Mortal Fear

by Greg Iles

  Despite my fraying nerves, I force myself to let her cross the room to the right front window. She seals the transmitter of the phone with her palm and whispers, “You’re mad as hell. You’re losing it. You’ll kill me before you let me go out there.”

  “What?”

  She gives me a frantic look like, Come on, stupid! “When I slap the windowpane, that means he’s exposed. That’s your shot. Not until then, okay?”

  Before I can argue, Drewe grips the blind cord in her right hand and takes three steps backward, pulling the blind to its highest position and exposing six vertical feet of glass.

  “Can you see me, Edward?” she says into the phone.

  Berkmann doesn’t answer. He’s not about to reveal his position by admitting he can see her. What is he thinking at this moment? The only light in the office comes from the halogen desk lamp, but it falls across Drewe from the side, illuminating her white robe and still-damp hair with a diffuse yellow glow. Berkmann would probably like to smash the window and snatch her out through it, but our house is built off the ground, which would make that very tough to do. He also knows I’m armed.

  “Edward?” Drewe says again, her voice plaintive.

  Still nothing.

  The smell of gasoline is strong by the wall, but Berkmann hasn’t lighted it yet. My first instinct is to move to the other window, ten feet down the wall from where Drewe stands. That would give me the best field of fire. But if Berkmann is out front, he knows that too.

  “Where is Harper?” he asks suddenly.

  I whirl toward the EROS computer, my finger on the trigger. I’d forgotten that the only way I’ll hear his voice now is through the answering machine across the room.

  Drewe has put a hand on the window frame to steady herself. She’s been acting with so much assurance that I assumed she was as confident as she looked. But she’s far from it. In fact, now that Berkmann has answered, she seems too flustered to respond.

  As I watch her floundering, the scenario she sketched out comes back to me. Pressing my chest flat against the wall between the windows, I extend my right arm, edge along the wall, and press the barrel of my .38 against her left temple.

  “You see him now?” she asks, her voice full of genuine shock.

  “You’re going to die for that, Harper.”

  Berkmann is definitely in front of the house.

  “That’s not a good way to start this negotiation, Edward,” Drewe says.

  “I’m not negotiating.”

  “This talk, then. That synthesized voice was so sterile. Not like this. Your real voice is much more intriguing.”

  “Shut up, damn you!” I yell, supplying what seems like my appropriate line.

  “I’m going to burn you alive,” Berkmann says coldly.

  “FUCK YOU!” I close my eyes and try to picture the scene outside. Drewe’s Acura is parked broadside to the house, about twenty yards from the window. The Explorer is ten yards closer to the house, but farther to the left than the Acura.

  “Harper won’t hurt me, Edward,” Drewe says. “He doesn’t have the guts. Just like he didn’t have the guts to tell me about Erin.”

  “Why don’t you try walking out then!” I scream.

  “I don’t have to,” she says in a strange voice. “Edward’s going to get me out.” She turns into the barrel of the .38 and gives me a look that could freeze mercury. “Would you really shoot me, Harper? Let’s see if you will.”

  She looks back into the darkening yard and says, “You know what would kill him, Edward?”

  “What?”

  “If I told him the truth about sex with him.”

  “Tell him.”

  “Shut up, goddamn it!”

  “I’ve never had an orgasm with Harper inside me. Not in three years of marriage and a year of sex before that. Of course he thinks I have. Sad, isn’t it?”

  “That will soon change.”

  Berkmann’s voice sounds different somehow. More strained.

  “I honestly can’t believe Erin enjoyed sex with him,” Drewe goes on. “Because she knew about sex, I can tell you. You wouldn’t believe some things she did.”

  Berkmann says nothing.

  My gun arm is tingling the way it did twenty years ago, when I reached into the fort to pull Miles out. I sense Berkmann aiming at my hand the way I sensed that rattlesnake. It would be a risky shot for him, firing through glass so near to Drewe’s head. But he might try it with a tranquilizer dart. I take a quick step backward, pulling the .38 behind the frame of the window.

