What kind of poison had she used? If I knew that, there might be something I could take to counteract it. At least I could tell the emergency operator, who could then alert the paramedics.
It was an effort to climb the stairs to the upper floor. Ray Porter, who had climbed mountains, hiked through jungles and across deserts-so damned weak he couldn’t mount a dozen steps without streaming sweat and hanging onto the railing with both hands. It enraged me, the idea of dying this way, weak and helpless. Yet the funny thing was, most of the rage was at myself for allowing such a thing to happen.
My fault, as much as Melissa’s. I’d driven her into Jake Hollis’s arms, the arms of all the others. I’d destroyed her, slowly and surely, with the heat of my passions. And in the process I’d sown the seeds of my own destruction.
But not blaming her or hating her didn’t mean I would let her get away with what she’d done. Life was still precious to me, and I wouldn’t let go of it without a fight.
She wasn’t in the kitchen. She had been, though; as I passed the stove, I smelled a sour odor and saw that she’d thrown up in the sink. My God! Maybe she hadn’t been faking in Murphys or on the way up here; maybe she’d poisoned herself, too. Hollis was dead, she couldn’t have him, and she didn’t want me anymore, so what did she have left to live for? It was just like her to concoct a quixotic Shakespearean finish for both of us.
I stumbled into the living room. She wasn’t there, either, but I could hear her-low sobbing sounds coming from out on the balcony that ran across the entire rear of the lodge. I almost fell before I reached the open balcony doors; I had to clutch at the glass for support, all but drag myself around the jamb. The weakness and the cramping pain made me even more determined.
Melissa was sitting on one of the redwood chairs, her arms wrapped across her middle, rocking slightly and grimacing. A closed book lay in her lap. A book, for God’s sake, at a time like this!
“Melissa.”
She stiffened and her head turned toward me. Her eyes were enormous, luminous with pain. In spite of what she’d done, in spite of myself, I experienced a surge of feeling for her-compassion, protectiveness, even tenderness, like suddenly materialized ghosts from the past.
“Why, Ray?” she said. “Why did this have to happen?”
“You know the answer to that better than I do. But it’s not too late. I won’t let it be too late.”
“I don’t want to die. I thought I did, for a while, but I don’t.”
“Neither of us is going to die. I’ll call for emergency medical help…but I have to know what it was first.” She shook her head as if she didn’t understand.
“The poison,” I said. “What kind of poison?”
“How should I know! Ray, don’t torture me any more…”
“Listen to me. It’s not too late. An antidote, some kind of emetic…what did you use?”
“I didn’t…I didn’t…”
I lurched toward her, fell to my knees beside her chair. “How long ago? What kind of poison? How much?”
“Stop it! You know it wasn’t me!”
“Melissa…”
“You did it. You, you, you!”
I stared at her in disbelief. “That’s crazy. I wouldn’t do a thing like that to you, to myself. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“But if you didn’t poison us…?”
“I didn’t.” Confusion gripped me now; I couldn’t seem to think clearly. “And you swear you didn’t?”
“I swear!”
“If it wasn’t poison, then what…” I broke off, staring at the book in her lap, seeing its title for the first time. Symptoms: The Complete Home Medical Encyclopedia.
I reached out to it-and the pain came again, a sudden wrenching so violent it brought an involuntary cry from my throat. Gagging, I clutched at Melissa. Felt her hands on me. And then we were clinging to each other, holding tighter than we had in a long, long time.
Melissa
As Ray kneeled beside my chair and we held each other, I felt something that I’d never felt for him before: compassion. He’d never needed it, never wanted it, and he probably wouldn’t now. But a man who had climbed mountains, who had been unafraid to step out into space with only a parachute to depend on-it tore at my heart to see him reduced to this sweating, trembling weakness by…what?
He was staring at the home medical encyclopedia I’d found on the shelf above the kitchen desk. Now he raised his eyes to mine and said thickly: “Did you look up our symptoms in there?”
“No, not yet…”
He reached again for the book, but another wave of pain drove him down into a sitting position, forehead against my knees.
“Can’t do it,” he said. “My eyes…”
The admission seemed to rob him of his last strength. Ray had always taken charge, always, in every situation.
A sharp spasm wrenched my stomach. When it eased, I put my hand on the back of his head and said: “I can.”
It was a huge volume, and for a moment I couldn’t focus on how to use it. Then I realized the first part was a reverse dictionary of symptoms; you looked yours up, and it referred you to the causes described in the second section. I started with the section on nausea and vomiting.
