Sorrow's Crown

by Tom Piccirilli

  I shouted, but in a few seconds the green power light dimmed and the phone went dead in my hand. I tossed it in the back seat and jammed the accelerator, pressing seventy along the snaking road and waiting for FBI helicopters to start swooping in low. The woman clapped and giggled some more.

  When we passed the two rearing stone lions at the entrance to Harnes' private road, she nearly jumped out of her seat and started wailing and slapping me in the arm. I pulled over, unsure of what to do. If I let her out and anybody else found her in the state she was in, dressed like a hospital patient, I suspected they'd only toss her back in. Besides, showing up with her might be the trick I needed to pull. She scrabbled at the door like a dog scratching to be let out. I spoke plainly and calmly, and though my words meant nothing to her, I hoped my tone would get through.

  She kept hitting me in the arm and keening loudly.

  I took firm hold of her shoulders and said, "You have to trust me. I need your help. I don't work for Harnes the way those doctors do. I'm your friend, and we're going to get away from him." I took my hands away, hoping she wouldn't leap for the woods. "But he has my grandmother, and only you can help me get her away from him. From him and Jocelyn."

  She quieted and looked straight ahead. I waited. Her face drew in on itself and became composed, revealing almost nothing. The corners of her eyes were filled with cracks from years of squinting in fury. She gestured for me to proceed, and despite the skittering shadows, she now appeared almost anxious to see him. She let loose with a string of sounds and folded her hands in her lap. I drove on.

  The stately electric gate stood shut, and that arcing iron name HARNES above seemed an extension of the man, looming over me. The stone wall surrounding the mansion was too high to climb, even if I managed to belly the car through the dense trees and climb onto the roof. I got out and could hear the buzzing of the amperage in the intricate ironwork. The metal wasn't that thick, more stylish than practical. I hoped. I gazed at the computerized connecting lock and the stone post in which it had been set.

  He had my grandmother.

  I got in the car and backed it up to the mouth of the private road. I'd heard you couldn't get electrocuted in your car because the tires would ground you. It was the kind of Americana I didn't trust, but it would have to do in a clinch. I continued in reverse down the road for a couple hundred yards more. I revved the engine and enjoyed the brusque howl and shriek coming from it.

  "Can you say ‘fuck it'?" I asked.

  She continued to simply stare ahead. Sweat trickled down my neck and my bruises and lumps burned. I reached over and put her seat belt on her.

  Finally she got hold of my meaning and said, with a tentative but laughing lilt, "Fuckit."

  "I'm glad you agree."

  I floored the gas.

  Trees streamed by in a rushing black wash as we hurtled forward. I threw on the high beams and they punctured the night like twin glittering blades. After crashing through the lightweight semaphore arm I felt used to smashing things. Even at this speed the car glided. Duke had done a good job the second time around. The gate loomed and we accelerated straight for it. Katie wasn't going to be thrilled with me. I gripped the steering wheel hard, and then the woman covered her face and let out a tiny but fierce scream. Or maybe it was me.

  When we hit, the headlights exploded, the grille wrenched wildly, and steam burst from the engine, but despite the gate's screeching lightning hum and burst of red sparks, we didn't fry. The gate tipped on top of us and crumpled part of the roof. She screamed but began clapping again, that giggle such a peculiar underscoring to the sound of tearing metal. The safety-glass windshield cracked and crimped inwards at the driver's corner but didn't shatter.

  The car sputtered feebly as the mansion emerged in the moist moonlight. Hundreds of panes of glass like menacing eyes marked my—our—return. The woman said something in a hushed mixture of awe, fear, and anger. I looked at her and she repeated it, and again and once more. I nodded. Whatever she was saying, I felt exactly the same way. We pulled up to the house behind the limousine, and I motioned for her to stay in the car. She tucked her chin to her chest and gazed at the front door. I hoped to Christ that Lowell had understood me through the static. I took off my watch and noted the second hand, and showed her that I wanted her to come inside in ten minutes. She looked at me as if I were insane.