  “What kinds of things?” Berkmann asks suddenly.

  Drewe glances at me. “I saw her get out of a DUI ticket by making a highway patrolman . . . you know, in his pants. I mean it. She didn’t even take off her clothes. His either. It was sort of like a slow dance on the side of the road. Erin didn’t care. To her sex was like breathing.”

  “And to you?”

  “I know how I want it to be. I want it to be . . . transcendent. Am I wrong to want that?”

  “No.”

  “The few times I’ve ever managed to get . . . aroused enough, Harper’s already finished. Do you know how to touch, Edward? Where to touch?”

  “I know places you don’t know you have.”

  “You slut!” I scream. “Hang up!”

  “Tell him what you’ll do if I hang up, Edward.”

  “I’ll light that gasoline, Harper. And when you come running out, I’ll shoot you in the pelvis. I have the deputy’s gun, and I’m an excellent shot. I have Officer Mayeux’s gun too, in case you’re wondering.”

  I grit my teeth and close my eyes. I can’t see Mayeux giving up his gun while alive. This isn’t working. Drewe thinks she’s stalling, but Berkmann isn’t sitting still. Darting to my desk, I scrawl a message on a legal pad with black Magic Marker. Then I return to the wall and hold it up where Drewe can see it by looking slightly to the left.

  HE’S PLAYING YOU! TRICKING US! YOU’VE GOT TO TURN IT AROUND! GET ME A SHOT!

  In the crackling silence, Drewe stares at me like a little girl who has walked out onto a high-diving board and lost the nerve even to walk back to the ladder. As I watch, she seems to waver on her feet. Yet the moment I move toward her, she snaps erect and holds up a hand to stop me.

  “I’ve thought a lot about your transplant work,” she says. “I’m the one who first figured out what you were doing. I never thought it was really possible, though.” She waits in vain for an answer. “It’s not possible, is it? That’s why you gave up?”

  Silence. Then, “It’s not only possible, it’s simple. The problem is the illegality, the inconvenience of obtaining donors and recipients for testing.”

  I nod encouragement to Drewe. She’s found the right button to push.

  “You can really keep someone youthful past the normal aging curve?”

  “Of course.”

  “You could keep me young?”

  “I’m going to, Drewe. When the women you went to school with are fighting menopause and osteoporosis, you’ll be skiing in Saint Moritz, making love as long and as often as a thirty-year-old.”

  “But why me?”

  “I’ve seen my mistake, Drewe. What’s the point of immortality without someone to share it with? The only real immortality is genetic anyway, at least for now. You shall bear my children. I could say I’ve chosen you, but this was all written long ago, by fate. When I realized how Harper had tricked me with Erin, and that you were the one I wanted, I thought of harvesting Erin’s pineal for you. There was a twenty percent chance that she would be a perfect tissue match, and at least it would have given her death some meaning. But I didn’t. I knew you probably hadn’t reached the stage where you could see the rightness of it.”

  “You’re right. Thank you for not doing that.”

  “There are always other sources. But first the children. Then more research. In forty years, who knows what might be possible? All that I have is yours, Drewe. My wealth and my talents.” Berkma
nn pauses briefly, but when he speaks again there is new urgency in his voice. “I want you to walk outside now, Drewe. Harper will not shoot. You must believe me.”

  “I don’t know what he’ll do. He hates you for telling his secret. He said you wouldn’t light the gasoline, and he was right. What am I supposed to do?”

  “You must come now, Drewe, or I’ll be forced to . . . to take risks.”

  “Wait! Don’t do anything! Harper’s already scared to death!”

  Berkmann says nothing.

  “Edward?”

  Silence.

  She glances at me, her face pale. She’s lost him again, and she knows it. I glance down at my wrist, then remember I gave my watch to Drewe. It seems as though she’s been at the window forever, but help is still five to ten minutes away. I am about to yank Drewe out of the window when she reaches down and tugs at the belt of her robe, loosening it. With her left hand, she pulls aside the terry cloth, exposing her left breast.

