by Sharon Pape
“Enough, all of you,” Westfield snapped, waving the gun at us.
“You have such beautiful children,” I said softly, trying to turn the conversation back to personal matters. “Do you have any idea what this will do to them?”
“Do you think I wanted to kill Harkens?” he asked incredulously. “Do you think I want this?”
“No, I’m sure you don’t,” I said. “Maybe Jim was an accident? With a good lawyer—”
“It wasn’t an accident; I simply reached the end of my rope. Everyone thinks you get to choose how you live your life, but it’s not true. Life backs you into corners, into impossible choices.”
“I know.” The moment the pointless words slipped out, I regretted them. This wasn’t a little chat between friends about mundane disappointments. Every word mattered. No do-overs.
His expression hardened. “You don’t have a clue.”
“Then do the decent thing and at least explain this to us.”
He didn’t say anything for the length of a minute. I figured my attempt to reach him had failed. I was trying to come up with another tactic, when he finally broke his silence. “The decent thing, huh? Okay, but only to prove my point. I was the ME for Manhattan before I moved up here. I did my job well and went home to my family with a clear conscience every night. I did right by my wife and children. In other words, I lived a good life, an exemplary life, some might say. Then one night the cops brought in a body for autopsy. It was getting late, so I put it in cold storage to work on in the morning. But bright and early the next day, I was visited at home by a man who said he was associated with the Rigosi family. Said they were prepared to pay me half a million dollars to do them a little favor. Easy stuff. All I had to do was lie about the cause of death for the body that came in the night before. I was ridiculously naive. I thanked the man for the generous offer, but said I couldn’t accept. He asked me if I would prefer to visit my wife and daughters in the cemetery.”
Tilly gasped.
“He said it calmly,” Westfield went on, “didn’t so much as raise his voice. At first I thought I hadn’t heard him correctly. So he repeated it in the same casual way. Then he said I had two minutes to decide. It was the easiest choice I ever had to make. I chose to keep my family alive.” His voice started to tremble on the last words.
“Oh dear, how awful,” Tilly said, shaking her head. “You poor boy.”
“Truly terrible,” I said, meaning every word of it deep down in my gut. “But I don’t understand what Jim Harkens had to do with it.”
“I took the money,” he continued, “gave up the position I’d worked hard to attain and moved my family up here to the sticks, so I would never be a target for people like that again. I didn’t tell my wife the truth, because I didn’t want her to live in fear. I told her I wanted to leave the city to raise our family in a safer environment. She didn’t need much convincing. She grew up in the suburbs and wasn’t much of a city girl at heart. After we were settled here, I hired Harkens to write my will. I also gave him a sealed letter to be given to my wife, should I predecease her. The letter explained the truth about our move and told her where to find the money. But Harkens was too curious for his own good. He betrayed me and opened the letter. He decided he could use some of that dirty money himself. He started blackmailing me. If I didn’t cooperate, he threatened to tell the authorities, my family and the rest of the world what I’d done. I couldn’t let that happen, because my family would be right back in jeopardy from the Rigosis. So I paid him what he asked for. But he was a gambler and he kept needing more. I finally told my wife the truth. Every miserable grain of it. Then I went to Harkens’s office and killed him.” He heaved a deep sigh. “The scary part was that I didn’t feel remorse. All I felt was relief.”
We were all silent, trying to digest what we’d heard. In spite of myself, I couldn’t help feeling a certain kinship with him. Given those same circumstances, I might have done the same thing. Yet that didn’t make it right. And if the ME was arrested and tried for murdering Jim, the whole sordid mess would come to light and the threat against his family might still be carried out. The police could promise to protect the Westfield girls, but if someone wanted them dead badly enough . . .
“If you kill us too, you’ll be looking at four counts of homicide. And when they bring you to trial, the truth will come out. You’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. Your wife will be tried for abetting you. What about your daughters’ safety then?”
