Final Call

by Rachel Ann Nunes

  As if reading my thoughts, Tawnia struggled to move her chair forward. One hop, then another. She tipped the chair forward and aimed her head toward the lantern. Not quite there, and she almost fell sideways to the ground with the effort. I had to give her more time.

  If Walsh was Erica’s father, that was the long-term connection we’d been searching for. Too late I remembered the eight-year-old photograph in Walsh’s office of the young girl with the long black hair. The evidence had been in front of me all along.

  “What about eight years ago?” I asked. “Did you poison the other actors, too?”

  Erica was close enough that I heard an intake of breath. Fear arched through me, zipping to the tips of my fingers.

  “He deserved it. They both did,” Erica said, sounding angry and indignant. “He played with my emotions. He romanced me for months, told me how pretty I was and how talented and how much he loved me. But then he laughed at me with that girl when Walsh told me I had to finish high school and take acting classes at the junior college before he would let me join the company.”

  That explained why she hadn’t shown up on any official employee documents until six years ago yet why she’d been in the photograph. She’d looked softer and so much younger that I’d believed her when she claimed it wasn’t her. I wondered if she’d still hoped then that Walsh would be a proper father to her and that she’d find true love. Everything she’d experienced afterward had turned her into the vindictive woman she was now, and I felt pity for that young girl in spite of what she’d become.

  “So the actor you loved turned out to be just like Walsh,” I prompted.

  “I caught him kissing that girl, the one who got the Juliet role Walsh should have given me, his own flesh and blood. When I confronted him, he mocked me. Told me to go home to play with my dolls. He didn’t love me at all.” She paused, and when she spoke again, the fury was gone from her voice. She could have been talking about dirty laundry for all the emotion she showed. “But don’t worry. I took care of them. He was easy to get away from the theater, and when I called to tell her he wanted to meet her alone, she came running for the tryst. They didn’t even question the refreshments set out for them. Their bones are probably still intertwined where they died.” The horror of what she’d said didn’t seem to worry her.

  “You were just a teenager.”

  “I was never a teenager. Not with the life I’d lived. Do you know what my first foster family did to make me obey? They said they had a warehouse, a place where they took all the kids who didn’t behave, where they hid their mangled bodies. They promised that’s where they’d make me disappear if I wasn’t good.” Though her tone was still detached, the ring of truth hung on her voice.

  Before I could probe further, the light on the stage crashed to the floor and went dark.

  “I’m over here,” I called to Erica. “Near the door. Tawnia can’t go anywhere. She’s tied. Come get me first, if you can.”

  I hurried through the door, pausing to see if she’d follow. A bullet ricocheting off the wall told me I’d succeeded. I was too exposed here in the hall, though. The walls weren’t thick enough to protect me from bullets, and she could shoot around the bend with her hand only partially through the door. Unlike with Mr. Taylor when he’d come into his cabin, she knew more or less where I was and could continue to pull the trigger blindly until she got lucky. I had no idea how many shots she might have or if she had an extra magazine.

  I wasn’t as familiar with this backstage door as I was the other, but I remembered the hallway divided after the bend. I made a dash for it, thumping more forcefully on the ground than my bare feet liked. I had to be sure she’d follow.

  Another shot ricocheted behind me. Odd for the ricochet to be louder than the actual firing of the bullet itself. Spooky. Especially in the dark.

  The hallway forked, and I hurried down the right side, which I hoped angled around to the men’s dressing room and the main hallway. I was heading for the prop room, which would offer many places to hide—and to attack—but I had to make sure she kept following me and didn’t return to the stage. “What about Rosemary?” I said, stopping to listen to her progress. “Why did you help Cheyenne with her?”

  “Poor thing did me a favor hitting Rosemary like that. Too bad Cheyenne had to take the part afterward, though. She regretted it in the end. I used less poison with her. I wanted her to really feel it. What right did she have to mess with my plans?”