  “Can you see me, Edward?” she asks, her voice like taut wire.

  Berkmann doesn’t respond. But he’s looking. I know it. Drewe knows it too. She cups the breast in her free hand, leans forward, and presses the nipple to the glass. “Edward?”

  Nothing.

  “No child has ever suckled at this breast.”

  Silence.

  “Do you want to do that, Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  She starts at the sudden reply. It’s almost as if Berkmann vanished before our eyes, then reappeared. “Would you brush my hair if I asked you to?” she asks, recovering quickly.

  “Yes.”

  “It needs brushing. I work so hard, I never have time to take care of it. Would you take care of it?”

  “Yes.”

  Berkmann’s voice sounds strangely constricted. Drewe waits, then says, “You lost your mother too young, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you never had a sister?”

  “No.”

  “Look at me, Edward.” Drewe lets the robe fall open, then flattens her hand like a starfish on the windowpane.

  “Time,” he says in a strangled voice. “No time. You’ve got to come out now. Please. HE WON’T SHOOT.”

  “I’ll come, Edward. But I don’t want Harper to die. However he may have betrayed me, he’s the father of my sister’s child. I would spare him for that alone.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “But you will do WHAT I SAY!” she proclaims in a voice so alien it sends a shiver through me. “BECAUSE I SAY SO. DO YOU HEAR ME, EDWARD?”

  A stunned silence. Then: “If you want to come out, why do you care about . . . him?”

  “I’m trying to resolve this, Edward. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”

  “Prove you don’t care about him.”

  “I will.”

  Drewe pulls away from the window, her chest coming up with a sticky sound, her nipples hard from the coolness of the glass. “Do you see me, Edward? I’m not pretending, like that brown-skinned Indian girl. I AM THE ONE.”

  The shock of Drewe’s nudity combined with her brazen voice trips something in my brain. This is it. If she’s ever going to bring Berkmann out, it’s now. I only hope she remembers to slap the glass.

  “Are you big now, Edward?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very big?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s only natural. You want to touch me, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You need to.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you see where?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what it’s like there?”

  A hiccup of silence. “I—”

  “It’s wet there, Edward. Burning.”

  “Please come out . . .”

  “Look, Edward. LOOK!”

  Shifting the phone from one hand to the other, Drewe lets the robe slip off her shoulders as casually as if she were stepping into the shower. A gasp of disbelief bursts from my lungs. I back far away from the wall, aiming the pistol at the crack of glass between the window frame and Drewe’s side, waiting for her signal.

  She shakes her hair into a fiery riot of copper and gold, then stands straight with her arms at her sides, as if to display every atom of her being in shameless pride. Her skin glows like veined marble. As when I saw Erin so many years ago, I cannot process the entirety of her nude image. I see her calves, the backs of her thighs, the small dimples above her rump, her shoulder blades—these are enough to hold my eye from its assigned task. Berkmann must be rooted to the ground.

  “Jesus Christ!” I hiss. “What are you doing?”

  “Edward?”

  “Yes . . .” A ragged whisper.

  Drewe moves her free hand around her hip, out of my sight. All I see is the muscle moving in her upper arm.

  “Help me, Edward. Show me your power.”

  With my gun arm quivering, I edge forward toward Drewe. I keep the .38 aimed just to the left of her hip, through the window, into the waiting dusk. As my pupils dilate I discern the silhouette of the Acura. It’s closer to the house than I remembered. Maybe thirty-five feet. My Explorer sits ten yards to the left of it, parked nose-in. The Acura is the natural vantage point for someone watching the window.

  But I see no one.

  In the near field of my vision, Drewe suddenly spreads her arms like wings and plants her bare feet apart. Her hands close into fists and her muscles go rigid, her body a hard quivering X in the lighted window. My heart thunders with fear and awe at the specter she has not created but is—woman revealed, the hidden unveiled, purity and carnality fused with power enough to stop the male heart.

