Killed on the Rocks

by William L. DeAndrea

  It was the intellect’s turn to tell the survival instinct to take a hike. The situation was so simple, there was no room to figure anything. I either had to make a break for the house or sit here in the slush until I died of pneumonia.

  I was tired of getting rained on.

  I pushed my back up against the tree and worked myself to a standing position. I took off the tree strap and the hooded jacket. I decided to leave the cleats on, for traction.

  It was clearly time to go, but somehow, I couldn’t force myself to leave the shelter of the tree. I stood there, trembling, until I got absolutely disgusted with myself for being such a coward.

  I said, “Shit,” and sprinted away from the tree. Now I had to live. I want my last words to be more uplifting than “shit.”

  More army training. Zig and zag. Don’t fall into a pattern. If you fall (and in that mess, boy, did I fall) hit, roll, and come up running.

  If any shots were fired, I wasn’t aware of them, but then, I had a lot on my mind. I made it to the stoop where Carol, Wilberforce, and I had talked, and scrambled up the stone stairs. I pounded the doorknocker.

  Fred Norman answered the door. He looked at me, gave me a look, and stood in my way.

  “Let me in,” I said.

  “You’re a mess. What have you been doing out there?”

  “Get the hell out of the way.”

  “My wife works hard to clean this place—”

  I punched him in the stomach, then pushed him on his ass when he doubled over. “If you want to give me a hard time,” I said, “try to save it for when nobody has been shooting at me for at least an hour or so. Okay?”

  Norman groaned.

  “I thought you quit, anyway,” I said, as I stepped over him. “Where’s your nephew?”

  Norman kept groaning.

  “Okay, maybe I overdid it a little. I’ve had a bad day. Where’s Ralph?”

  Norman said, “Kitchen,” then began a description of my background, habits, and possible future. It seemed to be doing him good. Certainly his voice was getting stronger as I walked away.

  I clanked across the carpet, cursed, then stopped and pulled the cleats off. Then I pounded to the kitchen and stiff-armed the door.

  There was no shotgun blast. Instead, there was Ralph, sitting at the table Roxanne and I had shared with Barry the other night. His aunt was sorting through the kitchen cabinets and drawers, putting things in a cardboard box.

  Ralph looked up from a cup of hot chocolate. I would have given two years off my life for a cup of hot chocolate just then.

  “What the hell happened to you?” Ralph demanded.

  “I’ve been out solving our case. And getting shot at.”

  “And getting mud all over my floors,” Aunt Agnes said.

  “I thought you quit.”

  “I’ve given notice. I’m still on duty here.”

  “Be quiet, Aunt Agnes,” Ralph said. “Shot at? I didn’t hear anything.”

  “I barely did, myself. The noise of the rain would have drowned it out.”

  “Just what have you solved?”

  “Everything.”

  “Feel like letting me in on it?”

  “In a couple of minutes. I want to scrape the mud off me and get some circulation back in my hands and feet. I’d appreciate it if you’d get everyone into the parlor and wait for me.”

  “Most of them are still asleep.”

  “Better and better. You won’t have to go look for them.”

  “Yes, sir. As you wish, sir. May I finish my chocolate?”

  “Bring it with you.”

  “You’d better know what you’re doing, Cobb,” he said.

  “I always know what I’m doing,” I lied. “Oh, by the way, I slugged your uncle.”

  “You what?”

  “I punched your uncle in the stomach.”

  Agnes cried, “Fred!” dropped her carton and bolted from the room. If her path had brought her close enough to me, I’m sure she would gladly have stuck a knife in me.

  “Why did you punch my uncle?” Ralph said when his aunt had gone.

  “Because I wanted to get a wall between me and some bullets, and he wouldn’t get out of the way. Tell him I apologize.”

  “Oh, that’ll make things just great. I’ve been talking to people. You have a reputation for getting on people’s nerves. I can see where it comes from. Did you hurt him?”

  “No. I just wanted to move him.”

