The Man Who Tried to Get Away

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  “And I like knowing it won’t make any difference. When you fuck me, you feel like a man again, you feel alive again—and it doesn’t make any difference. Because I know as soon as you start to feel that way you’re going to die. I can take you to the top of the mountain, Brew, and I enjoy it because I know you’ll fall off. You’re going to end up dead.”

  I saw movement behind her. For a moment I couldn’t fix on it. I couldn’t do anything except watch the .22 and shrink. If I took my eyes off the gun, I might warn her—

  Then the background clarified, and I saw Connie.

  She eased forward carefully, so carefully that she hardly seemed to move. Her gaze flicked back and forth between Lara and me, hunting for some hint of what was going on.

  Lara didn’t know Connie was there. “That’s power, Brew,” she said. “You can’t say no to me, you really can’t. You’re a cripple, and cripples can’t say no. They never can.

  “What did Ginny find in my room?”

  “You can’t shoot me,” I replied thinly. “You poisoned Queenie. I figured that out.” I spoke for Connie’s benefit, explaining to her, giving her time. But I couldn’t answer Lara’s question. If I did, she wouldn’t have any reason left to hold back. “And you probably stabbed Ginny. But who killed Mac?”

  Lara’s finger clenched on the trigger. “Brew,” she warned, “I asked you a question.”

  Connie hadn’t advanced far enough. Her features were pure and hard. She didn’t intend to let anything stop her. The anger which had held her since Mac’s death impelled her. But she’d never reach Lara in time.

  “No. You can’t shoot me.” I wanted to sound casual, but my voice twanged like a snapping rubber band. “Don’t you smell it?”

  Lara frowned. “Smell what?”

  “Gas.” Personally I couldn’t smell it at all now. Just soup. “There’s a leak in here somewhere. I first caught a whiff of it a couple of days ago, but it’s getting stronger.

  “If you shoot me, the muzzle flash will set it off. This entire kitchen will blow. Do you know what that kind of fire does to you? Even if you live, it’ll char the skin from your bones.”

  Lara hesitated. “You’re lying.” Just a small falter—a tiny decrease of pressure in the trigger—but it sufficed. “I don’t smell any gas.”

  You’re going to end up dead.

  In that instant, a wild and unholy look like a glimpse of the abyss crossed Connie’s face. With both hands she picked up the kettle and poured soup onto Lara’s head.

  The shock saved me. Lara didn’t shoot. She didn’t manage to fire at all. The .22 flipped out of her grasp as she screamed and clutched at her scalded flesh.

  Still screaming in short mad bursts, she dropped to the floor. Her hands clawed at the back of her dress, fighting to tear the burn away, but she couldn’t rip the fabric.

  “Oh, my Lord,” Faith moaned. “God help me.”

  Connie looked stricken, as if she’d terrified herself unexpectedly, but she went and retrieved the .22. She’d written enough novels about violence. She knew what to do. When she had the gun, she met my gaze. Shadows shifted like ghosts across the depths of her eyes. “Second degree burns,” she announced as if she were sure. “She’ll live.”

  I didn’t thank her. I didn’t have time. Quickly I said, “Reeson killed Cat and Simon. He wants to kill me. He’s holding Ginny hostage in the office.”

  Then I said, “Faith is going to help me rescue her.”

  Both Connie and I turned toward Faith.

  “You can’t get away from it,” I said softly, gently. “No one ever gets away from violence. No one is ever safe. That isn’t the way God works. If you want these murders to stop, you have to make that happen yourself.”

  She didn’t respond. Her eyes were riveted on Lara. But her hands were where they belonged, holding her crucifix, and her mouth shaped prayers I couldn’t hear.

  When I took hold of her arm, she didn’t resist. Clinging to the delicate silver remnant of her beliefs, she let me steer her in the direction of the office.

  None of us tried to help Lara.

  As we left I told Connie, “Get everyone together in Sam’s room. Even Mile. But don’t let him have the gun.”

  The way she said, “Leave it to me,” was good enough.