  The dying chauffeur sat in the limo, slumped back in his seat, coughing into a bloody, phlegm-flecked handkerchief. He didn't even have the strength to go to his room. His heavy, wet wheeze made it sound like he was slowly being crushed under a board with rocks on top of it, and he only followed me with his eyes because he couldn't turn his head anymore. I wondered if Harnes had actually been poisoning him with a mixture of household products, too.

  The chauffeur said, "What the hell was that noise?”

  “Me," I told him. "Come knocking. Cops will be here soon. Hold on."

  "What are they headed here for? Nothing they can do. He won't hurt your grandma. He hates her, but he won't hurt her. That's what he likes."

  "Why aren't you in a hospital?"

  He went into a coughing fit and spasms coiled him in his seat. I heard something break away deep inside his chest. "No medical."

  In the hard-boiled novels Anna read, the protagonist would have a host of choices to make: he might throw himself through the front window; roll on the floor in perfect tune with the room, some psychic sense aiming his gun for him; or he might climb and enter through a skylight left carelessly open, and then swing down into a plush room where a blond had moments earlier finished showering and stood naked with a thin smile at his entrance; or he might just grab the dying chauffeur and hurl him through the window and follow with a roar in the acrid air.

  I tried the door, opened it, and walked inside.

  ~ * ~

  In the library, my tape recorder lay on the table, turned off, the cassette beside it.

  Anna sat with Theodore Harnes by the window where they'd spent the night talking during the party. Jocelyn stood beside them, looking at me, waiting expectantly. I couldn't tell what kind of charge was already in the room, but we all knew a conclusion of some sort was at hand.

  My grandmother appeared extremely tired and weak. Her cheeks were ashen and she rubbed her wrists together to heat her hands. A full glass of wine rested beside the tape recorder, and I realized she'd never be able to look at that chateau the same way again, much less drink it after hearing of Harnes' exploits in poisoning women.

  I would have to lead the dragon from its lair.

  There wasn't much light in the library, and gloom enwrapped us all. Jocelyn's incredibly long, intensely black hair seemed to draw her further into darkness, like a suitor wanting to dance. A phone rang distantly, and I realized it had been ringing for some time. That would be Brent calling to report the escape from Panecraft. It was a nearly plaintive sound in the dim recesses of the house, the night soaking inside.

  Jocelyn said, "Leave."

  "Boy, you have got to be kidding."

  I walked past her and moved to Anna, who reached for my hand. Jesus, her fingers were freezing. Had she sipped any of the wine? A nervous gurgle boiled in my throat, but she grinned and softly said, "My, I hadn't realized how the time had galloped away, dear." She glanced at Harnes and tipped her head as if to thank him for such a lovely day. "Well, Theodore, we really must be going now. I have so much to do at home. The place is an absolute shambles."

  "What with all the dusting," I said. "And cleaning out the rain gutters."

  The nondescript persona of Theodore Harnes slid against me once more, a pressure without a living force wallowing within his body's residence. I thought if I looked closely enough I could spot the seams where they'd stuffed him full of sawdust and cotton.

  He said, "I'm afraid I cannot allow that just yet."

  Anna's hand didn't warm quickly enough in mine. We both released long sighs. I tried to get into Harnes' thoughts for a minute but s
till nothing clarified. He was a man who enjoyed a standoff and needed an audience. He used people at his whim, and when finished he either murdered or imprisoned them. His methods took months or years to play out. He delighted in watching the plight of his prey.

  Anna said, "Theodore, you are a stately sophisticate, a brilliant industrialist, and a terrifyingly refined psychopath.”

  “Yes," he responded.

  Jocelyn inched forward and so did I. Although she stood completely stationary, her lithe form still seemed to be floating around me, on the air and threading through my hands. In another minute we were going to be into it and somehow, without her ever having done anything remotely threatening, she had become one of the very few people I'd met who actually frightened me.

  My grandmother, smiling now, allowed the beginning of that cackle to escape her once more. She let out fifty years of anger, scorn, contempt, and heartache for her lost bridesmaid and also herself, and she never raised her voice. Her chilled hand slid on top of his, and the iciness startled him. She patted him with a disdain that actually brushed Harnes back in his chair.

