by Dana Cameron
“I’m not going out there again!” Billy screamed as he heaved the anchor out onto the cobbles above the high-water line. He dumped the diving gear on the beach, then, straining a little, set a heavy bag next to it. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Right,” Markham shouted. Then he murmured into my ear, his breath warm, “Time to go, Billy-boy.”
The pistol that had been boring into my side swung away just long enough to pump three slugs into Billy’s chest. Blood and neoprene spattered across the bow of the boat and on the beach cobbles below, only to be washed away almost immediately by the driving rain, first leaving dark rivulets, then suddenly, nothing. Instinctively I turned away in horror but was left with an indelible image of what remained behind on the cobbles, what the rain couldn’t wash away.
The shock that registered on Billy’s face was only at being outthought; as he clutched dumbly at himself, he dropped the pistol he had concealed in the boat with the obvious intention of double-crossing Markham.
Until that point I don’t think I really, truly understood what could happen. In spite of the fact that I’d tried to prepare myself for anything, I simply hadn’t believed what I was involved in. The violence I’d just witnessed was so quick, so final, that I was stunned by it.
“All that cheap booze was bound to dull the reflexes, Billy,” Tony clucked.
It was only then that it truly hit home for me: Tony Markham was out of his mind.
He turned to me, raising his voice to be better heard. “Now, Dr. Fielding, if you wouldn’t mind picking up that bag, I believe we’ll just leave Mr. Griggs to nature. We need to get to shelter, as the tide is coming in unusually high and we have a few details to discuss. The sack, if you’d be so kind.”
Shaking, I picked up the bag, not because I was that eager to get close to Billy, dead or not, but because of the gun that was pointing at me. Markham retrieved Billy’s weapon. He paused to nudge Billy Griggs with his toe and Billy slumped over, his face smacking sickeningly against the stones. The tide was just beginning to lap at the feet of the newly made corpse.
Chapter 27
I FELT MYSELF GROW QUITE CALM. MY VIOLENT TREMBLING stopped. With surreal detachment I had watched Markham stand next to me and murder Billy Griggs. I coolly realized that whatever opportunity I had of escaping while the other two bickered had evaporated too quickly for me to exploit. I would die in the storm near the ruins of Greycliff, far away from Brian.
The inevitability of death cleared my mind, which seemed to speed up in relation to my surroundings. With universal comprehension, I observed the progress of the storm, Tony’s heightened color as he climbed back up the slippery stairs next to me, and the gun that never left my side. I understood precisely how they all interrelated, what actions would beget which reactions.
Unfortunately with this comprehension came a resignation and a disconnection from my own body that made survival seem very unlikely. The instinct for self-preservation had fled, and I was operating on pure intellectual energy rather than by instinct, which might have saved me.
With this detachment, I struggled up the lawn through the hammering rain, awkwardly lugging the potato sack–sized bag partially filled with gold. Tony led me back to the old barn, and dutifully I remarked that the rain was now driving horizontally through the spaces in the barn’s walls, not improving my shivering, drenched state.
Markham switched on a powerful lantern flashlight and set it on an overturned bucket. “No need to fumble in the dark and wet. You showed some genuine sangfroid down there, my dear, most exemplary. Now what are we going to do?”
I dumped the bag down. With difficulty, I found my larynx and tried to recall how to make that organ shape meaningful aural symbols. “I presume you are going to shoot me, though it escapes me why you didn’t just do it down on the beach with Billy.” I was pleased my preternatural calm hadn’t robbed me of words: I knew I was going to die and I didn’t want to gibber.
Tony shook his head despairingly. “How unimaginative of you.” He considered the matter for a moment. “At this point you are the only one who has any inkling that I am connected with anyone’s death. Or any dubious treasure hunting, for that matter. If you choose not to say anything, no one will ever know a thing. Why not fall in with me? Take half of the wreck treasure as an earnest.”
I wasn’t certain whether he was toying with me or not. There was only the hope that I could parlay this into a chance to get away. The thing was to keep his attention.
