Nervous Water

by William G. Tapply

  She turned and frowned at me. “Huh? Don’t I look all right?”

  I smiled. “You look terrific. I just thought…I mean, in my experience, no woman just stands up and goes anywhere. They always have to do something first.”

  “Well,” she said, “not me. I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I’ve got to use your bathroom.”

  She laughed. “It’s right there.” She pointed at a door next to the kitchen. “You’ve got to hold the handle down or it won’t flush right.”

  I squeezed in. The doorway was so narrow that I had to turn my shoulders to get through it. Cassie’s bathroom was about the size of the kind you find on an airplane except it had a coffin-sized shower stall.

  As I was holding the handle down and the water was sloshing around noisily in the toilet, I thought I heard Cassie say something.

  When I opened the door and stepped out, I said, “Were you talking to me? The toilet was—”

  I stopped. The front door of the trailer was open and Cassie was standing in front of it. She was holding up her hands in a gesture of surrender.

  As I watched, she took a step backward into the kitchen, and then a hand holding a gun appeared in the doorway. The gun was a stainless-steel snub-nosed revolver. A Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special .38, if I wasn’t mistaken.

  Twenty-Three

  The gun was followed by an arm, and the arm was followed by Rebecca Hurley.

  Cassie backed up until she was stopped by the wall opposite the door. Her eyes were wide and confused.

  Becca stepped into the tiny kitchen, reached back, and pulled the door shut behind her. The handgun held steady on Cassie’s chest.

  “Over there.” Becca gestured with the revolver at the livingroom area, then aimed it at Cassie again. She looked at me as if she wasn’t the least bit surprised to find me standing in the bathroom doorway. “You, too. Both of you. Sit on that sofa. Keep your hands on your knees.”

  Cassie went over and sat down. I sat beside her.

  Becca perched on the edge of the chair across from us. She held the stainless-steel revolver on her lap with both hands. It pointed unwaveringly at Cassie.

  Cassie was staring at her. “Becca, what—?”

  “Shut up,” said Becca. She looked at me. “I should’ve killed you the first time.” She smiled. “Oh, well. Here’s a second chance.” She flicked the gun at me for a moment, then returned it to Cassie. The chair she was sitting in on the other side of the tiny living room was no more than six feet from us. From that distance, even an inexperienced marksman with a notoriously inaccurate short-barreled revolver would have trouble missing some vital part of a human torso.

  “How did you find me?” said Cassie.

  “I’ve got your boyfriend’s cell phone,” said Becca. “You’ve been trying to call him from that store. The number comes up when it rings. I called it, found out where it was. Then your cousin here, he was considerate enough to leave his car right out front for me.” She looked at me. “Thank you. Saved me some time.”

  I shrugged.

  “Why are you doing this?” said Cassie.

  “You tell me. Why did you run away?”

  Cassie shook her head and said nothing.

  “You heard us that night, didn’t you?” said Becca. “You figured it out.”

  “It was impossible not to hear you,” said Cassie. “The two of you were yelling.”

  “Well,” said Becca, “it doesn’t matter. Sooner or later, I was going to have to kill you anyway.”

  “Because I know what Richard did to Ellen? That he watched her die and did nothing? That he murdered her?”

  Becca smiled. “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I heard you two arguing about.”

  “You didn’t hear so good, then, sweetie. Daddy never killed anybody.”

  “She had an asthma attack,” said Cassie. “She fell off a stepladder. She couldn’t breathe. Richard was there, and he refused to get her inhaler. He just stood there and watched her gasp for air and suffocate. That’s what you two were yelling about.”

  Becca was smiling and shaking her head. “You’ve got it a little confused, dear stepmother.”

  “It was Becca,” I said to Cassie. “Richard didn’t refuse to get Ellen’s inhaler and stand there and watch her die. She did.” I looked at Becca. “Right?”

  She shrugged. “It was long overdue.”

  “But why?” said Cassie.

