She says nothing.
‘I think you remember me,’ I say.
‘How did you get here?’ The first crack in the wall of denial.
I gesture toward my car in the parking lot.
‘I think you should get back in it and go,’ she says.
‘Not till we talk.’
‘We have nothing to talk about,’ she says. ‘You shouldn’t be here. There’ll be trouble if they find us together,’ she says.
‘Who’s “they”?’
‘Never mind.’
Having captured all the colors of the rainbow, she closes the latch on the wooden box.
I pick up the easel. She grabs it from my hand and starts to walk away, across the thick grass, as fast as sandals will allow, like some geisha in flowing gowns.
‘Do you have a car?’ I ask.
No answer.
‘I could give you a lift.’
‘No, thanks.’ She’s opening the gulf between us, twenty yards away.
I start to run, trailing in her wake. ‘I have to talk to you.’
‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘Marcie Reed is dead,’ I tell her.
Suddenly she stops. I nearly run over her from behind.
She turns to look at me over one shoulder.
‘Marcie?’ she says.
I nod. ‘Yesterday afternoon in Capital City,’ I tell her.
She doesn’t say a word, but the news of Marcie’s death, a woman she claims not to know, has suddenly turned her composure to mush. The easel and stool are back on the grass. As if in slow motion the handle of the box slips from her fingers, the sound of wood on wood as it clacks down on top of the easel. One hand comes up, so many fingers in her mouth I think she’s going to swallow them. Deep in thought, she turns away from me. I can no longer see her face. But with a hand she reaches up and takes the glasses off.
‘How did it happen?’
‘A letter bomb delivered to the post office by a private courier.’
When she turns I see her eyes for the first time, tired, dark edges, tracks like a thousand birds in the dried mud at some watering hole on a parched savanna. She’s calculating the barbarity of death in this fashion, looks at me, searching eyes, the sense of one tortured by fear, now rendered fearless by fatigue.
‘Poor Marcie,’ she says. ‘I should never have involved her. She was only doing me a favor.’
‘I know.’
‘Why did they have to kill her?’ she says.
‘Why don’t you tell me.’
‘Oh, God. None of this was supposed to happen,’ she says. ‘They promised us.’
‘Who?’
My question draws her from her reverie over Marcie.
‘Why did you come all this way? What’s your interest?’
‘I represent a woman who has been charged with the murder of Melanie Vega. She didn’t do it. I think you know that.’
‘Ahh.’ Her head is now making big lazy circles, nodding, the way people do when they are dazed. The pieces slowly beginning to fit for her.
‘And you think I can help you?’
‘Before Marcie died she told me some things.’
‘What things?’
‘That whoever killed Melanie Vega had been hired to carry out the murder. That you knew something about this.’
‘I’m sorry that your client is in trouble. But I can’t help you.’
With this she adjusts her glasses back on her head.
‘I think you can. Just tell me what happened.’
In the distance there’s the sound of rubber on gravel. The blue sedan I’d seen moments ago out on the highway, coming this way like there’s no tomorrow. Some tourist in a hurry, a lot of speed and dust as the car slides to a stop in the lot.
For several seconds my question lies dormant, punctuated only by the sound of the car’s engine rumbling in the distance.
‘Mrs. Merlow?’
She’s frozen in place, looking at the vehicle, which is stone-still, its motor running, no one getting out.
‘We have to talk,’ I tell her.
‘Not now.’ Her eyes are on the car.
‘When?’
She’s ignoring me.
‘All I want to know is what happened. Give me a hint.’
‘I didn’t see a thing,’ she says.
‘Then your husband?’ I say. ‘He knew something, didn’t he? And he told you?’ I’m thinking Melanie and her carnal welcome wagon. Maybe she and George, Jack and Melanie, were doing a foursome, some erotic swap-meet. Maybe that’s why Kathy Merlow doesn’t want to talk.
‘Leave us alone,’ she says.
