Pierce.

“Where are you going?” I asked with the stress still evident in my voice.

“The turnpike.”

“Listen, Marty, we have to take a deep breath and think this through. You want to go to a road that will photograph us entering and ping off my SunPass as we pay the toll? We need to stay on the back roads, or at most, get on I-95.”

I could see that my words were registering with him. He said, “Do you think anyone saw us? It just sort of happened. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”

I felt like I was about to throw up. I’d never been involved in anything at all like this. I had talked to the cops more in the last couple of weeks than I had in my whole life combined. If I’d been counting on Marty being my rock, I could see I’d made a mistake. Even if I went to the police right now, I’d have to explain why I’d driven all the way up to Vero Beach with Marty and why we’d both fled the scene. This wouldn’t play out well in any courtroom. Now we had to jump in with both feet.

Marty turned onto one of the main roads and then took the entrance ramp to I-95. I didn’t want to question his every move; he was already so far over the edge that I even wondered if he might pull the gun and use it on himself or maybe even on me. If we got stopped by a cop now, it would all be over. There was no way he’d be able to look calm with the way he was acting.

“Speed up and get into the center lane. You’re drawing attention,” I snapped when I looked at the speedometer and saw that he was only going forty-eight miles an hour. Cars whizzed past us like we were parked.

Marty mumbled something as he got into the flow of traffic. He was still staring straight ahead, and I tried to figure out how to get the gun from him. That would be a good first step. Eliminate the possibility of more murders or a suicide.

I leaned over and patted him on the shoulder and rubbed his neck for a minute. He didn’t respond. The guy was a wreck. Then I let my hand drift