The ME shrugged. “I’ve thought about this long and hard and I’ve come to understand the mean truth. I lost my family the night that corpse landed on my autopsy table. It’s just taken me all this time to realize it.” He sounded resigned, defeated, but he wouldn’t have come here to kill me if he didn’t also harbor some hope for a future. Even if it was only for a future on the run.
“I have a question,” I said, aware I was treading on dangerous ground.
“Sure, why not?” he said expansively. “But make it quick, because I’ve wasted enough time here and we have to get down to business.”
Chapter 36
“Why were you trying to frame Elise Harkens?” I asked him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he said wryly, as if he was actually beginning to enjoy the dialogue. Venting, even bragging about the secret he’d kept for so long. “I needed to direct the investigation away from me. Wives and husbands have been killing each other since the dawn of time. If you dig deep enough into any long-term relationship, you can probably find a motive for murder. I chose Elise when I bumped into her and Jim at the shooting range. They actually had the kind of gun I wanted to use. It was like I had Fate’s blessing.”
Without thinking, Tilly clucked her tongue in disapproval. I held my breath, afraid Westfield would cut his narrative short to make her his first victim. But he ignored her. “Turns out, you can talk yourself into believing pretty much anything.”
Caught up in the story, Tilly wouldn’t let it go. “How did you get into their house to steal the gun?”
“Fate to the rescue once again. My cleaning lady is their cleaning lady. She had their house key.”
I tried to shush my aunt before she said anything else, but she was a runaway train on the downhill. “The cleaning lady gave you the key, just like that?”
The ME gave a grim chuckle. “You don’t go through what I have, without learning that everyone has their price, be it money or the life of someone they love.”
The casual tone of his words made my skin crawl. Whatever empathy I’d felt for him turned to ice and shattered. The man he’d been the night that corpse arrived was not the man who was holding the gun on us today. Reasoning with him was not going to save us.
I don’t know if Sashkatu was reading my mind or the mood of the room, but he chose that moment to make a run at the ME. Before any of us realized what he was about to do, he launched himself at the ME’s gun hand. The weapon flew out of his grip, clattering to the floor. But he recovered too swiftly and with one swipe of his arm, caught Sashki in midair and knocked him halfway across the room. I winced as I watched his arthritic legs absorb the shock of his landing. Tilly shrieked in horror. I ran to help him, but he shook off the pain with an angry yowl, a small but stoic hero. Unfortunately his efforts were in vain. The gun had landed less than a foot away from Westfield. He had it in his hand in seconds and ordered me to get back to the others.
“The cat tries that again,” he said, “and he won’t have enough lives left to—hey,” he interrupted himself, “what’s going on with the old man?”
I looked over at Merlin, who was standing on the other side of Tilly. His eyes were closed and he was mumbling words I couldn’t distinguish. But I knew he was casting a spell. “He’s praying,” I said. “Just an old man praying for his life.”
“Well it’s creepy. Tell him to cut it out.”
“Merlin,” I yelled to get his attention, “Merlin, stop it. Stop it this second.”
“Tell him to cut it out or he g
ets the first bullet.” Westfield cocked the gun to prove his point.
“Merlin, stop!” I pleaded. “Stop!” He was so completely focused on the spell that he was beyond hearing me. I turned to the ME. “You can see that he suffers from dementia. He’s a harmless old man.”
Westfield wasn’t buying it. “He either stops the mumbo jumbo right now or he’s dead.”
Tilly’s eyes bulged with panic. Without a word, she reached over and grabbed the skin on the wizard’s forearm, pinching and twisting it with every bit of her strength. Merlin’s eyes flew open. He screeched as if a hawk had ripped a chunk out of him. “What possessed you to do such a thing?” he demanded of her, rubbing the bruised arm.
I did it to save your life, you old fool,” she said.
“I have never suffered anyone calling me a fool,” he responded indignantly, “and I do not intend to start now.”