  Becca shrugged as if it were obvious. “She wasn’t the one he loved.” She smiled. “My daddy had a lover. The love of his life. Poor Ellen was up there on her stepladder washing the windows. Such a dedicated housewife. She tried so hard. I stood beside her, and I looked up at her on her stepladder, and I told her. I explained the truth to her. I said, ‘Daddy doesn’t love you, you know. All these years, he’s only loved one woman. And it’s not you.’ ”

  Becca turned and smiled at me as if she and I shared a secret, and when she did, her Chief’s Special turned in her lap and pointed at me.

  She returned her gaze to Cassie. “When I told her who it was, the poor thing, her face got red and she started gasping and her hands went to her throat, and the next thing I knew, she just toppled backward right off her ladder. Stress would always bring on one of her attacks. That’s why she kept those inhalers all over the house. It was kind of sickening, how hard she landed. I thought sure she’d broken her back or something.” She shrugged. “She couldn’t breathe. Turned blue. It didn’t take her very long to die.”

  Beside me, Cassie was shaking her head. “I still don’t get it. What did you have against Ellen?”

  “She’s saying she’s Richard’s lover,” I said to Cassie.

  “Who—?” Cassie’s mouth opened and closed. She turned to me. “Her? Becca?”

  “Yes.” I looked at Becca. “And your baby?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  Cassie turned to me and frowned.

  “She’s saying that little Danny’s father is also his grandfather,” I said.

  “Jesus,” mumbled Cassie.

  “What about Moses Crandall?” I said to Becca. “What was that all about?”

  She shrugged. “I was trying to track down Miss Cassie here. Figured he might have a letter or a phone record or something. I was poking around in his house with my flashlight and he came out of his bedroom. He kind of squinted at me there in the darkness and said, ‘Cassie? That you, honey?’ Like that.”

  “So you hit him,” I said.

  “Made me mad,” said Becca with a shrug, as if anybody would understand that. “He went down like a big tree falling. I thought he died right there.”

  “And you smashed all those photos,” I said.

  “Like I said. Made me mad. Miss Cassie here, she makes me mad. My daddy thinks he loves her.”

  Beside me, Cassie let out a groan. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she mumbled. “I gotta go to the bathroom.” She started to push herself to her feet.

  Becca waved her gun at Cassie. “Don’t you move.”

  “Let her go into the bathroom,” I said to Becca. “You want her to throw up right here?”

  “I could just kill her now,” she said. “Put her out of her misery.”

  Cassie leaned forward with her head between her knees. She was taking long deep ragged breaths. I slid off the sofa, squatted beside her, put my arm around her shoulders, and bent my head close to her ear. “Be ready,” I whispered.

  Cassie hesitated, then gave me a tiny nod.

  I darted my eyes at Becca.

  Under my hand I could feel Cassie’s shoulder muscles tighten.

  “Move away from her,” said Becca.

  “She’s really feeling sick,” I said. “I’m going to help her to the bathroom.”

  I started to stand up.

  “Sit down,” said Becca. “Just don’t move, either of you, or I’ll shoot you, I promise.”

  She had shifted the business end of her r
evolver so that it was pointing at me now. She had it braced on her lap with both hands wrapped around the butt. Her right thumb rested on the hammer. I couldn’t be sure, but from my angle it looked like she hadn’t cocked it.

  If not, I had a second or two.

  If it was already cocked, I had no time at all.

  Rebecca Hurley knew how to shoot the gun, and she was willing to do it. I’d seen the evidence. She’d centered Grantham Webster’s chest.

  There was no reason to think she wasn’t equally willing and able to shoot Cassie and me. We could wait around and talk about it for a while until she decided it was time. We could hope that maybe she wouldn’t, that we could talk her out of it, that she’d see the error of her ways, that she’d listen to reason, that she’d come to her senses, repent of her sins, throw down her gun, surrender to the authorities.

  Sure. Clichés happened.