  “All right, then,” Ralph said. “Let’s get going, we’re wasting time. And, Cobb?”

  “Yes?”

  “I hope to God you’ve really got something. This detective stuff is for shit.”

  Spot wasn’t in my room; neither was Roxanne. I made a big deduction: she was in back, walking the dog. I figured that because if she hadn’t been, she would have been watching me on the tree, and she would have rushed to my soggy arms the minute I was inside. She would have at least asked me if I was satisfied, now that I’d made frozen mud pie of myself.

  Since she hadn’t done either of those things, it followed that she hadn’t seen me come down the tree, in which case the most likely place for her to be was walking the dog.

  I stepped out of my clothes—actually, they were so stiff with snow and mud I practically had to climb out—then thawed myself with a quick hot shower. I dressed and ran downstairs.

  I was met with universal grousing.

  “I thought this was all over with, Cobb,” Haskell Freed said.

  “I don’t care what the sheriff told you,” Aranda Dost said. “You are exceeding your authority! You’re exceeding decency!”

  “Cobb, I demand to know what you think you’re doing.” Charles Wilberforce stood directly in front of me with his feet planted and his arms folded across his chest, exactly as though I couldn’t pick him up and stuff him in my back pocket. Fortunately for him, I’d already had my yearly dose of violence, and I was already regretting it.

  “Shut up,” I said amiably to one and all. I looked around for Ralph and found him just coming into the room.

  “I didn’t know how much to tell them,” he said, when he saw me surrounded by hostiles, “so I didn’t tell them anything.”

  “Good thinking,” I said. “Where’s Bromhead?”

  What I could see of Ralph’s face behind the bandage wore a puzzled look. “I can’t find him. I’ve looked all over. Can’t find Roxanne, either, when it comes to that. Or your dog—”

  I went cold, colder than I’d been sitting in the snow. Of course, Roxanne would want to see me climb the tree. She was in love with me, right? And what was the best vantage point to see the tree from?

  The wire room. Where the shots had come from. I’d sent her right into his arms.

  I grabbed Ralph’s arms. “Did you check the wire room? The fourth-floor corner, where all the cables come into the house?”

  “Yeah. I looked all over.”

  I turned to Aranda. “Where are they?”

  She looked concerned, fluttered her hands. “I—I really don’t understand—”

  “Aranda,” I said quietly. “Don’t. Just don’t. I know everything, all right? How the body got there. How you worked your husband’s ghost trick. It’s over. Whatever Bromhead does now will just make it worse.”

  “Thank God!” Aranda said. “Thank God!” She stood and addressed the gathering. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I want to apologize to all of you.” Back to me. “He made me help him. He did. It started as a simple little affair, but he became obsessed. He threatened to kill me if I didn’t help him. I didn’t really know what he was planning to do until it was too late. I swear—”

  Carol Coretti jumped up, grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. “Shut up!” She looked at me. “Can’t you tell she’s lying? I swear to Christ, how a woman like this can ever fool anybody is beyond me.”

  “Where are they, Aranda?” I said. “Plenty of time to work on your alibi, later.”

  “Yes,” Carol Coret
ti said, “and in the meantime, you tell the man what he wants to know.”

  “But I—I don’t know!” Aranda struggled to get away, but Carol’s red nails dug deeper into her arm.

  “Take a guess,” I said. “Take a good guess.”

  Aranda opened her mouth to protest, but Carol spoke first.

  “Wait a minute. I owe you one for that business that first night, so I want to tell you this. Whatever happens to Roxanne Schick, happens to you. I’ll take care of whatever Cobb leaves. I warn you, he won’t leave much. The man’s in love.”

  Wilberforce said, “He’s what?”

  Carol shook her head. “Men are such idiots.” I was impressed. Wilberforce was her boss. Back to Aranda. “Now where?”

  “I—I guess the garage. I think he’s going to try to make a run for it. With the Schick girl as hostage. He was shooting at you. He saw you climbing the tree. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  “No,” I said, “it sure wasn’t.”

