Dead In Red

by L. L. Bartlett

  “Child? I thought he was her nephew.”

  Dana sighed. “We’ve had a lot of time to talk in the past two days—we may have even become friends. Gene is Cyn’s biological son. He doesn’t even know it. But that’s the reason she’s always been so close to him. Cyn wasn’t up to being a single parent. Her sister adopted him because she couldn’t have children of her own.”

  My mind was racing. “I’m meeting Richard at the hospital. Will you be at this number later?”

  “Yes, and please call. I’m afraid for both of them.”

  I said good-bye and hung up.

  “Tom!”

  Tom, who’d apparently been eavesdropping, poked his head around the office door as I was untying the apron at my waist. “Something’s come up. I have to go.”

  “Does this have anything to do with Walt’s killer?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t hesitate. “Go.”

  * * *

  The light ahead turned red and I braked. Even in heavy traffic, Richard’s house was only minutes from the hospital, much less at this time of day. He’d get there in plenty of time to intercept Cyn, who had at least a twenty-minute ride from Cheektowaga. Rich would make it there on time.

  Oh yeah? If I believed that, then why did I feel so antsy?

  The vision of the bloody hands assaulted me once again. I squeezed my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the light went green. I hit the gas.

  The should-haves started circulating through my brain. I should have contacted Sam sooner, I should have insisted Gene go to the cops.

  The light at Eggert turned red. Goddamn the timing on these things.

  I hung a left at Bailey Avenue, nearly sheering off the bumper of a Volkswagen Jetta, and stepped on the gas. I ran the first couple of lights, but got caught in traffic and had to wait. At this rate, I’d get to ECMC after—

  Bloody hands, glistening—rivulets of scarlet cascading—

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The same old scene was getting tedious.

  I gunned it, weaving around cars, SUVs and minivans, their horns blasting me from every direction.

  I didn’t bother with the hospital’s parking lot, pulling right up to the Emergency entrance. Richard was there, waiting for me, hopped right in the passenger side of my car. “She’s gone. Head for the Thruway.”

  My wheels spun on the asphalt. “Tell me.”

  “I flashed my ID and told the receptionist Gene was my patient, that I’d been told he’d been taken to the ER. She said Cyn had been there only minutes before looking for him, but told her no one by that name had been admitted. A tall, skinhead approached Cyn, spoke to her in low tones, and then they left together.”

  “What makes you think they’re going to the Holiday Valley house?”

  “Thank god for smokers. They had a brief conversation outside the door, one of the nurses heard Cyn say Holiday Valley. Then they walked to the parking lot, got in a car and drove away.”

  “Wow, you’re getting good at this investigation stuff.”

  “Must be your influence. Can’t you go any faster?”

  I was already breaking the speed limit, but I pressed harder on the accelerator, giving myself another five mph and hoped like hell the Amherst cops were all on a donut break.

  “So how much of a lead do you think they’ve got?” I asked.

  “No more than five minutes.”

  “Did your smoker mention Cyn’s emotional state?”

  “She said Cyn seemed to go willingly.”

  “Sure, if I had a knife sticking in my ribs—and that’s Veronica’s, or Myron’s favorite weapon—I might appear to cooperate, too. Did your smoker say who was driving?”

  “I didn’t think to ask.”

  “I’ll bet it was Cyn. If she’s smart, she’ll crash the car, but who knows what cock-and-bull story Veronica told her. And by the way, Dana Watkins told me Gene is Cyn’s biological son—not her nephew. She had the unfortunate timing to have her baby out of wedlock and her sister adopted the boy.”

  “That ups the ante,” Richard said.

  “She might’ve been angry with him on Sunday, but now she’s on a quest to save him. Cyn probably doesn’t even know that Myron is Veronica.”

  We hit the Thruway ramp, headed south.

  “It’ll take at least an hour to get there,” Richard grumbled. “You got a map?”

  “Glove box.”

  He hit the button, pulled out a New York state map, spent far too long unfolding and refolding it to the right section. “You know where this house is, right?”