  She said, "For Diane, and Crummler, and all your other victims, but more so for myself, I will do everything in my power to see that you not only pay for your heinous crimes, but that you suffer for them, and suffer dreadfully."

  I sighed even louder. Anna shouldn't be threatening a wealthy, psychotic killer during our attempted getaway.

  Jocelyn glided forward and I moved to meet her.

  Nick Crummler stepped into the room.

  I whispered, "Oh shit."

  He appeared to have spent the last several days in the woods, perhaps around the Hames estate, or hiding in the back fields of the hospital, or somewhere in the cemetery where he could seek occasional shelter inside his brother's shack.

  "Hello," he said.

  Harnes stood and approached him. "Hello, Nicodemus.”

  “No need to get up on my account."

  "You shouldn't have returned."

  "You shouldn't have gone after my brother."

  "He murdered my son."

  "No, he didn't."

  Nick had proven to be the wild card, somehow a part of all that had transpired, and yet not really of it. He remained too far outside the rest of us. He'd saved my life but I didn't know what that might mean anymore. Jocelyn drifted back into a darkened comer of the room. I quickly checked around. There wasn't much to grab, not even a bottle of wine, a letter opener, nothing.

  "What are you doing here, Nick?" Anna asked.

  My grandmother had been right: sometimes all you had to do was ask. I suddenly realized with an awful clarity that no one, so far, whom I'd spoken with since Teddy's murder, had actually lied to me.

  "I had an affair with his wife, Marie, a long time ago," Nick said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving a hardened piece of cheese. He swallowed it in one bite and proceeded to look so relaxed and untroubled in Harnes' home that I was beginning to feel extremely uneasy.

  "And you, I presume," Anna said. "Are Teddy's biological father?"

  He grimaced and shook his head. "Hell, no. Vasectomy when I was twelve. There are places that still do that to orphans." He went through his pockets, found the stub of a cigarette, and stuck it in his mouth. "I used to work for him. I was his chauffeur once upon a time, back when I wasn't much more than a kid." When he couldn't find any matches he dropped the butt back in his coat. “By the way, you need a new driver. The one outside is dead."

  Jocelyn descended through the ink trails of the room and reappeared like a dark angel landing. I spun toward her and we met face-to-face, as if about to kiss. She pressed a silver .32 she'd probably bought from Oscar Kinion hard above my heart as I looked deeply at the dragon that Crummler had seen murdering a boy in his cemetery.

  "You'd do anything to protect him, wouldn't you?" I asked. "But you don't have his light touch or his patience. He enjoys the slow drag and you like the quick finish. That's why you had Shanks kill Brian Frost. What are you after?"

  "You ordered Freddy to do such a thing?" Harnes asked.

  "Yes," she answered.

  Nobody seemed too concerned about the gun jammed into my chest except me.

  Harms' brows drew together in a scowl of disappointment. "That is not my way."

  No, he had his own methods. Theodore Harnes enjoyed a standoff, the panic and passion and dismay of others he could leech to fill his own vacant shell, but she clearly hated all of us; everybody.

  "Have we not dealt with these pretentious American fools long enough?" Jocelyn asked. Something displaced beneath her face, like the slow but irrevocable movement of a leviathan thrashing from the depths toward the surface. "A moronic, arrogant brute daring to demand money for a weak, simpleminded girl? Attempting to disrupt our lives with lawyers and reporters? And you abide their impudent threats instead of putting a stop to such insolence?"

  "Empty threats mean nothing."

  "They are an affront to honor. America is unbearable. A wasteland of privilege without principal."

  "It is that, and more. My son wanted to come home, and so did I."

  "It is not my home."

  The timing had to be right. Ten minutes had gone by, but Nick hadn't made any mention of the woman. Had she run off? Jocelyn dug the barrel of the .38 along the groove of my ribs. It hurt like hell, but I did my best to keep my face as straight as hers. I didn't do so well. Anna wheeled forward and my heart sank even lower. If she could have seen what I'd seen in the wake of the dragon—the elimination of a boy's face in the name of hate—she would have stayed back. Or perhaps not.

  Anna said, "There is no need for this."

  "Quiet, you foolish, nosy old woman."

  From the doorway came, "Fuckit."

