The Man Who Tried to Get Away

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  He didn’t seem to notice Ginny or Simon. When his eyes managed to focus on me, he said in a blank voice, “The phone is dead. The snow must have pulled down the line.”

  I’ve always tried to be a responsible member of society. Still holding the Winchester, I went around Ginny and Abel to close the door.

  11

  It was just as well I shut the door. Snow had already started to drift in from the porch. Outside it blanketed everything, as thick and terminal as volcanic ash. I suppose the phone lines could’ve come down under that kind of weight.

  Now that Ginny had Simon on the floor, she didn’t quite know what to do with him. He’d confessed too fast for his own good. Which probably didn’t make her feel like trusting him. Reaching down, she clamped her claw in his coat to haul him upright.

  “Mr. Altar!” Abel gabbled, “Rock, I only did what you told me, I was only doing my job, tell her, don’t let her shoot me!”

  Something about the particular tone of Simon’s hysteria penetrated Altar’s fog. For the first time, he shifted his attention toward Simon and Ginny. Slowly a flush spread across his face. In a moment he looked almost crimson, on the verge of a heart attack. Bunching his fists, he hissed, “You fool! You weren’t supposed to do it!”

  In our respective fashions, Ginny, Simon, and I all gaped at him.

  When he realized that we were staring at him, Altar’s rage paled out. He blinked at us. “He’s an actor,” he muttered as if he were apologizing. “He was supposed to be acting. He wasn’t supposed to do it.”

  “It’s a little late for that,” Ginny panted as she pulled on Abel’s coat.

  He tried to untangle his feet so that he could cooperate. “No, wait.” He was as confused as the rest of us. Or he was good at acting confused? “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

  Before anyone could answer, an idea as terrible as Ginny’s .357 struck him, and he jumped away from her so fast that her claw lost its grip. The fingers came together with a metallic snap.

  “Cat?” he asked. “Cat?”

  I suppose I should’ve grappled for him, helped Ginny keep him under control. But I felt feverish and unloved, and too much snow had fallen, and Simon Abel was an actor who’d been hired to do a job. On top of that, Ginny didn’t want my support. Instead of exerting myself, I said, “The parlor,” and pointed him in the right direction.

  He turned and ran.

  Ginny gave me a glare that would’ve curdled blood and went after him.

  He headed straight for the parlor, threw open the door, rushed into the room.

  The atmosphere was tense, as if half the people there had just stopped shouting at each other. You could almost hear Mile sweat.

  From behind I couldn’t watch Abel’s face. But I saw everyone else flinch away from him. Even Sam Drayton. Even Hardhouse.

  He ignored them. Maybe at the moment he didn’t know that he had an audience. He went rigid with shock. Then he let out a howl, broken off when he flung himself down beside Cat’s corpse, scrambling to take her up in his arms.

  Ginny kept her gun on Abel, mostly to show the rest of the group that she was still in charge. I set myself in the doorway and took a quick inventory of the guests. I had an active desire to avoid any more surprises—to be sure that no one could come at my back, except maybe Rock.

  Queenie must’ve been good at comforting people. Maryanne was stable now, if not exactly calm. She acted frightened at the sight of Simon—or at the sight of Ginny’s gun—but she didn’t start crying again. Queenie faced us all with her arm around Maryanne and waited to find out what was going on.

  Connie approached comforting Buffy in a completely different way. Her manner was stern, authoritative, and her mouth kept a tight inflexible line, like it was held in place by C-clamps. Her eyes watched everyone with impartial suspicion.

  I couldn’t tell whether Buffy felt comforted. Mostly she just looked catatonic.

  Joseph and Lara stood close to each other, as close as they could get without actually touching. His jaw jutted aggressively. A strange intensity that might’ve been eagerness or dread glittered in her eyes.

  The sight of them together made me shiver.

  Mile had recovered from his initial panic. Now he tried to bluster—or he did until Simon came into the room. Then he shut up. I could almost see anxiety ooze from his pores.

  Sam Drayton and Westward didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular, except ignoring Mile. Sam was accustomed to crises and death. We could count on him. In contrast, Mac’s detachment and curiosity struck me as loony, essentially unreliable.