  “Anybody hear them leave?”

  “They’d never make it down the mountain in this,” Haskell Freed said.

  “Shut up,” I told him. I was afraid he was right. “Did anybody hear them leave?”

  “They can’t have left,” Aranda said. “The first night Jack put all the cars out of commission. We didn’t know that with the blizzard, no one would even try them. He’s got to fix one up before he can leave.”

  All right, then, I thought.

  “Ralph, come on. You too, Norman, if you’re willing.”

  I expected more crap from him, but he just looked at me blandly and said, “Sure thing.”

  “The rest of you,” I said, “are deputies. Aranda Dost is the prisoner. If she’s not here when we get back, I will personally kill each and every one of you.”

  As I strode from the room, I heard Haskell Freed saying that my tone was uncalled for, and Bats Blefary telling him to shut up. There was going to be a lot of job changing at the Network when this was over, even without the merger.

  Just outside the door, I felt a hand on my back. I turned to see Carol Coretti’s bright blue eyes.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I would have gotten the same information out of her, but it would have taken longer, and been nastier.”

  Carol showed me a small smile. “God, I feel so butch. Aren’t you going to get a gun or something?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going to risk getting Roxanne in a crossfire! Spot either, come to that.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I intend to. I may be an idiot, but I’m not that big an idiot.”

  Carol smiled.

  “Get back in there now and keep Aranda from putting one over on the rest of the idiots, will you? I’ve got to get to work now.”

  “Right. Good luck.”

  Ralph and his uncle were waiting down the hall. I told them what I wanted.

  They didn’t like it. “You, the dog, and Roxanne are likely to wind up dead,” Ralph said.

  Fred Norman shook his head. “It’s brave, what you want to do, but it’s crazy.”

  “It’s the only way,” I insisted. “Believe me, if I think he’s getting ready to shoot, I’ll give him what he wants.”

  “What if he’s ready now?”

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  Spot was outside, cowering out of the rain beneath the overhang that protected the walkway from the garage to the house. With his usual puffball of fur now a clinging wet mass, he looked a lot smaller than usual. He seemed glad to see me. I knew I was glad to see him.

  “Come on, boy,” I said, and stepped out into the rain to the front of the garage.

  Spot hung back for a second, giving me a look that said, “What are you, nuts?” Finally, though, training won out over inclination, and he followed me.

  Spot and I had to walk to the center of the front door of the building, where a regular person door sat among the sliding doors for cars. I ducked below the windows of the garage doors as we went by. I flattened myself against the wall just to the side of the door, and checked to see if Ralph and his uncle had gotten into position.

  They had. It was up to me now.

  I threw the door open. I heard Jack Bromhead’s voice cursing from inside. “One more goddam minute!”

  “Jack?” I said.

  “Get the hell away from me, Cobb. I mean it.”

  “I want to come in, Jack. I want to talk. I’m not armed.”

  “I am,” he said.

  “I know. I’m not worried.” That was a lie.

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what I know, having seen me in the tree. I’m pretty sure you’ve got Miss Schick in there with you. With that much at stake, you have to know I wouldn’t be out here without backup.”

  “What’s the other thing?”

  “The other thing is that if you don’t shoot any better than you did when I was hanging from the tree, I don’t have much to worry about.”

  Jack started to laugh. “You simple bastard,” he said. “I could have shot you in one earhole and out the other, if I wanted to. The idea was to make you drop out of the damn tree, make people think you got careless and fell. I didn’t want anybody else looking up there, at least not until I could make myself scarce. Fat lot of good a body full of bullet holes at the base of the tree was going to do me.”

  “How’d you happen to see me up there?”

  “I was looking out the window. I spent a lot of time the last few days looking out that window.” There was a spitting noise. ‘”Can’t shoot any better than that,’” he grumbled. “Ha! All right, get in here, if you want to talk.”