  “Yup.”

  Richard kept staring at the map. “How weird is this? I hadn’t seen Cyn for thirty years, and now I’m rushing to try to save her life.”

  “That’s pretty weird,” I said. Then again, since I’d been smacked in the head with a baseball bat, a big portion of my life had gone majorly weird.

  Richard set the map on his lap, looked at his watch. “What are we going to do when we get there? We can’t just drive up the driveway and yell ‘Surprise!’”

  “No shit. I figure we’ll park on the street and go in on foot.”

  “And do what? Threaten Veronica with a stick?”

  “You got your cell phone?” I asked.

  “No, dammit. That lets out calling the cops. Unless we find a pay phone.”

  “Cyn’s house isn’t in Ellicottville. It’s up in the hills; there aren’t any pay phones nearby, and cell coverage is probably spotty, too. And anyway, what would we say? We think someone may be plotting murder at this location—meet us there. And what if we find Cyn, Gene, and Veronica sitting around the pool drinking gin and tonics and chowing on nachos?”

  “You’re full of answers,” Richard groused.

  My fingers gripped harder on the steering wheel. “Gene did give me the phone number at the house, but he told me he had caller ID and unless he knew the number—”

  “Surely he’d answer a call from Cyn.”

  “I doubt Veronica would let her tip him off.”

  Richard kept consulting his watch, while only the air conditioner’s fan and road noise filled the car for the next ten minutes.

  I took the cut off for Route 219 and the traffic around us petered out. The expressway ran for another ten or fifteen miles before narrowing to a two-lane highway. Forty minutes down, another twenty to thirty more to get to Cyn’s vacation home. Despite the car’s cool interior, my palms were sweating. Richard was still fiddling with his watch. “Damn. The band just broke.”

  “Well if you hadn’t been playing with it for the last half hour.”

  Richard pocketed the watch.

  The “Welcome to Ellicottville” sign flashed by on our right. With no bypass, we were forced to go through the middle of town, stopped by traffic lights and pedestrians. Richard’s fists kept clenching and unclenching. “Come on,” he murmured at the longest red light in western New York.

  Green. Go!

  The village grew smaller in my rearview mirror. I pulled off the main drag and onto one of the side roads, leading up into the hills.

  “This is where a plan would be helpful,” I said.

  “I haven’t come up with anything. You?”

  I shook my head. “Then it’s on foot to reconnoiter. And after that—we wing it.”

  “Winging it sounds like it could be dangerous. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not wearing my Superman underwear.”

  And bullets hadn’t bounced off his trench coat back in March, either.

  I hit the brakes and the car skidded to a halt. “Get out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me, I said get out. You’re not coming with me.”

  “Don’t start that shit again.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t make me. I’m bigger than you.”

  Brenda was right. Sometimes we did act like a couple of overgrown kids.

  “You’re wasting time,” Richard said. “And unless you want Cyn’s and Gene’s deaths on your
conscience, I suggest you get your foot off the goddamn brake and move this car.”

  We glared at each other for maybe ten seconds before I looked away, hit the accelerator.

  # # #

  CHAPTER 24

  Only one car sat in the middle of Cyn’s vacation home’s driveway, and it wasn’t Gene’s. Richard and I peered at it through a thicket. No other sign of habitation. Nice and quiet. Idyllic.

  Too damned isolated.

  “Okay, now what?” Richard asked.

  I certainly wasn’t going to risk his life. “I go in.”

  “And do what?”

  “See if I can diffuse the situation. Veronica can’t stab all of us at once.”

  “And what if she has a gun? Let me tell you from personal experience, getting shot hurts. A lot.”

  “Thanks for the news flash. Look, you’re my ace in the hole. Someone’s got to go for help if the situation warrants it.”

  “And how am I supposed to know when and if to do that? I’m not the one who’s psychic.”