  Jocelyn drew back out of my range before she would even turn her head. Then she glared at the woman. Neither she nor Harnes showed any change of composure. Harnes said, "Li Tai." I finally knew what to call the woman. Her mouth fell open for a second and then she closed it. Jocelyn said something to her in Chinese. They began a slow chattering that rapidly built to a singsong quarrel. Harnes put in a few words himself, and they all fell silent.

  "Jocelyn is your daughter," Anna said.

  "Yes," Harnes admitted.

  "And you had her mother confined to a mental institution? Why?"

  "I did not want her in my life any longer and she threatened to cause a stir with Chinese officials. She managed several of my factories overseas, and had a great many political affiliations in Hong Kong. This course proved to be most beneficial for me."

  "So long as you had her you could control these politicians."

  "No, money did that, until Hong Kong reverted back to mainland China's rule. Then it became more advantageous to simply leave."

  Anna's lips flattened and went white until she found the air to say, "That was nearly two years ago. Why not release her?"

  He looked mildly amused. "And why should I?"

  I made eye contact with Nick Crummler but couldn't read anything. Jocelyn hadn't pointed the gun at him at all, I'd noticed. Harnes sat, crossed his legs, and straightened the seam of his pants leg.

  I said, "You returned from Asia two years ago and left her imprisoned that long for no reason?"

  "No, it has been over twelve years." he confessed with the cool alacrity I wanted to set fire to. "I brought her from Hong Kong under the auspices of visiting Disneyland long before my son and I stopped traveling the world and settled back in America."

  At the word Disneyland Li Tai squeezed her eyes shut and one massive shiver ran through her body.

  "And Teddy didn't know."

  "He believed her to be dead. My son was. . . a benevolent soul. He would not have understood."

  "It was stupid of you to bring her here," Jocelyn hissed at me. "What could you possibly have hoped to accomplish?"

  "This." I unfolded Teddy's sketches and showed them to Harnes. "You didn't know that Teddy volunteered at the hospital, did you? He
drew murals in the group therapy rooms. He must've spotted Li Tai there several weeks ago. She was your wife in China, wasn't she? He'd been raised by her."

  "For some years, yes."

  I turned to Jocelyn, watching all that had laid coiled and under control for so long rising and struggling to get free. I shoved my chest against the gun, hoping it would make her feel empowered enough not to pull the trigger.

  "A woman he hardly remembered, and believed to be dead. He came to you, didn't he? He finally realized the kind of man his father was, and he came to you, hoping you'd side with him. How he must have loved you to have trusted you. His sister. He thought you hadn't known your own mother was still alive. But you did know. And you didn't care. That's what Crummler saw that day he came out into the hailstorm. He saw you two arguing. He knew what you were capable of. You terrified him."

  "Shut up about that brain-damaged caretaker. He means nothing," she said. "Teddy never understood the man our father was. If he had, he would not have acted so intolerably."

  "What did he want to do? Go to the police? Try to get your mother out on his own? He chose to talk with you alone while he visited his own mother. He must've gone to the cemetery every day for a while. He respected the dead."

  "He did not respect father."

  "And you'd do anything to protect your father," I said. "So you murdered Teddy."

  Harnes cocked his head and said, "What?"

  "Father . . ."

  "What?"

  "Farther, it had to be done."

  "You? You . . . killed my son?" Harnes said. His voice seemed to come from someplace other than his throat—perhaps Jocelyn still had his breath, or maybe I did—so that he was only a man mouthing silently in a vacuum. He still showed no emotion, other than the slight hint of confusion. "You did this?"

  I saw the dragon emerging in Jocelyn's eyes, and stared in lost captivation as it began to overcome her—the lizard beneath the beauty, cold and primordial, jealous and savage.

  "Once Teddy was dead you became even more brazen," I said. "You approached Shanks to handle Frost. Your rage was showing." In fact, it started to show again in her loveliness, the shadows moving in her features, and I had trouble speaking and watching at the same time. "Why his face? Why did you cut off his face with Crummler's shovel? Because you saw too much of yourself in it?" Yes, yes, look at her. "Teddy didn't turn against his father. You did."