  Faith and I moved along the halls like martyrs on their way to the stake. Although she didn’t know it, she actually kept me on my feet, supporting me through my grip on her arm. Under her breath she murmured prayers that went nowhere.

  Dazed by our separate fears, we reached the office.

  I couldn’t hear voices, which scared me so badly that I nearly let everything else go and charged inside by myself.

  But I still hadn’t heard a shot. I clutched that fact the same way Faith clutched her crucifix.

  Trying not to shake like a drunk with the DTs, I took out the .45 for the first time in what seemed like forever. Bracing my arm, I worked the slide.

  As a kind of apology, I muttered to Faith, “I have to make this look good.” Then I put the gun behind her and pointed the muzzle at the back of her skull.

  God help me.

  “Reeson!”

  My voice cracked I swallowed, nearly choking. The silence from the office was absolute.

  “I’ve got Faith!”

  Absolute.

  “I’ll trade you! Her for Ginny!”

  Not a sound. Nothing. Reeson had already killed Ginny. He’d gone out through the window. By now he’d probably positioned himself right behind me.

  “I have a gun on her! You’ve got five seconds! Then I’m going to blow her head off!”

  From somewhere I heard an odd thunk. It sounded like Ginny’s claw hitting the desktop.

  “Faith.” Reeson didn’t shout, but his hoarse whisper carried like a cry. “Get away from him. He won’t shoot you.”

  An inarticulate sob burst from Faith’s throat.

  Praying as hard as she did, I reached past her to the doorknob, turned it, pushed the door open. While it swung aside, I pulled her in front of me, giving Reeson a blocked target if he decided to fire.

  He stood at one end of the desk. His hands knew what to do without help. One held the Ruger on Ginny, steady as death. The other aimed her .357 at Faith and me.

  Directly at Faith’s heart.

  Ginny’s face was pale iron, as stiff as a mask. She didn’t so much as nod at me. She held both arms braced on the desktop where Reeson could watch them—where they were helpless. She loathed helplessness as much as I did, but she didn’t excuse it with alcohol. When she accepted her claw, she’d given up excuses. Nevertheless her grim mask kept her loathing secret, away from Reeson. She’d given him nothing of herself, nothing he could use.

  “Art,” Faith murmured brokenly, “oh, Art.” Now she saw that I’d told the truth. Reeson didn’t try to hide it. He had nowhere to go. “Don’t do this.”

  “Get away from him.” Reeson’s face looked like it was about to crack, split open by murder and love. Seeing Faith brought him face to face with his own ghouls and beasties. He knew too much about death. He shouldn’t have allowed himself to care for her. “I’ll shoot you if I have to. Don’t make me do it.”

  Faith moved—but not away. Instead she took a step toward him. As if she thought that she might still be able to convince him, she said, “Oh, Art, killing is evil. Life and death belong to the Lord.”

  “Stop. Don’t.” Despair ached unmistakably in Reeson’s voice. “I don’t want to kill you.”

  She took another step. “This has to end. Don’t you see that? Everybody knows what you’ve done. God knows. This is a crime against your own soul.”

  Another step.

  “Art, please.”

  Reeson actually backed away from the desk, retreated to the wall. He no longer covered Ginny. Instead he held both guns aligned on Faith, and his fingers hugged the triggers.

  Ginny still didn’t move, however. She knew better. Anything sudden might set him off. />
  “No,” he rasped. “No.”

  Yes.

  Maybe he wasn’t that desperate. Maybe he wouldn’t shoot her. I didn’t know how much power his demons had with him. But I couldn’t take the risk. She was worth too much.

  As soon as I had a clear shot past her shoulder, I raised the .45 and fired.

  For once in my life, I hit my target. The .45 made a sound like a stick of dynamite in the enclosed space, and bright red burst from the center of Reeson’s chest.

  When she saw him fall, Faith lifted her voice and began wailing.

  24

  An hour or so later, the rest of the group gathered in the Draytons’ room, those of us who were still alive, or functional, or who didn’t have better things to do.