  Or maybe the cavalry would come galloping over the hill in the nick of time and rescue us. Or a god might descend in a machine to straighten out our sad little Greek tragedy. Maybe just as Becca was about to pull the trigger, lightning would strike the utility poles and the lights would go out. Or an earthquake would shake her arm and spoil her aim. Or the cat would leap at her and sink its claws into her face.

  In the movies, maybe.

  I was looking into Rebecca Hurley’s eyes. Her commitment was unwavering. She was calm. She’d killed people before, and it had worked out just fine. She could do it again.

  She wanted to do it again.

  She had her mind made up, and there would be no cavalry, no deus ex machina, no serendipitous intervention.

  Cassie didn’t even have a cat.

  We could sit there and wait for Becca to decide it was time to shoot us.

  Or we could try to do something.

  All these thoughts whizzed through my brain as I crouched there beside Cassie, gauging distances and reaction times and my own quickness and agility and middle-aged reflexes and dubious courage.

  Don’t do something, my old man used to say. Just sit there.

  Becca’s gun was pointed at me. I watched her, and when her eyes slid over to Cassie, I figured that was as much of an edge as we’d have.

  I yelled, “Now!” as loud as I could, shoved Cassie away from me as I sprang up from my crouch, and leaped wildly at Becca. I did all those things in one sudden movement, hoping it was startling and loud and scary and swift, but it played out in my head in slow stupid motion, like one of those dreams where your legs are pumping but you aren’t going anywhere.

  The gun exploded near my face. There was a great flash of white light and the booming echo of a bomb bursting inside that little aluminum trailer.

  I crashed blindly against Becca Hurley, plowing into her and the chair she was in with my shoulder. She twisted away from me. She was quicker and stronger than I’d expected. I grappled for the arm that held the gun. We slammed onto the floor. She was scissoring her legs, twisting and writhing under me….

  Then the gun exploded again, and instantly my left hand—the hand that was clawing and grabbing at the wrist that held the gun—went numb. I felt Becca squirming under me, and I sensed rather than saw her revolver turn slowly toward my chest, and I had no strength in my arm to stop it.

  Then Becca said, “Oh…” It was a long, quiet, wet sound, more of an exhalation of breath than an articulated word, and I felt her go limp under me.

  I rolled off her and lay there on my back, panting for breath. White lights were exploding behind my eyes. A loud whistle rang persistently in my ears.

  I looked up. Cassie was standing over me. Her mouth was moving, but all I could hear was that high-pitched screeching in my ears.

  I noticed she was gripping the barrel of her shotgun in both hands.

  She knelt beside me. Her mouth moved again. This time her voice filtered through the ringing inside my head.

  “Are you okay?” she said.

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  She touched my arm, then showed me her finger. It was red and wet.

  About then the burn began to register in my brain. It felt as if someone were aiming a blowtorch at my left biceps.

  “How does it feel?” said Cassie.

  “It hurts,” I said. I pointed at my ear. “Sorry. I’m kind of deaf right now.”

  I used my good arm to push myself into a sitting position, and I hitched backward until I was leaning against the sofa.

  Becca Hurley was sprawled on her belly. One arm was outstretched. The other was twisted awkwardly beneath her.

  I looked at Cassie. “Did you shoot her?”

  She shook her head and patted the butt of her shotgun. “Gave her a good whack on the head,” she said.

  The silver revolver lay on the floor beside Becca. I pointed at it. “Kick that away from her,” I said to Cassie. “Don’t touch it with your hand.”

  She stood up and kicked the gun to the other side of the room. “Now what?” she said.

  “Call the police.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “My cell’s in my car,” I said. I tried to stand up, but a wave of dizziness made me sit back down.

  “I’ll get it,” said Cassie. “Here. You better take this.” She handed the shotgun to me.

  I held the shotgun in my functional right hand with the barrel resting on my knees, aimed more or less at Becca, who was groaning and twitching on the floor.

  “You okay?” said Cassie.