“Shut up, both of you!” The ME growled at them. The gun was still cocked. It wouldn’t take much for the first bullet to fly. We were down to last resorts. I tried to quiet my mind, which, under the circumstances, was harder than anything I’d ever done. I focused my energies on the gun. I tugged at it and tugged at it until I felt as if I were twisting myself inside out with the effort. But the gun didn’t budge. If I could move a chair, moving the gun should have been easy. The problem had to be my state of mind.
Westfield was talking, but I blocked out his voice. I couldn’t allow him to distract me. I grabbed Tilly’s hand, hoping somehow she would strengthen me. She immediately understood what I was trying to do. She still had the plate of strudel in her other hand. After a second’s hesitation, she let it drop to the floor. Merlin yelped and was bending to retrieve it, when Tilly seized his hand. With the three of us linked, the boost from their energy nearly rocked me off my feet. If this had any chance of working, it had to be now! I locked my eyes on the gun in the ME’s hand and tugged at it with every ounce of my being. But instead of drawing the gun to me, I somehow drew myself to it. I was standing inches from the ME. Before he could process what was happening, I yanked the gun out of his hand. He was a quick study, though. Ignoring the whys and hows of what I’d done, he was determined to retake the weapon. As we struggled over the gun, it fired. All of us jumped. Tilly shrieked. I looked up, afraid she’d been hit. “I’m okay,” she sang out. “It hit the wall.” But in that moment of distraction, Westfield got a better grip on the gun. I was seconds away from losing it. In desperation I stomped on his foot, grinding my stiletto heel into it. He howled, the pain causing him to loosen his grip on the gun. I opened my hand too, letting the gun fall to the floor. Then I kicked it across the room to Merlin and Tilly, before sprinting back to them. Tilly grabbed the gun off the floor and was pointing it at the ME with shaking hands. She passed it over to me as soon as I reached her, apparently forgetting that I’d never learned how to shoot either. But one of us had to convince Westfield we knew what we were doing or he’d be on us in no time.
From across the room, he glared at us with feral anger, cornered yet again. One thing was clear. If he took a single step toward us, I would have to shoot him, pull the trigger without hesitation, without thought. All of our lives depended on it.
“No one move.” The order came from the rear door, which the ME had left unlocked for his escape. The voice was deep and commanding—detective Phillip Duggan. I wanted to turn and look, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Westfield, until I knew for sure we were safe.
“Thank goodness you’re here!” Westfield said. “Wilde is the one you’re after. She killed Harkens and in another second she would have killed me too.”
“He’s lying,” Tilly cried out before I could. “He’s the one who killed Jim. He confessed. We all heard him.” Merlin lent his voice to the fray and soon they were all shouting over each other.
“Quiet, all of you,” Duggan snapped. “Put down the gun, Ms. Wilde.”
“Not until you’ve got him in handcuffs,” I said, although my arms were aching and I didn’t know how much longer I could hold the gun extended in front of me the way they did on TV. Duggan must have given Curtis the nod, because the younger cop walked past me, holding a pair of plastic cuffs. He crossed the room to Westfield and in less than a minute, the killer’s hands were cuffed behind him. I lowered the gun.
Duggan was holstering his weapon as he came from behind me. He held out his hand. “I’ll take that now.”
My fingers were locked so tightly around the gun that for a moment I had trouble releasing it. Once it was in Duggan’s hand, relief surged through me, making my limbs go weak. In the next instant, Tilly threw her arms around me with such enthusiasm that she nearly sent both of us crashing to the floor. Somehow we managed to stay upright, swaying together like a couple trying to dance on a ship in heavy seas. Merlin joined us and had to make do with patting the part of my back that was free of Tilly’s embrace. “I commend you,” he said, solemnly. “You were as courageous as any knight of the realm.” I thanked him. “Although,” he went on, “had I been allowed to continue with my spell, things would have come to a more satisfying and entertaining conclusion.”
Tilly released me and turned her twinkling eyes to the sorcerer. “You were going to turn him into something, weren’t you?”
“I had not as yet decided between a rat and a beetle, when you stopped me by nearly tearing the skin from my body.” He was clearly not over his pique.