  My own ability to function was open to question. Sam’s second injection, the jolt of artificial energy, didn’t last as long as the first. The blood had gone leaden in my veins, which forced my heart to beat overtime, and fever filled my head again. To keep myself out of everyone’s way—out of trouble—I sat on the floor beside the window with my back against the wall and my face toward the door. In that position, I did what I could to prevent my mind from merging with the woodwork.

  Just to be on the safe side, I had the .45 on the floor between my legs, in easy reach. But I didn’t believe that I’d ever be able to shoot straight again.

  Nevertheless I was in a hell of a lot better shape than Queenie. As far as I could tell, she hadn’t moved a muscle for hours. Her coma had shut down on her like the lid of a coffin.

  But I would’ve given several of my remaining body parts to see her smile again.

  Sam sat on the bed beside her, clenching her hand as if he’d never left. Now he faced in the opposite direction, however, out toward the rest of us rather than down at Queenie. In that position I could see his face too well. He looked altogether haunted and fragile, as if he had all Art Reeson’s ghouls and beasties caterwauling loose inside his head. The fact that we’d caught the woman who poisoned his wife didn’t give him any noticeable relief.

  Lara Hardhouse wasn’t among us, naturally. We’d left her in her room, handcuffed facedown to her bed so that she wouldn’t get away. Sam had wrapped her burns in damp gauze. The cracks and blisters punctuating her red skin he’d treated with Silvadene. Then he’d given her a sedative against the shock—a gesture which I considered remarkably charitable under the circumstances. Like Connie, he thought that she had only second degree burns.

  Like Connie, he didn’t seem to care.

  Faith Jerrick was absent as well. Sam had sedated her, too, and she slept a frail heartbreaking sleep in Cat’s bed. I didn’t trust this. I doubted that any mere sedative could contain her distress for long. When she woke up, she’d be more alone than she’d ever been in her life. So I was glad that Amalia had decided to stay with her.

  Meanwhile Truchi had gone to search Reeson’s cottage for the missing rotors, at Ginny’s suggestion. Like me, she found it impossible to imagine the Carbones guilty of anything.

  As for the rest—

  Counting Queenie, there were ten of us. More than half of the fourteen we’d started with—which was a pretty good survival rate for a guerrilla war, but just plain shitty for a mystery camp. In a characteristic display of Texas chivalry, Mile had commandeered one of the two original chairs. Buffy creaked away in the other, rocking herself determinedly for comfort. But Rock had brought two more chairs from some other room. With more weakness than she usually let herself show, Ginny accepted one of them. When Connie refused the other, Maryanne sat down beside Mile. They’d resumed holding hands. From my angle, I couldn’t tell whether that was her idea or his.

  Rock, Connie, and Hardhouse remained standing. Rock occupied the corner of the room closest to Buffy. Apparently, he wanted to keep an eye on all of us—but especially on her. Connie stood at the head of Queenie’s bed across from Sam. I didn’t see any sign of the .22. She’d put it out of sight somewhere.

  Against the wall near the door, Hardhouse lounged with his arms folded over his chest and his aggressive chin jutting. He didn’t look exactly chipper, but his eyes were bright and clear, and his attention remained sharp, as if he had unlimited resources of adrenaline to call on.

  I couldn’t say the same for the rest of the group.

  After what Ginny had endured, her exhaustion showed in the blurred color of her eyes and the deep lines on either side of her pale nose. At odd moments she shook her head and scowled angrily, as if she couldn’t forgive herself for failing to recognize Reeson’s guilt earlier.

  Superficially, at least, Mile and Maryanne concentrated on each other. But his gaze when he glanced at her was strangely baleful and lost, confused by lust or loathing. And her relief at Reeson’s death and Lara’s capture only made her seem morose. Maybe she’d had a taste of power, of her own kind of vengeance, and didn’t want to resume her familiar role with Mile. On the other hand, she had no idea what else to do.

  If they felt any relief, Buffy and Rock didn’t show it. For better or worse, they both knew too much about murder. Rocking hard looked like her only defense against hysteria. By degrees, he inched deeper into the corner like a man who stood there because he wanted to escape his responsibilities.