  “I’ll come slowly.”

  “I don’t give a damn how fast you come. But God help you if you’ve got a gun in your hand.”

  I took a deep breath, held it for a second, then let it go. I stepped through the doorway. Jack Bromhead was straight ahead of me, peeking at me across the nose of his own white Mercedes. He was holding the silver-plated Colt, but it wasn’t pointed at me. It was pointed at the windshield in front of the passenger seat of the car, where Roxanne sat.

  “I got her tied up and gagged. Don’t want you two going all sloppy on me, now.”

  “That’s the least of your problems, Jack,” I told him.

  “Maybe so,” he said. “But since I’ve got the gun, I’m the one who’s gonna set the agenda. Gabby used to say that. ‘Set the agenda.’ I used to tell him to stop trying to sound like somebody who’d been to business school. All right. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Jack stepped out from behind the car. The gun was pointed at me, now. He opened the driver’s side door and leaned against it. He held the gun against his body, shifting the muzzle to Roxanne.

  “All right,” he said quietly. “You wanted to talk. Now talk.”

  “Suits me fi—” I began.

  Jack cut me off. “Oh, if you’re figuring on sending your doggie to bite my ass or something, I wouldn’t advise it. He’s a good dog, and a game rascal, but it’ll take him three bounds to get to me, and he’d have a bullet between his eyes halfway through the second. And you’d have one before he hit. If you don’t believe me, just give it a try.”

  “That’s not going to be necessary, Jack. I’m counting on your being smart enough to listen to reason.”

  “Reason,” he snorted. “That, my boy, is a word that don’t mean anything. Reason is what seems good at the time, then when you look back at it, it don’t make any sense. So what’s your reason going to do for me?”

  “Let’s give it a try, and see.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Why the hell not? Do you know I was about one minute away from having the rest of these spark plugs in? I would have been out of here in two minutes. Give me a reason for that, I dare you.

  “The funny thing is, I thought you were gonna walk in on me when I was taking them out, too. That first night. I was out here fixing things so the cars wouldn’t go—waste of time,
of course, as it turned out. But who knew the storm was gonna be as bad as all that?” He shook his head. “Anyway, I was out here, and who walks out the front of the house but you and that gal and Wilberforce. What the hell were you talking about?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He waved his gun. “My agenda, remember?”

  “We were talking about a sexual pass Aranda tossed at Miss Coretti.”

  “Why the hell outside?” Jack seemed honestly puzzled.

  “Wilberforce was afraid the rooms were bugged.”

  “Ha. He would, wouldn’t he? Nah, we’d never do that. Besides, a lot of people are too good at checking that kind of thing.”

  “Now, do I get to ask one?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “What was the whole idea of that, anyway? Carol herself swears that Aranda’s not gay.”

  “You want reasons again. The idea was, since Gabby was gonna bite the dust that night, we wanted Aranda to have an alibi. A good alibi, one of your people. We figured it would come out sooner or later that Gabby had talked to his lawyer about getting out of the marriage, so it didn’t matter about the unfaithful bit. We’d studied up on everybody, you know.”

  “I know. That’s one of the things that didn’t make sense.”

  “Well, I wanted her to make a play for that Blefary geek. He’s a bachelor, he’s a loner. He rents porno movies. He got in bed with a woman like Aranda, he’d feel like he’d died and gone to heaven; probably give her an alibi even if she didn’t stay with him all night, which was the plan.”

  It probably would have worked, at that. “Why didn’t she?”

  Jack smiled sadly. He shrugged—one shoulder only. The arm that held the gun never moved.

  “Aranda didn’t want to. Said now that she’d found me, she couldn’t stand the thought of any other man being with her.”

  “But a woman would be okay.”

  “She said it would be tough, but it wouldn’t be the same. Besides, she had this idea that if she spent the night with a lesbian, when you finally dragged it out of her, it would make an even better alibi. Because it was embarrassing, you know?”

  “And maybe she was just curious,” I said.