  As I stare openmouthed, her right hand flattens against the window and begins rattling like a superheated kettle on a stove. I focus on the hand, then realize she’s trying to signal me with an arm incapacitated by terror. In the instant I look back through the window, Edward Berkmann rises above the roof line of the Acura, his enraptured face shining like an earthbound moon in the darkness.

  Time blurs, stops. We both stand transfixed, paralyzed by the realization that Drewe is everything he imagined in his messianic fantasies, and more.

  “Edwaarrrd!”

  Drewe’s scream jolts me back to myself. As I aim for Berkmann’s face, she hurls the cordless phone through the windowpane in an explosion of glittering glass. I shoulder her out of the way and open fire.

  My first shot is high and wild.

  The second punches a hole in the Acura’s door.

  Berkmann drops.

  Screaming like a lunatic, I fire two more rounds, then scoop up Drewe’s robe and throw my arm around her waist as she comes up off the floor. I try to pull her toward the door, but she won’t budge.

  “Did you hit him?” she asks, her eyes white and round.

  “I don’t think so!”

  “Get the light! Then shoot me!”

  After a stunned instant, I turn, steady the pistol, and blow the halogen lamp off my desk, throwing us into darkness.

  “Edwaarrrd!” she yells, her voice ringing across the yard.

  I fire my last bullet in her direction, and watch in horror as she flies backward like a GI taking a round in house-to-house fighting.

  The silence is absolute. Not even crickets cheep in this strange lacuna of time.

  Then Drewe is beside me again, naked in the dark. Lifting her robe toward her, I sense something like a horsefly beside my left ear and swat at it even as the tranquilizer dart thwacks into one of my guitars, filling the room with jangling noise.

  We hit the floor and crawl like alligators toward the office door. I feel a strange weight in the robe. It’s Drewe’s .25. I pause, raise the gun, fire two quick rounds through the intact front window, then feel my way to the door. When I look back, the bright amber message on the screen of the Gateway 2000 floats in the darkness like a tablet of fire brought from a mountaintop. Just as it should.

  “What did you do
?” Berkmann asks, his voice a fusion of fear and fury.

  Drewe’s hand grips my shoulder like a claw.

  “It’s the answering machine!” I whisper, at the same time noticing the faint glow of the EROS screen to my right. While Drewe ties on her robe, I raise the .25 and fire through the EROS monitor, shorting it out with a shower of sparks. Now the Gateway screen is the only light.

  Holding the hot pistol to my chest, I switch off the hall light, then slide Drewe around in front of me. “Ready?”

  She nods.

  The second I jerk open the door she scrambles up the hallway toward the kitchen, but I force myself to walk, backward, keeping the .25 pointed at the front door in case Berkmann comes through it. When I reach the kitchen, I turn and run to the washroom where Drewe waits. The smell of gasoline is strong here too. Drewe leans into me, clutching my shirt like a child.

  “Maybe we should stay here,” she says in a meek voice.

  “We can’t.” I hug her tightly. Her whole body is shaking, as though the bravura performance at the window drained every bit of courage out of her.

  With the .25 I part the curtains that cover the small window in the back door. The yard looks blue-black in the moonlight. The long tin roof of the toolshed gleams, beckoning. My eyes move lower. There is a man lying flat on his back just outside the door. His eyes are closed, and there is a screwdriver handle sticking out of his right upper chest. I let the curtain fall closed.

  “Drewe, there’s a man on the ground outside. It’s Detective Mayeux from New Orleans. He’s probably dead, but we only heard one shot. He could be alive.”

  “I’ll get my bag,” she says automatically, as though someone had just passed out in church.

  I squeeze her arm. “We can’t help him. I’m telling you so you’ll step over him.”

  She blinks rapidly.

  “When I open this door, we’re going to run straight back to the cotton field and keep going. Okay?”

  She nods once.

  Gripping the .25, I unbolt the door, then freeze as a high brittle plea crosses the space between us. “Don’t let him get close to me, Harper.”

  “I won’t.”

  Her fingernails dig into my arm, causing me to twist sideways. “If he hits you with a dart, and you can’t see him anywhere . . . shoot me.”