  “I’m good,” I said.

  Cassie went out. I sat there watching Rebecca Hurley. After a minute her eyes flickered and she lifted her head. She turned and looked at me. Then she kind of shrugged, and she laid her head back down and let her eyes close.

  Cassie came back and handed me my cell phone. She was shaking her head. “There’s twenty-two trailers here in this little village,” she said. “Most of ’em, two or three people are living there. I know everybody. We say hello every day. I just walked to where your car was parked and back, and not one single person came out. No one saying, ‘Is everything all right?’ Or, ‘Anybody get hurt?’ Or, ‘What was that explosion I heard?’ I know they’re here. Some people never leave this place. They just watch TV all day and wait for their welfare checks to come. Those gunshots must’ve sounded like hand grenades going off, but nobody had the curiosity, or the interest, or…or the kindness to even take a look.” She smiled. “We could’ve gotten murdered, and Becca would’ve just strolled out of here and driven away and nobody would know the difference.”

  “It’s the way of the world,” I said.

  Twenty-Four

  I called Roger Horowitz’s cell phone. He’d know what to do.

  When he answered, I told him what had happened.

  He listened without interrupting, and when I finished, he said, “It would’ve been a helluva lot more convenient if you could’ve arranged for all this to happen in Massachusetts, you know.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Inconsiderate of me.”

  “Yeah, apology accepted. Don’t worry about it. Anybody need an ambulance or something?”

  I looked over at Becca. She was now sitting with her back against the wall watching us. Her face registered bemusement and mild curiosity.

  Cassie was sitting beside me on the sofa with the shotgun leveled at Becca.

  “We’re good,” I said. “I just want to turn our prisoner over to somebody and get the hell out of here.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Sit tight.” And he hung up.

  No good-bye. No thank-you. No “Good work, Coyne.” No “How are you feeling?”

  That was Horowitz.

  I clicked off the phone and looked at Becca. “Tell me something,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance?”

  “In Webster’s office, you mean?”

  I nodded. “You put your gun against my head and cocked the hammer. But you didn’t pull the trigger.”

/>   She smiled. “I remembered how you gave Danny a Cheerio. That was sweet. I didn’t want to kill you.”

  “Sweet,” I said. I shoved the cell phone into my pants pocket, and the movement sent a dart of hot pain up my arm and made me wince.

  “Lemme have a look at that,” said Cassie.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  I watched her touch the area around my left biceps with her fingertips. It was pretty bloody. I couldn’t feel her fingers.

  “Looks like the bullet just scratched you,” she said. “It’s all red and black and blistery. Pretty nasty.”

  “Powder burn,” I said. “Could’ve been worse.”

  “A lot worse,” she said.

  By the time the troops arrived at Cassie’s trailer, she had cleaned my wound and doused it with antiseptic and wrapped a bandage around it. Becca was holding a bag of frozen peas from Cassie’s freezer against the side of her head where Cassie had smashed her with the butt of the shotgun.

  There were four or five Maine state troopers plus the county sheriff and a couple of his deputies, and I sensed that a little local turf war was building already.

  They hadn’t seen anything yet. Rebecca Hurley had committed two murders in Massachusetts, most recently Grantham Webster. This was Horowitz’s case and Becca was—or would soon become—his prisoner.

  All they had here were a few firearms violations, maybe an assault with a deadly weapon, and a superficial gunshot wound.

  They handcuffed Rebecca Hurley and whisked her away in a state-police squad car. They bagged her Chief’s Special for evidence, and the sheriff and one of the police officers took statements from both me and Cassie and made sure they knew how to reach us. The whole thing took a couple of hours. I had the sense they were going through the motions. They’d figured out that Becca would quickly be extradited to Massachusetts. Horowitz had already made that clear.

  After everybody left and Cassie and I were alone, I turned to her and said, “Now what?”

  “I want to go see him. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  “Moze?”

  She nodded.

  “Now?”