“This doesn’t help,” I muttered after scanning the entry. Vomiting…Characteristic of nearly all infectious diseases, none of which it was likely we’d both come down with…Wait, here was vomiting coupled with headache…
Ray grabbed onto my calves now, his fingers spasming along with his body. More cramps, worse than what I was experiencing. I gripped his shoulder reassuringly and read on.
Brain tumors, migraine headache, acute glaucoma…
Oh, God, this was no good! I felt the beginnings of panic, took a deep breath, and continued skimming the entry. It told me nothing.
Ray moaned, his face contorted.
I flipped to the front of the book, looking for a table of contents. An encyclopedia of symptoms-wouldn’t they expect that a user might be in pain, want answers in a hurry? Why wasn’t there…?
Severe pain in the abdomen, nausea, cramps, vomiting. Acute gastritis…Staphylococcus…Botulism…“I’ve narrowed it down. Hold on.”
“What…?”
A strong spasm stiffened me before I could focus clearly on the next page. The chills that followed were intense enough to make my teeth chatter.
“Melissa?”
“I’ll be all right in a minute. Are your eyes any better?”
“…A little.”
I fumbled the book toward him. “Look at page three fifty-two, darling. Three fifty-two…”
Ray
Darling. Had I heard that right? She hadn’t called me darling, dear, honey, any of the endearments in a long while, even on the rare occasions the past few years when we’d made love…
Another twinge of pain made me grit my teeth, focus on the open book. Page 352. Infected Food, Gastroenteritis. Usually due to eating food that is infected by salmonella bacteria.
Food poisoning. What fools we’d been, each imagining that the other had resorted to arsenic, strychnine, some damned thing. And all along…
“Salmonella,” I said. “But how did we get it? We haven’t eaten anywhere but here the past couple of days.”
“The kitchen! You remember how filthy it was when we arrived? I thought I cleaned everything thoroughly, but I must’ve missed something…That damn’ plastic cutting board. Bacteria breeds in plastic like that, and I diced the raw chicken on it for our pasta.”
Rarely fatal, the book said. But nevertheless a medical alert. Severe cases develop dehydration, kidney failure with urinary suppression, shock. Call physician immediately.
“Nine-eleven,” I said. “Can’t waste any more time.” I tried to push up onto my feet, but I seemed to have no strength in my arms or legs. The entire lower half of my body felt heavy, almost numb from the vomiting and cramping.
“You’re too weak.”
“No. I’ve got to make the
call…”
“You ate more than I did,” Melissa said, “your case is more severe. I feel better now…I’ll do it.” She touched my face. “I’m the strong one right now, darling. Let me be the strong one for once.”
I looked up at her through the wetness and the pain. The same Melissa, the same woman I’d married and had children with and lived with for a quarter of a century. And yet she seemed different somehow. Or maybe I was seeing her differently. The little-girl-lost quality was gone; for the first time I saw strength in my wife. Hazily I wondered if it was something new, a courage born of this crisis, or if it had been there all along, hidden or suppressed or just not visible to me for what it was.
I clung to the chair, weak, and watched Melissa stand up, strong, and make her way toward the open doors. And a voice that didn’t sound like mine, that almost whimpered like a hurt child’s, called after her: “Hurry, baby, hurry…”
Melissa
Ray had collapsed against the chair when I came back. “They’re sending a medevac helicopter,” I told him. “We’re going to be OK.” Then I sank down beside him, pulling an Afghan over both of us. He grasped my hand the way the children used to when I’d comfort them after bad nightmares.
A nightmare, that’s what today was.
“Melissa,” he said after a moment, “why did you think I poisoned you?”
“It isn’t important now.” We’d have to talk about it, of course, but later, when we were both stronger. I’d finally have to confront him about Jake. After that…
“No, please, I need to know.”
“…After Jake…died…”
“Jake? What does his death have to do with this?”
“I was there, Ray. I saw the two of you struggling in midair.”
His lips twisted and he let go of my hand. “The son of a bitch tried to kill me.”
“Jake, kill you? He was your friend. You meant a lot to him.”
“He was your lover.”
“No, my friend, too. All we ever did when we were alone together was talk about you and why our marriage was dying.”
A spasm overcame him, and he made a choking sound. When he recovered, he didn’t speak. I felt a coldness in him-anger, too, directed at me. And suddenly I understood.
“Oh, no!” I said. “You think Jake tried to kill you because of me. You think we conspired to get rid of you!”
His pain-dull eyes watched me for a moment. “You didn’t plan to kill me? And you weren’t sleeping with him?”
“I told you I wasn’t. I’ve slept with exactly two men other than you in my life…the last over five years ago. And even if I had been having an affair with Jake, I would never have plotted to hurt you.” The tears I’d been controlling started again.