  Okay. Thinking rationally was and wasn’t going to do it. Sophie told me to come see her on Saturday night—if I could. That wasn’t an automatic death sentence. If I trusted her—and I did—that meant there was a possibility I’d survive. She saw a future for Richard. Maybe not a great one, and I didn’t want to think about what that meant, but she saw a future for him. The missing elements of the equation were Cyn and Gene. Her clairvoyance hadn’t included them.

  I turned to Richard. “My gut tells me at least one of us is going to come out of this alive, but I don’t know about Cyn and Gene.”

  “One of us? And who might that be?”

  I hesitated. If I said him, he’d probably make some stupid, grandstand move that would blow Sophie’s predictions about his future straight to hell. “I don’t know for sure,” I lied. “If we walk away, we’re okay. If we storm the joint—we might both live. Living isn’t the same as thriving, or happily ever after. You almost met your maker already this year. What do you think?”

  Richard let out a breath. “Jesus, you couldn’t give me something easy to contemplate?” He wiped a hand across his mustache, his expression grave. “The way I see it, Veronica’s got two hostages. She’s killed at least one person. I trust your gut. If we can save only one of them—we’ve got to try.” He nodded, reaffirming it. “Yeah. One is better than none.”

  “What if it isn’t Cyn?”

  “From what you’ve said, Veronica is angry at Gene for replacing him—her—in Walt’s affection. She’ll go after him before Cyn.”

  “I don’t want either of them to get hurt—”

  “You think I do? A physician’s first responsibility is to do no harm.”

  “I thought that was the witches’ credo.”

  “Hypocrites came before Wicca.”

  “Says you.”

  “We’re wasting time.”

  I wanted to believe Sophie. I wanted to believe with all my heart. But what if she was wrong?

  I didn’t have time to worry about it.

  I studied Richard’s worried blue eyes. “Okay. I’ll go to the door. Knock. If it’s open, I’ll go in.”

  “If it’s not?”

  “I’ll smash the window. If nothing else, that’ll get Veronica’s attention.”

  Richard cast around, found a rock the size of an Idaho spud on the ground, handed it to me. “Here. Use this instead of your fist. If you get the chance, use it against Veronica, too.”

  I took it from him, hefted it. Smashed against a skull, it could do considerable damage. Yeah, like the baseball bat had done to me. I gulped, unsure if I could inflict that kind of damage on anyone else. Then again, if it meant my survival . . .

  I met his gaze. “Whatever happened to do no harm?”

  Richard shrugged, the barest hint of a smile on his lips. “You’ve got the rock. Not me.”

  I turned back to look at the house, took a couple of big gulps of air. Yeah—I could do this—and stood, pushing aside the branches.

  I walked into the clearing that was the front yard, slowly making my way, as though a landmine might explode under my feet.

  Nearer, nearer to the closed front door.

  In less than two days Richard would marry Brenda. Maggie and I would stand up for them, then spend the rest of the day—and possibly the night—together.

  I hoped.

  I was within five feet of the door when it cracked open. My hand with the rock snaked around behind me as I backed up a few steps.

  “What do you want?” asked a male voice I didn’t recognize.

  “Myron?”

  The door opened wider. A swollen-eyed Cyn, her face streaked with tears, stood rigidly in front of the skinhead the hospital receptionist had described, the long barrel of a shotgun pressed against her jaw. “Help,” she squeaked.

  “Myron, you don’t want to do this.”

  “Wanna bet? Seems to me I don’t have a whole helluva lot to lose.” He laughed, smug. The voice was and wasn’t Veronica. Lower, rougher.

  “You’re looking at twenty-five years to life for Walt Kaplan’s death.”

  “So what’s a few more years on the sentence? I could probably have a whole lot of fun in jail. Think of all the fine, rough sex that could come my way? It might just be the answer to all my prayers.”

  “No operation. No more dresses. No more shoes, wigs, makeup—fun.”

  “Please help me,” Cyn sobbed.

  I gulped air. “Where’s Gene?” I asked, sounding a lot braver than I felt.

  “He’s here. He’s just—” Myron laughed. “A little tied up.”

  I stood only ten or twelve feet from the door. If he swung the shotgun down, he could very easily take me out. Had he ever used a gun before? Had he—?