I left them and went hunting for Sashkatu. He wasn’t between the rows of metal shelving. I finally found him in the closet with the broom and cleaning supplies. I knelt down and held my arms out to him. Had it been an ordinary day, he would have ignored me. But there was nothing ordinary about this day, and he knew it as well as any of us. He struggled to his feet and came to me, favoring his left rear leg. He didn’t put up a fuss when I scooped him up and cradled him in my arms. I promised him his own salmon fillet for dinner and carried him over to Merlin and Tilly, who welcomed him like a conquering hero. Curtis was reading the ME his rights as he escorted him out of the storeroom.
“I’m going to need statements from all of you,” Duggan said. “Take some time to compose yourselves, then come down to the station, the one right here in New Camel.”
“Detective,” I said as he turned to leave. “A huge thank you, from all of us.”
“You’re welcome, Ms Wilde, but you seemed to have things under control before we arrived.”
“How did you know what was happening here?”
“I didn’t actually. You should thank your boyfriend. He’s very persistent. When he couldn’t reach you on your business phone or your cell, he called me. I told him the police were not in the habit of tracking down people who didn’t answer their phones for a few hours. He explained what he’d found out about Westfield and why he was worried about your safety. He wouldn’t let up on me. By the way,” Duggan added dryly, “you might want to impress on him that threatening to throw a police officer under the bus, even figuratively, is a good way to wind up in jail.”
Chapter 37
After we gave Duggan our statements, I took Sashkatu straight to Dr. Hudson. He, and his father before him, had been our family vet for as long as I could remember. He gave Sashki a thorough exam, never an easy job, and proclaimed him to be in fine shape overall. The X-ray showed that his leg was badly sprained, but not broken. Hudson prescribed plenty of rest and no more feats of derring-do. No problem. Sashki preferred couch-potato mode.
On the way home, I stopped to buy two salmon fillets. One for Sashki, which I’d dole out over the next few days and one for the other cats to share as an apology for making them wait so long for dinner. I had finally collapsed on the couch when Morgana and Bronwen popped out of the ether. I nearly groaned out loud. The day been long and emotional enough. I was weary to the marrow of my bones.
“You were magnificent,” Morgan proclaimed.
That got my attention. “Wait—you saw what happened?”
“We certainly did. M
ost of it anyway. I think we missed a bit in the beginning.”
“Your mother is right,” Bronwen chimed in. You were magnificent. You and Sashkatu both!” They gave me a round of applause with claps of thunder.
“Thank you,” I said, though I didn’t feel grateful. “Why didn’t you try to help us? We were minutes, seconds, away from being murdered right there in front of you.” My outrage was foaming in my mouth.
“We’re not allowed to interfere,” Bronwen said without apology. “It’s that simple.”
“Otherwise, don’t you think we would have done whatever we could to help?”
“How could I have known that?” I said. “You never mentioned it before.”
“Clearly an oversight,” Bronwen replied. “But now you know. It happens to be the primary law on this side of the veil. The consequences for disobeying it are . . . suffice it to say—formidable.”
“One last thing before we go,” my mother said. “Was this your first instance of teleportation?”
“Yes. But at the time, I didn’t realize I was doing it.”
“Now that you’re aware of this ability, you must practice it, cultivate it,” Bronwen instructed. “Strengthen it as you would a muscle. It is the rarest power in our bloodline. I know of only one distant aunt who possessed it generations ago.” Once they were satisfied with my promise to comply, they took their leave.
A split second after their departure, the doorbell rang. I opened the door to find Travis on the porch, holding a bag of something that smelled wonderful. He walked in, put the bag on the floor and pulled me into a hug and a lingering kiss, although we’d connected at the police station less than an hour before. When he bent to retrieve the bag, I hooked my mind into it and with one good tug lifted if off the floor and sailed it up to my waiting hand. On the short drive home, I’d decided that if Travis was going to be in my life on more than a temporary basis, he needed to know my magick was real. The bag of food provided the perfect opportunity. He’d brought it, and it hadn’t been out of his sight. There was no way I could have tampered with it.