“I don’t think I believe you.”
Tony nodded. “Fair enough. But there’s no reason to disbelieve me—why would I offer otherwise? It would save me further…trouble if you’d agree.” He paused, then added meaningfully. “You can have everything you ever wanted. All for the price of saying nothing about my hand in the demise of two people who have caused incalculable grief in your life.”
For a split second I actually saw the logic in what he was saying; he seemed to understand so well what I was going through. I still said nothing, waiting for Tony to give me a hint as to his real intentions.
“All you need is the imagination to see beyond your dull little life and take what you really want. It’s all about power, Emma.” Tony looked me in the eye. “I wanted it once myself until I got it, and realized how meaningless it all was. Even the control you get over people, letting them know that their futures are in your hands, and watching them agonize as they decide whether to sell their souls to you, pales after a while. It gets boring.”
I tried to look indecisive, but probably didn’t manage it. “I don’t know…”
“I can see your future and I can tell you how very unsatisfying it really is,” he insisted. “When you finally get to the top, you’re all alone, and power’s no fun unless you’re constantly trying to defend it. And the ivory tower is simply too small a battlefield. I saw that and realized even if I waited for Kellerman to finally retire, I’d have nothing. I could entomb myself in boredom or I could take an opportunity that fate offered.”
I couldn’t think clearly: Would he believe me if I said yes? He knows me too well. Back in the bar, hell, back in the storage room, I might have bought every word.
“Why toil in obscurity when it won’t be what you want in the end?” he asked reasonably. “Learn from my mistakes. Let me save you the effort of finding out for yourself.”
There was an honesty to his words that I found intriguing, but the idea was ludicrous. And finally I was too tired to play along; the words were out before I could reconsider. “Sorry, I can’t.” I shrugged helplessly, watching the gun.
“Of course. You wouldn’t want anything you didn’t earn yourself.” Tony seemed to be talking to himself or the damp, musty air in the barn.
Something about his tone pushed me past prudence. “I don’t want anything from you Tony!” I snapped. “I don’t need your help.”
“No, you don’t need help from anyone, do you?” Tony conceded reluctantly, then changed the topic. “You know, long ago, when we went out for our little drink, I was surprised to learn that you could believe that no one would know about the family connection between you and Oscar Fielding. I’m sure I couldn’t produce anyone who hadn’t heard of his work.”
I was confused. “What about Oscar? What the hell are you talking about?”
“How humiliating for him, to have to put himself forward on your behalf in graduate school,” Tony mused. “And I’m sure that it would have looked bad if Oscar’s granddaughter and protégée wasn’t capable of getting a position on her own. Even after he foisted you off on Coolidge, his reputation was at work—”
“Foisted?” I interrupted angrily. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! And you forget, Oscar was gone long before I got the job at Caldwell!”
“I know, Emma. But doesn’t that make it all the more macabre?” Tony reproved. “I mean, really, the poor man was dead, and he was still dragging you along on his coattails—”
“Shut up! You don’
t know what you’re talking about!” It was a lie.
“I’m sorry, that’s right, you don’t need help from anyone, do you? You can do it all on your own. The fact that Pauline—”
“Don’t you dare say her name!” It only came out in a whisper, though. My throat was too tight. “Just stop it!”
“—was so worried about you, felt she had to buy you a permanent place in the college, is just touching. Very nice for you, I’m sure. And you know, when Chairman Kellerman asked my advice about the Westlake chair, I reluctantly said yes. I was curious to see how anyone who had caused a friend’s death—however inadvertently, I’m sure—would decide if she should also profit by it—”
My mind reeled. “Stop it! Stop it! That’s disgusting!”
“Isn’t it though?” Tony agreed severely. “And on top of that, you don’t even have the guts to go after her killer—”
“He was dead before I—” I stammered. I couldn’t breathe, my chest felt like it had a chain and padlock around it. “I mean, I couldn’t—”
“I really shouldn’t have had to kill Grahame Tichnor, should I? Once again, you let someone else do your work for you. How does that feel, I wonder, to be so in debt with no way of paying it all back? Must feel a little like drowning, I should think.”