  Good. She was still coming. Except that meant any minute she’d round the corner and I’d be in the open. Even in the dark she might be able to hit me. I sprinted down the hall past the men’s dressing room, slamming my hip on the wall as I turned into the main hall. I experienced an instant of relief that I’d chosen the right path before I pushed myself to move forward again. The steady thud of Erica’s feet continued behind me, sounding loud in the darkness.

  The main hallway seemed to stretch forever before me.

  “There’s no getting away, Autumn,” she called. “You can’t make it to the outside door before I shoot you.”

  She was right, but I didn’t plan on trying to make it to the door, just to the prop room.

  “We really must get this over with,” she continued in what might pass as a normal tone in any other situation. Now it was eerie. “I have things I need to do. Give yourself up, or maybe I’ll just go back to your sister and finish the job. How would you like that?”

  I hesitated. I couldn’t let her do that. “What about the baby?” I taunted. “You don’t think I’d leave her here, do you? You’ll never be a mother, not to her or anyone else. Not when you’re in jail.”

  “Okay, let’s play it your way.” Her steps quickened to a run.

  I either had to turn around and shoot it out with her, or lead her to the prop room where I could shoot from cover.

  Prop room. It had always been meant to end there.

  I ran past the office and the women’s dressing room. Another shot, but I was already going around the final bend. The prop room door stood open. I hurried inside.

  Whap! I collided with the figure before I saw him. For an instant I dared hope it was Shannon, but instead it was someone wearing another mask. A sense of déjà vu came over me.

  As we tumbled to the ground, my hand hit a table. The Ruger skittered away. The masked person fell on me, and I grunted with the impact.

  I blocked a punch with one hand and grabbed for the mask with the other. I pulled hard, feeling it come loose.

  “Grady Mullins?” I said.

  His eyes widened as he recognized me. “You!” He glanced at the outside door, as though calculating his chances of escape.

  “Hit her!” Erica said, moving through the door. “Don’t be a wimp. Or move so I can shoot her.”

  “What?” The word came out as a yelp.

  “Do it! You owe me. If you hadn’t screwed up on Saturday, she wouldn’t even be here.”

  “What are you talking about? I was here. But you said to let no one see me, and someone did, so I left.”

  Not without trying to hit me with a hammer first.

  “You were late!” Erica’s voice had risen to a scream. “Now hit her or move!”

  Grady pulled back his fist. I was faster. Grabbing my right hand with my left, I pulled hard, slamming my right elbow into Grady’s head. He rolled off me with the impact. I rolled the other way, under a table of props. Flipping to my knees, I scurried to the next table as a shot splintered the first.

  I crawled on as shots punctured the props and table behind me. How many shots did she have? She’d fired at least nine, hadn’t she? The typical 9 mil Glock, a favorite gun among many gun owners, could hold anywhere from ten to seventeen rounds, depending on the model, and larger magazines were often purchased by enthusiasts, which I didn’t think included Walsh. So that meant
she could have up to eight bullets left.

  I didn’t know if I could survive eight.

  That’s when Erica got lucky. I gasped as agony ripped through the flesh of my upper left arm. Dizziness threatened to take me. Don’t faint, I ordered myself. You have to save Tawnia and Destiny.

  I forced myself onward, pain lacing every inch. Wetness seeped inside the sleeve of my coat. It was all I could do not to curl into a ball and scream with the pain. Tawnia, I reminded myself.

  My hand touched a cloth of some type that had fallen from one of the tables. Wadding it, I shoved the entire thing inside my coat, packing it to staunch the flow of blood.

  Then I heard what I’d been waiting for: silence, followed by a muffled curse. It was now or never. I leapt to my feet, jumped on the table in front of me, and launched myself at Erica. She was scrambling to put in another magazine, but her inexperience slowed her down. I slammed into her hard and felt satisfaction as her gun and the new magazine clattered to the ground. She hit the floor with a grunt.

  She bounced up the next second, surprisingly resilient. Her swing went wide, leaving her open to a perfect right uppercut, followed by a left punch to her face, which sent her stumbling backward and lances of pain through my wounded arm. For a second I thought I would faint, but I held on. That’s for Tawnia, I thought. A few more punches and a kick or two would have her subdued. Even one-handed I could take her.

