by Josh Lanyon
The silence that followed was more terrible than that dying scream.
Jake and I stared at each other, and then he started to climb through the boards.
“No, wait!” Melissa cried. We both grabbed for him.
“The stairs are gone!” I shouted, locking my arms around him.
“He’s fallen down the mine shaft!” Melissa said. Her face was blanched of color, her eyes ... they were still glowing. Hastily I looked away.
Jake stared at us like we were speaking in tongues, and then to my utter amazement, he pulled me against him in a rough embrace that nearly knocked the remaining wind out of me.
“I owe you one, baby,” he muttered against my ear. I could feel his heart banging away with exertion and excitement against my own. It was the most beautiful sound in the world, and I closed my eyes as I listened and thought, I love you.
Old news really. I guess I’d known since I left LA. I guess that was why I’d left LA, because there wasn’t any future in it. Not really. The things I wanted from life -- and Jake -- weren’t things he could give. But somehow at that moment it just didn’t matter.
I barely heard Melissa babbling, “He must have forgotten that the stairs had rotted away. I know we told him. Kevin and I noticed when we were out here. Only the top two rungs are left. I know we told him. He forgot. He must have forgotten.”
“Maybe he knew,” I told her.
Jake’s arms tightened around me like he was picturing himself tumbling down the shaft on Marquez’s heels. “Poor bastard,” he muttered against my ear.
I nodded, sick with the thought of what a difference a few minutes would have made. If it had taken me longer to get out of the cellar, if I had waited at the house for the sheriffs, if I had taken my time running across the hillside -- it would have been Jake and Melissa’s crumpled bodies at the bottom of that mine shaft. In fact, we might never have found their bodies, might never have known what happened to them.
What a nice little legend that would have made.
“No one could survive that fall,” Melissa said, though neither of us was really listening to her. “He’s dead. He must be. Maybe he meant to do it all along. Maybe ...”
The sirens were close now, wailing through the trees like electronic banshees. As the first car appeared on the road, Jake released me and stepped back. He massaged the back of his neck self-consciously.
“He must be dead,” Melissa repeated. “Don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” I said.
Astonished, I realized that the shadows were lengthening. Another day gone in Paradise. I looked up at the heavy skies. There was a hint of rain in the air. In fact, it felt cold enough for snow. I rubbed my nose hard. “What happened?” I asked Jake. “Why the hell did you come back here?” I stopped as color rose in his face.
“I had a bad feeling,” he said. “You gave in too easily this morning. I know you -- well, I thought I did. I started thinking you were going to come back here and do something ... dumb.”
“Dumb?”
“Like in a book. You know, gather all the suspects in the drawing room and try to trick the murderer into confessing.”
“So you did something dumb instead?”
The clearing was suddenly full of cop cars and uniforms. The sound of voices and slamming car doors carried on the late afternoon.
Jake said, “I ... er ...” He cleared his throat. “I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shoup confronted Marquez. He was waving this old newspaper in his face. Then Marquez popped Shoup. That’s when she showed up. He glanced at Melissa, doing a double-take at her flaming red orbs, and breaking off what he was saying to exclaim, “And lady, what is with you?”
Melissa met our gazes blankly. Then she gave a weak laugh, and popped out the trick eyeballs.
* * * * *
“Well, it’s been real. And it’s been fun,” Jake said.
I gave a half laugh.
We stood beside our packed cars. It was nearly dark.
Marquez’s body had been retrieved from the mine a few hours earlier. There was no sign of any lost gold, assuming it had ever really been there. Melissa, Jake and I had given our statements to the sheriffs; Melissa had bid us a hasty goodbye and hurried off to see about getting Kevin freed. Jake and I promised to make ourselves available for the coroner’s inquest and any further questioning as requested.
It had been a long day and we could have waited to leave till the next morning, but Jake was in a hurry to start back.
I could feel him watching me, but when I glanced his way, he was staring at the long silent ranch house. The windows were shuttered. The cowbell chimes hung motionless in the still, cold air. Across the barren yard, the windmill groaned with phantom pains.
It already looked abandoned, like we had never been there, like no one had lived there for years.
“Maybe we’ll come back sometime,” he said, surprisingly.
He met my gaze and shrugged. Then he tossed his keys, caught them, and started for his car. Over his shoulder he called, “Are you following me or am I following you?”
I opened my mouth -- then let it go. Mildly, I said, “Are you sure you know the way?”
He paused. Turned. “Hey,” he said. “I found you, didn’t I?”
Josh Lanyon
Josh Lanyon is the author of three Adrien English mystery novels. THE HELL YOU SAY was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and is the winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT fiction. Josh lives in Los Angeles, California, and is currently at work on the fourth book in the series, DEATH OF A PIRATE KING.