‘No. I won’t leave you alone. A woman is being charged with murder in a crime she didn’t commit. Sooner or later you’re going to have to tell me what you know.’
‘I don’t know a thing, and neither does my husband.’
‘You expect me to believe that the two of you left Capital City in the middle of the night immediately after Melanie Vega’s murder because you didn’t like the weather?’
‘Frankly I don’t care what you believe.’ As she says this she’s giving me eyes-right, less than her undivided attention, her gaze glued to the car in the parking lot.
‘Is he with you?’ she says.
The vehicle’s occupant is now standing beside the car, its motor still rumbling. He’s leaning against the open driver’s door, looking this way, lighting what looks like a big cigar, a large stogie with a glowing red tip.
I squint in the sunlight. I had been particularly careful driving, watching the rearview mirror for other cars.
‘No.’
‘He’s looking at us,’ she says.
‘I don’t think so. He’s looking at the cemetery,’ I tell her. ‘A tourist, probably trying to find Lindbergh’s grave,’ I say.
‘Listen. I can’t talk to you now.’
‘Later?’
‘Perhaps. But I do have to go now.’
‘Tell me where I can find you.’
‘Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Maybe doesn’t cut it,’ I say.
She looks at me, reading my mind. The road back to Hana is narrow and slow. I could follow her and she knows it.
‘Tomorrow afternoon. Two o’clock. Here,’ she says.
‘You promise?’
‘I promise.’
Like some pesty insect, it settles first on her right temple, a tiny red prism of light, a dot no bigger than the point of a pen, dancing like reflections through the facets of a crystal. She stoops to pick up the paint box, and the light disappears, only to find its way into her hairline as she straightens up.
It takes an instant before the image registers. Like a cigar with hot embers at the tip, but different, a beam of light, one moment it’s there, the next it’s gone, red glowing like some diffused demonic gaze.
With all the force my body can muster from a standing start, I shove Kathy Merlow. I send her sprawling onto the grass and land on top of her.
The crack of the speeding bullet snaps the sound barrier overhead and passes into the brush beyond. Silenced. Guided to a near miss by the deadly accuracy of its laserscope.
‘What! Are you crazy?’ She’s pushing me off, clawing at my face like I’m some sexual predator.
‘Get up.’ I grab her by the arm.
‘Get away from me!’ She’s pushing at me, trying to dust off her clothes with one hand.
I’m on one knee, crouched. She’s on her feet, standing upright. And it hits me – she doesn’t realize a shot has been taken.
I’ve got a grip on her arm like a vise. She will be black and blue if she lives. I’m pushing her along ahead of me, moving laterally toward granite headstones and the church.
‘Let – let –’ She repeats this three or four times. ‘Let me go,’ she says. Waving arms and flailing hands trying to shake free. ‘Are you crazy?’
Another crack through the air, no more than an inch from my chest, and something buries
itself in the grass near her left foot. With this, her eyes go wide, twin saucers. For a single beat she’s frozen in place. A few tentative steps, then she breaks into full flight. Sandals flying from her feet, she leaves me kneeling on the grass.
In two seconds I overtake her. We are now running, stride for stride. From the corner of my eye I can see the guy setting up over the windowframe of his car door for another shot. Behind the banyan tree, Lindbergh’s grave between us, I can hear the guy swear, fifty yards away, a list of expletives to make a sailor blush. Movement in my peripheral vision as he raises the muzzle of the gun and starts to move parallel to our flight. He’s crouching behind a low stone wall, looking for one more opening.
A flash. Something nicks my cheek. Sparks off stone as he squeezes off several rounds, the gunman spraying and praying. They ricochet off tombstones like pinballs in a machine.
Off the grass, Kathy Merlow is hopping gingerly, barefooted, over the sharp lava pebbles on the path. We run through a fusillade of bullets, targets in a penny arcade, until finally we are covered by the shrubbery surrounding the church.