Ray put a shaky hand to my cheek, tried to brush them away. “What’ve I been thinking? Accusing you over and over. And today…I thought you’d decided you couldn’t go on without Jake and were going to…Christ, what a hideous, twisted imagination I’ve got!”
“No more than mine. I thought you killed Jake and were faking your illness so I wouldn’t realize you’d poisoned me.”
He shook his head, grimacing. “You know, this would be funny if it wasn’t so…”
“Yes.”
We sat silently for a while. A distant thrumming and flapping noise came from beyond the pine-covered hills to the west.
“What about Jake?” Ray asked. “Why did he grab at my chute like that? There has to be a reason.” He closed his eyes, probably reliving the horrifying experience. “Oh, God,” he said heavily.
“What?”
“Jake taught skydiving, remember. Instructors are trained to notice things that other divers might not. He wasn’t trying to kill me…he was trying to save my life. He must’ve seen something that told him my chute wasn’t going to open. And he saved me at the expense of himself.”
Ray lowered his face into his hands and made a strange sound. At first I couldn’t identify it, then I realized he was crying. I’d never seen him shed so much as a single tear.
I peeled his hands away, took his face in both of mine, and kissed him. No words could ease the grief and shame we were feeling. There were not enough words to do that.
Ray
We were both composed again by the time the medevac he licopter arrived. Huddled together under the Afghan, holding hands. We hadn’t said much after the revelations about Jake Hollis’s death; there was only one issue left to discuss, and neither of us was quite ready to put it into words.
Every time I looked at her now, it was as if twenty-six years had melted away. I felt the same deep stirrings as I’d felt that first night at her sorority’s open house. But it wasn’t a young woman’s vulnerable beauty that attracted me this time, made me feel alive again; it was a mature woman’s capacity for giving and understanding. For such a long time I’d seen only the young Melissa whenever I looked at my wife-an illusion that had begun as reality and gradually evolved into pure fantasy. False illusion was what had driven the wedge between us, led to all the problems and foolish misconceptions we’d both had. And not only on my part-on hers, too.
Neither of us knew the other any more.
I wanted to know her again, everything there was to know about this Melissa-but did she feel the same about me? Did she want to know the Ray Porter I’d grown and changed into, with all his flaws and insecurities? I thought I saw the answer in her eyes, but the spasms that continued to rack us both made me unsure.
The helicopter was down finally, its rotors making a hell of a racket on the road out front. The paramedics would be here any minute. I had to get it out into the open now, before there was any more separation.
I squeezed her hand. “Melissa, it’s not too late for us, is it? We can start over again, learn to love each other again?”
“I never stopped loving you,” she said.
“Nor I you, but I mean…”
“I know what you mean. No more misunderstandings between us. No more walls.”
“Yes.”
“No more dying,” she said, and now I was sure of what was in her eyes. “The dying time is over. Now we can start living again.”
About the Authors
Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, Marcia Muller has been a full-time novelist since 1983. She received her bachelor’s degree in English literature and master’s degree in journalism from the University of Michigan. Upon graduation she worked for Sunset magazine, and then as a freelance writer as well as being a partner in an editorial services firm. She is the author of numerous crime novels, twenty-three of which feature her much-loved San Francisco investigator, Sharon McCone, who made her debut in 1977. Recipient of numerous awards, including the American Mystery Award and the Private Eye Writers of America Shamus Award, in 1993 Muller was presented with the Private Eye Writers of America’s Life Achievement Award for her contribution to the genre. Her interest in the Western story stems from her love of history and research. Time of the Wolves was her first Western story collection.
Bill Pronzini was born in Petaluma, California. His earliest Western fiction was published in Zane Grey Western Magazine. His first Western novel was The Gallows Land (1983). Although Pronzini has earned an enviable reputation as an author of detective stories, he has continued periodically to write Western novels, most notably perhaps Starvation Camp (1984) and Firewind (1989) as well as Western short stories, including Burgade’s Crossing and Quincannon’s Game, both collections of Quincannon stories. In his Western stories, Pronzini has tended toward narratives that avoid excessive violence and, instead, are character studies in which a person has to deal with personal flaws or learn to live with the consequences of previous actions. As an editor and anthologist, Pronzini has demonstrated both rare éclat and reliable good taste in selecting very fine stories by other authors, fiction notable for its human drama and memorable characters. He is married to author Marcia Muller, who has written Western stories as well as detective stories, and occasionally c
ollaborated with her husband on detective novels. They make their home in Petaluma, California.
***
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Crucifixion River Page 19
