Ryan let the pistol fall from his hands.
“Okay, now march yourself to the front door.”
“If I step out there, they’ll probably let loose,” Ryan said. “McCalester will certainly shoot to cover up, so don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re somehow going to escape being a murderer, Mr. Ross. You were responsible for Stocker Robinson’s death.”
“She killed another girl and would have done me great harm. I have no pangs of conscience about her.”
“What about your wife, your own child?”
“I did what I had to do, and besides, that’s not your business. If you had stuck to the simple case, you wouldn’t be in trouble now. You lost your focus. A Natal would have been smarter.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“I do.”
“Then I do feel sorrier for you,” Ryan said.
“Get out of my house. Go on,” Preston urged, extending his arm and the pistol at Ryan.
Ryan turned and started for the front door. Outside, the voices of agents could be heard shouting orders, Hilton Sacks’s voice above all. A bright light was turned onto the front of the house. By now, they had it surrounded, Ryan thought sadly.
Maybe it was all too much. Maybe he was like the perennial Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. How do you swim upstream? How do you do battle with an entire society fixed on its new mores and morality, its fervent shift from what was once human to what was now scientific, carrying with it all the weight of that new certainty and confidence that gave mankind no pause when it challenged the very spiritual soul of life itself?
In a strange way, he almost welcomed what awaited him on the other side of that door. If this was the world he had to tolerate, maybe it was better to evacuate. He smiled to himself.
“What’s so funny?” Preston asked.
“I feel like you’re doing me a favor,” he replied, and reached for the door knob.
Preston pointed the gun at the floor and let off a round. The sound of it put the agents and policemen outside into a frenzy. They crouched, threw themselves behind protection, and directed their weapons at the front door.
Ryan opened the door.
But just as he was about to step out, he heard a loud cry of “Noooooo!”
As he turned from the door, Natalie Ross charged Preston, hitting him from behind with her hands up. The blow sent him falling forward through the doorway and into the light. He raised his arms quickly, but he held the pistol.
Ryan lunged for Natalie and drove her out of the light that spilled through the doorway and into the entryway. The two of them hit the floor just as the barrage of bullets tore through Preston Ross and slammed in and around the doorway, ripping out chunks of the walls and shattering the window which sent a rainfall of glass all around Ryan and Natalie. It looked like a deluge of diamonds.
The deep, heavy silence that followed made it seem as if God himself were holding his breath.
Epilogue
Ryan was not surprised to see the moving van in front of the Rosses’ residence. He had swung around from Monticello, the county seat, where he had met with the district attorney and given her his evidence and detailed information on the investigation. Her name was Carla Stickos, and he quickly learned that those attorneys and law enforcement officers who had nicknamed her “Stickler” were not far off the mark. Of course, he couldn’t blame her for being as thorough and as demanding as she was with him. After all, she was supposed to go after some very influential members of the community, as well as a chief of police. He could only imagine the weight of pressure she had to carry and sidestep to do her job.
In the end, he actually found himself liking her. There were times when a perfectionist was not only needed but desired. Privately, she let him know how awful she felt the baby squads were, but she was diplomatic enough to survive in a political arena.
The sweetest irony for Ryan came when Hilton Sacks was brought before the CID review board to explain how it happened that he was so easily manipulated by a local policeman to the extent that he and the men under him shot and killed Preston Ross. His eagerness to prove himself superior turned out to be his hubris. Greek tragedy was alive and well in the modern world, Ryan thought. Arrogance, pride, conceit were all still quite infectious, even for the so-called Natals.
It wasn’t as easy to bring down Cauthers. Men like that made sure to protect themselves, never to leave their prints or personal marks on anything, and McCalester wasn’t about to turn on him. He would need all the help he could get in the days, months, and years to come serving time in one of the state correctional institutions.
Ryan’s great sense of satisfaction was tempered by his feelings of regret and sadness for Natalie Ross. She had literally saved his life, and in a different sort of way, perhaps, he had saved hers, but he knew that none of this was ever on her radar screen. Living with all the revelations had to be difficult, especially in this community.
That was why he had practically expected to see the moving van in front.
He parked off to the side and walked up the driveway. The movers glanced at him with little interest. He could see their eagerness to get this job finished and get on with it. Perhaps this house and everyone ever connected to it had become pariahs. Perhaps they thought the bad luck would rub off. He didn’t blame them; he never blamed anyone for his or her fears these days. The perfect world had made people softer in so many ways. Rarely having to contend with displeasure, the old diseases, career and social defeats, they lost the old defenses, no longer had the armor plates woven with rationalizations, excuses, and fantasies.
He knocked on the open door jamb.
“Hello?”
Another pair of moving men came down the stairs carrying a dresser. He got out of their way, but as they passed, he asked them if they had seen Mrs. Ross about.
“In the back,” the closer mover said, and nodded toward the rear of the house.
Ryan walked down the corridor. Already quite emptied, the house echoed with his footsteps. Someone was bound to get a great real estate bargain here, he thought, and almost wished it were he.