Behind the building we stop. She is down on one knee, wincing, picking a rock from the bottom of her bare foot.
‘Are you okay?’
She nods. Winded but not wounded.
‘Where’s your car?’
But before she can answer I put a finger to my lips. The crunch of gravel, footsteps at the front of the church. The slide and click of precision metal. Our man is reloaded. The wonders of modern methodical murder.
She points away from the back of the church to a fence overgrown with vegetation, a small gate leading away. She moves toward it, then looks for me to follow.
I shake my head, then point emphatically for her to go.
She waves me on.
I shake my head one more time.
Left with no choice, she disappears through the jungle of vines that cover the gate. I see it open. Her form disappears and the gate closes. I will draw cover. One woman is already dead because I pursued my questions.
I am alone now at the back of the church, my only companion a weathered wooden door. I suspect that this leads to the sacristy, the area behind the small wooden altar inside.
More footsteps. This time they come from the area around the side of the church. He is working his way through the graveyard toward where I am crouched.
I try the door. The knob turns, but I look at the rusty hinges and think twice about noise.
An engine starts in the distance. Kathy Merlow has reached her car. The footfalls on the gravel turn to a run. By my estimation he is no more than a dozen feet from the back corner of the church, coming fast. No time to think. Running, I reach for the door, and suddenly I’m inside, enveloped by the cool shadows of the church, the door closed behind me. I move quickly to a position behind the wooden altar, lost in its shadows.
Outside I can hear a vehicle moving on gravel, toward the church. More epithets from the man with the gun as he races for the gate in the fence.
I grab the only object in reach, a candle and its holder on a shelf behind the altar, and fling it hard against the interior wall of the church. It clunks, heavy metal on wood, and lands on the floor.
The footfalls outside suddenly stop. The sound of wheels as they veer in gravel, turning away from the church. The acceleration of the engine, and Kathy Merlow’s car is gone, the growl of its engine receding down some unseen road.
Hesitation. The noise from inside the church has cost the killer his quarry. And now he looks for other game.
On the door, behind me, there is a hook for a lock, halfway up.
Quickly I move, in a whisper of sound I slip the hook through the eye in the door, and before I can move back to the altar someone grips the knob from the outside and jerks. The door rattles in its frame but does not open. I am pressed against the wall next to it, the hook jiggling in the eye. I stop breathing. Another tug. Several seconds pass. I can visualize an ear to the wood of the door, an eye to the keyhole, then finally, after several seconds, receding footfalls.
As quickly as they started, they stop. Maybe he walked onto grass, I think, somewhere in the graveyard along the side of the church. Dead silence.
I am braced against the wall by the door, standing upright. I don’t know if it is the shadow of a tree limb on the window, but something moves.
Without a sound, I am back behind the altar, on hands and knees, the cold sweat of fear seeping through my shirt.
Through a crack in one of the boards I can see a form as it approaches the glass, backlit by the bright afternoon sun. One hand cupped to the window, shading, to peer inside. Hair that bristles in the sunlight, close-cropped, the face of the courier who delivered the deadly bomb to Marcie Reed.
I pull away from the crack in the boards and press my back to the altar. I am stone-still. Seconds pass without a sound, my breathing almost stopped, my head pounding from lack of oxygen, rivulets of sweat making their way down the sides of my face drip onto the floor. Time passes, an eternity. I lose track, unwilling to move for fear of casting a shadow on a distant wall.
My eye back to the crack in the boards. The figure at the window is gone.
I wait, look at my watch. Several minutes pass. I’m afraid to move. I listen for the sound of his car, tires grinding gravel. But there is nothing.