  Except I’d forgotten about Grady. He was a spineless, rather ineffectual fighter, so I’d dismissed him. Big mistake.

  “You stupid!” Erica yelled, scrambling away from me. “Shoot her! Shoot her!”

  Risking a glance behind me, I saw Grady with my Ruger in his hand. “Don’t do it,” I said. “The police are already looking for you.”

  “I’ll tell them you killed Cheyenne,” Erica screamed. “I’ll tell them it was all your idea. That you forced me to go along so you could get the main role in the new play I was going to force Walsh to do instead of that insipid Juliet one.”

  “Me? That was your idea,” he shouted. “You said if I helped hide the body, you’d get me the chance that I’d never get with my father’s company. That you’d tell me where Rosemary went.”

  “You think they’re going to believe you? Never! If I go down, you go down with me.”

  “Murder is not the answer,” I said.

  “You were just defending me!” Erica shouted. “She attacked me! No one will blame you.”

  I could see her words were having an effect on the spineless idiot, but before I could say anymore, Erica dived for a vase on a table, bringing it up to slam over me.

  I sidestepped and sent a roundhouse into her side, following up with a right hook to her shoulder.

  “Now!” she screamed.

  Two seconds to decide. Did I knock her out and save my sister, or did I dive for the tables and seek protection from the hollow points in my own gun, hoping I found another chance to beat them later?

  There was no real choice. I couldn’t leave my sister exposed. Besides, it was dark, and I bet that Grady didn’t have a lot of experience with guns unless they were props. I let my fist dig into Erica’s chest, feeling satisfaction at the shock on her face.

  “Shoot!” she wailed. I fired another right punch, this time at her head.

  A shot rang out. Or were there two? So close together, I couldn’t tell. My ears were deafened with the blast. I felt no new pain, no hot slicing through my skin that I’d just experienced under the table, though I’d heard that sometimes fatal shots take a minute to register with your brain, depending on where you’re hit.

  With my last blow, Erica fell, bounced off a table, crashed to the ground, and lay there unmoving. I stumbled forward, fighting for balance.

  The next thing I registered were voices, light from outside, and officers rushing all around. Grady grabbing his shoulder, and red spouting underneath his fingers. Shannon roughly pushing him against a table and cuffing him.

  “Take it easy,” Grady whined. “I’m shot.”

  “Yeah?” Shannon asked. “That was me. Sorry, I was aiming for your head. If you don’t shut up, I’ll rectify my mistake.”

  Next to Shannon, Officer Peirce Elvey pulled on a glove, bent down, retrieved my Ruger, sniffed it, and put it in a plastic bag. I knew from the expression on his face that it had been fired. Grady had tried to kill me.

  Tracy touched my arm. “Are there any more?” Assailants, she meant.

  I looked down at Erica, sprawled on the ground where an officer was checking her pulse. Bile rose in my throat.

  “Not that I saw.” It was hard to focus, but I didn’t know if that was from blood loss, the adrenaline seeping from my body, or the simple lack of light. “But Tawnia’s on the stage. Tied up. Destiny’s there, too. I hid her in the props behind the curtains.” I wished I could go for them myself, but at the moment I doubted I could walk across the room. I had to trust Tracy.

  Tracy and two uniformed officers rushed from the room, guns drawn.

  “Someone get these lights working!” Shannon yelled. So far he’d avoided my gaze, but I could feel his attention riveted on me. He shoved Grady to a seated position on the ground. “Don’t move,” he ordered.

  “I need medical attention,” whined Grady.

  Ignoring him, Shannon crossed the distance between us. “You okay?” Gruffly spoken, but the intentness in his eyes momentarily stole my breath.

  “You shot him?” I asked.

  “Not fast enough.”

  I still owed him my life—again. Because Grady might have fired a second time and gotten lucky. I might not have been fast enough. “Thanks.”