  As for Connie, nothing in her face or posture suggested anything except vigilance and unrelenting anger. Nevertheless I had the impression that she’d come to some kind of limit inside herself. More than most of the people here, she knew what she was doing. She thought clearly, she understood the consequences of her actions. And she was a novelist who preached the importance of sympathizing with all her characters, even the criminals. Scalding Lara was probably the most hurtful thing she’d ever done. It may’ve been the most hurtful thing she could ever do.

  For a while no one spoke. Our own thoughts occupied our attention. Murder does that to you. It forces you to look at your life. And most of the time you can’t honestly say that you like what you see. But eventually Buffy gave her rocker a vehement swing and protested in a frayed voice, “I don’t understand.”

  “What is there to understand?” Maryanne asked plaintively. “Houston was right all along. There were two killers—and now they’ve both been caught. We’re safe at last.” She looked around the room for confirmation. “Aren’t we?”

  Connie shook her head. “Mrs. Altar is right.” She sounded unkind, but she was only angry. “The pieces don’t add up. Who killed Mac?”

  Even though I’d been doing my best to meditate on that question, I still felt a chill to hear it stated. As long as we didn’t know the answer, we could be wrong about any number of other things as well. Lara Hardhouse, for instance.

  “Why, Art Reeson, of course,” Maryanne countered a shade frantically. “Didn’t he? He and Lara were working together, just like Houston said. She opened a window for him, and he came in and killed Mac. Then he went out again and pretended to come back for the first time.” She turned to Mile. “Isn’t that right?”

  He glared at her without answering. However, he didn’t make her let go of his fingers.

  “But why?” Buffy insisted. “Why were they working together? Why would they kill Mac? Why did they want to kill Cat?” Too much weeping had tattered her voice, but now she’d used up all her tears. “I don’t understand.”

  “All right,” Ginny said heavily. This was her job. For some reason she didn’t want to do it. But she did it anyway. “We’ll start with what we know.

  “The idea that Lara and Reeson are in this together has too many practical problems. According to your theory, he would’ve had to return here while I was playing dead outside. If he did that, I probably would’ve heard him. He didn’t have time to go around the hills to the other side of the lodge. He would’ve had to pass fairly close to me.

  “According to your theory again, he must’ve been the one who stabbed me. As Joseph pointed out, Lara was the only other possibility—and she didn’t have a knife. So Reeson was still in the building. He stabbed me
and then went out through a window. Maybe she closed it after him to cover his trail.

  “But he’s a professional killer. If he stabbed me, I wouldn’t be here talking about it.

  “What we do know about him is why.” He was in the business of death. That’s how he proved himself against his demons. “He worked for el Señor—and el Señor wanted him to kill Brew. We know that. Otherwise he would’ve shot me while he had the chance, instead of holding me to use against Brew.

  “That means he had no reason to kill Mac.

  “And” she asserted, “he couldn’t have poisoned Cat if he’d wanted to.” I’d explained this detail to her before we gathered in Sam’s room. “Faith never told him about her taste for port.

  “Another thing,” she continued. “I can’t really believe that a man like Reeson would work with a woman like Lara. He was a professional. She’s too unreliable for him.

  “And he loved Faith. Otherwise Brew and I’d both be dead.”

  “So Mrs. Hardhouse acted on her. own,” Connie said flatly. “And she must’ve intended murder almost from the first. The port was poisoned before Cat was shot. If she didn’t arrive here meaning to kill, she conceived the idea soon after we settled in.

  “She put cocaine in the port because she had some reason for wanting Cat dead. And she stabbed you”—Ginny—“for the same reason.

  “What reason, I wonder?”

  The way she asked the question brought back an odd memory. When Lara had entered the parlor with Mac right after Cat’s murder, her first words had been directed at her husband.

  Joseph. What have you done?

  She hadn’t just jumped to the conclusion that he was responsible. She’d been offended by it.

  And he’d answered, I didn’t do it. As if he owed her that particular reassurance.

  And I’d seen them kissing like lovers at a time when they were both busy fucking everyone they could get their hands on.

  You’re going to end up dead.

  In a tone of exhaustion, Ginny said, “Maybe it was the same reason for both of us.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Maryanne protested. “What are you talking about?”