Tony let me think about that for a minute. How could he know all this? He had to be wrong—but he spoke with too much authority, he knew too much. It did feel just like drowning, I couldn’t catch a breath, I couldn’t think; I could only wait for him to speak again.
“But, of course, you don’t need help from anybody, do you?” he asked scornfully. “I don’t know how you can cope with the knowledge of yourself. I withdraw my offer—I was a fool to imagine that I should do anything for you too—”
There it was—the lifeline! Something inside me clicked—just the way it did that day on the site when all the data just snapped into place. Tony Markham might be smart enough to imagine the fears that drove me, even enough to play on them, but he didn’t know anything of real truth at all. Much as I’d admired him, he didn’t know squat. I laughed out loud and it was like breathing fresh air after being locked up in a tomb—Antigone with a reprieve. I suddenly heard the rain again and not just Tony’s words.
And for the first time that afternoon, he looked disconcerted.
“Jesus, Tony, that was good! It was just like you’d been inside my head for the past ten years, playing me like a fiddle! And you were so close…” I stopped to catch my breath. “So close. Damn, you nearly had me.” I took another, steadying breath—if I hadn’t been so exhausted, I would have laughed again, but the fact that I could feel the cold air again made that inconsequential. “I almost asked you how you could know. But you know, the last thing you should have done was compare yourself to Oscar and Pauline.”
A look of relief flickered over his face. “Stupid of me. I must curb this urge of mine to overdo the dramatic simply for the sake of it. Of course, it doesn’t actually change things much, does it, Emma?” Tony smiled and nodded his head meaningfully at the pistol, which had never lowered during our exchange.
That sobered me. I’d won the battle but lost the war. “How do you think you’ll get away with shooting me? You can’t—” I tried weakly.
“But everyone knows how irrational you’ve been lately, jumping at shadows at the department, your insane accusations of me,” Tony chided. “Yelling at poor Rick in the quad. Running away from dolls. Nothing easier. You called me in hysterics, I agreed to meet you—I was worried about you. But when you drew your gun, I attempted to wrestle it away from you, and shot you quite by accident. I, of course, was horrified to find out that it was the same one with which you killed your old nemesis, Billy Griggs. Who kindly provided me with it, by the way—stolen, of course.”
He seemed to consider the scenario for a moment. “I don’t think I even need to wing myself. If I wrap your…regrettably…lifeless hand around the stock and fire into the barn, my story would ring true enough.”
His calculations chilled me, and I had no doubt that he could carry it off. I had one more question, however. “Why, Tony? When you’ve got everything anyone could want? Why get tangled up in robbing a site? You don’t need the money, prestige, anything—”
“I told you before, it’s not enough,” he interrupted impatiently, then sighed. “This little lark, the wreck, just came along in time to rescue me from superlative boredom. A bit of amusing naughtiness, well away from my professional spheres, and I thought, away from everyone else’s too. I don’t even know whether it was even illegal according to Maine’s historic preservation laws—”
“It is, actually,” I muttered.
“—and then things took a rather exciting turn when Tichnor’s stupidity elevated this little adventure to something else altogether.”
Now his eyes blazed with excitement. “I’m tremendously indebted to Grahame, actually, I’ll always remember him fondly. This gives me a whole new outlook on life. I don’t suppose that you might…” He looked at me hopefully, but now I could tell that he was ridiculing me.
I tried again, desperately, to provoke him. “Just how insane are you, Tony? The best thing for you to do is put the gun down—”
“Put the gun down?” Markham laughed. “I’m not that insane. Well, Emma, finally your desperation bores me. A shame, up till now, it’s been…fun.”