  He nodded, his face stern. I knew it was because he’d almost lost me.

  “Of course,” I couldn’t resist saying, “if I hadn’t been carrying the Ruger, he couldn’t have tried to shoot me with it.”

  A shadow crossed his face, and I realized he’d already had that thought all on his own. Which meant he would blame himself for my near death. Sometimes my mouth didn’t know when to quit.

  Carefully, I put my left hand in my pocket where it could rest without putting pressure on the wound in my arm. There was no new wetness and the dizziness wasn’t any worse, so it could wait until I saw Tawnia. And until Shannon calmed down.

  The lights went on but didn’t affect our eyes much because they were so weak. A paramedic had arrived and was treating Grady. The actor was playing it up as much as possible, and I wondered if he thought it would get him less time.

  “He knew about Cheyenne’s death,” I said. “I don’t think he helped Erica kill her, but he was going to move the body. That’s why he was here that night.”

  “Your attacker.”

  I nodded. “Erica faked the other incident, to cover the fact that the second glass was missing. She found out about my talent and was worried I’d identify her.”

  We looked up as Tawnia and an officer came in. She smiled at me but her attention went immediately to the car seat. Her face paled and her scream reverberated throughout the entire room. “No!”

  I followed her gaze to the two bullet holes that punctured the back of the seat. One larger than the other. Probably from two different guns. Maybe one had been mine.

  Tawnia was crying, trying to reach the seat as the officer held her back.

  I rushed to my sister’s side. “She’s not there. I moved her. She’s safe.” I hoped.

  Tracy appeared in the hallway behind us. “You looking for this? We were securing the crime scene when I heard her fussing. Took me a while to find her, but she was patient once she heard my voice.” In her arms, Tracy held Destiny.

  Tawnia lunged for her daughter, and Destiny gave a glad cry to see her mother. A tear clung to the lower lashes of her left eye, but her face was less red than when I’d found he
r earlier. Tawnia hugged the baby to her chest. Her eyes met mine. “Thank you.”

  I nodded, but inside I felt sick. I’d almost left Destiny in the car seat, thinking it was the safest place. What if the bullets had gone astray on the stage instead of here? Destiny could have been killed. My sister could have been killed. Would have been.

  It was all my fault.

  “Erica?”

  We turned to see Walsh pushing his way through the officers. “Where is she?” Spying Erica on the ground, he hurried over. “What have you done?” he asked, falling heavily to his knees. “Why would you do this?”

  To my surprise, her eyes opened. “Because of you. It’s all because of you. I hate you.” She held her hand to her small chest, as if her heart hurt.

  Walsh placed a fleshy hand on her black-clad arm. “I didn’t believe you could do something like this, not until I saw the note you sent Seaver. I recognized your handwriting. I still couldn’t believe.”

  She laughed. “You got rid of the note, didn’t you? Couldn’t risk your precious play or your wife finding out about me.”

  I took a step toward her. “Where’s Rosemary? You were there after Cheyenne hit her with the hammer. Is she still alive? What did you do with her?”

  Erica looked up at me, her face that had once reminded me of a delicate faerie now looked sharp and devilish. “Maybe you should look in the Willamette.”

  My stomach twisted. Not the river.

  “Tell them, Erica,” Walsh urged.

  Her attention shifted to him. “You can’t tell me what to do,” she sneered. “You’ll never get Rosemary—or do your precious play. You should have listened to me and done the other play instead. I would have been great as the lead, and once I was in New York, I would have been out of your hair forever. But no, you wanted to make sure I stayed hidden. Well, now your wife will know all your dirty little secrets.” With a quick motion, she took her hand from her heart, twisted something, and brought it to her mouth, gagging as it went down.

  She smiled with triumph. “I’ve carried this with me for eight years, just in case.” She gave a sharp laugh. “A tragedy. That’s what this is. Everyone dies or is destroyed. And this”—she lifted the amulet I’d seen earlier on her necklace—“is beautifully ironic.”