He paused at the rear door and looked out at Natalie Ross, who sat with her back to the house. She was in a big lawn chair, sitting quite straight and gazing at the small patch of woods off to the right of the property. A pair of sparrows not a yard away from her did a dance of delight on the lawn, pecking at some insect food and then soaring off toward the trees. Every time a bird finds something to eat, its heart must be full, Ryan thought. How simply most everything else in Nature is satisfied. Humans are the only pains in the ass.
“Hello,” he said, approaching. He didn’t want to pop up beside her and frighten her. He knew what it was like to be in a daze, to soak in wonderful warm thoughts and turn off the world around you.
She smiled. “Hello, Detective Ryan. Somehow, I knew I would see you again before I left.”
“I’ve been at the district attorney’s office, helping her prepare her prosecution. Actually, I’m on my way back to Albany.”
“This is out of the way, though, is it not?”
“Yes,” Ryan said, smiling like a little boy caught in a white lie.
She smiled and looked at the trees again. “I was so in love with this place,” she said. “I think I was more in love with it than I was with Preston.”
Ryan nodded even though she didn’t look his way. He could understand why she would say that.
“Maybe you should stay,” he suggested softly and with no real expectation of agreement.
“No, it’s gone. This place, my so-called good friends who want nothing to do with me. It’s all swept away. It looks more like a dream to me already.”
She turned back to him. What a beautiful woman she is, Ryan thought. In her sadness, in her soft moments of regret, she seemed to be blossoming. How unfortunate the Natals were, he concluded, never having the wonderful pleasure that came from making an absolute fool of yourself because you’re head ov
er heels in love with someone and the mere sight or sound of her sends such ripples through your blood your heart sighs. He laughed at his own thoughts.
“What?” she asked, widening her smile.
“I read one of your novels.”
“You did?”
“When I first came here, as a way of getting to know you.”
“Really? They’re just romantic fantasies, oldtime stories hardly anyone lives anymore,” she said.
“Actually, I knew as soon as I had finished the book that you were a Natural. I had this sixth sense about it,” he said, laughing at himself.
“Really? I thought a CID detective believed in nothing but tangible and empirical truth.”
“I’m not exactly the run-of-the-mill.”
“You’re a Natural, too, aren’t you?”
“Yes. Why, does it show?”
“They used to say it takes one to know one. What gave me away?” she asked.
“After I read your novel, I thought, how could anyone created in a natal lab be so filled with such deep yet imperfect emotions, know what I mean? The longing your characters expressed for each other, all the unrequited love, couldn’t be learned in some science class or psychology class. It had to be something from the heart, something untouched, not tampered with and destroyed.”
“Very perceptive of you. You are a good detective.”
He shrugged. “I can only try.”
“We all try. You succeed.” She smiled. “Humphrey Bogart says that to Paul Henreid in an old movie…”
“Casablanca.”
“Yes. You know it?”
“Very well.”
“He’s telling the leader of the French underground how much he admires him, but he’s really expressing regret about himself, regret that he isn’t trying anymore, that he’s lost the hunger for idealism, for hope.”
“Yes.”
“A lot like people we know today,” she said, her smile fading.
“As long as we have it, some of us still have it, we can keep the candles burning.”
She turned to him sharply. “That’s…”
“The last line in your book…whenever you look this way, look in the window, we can keep the candles burning.”
“I’m flattered,” she said, blanching.
“Good. Where are you going?”
“I found this place farther upstate, near the border, actually, a small town full of the most unsophisticated people you can imagine. It’s not as grand as this house, but it has a large pond on it, and from what they tell me, ducks and geese come there in the summer months.
“I suppose it doesn’t matter all that much. I intend to do a lot more writing, and a writer takes his or her luggage along anywhere. It’s in here,” she said, holding her hand over her heart. “In the winter, I’ll visit with my parents in California.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said.
“And you?”
“Well, I think I’m going to get some more challenging assignments, if that’s what you mean. I am…redeemed,” he cried as if he were on some Shakespearean stage.
She laughed. “You’re a nice man, Ryan Lee.”
He shrugged. “I’m a man, no more, no less.”
“Definitely no less,” she said. “As hard as that is for them to swallow.”
He laughed. “Thanks for saving my life,” he said.
“Thanks for saving mine.”
“I’ve wondered…how much of that conversation among Preston, McCalester, and me did you overhear that day?”
“Most of it, although I had the suspicions in my heart. I suppose if you hadn’t arrived and Hattie Scranton hadn’t appeared again, they all might have had me at least doubting.”
“I’m sorry you experienced all that betrayal.”
“Thank you.” She smiled. “But I’m reborn,” she said. “You just can’t keep a good naturally born woman down.”
He laughed and looked at the house.
“Well,” he said, “I’d better get moving. Take care.”
“Detective,” she said as he started away. He turned back. “Track me down one day when you’re between investigations.”
“I’d like to,” he said.
“Good. I’ll send you my next book.”
“Looking forward to it.”
She watched him go and then turned back to the forest for a few more moments before rising from her chair and following.
“No tears,” she whispered. “No more tears.”
In the trees, a crow, sounding more like a human baby, called after her.
Its voice was seized by the wind as if it had plucked a jewel out of the woods.
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS
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Copyright © 2003 by Andrew Neiderman
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7434-1803-4
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