The bonhomie faded from his face, and he surveyed the situation for a moment. “Get up, my dear,” he said finally. “I think the entry wound should be under the chin, close, but not too close to the skin. It needs to look like we were struggling, you see. Head wounds are notoriously dicey, but even if you don’t die immediately, this angle will certainly still your tongue.”
I felt the metal radiating coldness so close to my face, and felt the chill slink into every part of me that was not already frozen.
“Don’t,” I whispered hoarsely. “Please.”
But Tony couldn’t hear me, he was so focused. He paused for a long moment, considering. “I wonder what it will feel like this time. Tichnor was so indirect and Griggs was self-defense. This is something else entirely…” Tony’s words trailed off as he lost himself in the experience.
He caressed my cheek with the end of the pistol, as another blast of wind shook the old shed to its beams. I prepared myself for the shot, wondering if I would live long enough to feel the pain of it. The calm that enveloped me was now quite complete, the kindly numbness that shocks a creature into immobility before inevitable death.
Chapter 28
THE INTIMACY OF THE MOMENT INSIDE THE BARN WAS broken by a dissonant, persistent blare of a car’s horn breaking through the storm. Tony started from his concentration, and swore. “That stupid tart Amy will have the whole county down on us. Something’s wrong, even she wouldn’t make that racket.” He grabbed me by the arm and shoved me out before him into the rain. “And whatever will I tell her about her poor Billy?”
A set of headlights accompanied the honking as a truck moved down the driveway. Unfortunately Tony recognized the driver a split second before I did, and the pistol swung up again.
“Jesus Christ, Neal! No!”
Awareness came to me too late, my warning too feeble against the fury of the storm. Two quick shots shattered the windshield and I could see Neal thrown back against the seat, then slump forward over the steering wheel. The truck slammed into the side of the burned-out house, and rested there motionless, the headlights illuminating the torrents of rain and low, dark clouds.
Even as Tony squeezed off the second round, I slammed into him, knocking us both into the mud. I managed to scramble away, kicking blindly at Tony as he grabbed for me. My foot connected with something solid and I heard a grunt behind me as I struggled to my feet.
I skidded down the slope, barely able to believe that I had freed myself, slipping in the mud and tripping over wind-tossed debris as I tried to avoid the tarps that marked the dangerous, still-open pits. With my hair plas
tered against my face and heavy raindrops slamming down unremittingly, it was more through memory than by sight that I located the stairs down to the cobble beach. I had nowhere to go but down.
With a sudden, gut-wrenching jerk, I found my progress violently arrested at the top of the stairs. My heart stopped beating and a scream tore from my throat, only to be sucked away by the wind. I whirled around and found nothing more sinister than my slicker caught on the rickety iron post that was all that was left of the staircase’s railing. I impatiently ripped the coat loose, but in all that haste the momentum of the motion pitched me off the stairs and down onto the beach.
I fell precisely as I should not have, with one arm flung out ahead of me to break my fall. My full weight crushed the delicate bones in my left wrist against the anvil of the beach cobbles, the sound like walnuts being cracked in a vise. I completed the somersault by tumbling over onto my back, my full weight momentarily resting only on that broken hand. Landing forced the breath from my lungs at the same moment the excruciating pain in my wrist revealed itself and my head smashed against the wet stones.
The pain was so overwhelming that for a moment, the only comfort I had was that I was spared the trouble of trying to isolate the worst of it. Freezing water soaked every stitch of clothing that wasn’t already wet and raced over the collar of my slicker, snaking its way down an icy path along my spine like a surprise attack. I lay there for a moment, the rain pelting me in the face, unable to believe the encyclopedia of physical anguish currently revealing itself to me. At the same time I was dimly aware that I needed to move before worse things came to pass.
I almost regretted that I wasn’t going to pass out when I tried to sit up. My throbbing head was not improved by uncontrollably chattering teeth, and my broken wrist was an arc-lamp of brilliant agony. I didn’t dare imagine what the bruises on my back would look like. No doctor could prescribe a compress colder or heavier than my own clothing at this particular moment, I thought giddily as I struggled against the waves to stand up.