I could go the way of Kathy Merlow, the gate through the overgrown fence behind the church. But my car is in the lot out front. Then it settles on me. He’s waiting. If he’s followed me, he knows my car. Sooner or later…
Then I hear them. Footfalls again. This time at the front of the church, from gravel, to the wooden porch, a hand on the doorknob, and it opens. A shaft of bright sunlight. I press my back harder against the altar. Hard heels on the rough wooden floor, quick steps coming this way. With each I count the seconds left of my life. I think of Sarah. Life as an orphan. Bitter recriminations. I should not have come and left my daughter to pay the price. The irresponsible things parents do. What I would give for one more hug before I leave her…
A long shadow approaching, growing shorter on the wall. In this instant of blind panic, my mind reaches for an out-of-body experience, floating somewhere over this scene, above this altar of death.
‘May I ask what you’re doing?’
From the corner of my eye, a head of dark hair peers at me over the edge of wood that is the corner of the altar. A lean face, stern in its bearing, middle aged, a touch of gray at the temples, the face of peace, framed in black and white, a broad clerical collar.
‘What are you doing back here?’ he says.
‘Oh, God!’ I grab my chest, gasping for air.
‘Are you all right?’ The minister looks at me, suddenly solicitous, one of his flock with a coronary.
I’m hyperventilating, making up for life’s deficit of lost breath.
‘Fine,’ I tell him. ‘I’m fine.’ My looks must convey otherwise. He’s around the altar, helping me to my feet, propping me against the altar.
‘Do you need a doctor?’
‘No, no. Just give me a second.’
Sweat running down my face, my knees trembling. He plies me for my story, some testimony of what I’m doing here, something for a Sunday sermon. Man’s ultimate ‘come-to-Jesus meeting’ behind the altar.
‘It’s a long story,’ I tell him. I look at the windows, the ebbing sun, the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. I fight to find saliva in a dry mouth.
‘You’ll have to excuse me, but I was praying,’ I tell him.
‘That’s good,’ he says. ‘This is the right place. But you’re supposed to do it out there.’ He points toward the pews.
‘Somehow, back here,’ I tell him, ‘I felt closer to God.’
He considers this for a moment, then nods as if to say, ‘If it’s right by the Lord, it’s fine by me.’
‘Is there anyone outside?’ I ask.
He shakes his head.
‘I mean a car… in the p
arking lot?’
‘One driving out when I came in, and another, a small red sedan parked,’ he says. ‘I was coming to look for the owner. I have to lock up.’
‘You found him. Where did you come from?’ I ask.
‘I live across the road. I walk here each afternoon to lock the church and the gate out on the highway. Can I help you to your car?’
‘No. There’s no need.’ I’m around the altar, making my amends, telling him I am fine, my shirt dripping with perspiration, more dust and dirt on my pants than a coal miner.
He gives me a strange sort of look, a shake of the head, something designed to measure my soul, that says it’s been a long time since anyone in this little church has worked so hard at prayer.
On the road back to Hana my eyes are glued to the rearview mirror. If the courier is following me, he’s doing a good job, sans lights, taking the hairpin turns in what is now approaching darkness.
I’m past the turnout to the Seven Pools when a car comes from someplace off a dirt road, a lot of dust, and headlights on high beam, close enough that if I brake, he will be sitting in my trunk.
My first thoughts are ones of panic. I goose it and take a turn on skidding wheels.
Suddenly there’s the flutter of lights in my mirror, flashing red and blue, followed by a quick siren. Pangs of wondrous relief. I’m about to get a speeding ticket.
We stop. The widest spot on the road I can find, a private driveway. The cop gets out, blue uniform. In the beam of his spotlight it is all I can see. In this instant it hits me. A courier one moment. How hard would it be?
Then his flashlight is in my eyes. He lowers the beam for a brief instant and I can see him. One of the local boys, Hawaiian through and through.
‘Can I see your driver’s license?’
‘How fast was I going, officer?’
No response. I fumble in my wallet.
‘Take it out, please.’
I hand it to him.
He looks at the license, then flashes light in my eyes.
‘Mr. Madriani. Stay in your vehicle and follow me, please.’
With that he hands me my license and heads back to his car.
Undue Influence Page 21