  No question about it, I was getting feverish. Another shiver went through me. Sounding positively amiable, I commented to the group, “Doesn’t look much like a murderer, does he.”

  Sam, Mac, and Joseph turned to stare at me.

  I waggled the rifle. “This is probably what he used. He won’t be shooting anyone else for a while.”

  While Simon rocked Cat and hugged her like he was trying to squeeze the death out of her, Ginny attempted to get Buffy’s attention.

  “Buffy. Mrs. Altar.”

  But Buffy, as they say in hospitals, was unreactive.

  “Brew, where’s Rock?”

  I glanced down the empty hallway, then looked back at Ginny and shook my head.

  “I want to know what the Altars hired Simon to do,” she demanded as if she expected the rest of us to come up with the answer. “I want to know what went wrong.”

  Simon surprised me by hearing her. He lifted his face out of Cat’s hair. In the kind of voice you sometimes get from junkies and drunks, people who have had too many neurons blasted, he said, “They hired me to kill her.”

  Buffy didn’t react to this, either. But Drayton had other ideas. He turned on Simon.

  “Why would they do that? They’ve been running mystery camps for a long time. Why would they suddenly decide they want someone dead?” He pointed at Cat. “And why her?”

  “She was unfaithful,” Simon answered in the same voice. Maybe he hadn’t noticed the blood on his clothes. “I loved her. I did everything I could to take care of her, make her happy. That’s what men are supposed to do, isn’t it? Take care of women who need them? But she didn’t care. She wanted other men. She wanted sex—sex with everybody. Except me. They hired me to kill her. The jealous lover.”

  Sam wanted to protest. Probably we all wanted to protest. But Ginny objected first.

  “No, Simon. That isn’t quite right.” She spoke softly now, almost gently, like she didn’t want him to feel threatened. “You’re an actor. The Altars hired you to pretend to kill her. She’s an actor, too. They hired her to pretend to be the victim. That was the scenario. A jealous lover and his wanton girl friend. They didn’t want you to really kill her.”

  “No, of course not,” Simon agreed. He was nearly as unreactive as Buffy. “I wouldn’t do that. I love her.”

  “You just did,” Hardhouse pronounced, each word as harsh as a blow. “You shot her through the window.” He flicked a glance at me that could’ve meant anything. “Unless it was Brew you wanted to kill, presumably because he was fooling around with her, and you hit her by mistake.”

  In unison, Sam, Queenie, and Mac opened their mouths. Like me, they hadn’t considered this possibility before.

  It had never occurred to me that Ginny might’ve had a better reason than lack of trust for not sending me out after Reeson.

  “No, of course not,” Simon repeated. Obviously he hadn’t understood Hardhouse. But a few seconds later it hit him. “Wait a minute.” His face changed radically. He was too young for himself—or his personality had too many unintegrated pieces. Nothing looked natural on him. His dismay as he put Ginny’s .357 and Cat’s corpse and the rifle together seemed artificial, manufactured in some way. “You think I killed her? You think I killed her?”

  No one responded.

  Abruptly he dropped Cat, let her head thud back to the rug. Then he jumped to his
feet and started shouting.

  “Weren’t you listening? I love her! I’ve loved her for years! I wouldn’t kill her!”

  “You confessed, boy,” Mile put in, apparently trying to create the illusion that he’d regained his self-possession. “We heard you. We got us enough witnesses to hang you.”

  “No, you don’t understand!” Simon shot back. “I was confused. I thought you were talking about the camp—about the mystery. The reason we’re all here.

  “I’m an actor. Cat and I were hired to put on a mystery for you. She was supposed to act as promiscuous as she could, and I was supposed to ‘kill’ her for it. With one of those blue marbles. Then you could try to figure out who did it.

  “When”—he faced Ginny with a gulp—“when you waved that gun at me and yelled, I panicked. I thought you were taking the camp too seriously. Right from the start, I thought you were a little crazy. I didn’t know you were talking about a real murder.”