  Cyn slumped, catching Myron off guard. She rammed an elbow into his stomach.

  Myron let out a painful oomph, fell back inside, landed on his backside.

  Cyn stumbled down the steps. I dropped the rock and grabbed her hand, pulling her with me as I ran for the bushes.

  No gunshot followed.

  The front door slammed.

  The yard was hauntingly silent.

  Richard captured Cyn in a rough embrace and she started to cry in earnest.

  “Where’s Gene?” I demanded.

  Cyn pulled away, wiped at her eyes. “He’s . . . Veronica tied him up. He was kicking Gene, over and over again. I tried to stop him and he hit me.”

  Gently, Richard pulled the hair away from her face to reveal a bright red mark that would be a bruise before nightfall. “That was a pretty brave thing you just did.”

  “Cowardly you mean,” she snapped. “I left Gene in there to die!”

  Richard turned to me. “Why didn’t he fire at you?”

  “That might alert the neighbors, who might call the cops.” I turned my attention back to Cyn. “Where’s your cell phone?”

  “In his car. But it’s locked. He’s got the keys.”

  “Damn!” Still, getting Cyn out of the house and away from Myron was one less life to worry about saving.

  Richard’s imploring stare cut through me.

  “I’ve got to get in that house.”

  “We’ve got to,” he corrected.

  “No! You stay here with Cyn. In fact, get the hell out of here—both of you. Go to the neighbors. Call for help.”

  “Not until you promise to wait right here.”

  Placate him, placate him! “Okay. Yeah. I’ll wait here. Go!”

  “If you’re lying to me—”

  I pushed his shoulder. “Go!”

  Richard grabbed Cyn’s hand, pulled her through the trees, back toward my car.

  I watched until they were out of sight, then turned my attention back to the silent house. Staying put was the smart thing to do. But knowing we were out here meant that Myron was going to have to do something. He knew we knew he’d killed Walt. He’d held Cyn hostage. That she got away didn’t mean he couldn’t b
e charged for it. If he made a break for the car—

  The drapes in the leftmost front window moved. Still clutching the gun, Myron peered out, looking for us. He scanned the hedges, stared long and hard before the curtain fell again.

  I waited, panic growing within me. My own or Gene’s? My connection to him had never been strong, but I couldn’t ignore the feeling. I stood, feeling like magnetic north had made a sudden shift south and I was being pulled toward the house.

  Closer.

  Closer.

  My heart pounded so loud and hard as I approached the front steps that I thought cardiac arrest was imminent.

  My trembling fingers clasped the aluminum door handle, pulled the screen door open. Relief flooded through me as I entered the empty entryway and wasn’t blown to pieces.

  “Myron?” I tried calling, but only a croak came out.

  No answer.

  I moved a few tentative steps forward, peering into what looked like the living room.

  No one.

  A grand, wide oak stairway in the center of the foyer led to the second floor. To my far left a set of opened French doors led into a tidy library-office filled with wall to ceiling bookshelves. A large rectangular, intricately woven Persian rug in hues of red and gold covered the floor.

  My ears strained, but no sounds broke the stillness, save for the call of a crow somewhere outside.

  I took another step forward. The hardwood floor creaked beneath my sneakered foot.

  I froze.

  Sweat trickled down the back of my neck.

  Bypassing the library, I crept along a long hallway that opened into a dining room. A door at the end was propped open with a wedge. I tiptoed up, hesitated, before darting into what turned out to be an orderly kitchen. The components of a chef salad graced the dark granite counter, with a large clear glass bowl half filled with lettuce.

  No sign of Gene or Myron.

  I tiptoed across the linoleum, tried the back door, found it double locked. They hadn’t escaped out the back. That meant they had to be upstairs.

  Creeping back down the hall, my heart nearly stopped when I heard a noise in the foyer.

  Back pressed against the wall, I edged closer to the source of the sound. The doorway was only two feet from me when I saw a figure standing in the open. Weak with relief, I had to lean against the doorframe for support.