  The blank stare he got back for this speech wasn’t lost on him. Whatever else you said about him, you probably had to admit that he was an experienced actor. He knew he was “dying.”

  “Look.” He pulled his coat open and shoved one hand into his pocket so suddenly that Ginny automatically tightened her grip on the .357. Maryanne winced. Connie’s mouth clenched disapprovingly. But what he brought out wasn’t a weapon. It was small collection of blue marbles. “I was hired to pretend to kill her. They wanted me to kill as many of you as I could before you caught me.

  “You heard Rock in the den.” Simon turned his appeal on me. “He hired me. He admitted it.”

  I ignored him. His reactions, and Ginny’s, and the fever made me feel that I’d lost contact with reality.

  “That’s true,” Ginny answered Simon in a leaden voice. “I’m sure almost everything you say is true. You’re an actor. You were hired. But that doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t mean you didn’t kill her.”

  He was working himself up into a frenzy of protest. “Why would I do that? I loved her!”

  “For the same reason you were supposed to kill her,” Hardhouse retorted. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “She screwed around. You loved her, and she didn’t love you back. You couldn’t stand watching her get into every bed except yours.

  “You must have planned this from the beginning, as soon as Rock and Buffy offered you the job. You figured that pretending to kill her would be the perfect cover for really killing her.”

  “That’s insane!”

  Simon wanted to sound hot and indignant and righteous, command the stage in a way that would make all of us believe him. I could see that. Unfortunately a sob burst out of him, ruining the effect. “I didn’t do it,” he insisted as hard as he could. “I didn’t kill her.” But he only managed to look pathetic.

  “Miz Fistoulari,” Mile drawled, getting to be more like himself by the minute, “you have purely done us a service. Ah confess, Ah was a mite worried we was all likely to get shot. But you got him, and we’re safe.

  “Ah always knew there was somethin’ fishy about him.”

  He spread his arms to Maryanne. “Commere, you pore li’l filly,” he said like he actually thought he could soothe her. “We’re safe now. No sense cryin’ about it.”

  The Lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. Maryanne got up from the love seat and went into Mile’s hug like a kid who needed her daddy.

  Just for a second, Queenie’s face twisted as if she wanted to puke. But she didn’t say anything.

  “We are safe, now, aren’t we, Ginny?” Connie asked sternly. “He must have shot her. Who else could have done it? And you have his rifle. Surely we can tie him or lock him up somewhere until the police are able to get through this storm.”

  Ginny hesitated. She looked at me, frowning. She hadn’t had much time to think—but she was already a good distance ahead of me. “If I were you,” she said slowly, “I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion.”

  The room started to tilt. I had to put my hand on the door frame to hold it steady. Her warning was aimed at me more than Connie and the rest of the guests. Fortunately no one else saw me lose my balance. They all concentrated like mad on Ginny.

  “What do you mean?” Connie demanded in her best irate schoolmarm manner. “Why do you think we aren’t safe?”

  “Miz Bebb’s right,” put in Mile. He’d wrapped himself around Maryanne like melting margarine. “We can’t be in danger. Who else could have shot her?”

  Abel insisted again, “I didn’t do it,” but no one listened.

  “I don’t know.” Ginny kept looking at me as if she could see fever radiate from my skin. “But a couple of details worry me. Rock says the phone is out. We can’t call the police. We’ll have to wait until morning and then see whether Reeson or Carbone has a vehicle that can drive in this kind of snow.”

  “Buffy mentioned a snowmobile,” Maryanne put in. “Or Rock did. I’m sure of it.”

  Ginny nodded. “The second point is that more guns are missing.” Steadily, as if she didn’t notice the sting of apprehension around her, she added, “If Simon took them, he didn’t put them the same place he put the rifle.”

  Alarm, protest, panic—voices all going at once.

  “Guns.”

  “Where did you put them?”

  “How many of us were you planning to kill?”

  “What’s happening to us?”

  For a minute, I lost contact with the room. As it tilted, my brain slipped a few cogs. As if I wanted to change the line of reasoning that made me so sick, I ran backward to the question of the snow on Abel’s windowsill.

  “Calm down!” Ginny demanded over the noise.

  At once the whole group collapsed into silence.

  “You’re intelligent people,” she went on. “Brew and I are professionals. Reeson has at least a four-wheel drive, as well as the snowmobile. We’ll figure out what to do. There’s no immediate danger. Just don’t stop using your heads.”

  Use my head. Sure. I lifted my weight off the door frame and moved precariously toward Simon.

  He looked at me like I might club him with the Winchester. Probably he was under too much stress to realize that I didn’t mean him any harm. I took him by the arm and pulled him toward a corner of the parlor, out of the way.

  Ginny gave me another glance, then decided to leave me alone. “Sam,” I heard her say, “go find Rock. He’s wandering around the lodge somewhere. But if you can’t track him down in a couple of minutes, come back here. I sent Faith after Art Reeson. At the time, I thought she’d be safe. Now I’m not so sure. If they don’t show up soon, we’ll have to organize a search.”

  “Right.” Sam paused to give Queenie a quick kiss. Just in case. Then he left.

  “Simon,” I said, shivering as if I could feel the draft in his room, “tell me something. Are you a fresh-air nut?”

  He didn’t need to be a good actor to peer at me like I’d lost my mind.

  “Do you always leave your windows open?”

  His soft features twisted into a laborious squint, as if he thought his life depended on his ability to distract me. “Brew, help me,” he whispered. “I didn’t kill her. You know that. They’re going to turn me over to the cops. I’ll be convicted if somebody here doesn’t believe me.”

  “Relax.” I smiled like I’d just escaped from an institution. “The cops aren’t that good at convicting people these days. Tell me why you left your window open.”

  If he kept scrunching up his face so hard, he’d break something. “Is this a gag?” His voice jerked above a whisper. He forced it down again. “I didn’t kill her. Why are you talking about windows?”

  I really didn’t have the strength to argue. And I wasn’t going to explain—I didn’t want to plant ideas in his head. Which left me without a lot of alternatives. But I still had some muscle, and I still had a grip on his arm. I started to squeeze, grinding my fingers into his biceps.

  “Simon,” I said softly, “just a
nswer the question.”

  The pain made him gasp almost immediately. “I didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Leave my window open. I never leave my window open.” Speaking faster and faster to stay ahead of the pain. “I keep it locked. I live in L.A. Cat did, too. We just said we were from back east for cover. If you don’t lock your windows, everything you own is gone when you come home.”

  I eased my grip. “For some reason,” I remarked distantly, “I’m not surprised.”

  I’m sure he would’ve liked to rub his arm, but I hadn’t actually let go of him yet. “What has my window got to do with this?” he asked. “What difference does it make?”

  “If you’re telling the truth, it probably makes a lot of difference.” Although at the moment I couldn’t have explained how or what to save my soul. I was just trying to do my job—just trying to account for the facts. “If you’re lying, it doesn’t make any difference at all.”

  Feeling light-headed, I shifted my attention back to Ginny.

  She was saying, “On the drive up here, Rock told us we had nothing to worry about if we got isolated. That’s still true—as far as it goes. We can keep Simon under control. We only have a problem if he isn’t the one who killed Cat.”

  “Why do you keep saying ‘if’?” Hardhouse asked. Maybe it was my imagination, but he sounded almost seductive. “What makes you think Simon didn’t do it?”

  Ginny smiled humorlessly. “Professional skepticism. When you look at a picture, and one detail doesn’t fit, sometimes the whole picture is wrong. Why did he take all those guns? Where did he put them? What did he plan to do with them? Until he answers questions like that, I’m going to keep saying ‘if’”

  “She’s dead,” Buffy murmured for no apparent reason. “It’s my fault.” She wasn’t talking to any of us. “We’re stuck here. We’re going to die. It’s all my fault.”

  “Nonsense,” Connie put in, quietly but firmly. “You couldn’t have known this would happen. And you had the good sense to hire Ginny and Brew. We’ll all be fine.”

  “I didn’t take ‘all those guns,’” Abel insisted. He sounded tired, as if I’d worn him out. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know anything about guns. I didn’t shoot Cat.”