He thumbed the TALK button. “Shan here.”
“Checking in.” It was Harvey Mitchum. “I’ve driven by the Kristoll house and Nathan Hideaway’s cottage,” he said. “Nobody home at either place.”
“Well, it’s a Saturday night.”
“It surely is,” Mitchum said. “What about you? Any luck?”
Shan approached the French windows of Hifflyn’s workroom.
“Bridget Shellcross is out,” he told Mitchum. “Her townhouse is deserted. Casimir Hifflyn’s car is in his driveway and there are lights on in his house, but no one answers the door.”
“Is that where you are now?” asked Mitchum. “Maybe I should come out there.”
“Hold on a second, will you, Harv?”
“Sure.”
With the phone in his left hand, Shan put a white cotton glove on his right and pushed at the French windows. Locked. Through the glass, he could see the figure of a man slouched in the high-backed chair at the writing table, one arm dangling toward the floor. Shan rapped his knuckles on the glass. The figure didn’t move.
Shan lifted his right foot and kicked solidly with the heel of his shoe at the seam between the two windows. A splintering of wood as the two halves burst inward. He slipped the open phone into his pocket and drew his pistol. Chambered a round and climbed into the room.
He crossed quickly to the writing table and confirmed that the figure in the chair was Casimir Hifflyn. Shan searched with two fingers for the carotid artery. No pulse. He hadn’t expected one. The wound at Hifflyn’s temple looked gruesome.
The second body lay near the doorway to the room. The writer’s lovely Mediterranean wife. One shot to the midriff and another to the chest. And one more that had punched a hole in the wall beside the door frame.
The muffled sound of Mitchum’s voice shouting. Shan drew the phone from his pocket.
“What the hell’s happening?”
Shan said, “Sorry about that. I’m afraid I had to break in here. You’d better come. The chief too, and the medical examiner. Hifflyn’s dead. He and his wife both.”
He gave Mitchum the details and ended the call, and then with his pistol still drawn he cleared the house room by room, turning on lights as he went. No one lurking. By the time he made his way back to Hifflyn’s workroom he heard the first faint sirens.
He read the note on the writing table, an uncapped fountain pen beside it.
I’m sorry for all of it—Tom and Tully and Beccanti. There’s no future now. I hope I have the courage to go through with this.
Signed with Hifflyn’s initials. Streaks of matching blue ink on the fingers of Hifflyn’s right hand.
Four shell casings on the floor by Hifflyn’s chair. The gun lay beneath the table. Carter Shan knelt to pick it up. A semiautomatic pistol, thirty-two caliber. Nickel-plated. He handled it with white cotton gloves.
The serial number was intact. In a short while Shan would call it in, have it run through the computer. He would learn that the pistol was registered to Sean Wrentmore.
But what he noticed now, as Harvey Mitchum’s voice called to him from the front of the house, were the flecks of dirt that came off on the gloves. Dirt from the grooves that ran along the thirty-two’s barrel, from the head of the screw that attached the grip. Black specks on the white cotton. As if the pistol had been buried underground.
The broken twig lay somewhere on the bed of moss behind her, and Elizabeth had given up on picking the lock of the handcuffs. She had spent half an hour considering whether it might be possible to work her cuffed hands around to the front of her body. She would have to tuck the chain beneath her bottom, slide it along her thighs, bend her knees just so. She might be able to do it, she thought, if she were a magician, if she had time to practice, if there weren’t an armed man watching over her.
Nathan Hideaway had returned to his seat on the fallen tree trunk. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, the black revolver resting on the palm of his right hand.
David Loogan had sunk into the earth nearly to his shoulders. There were dark mounds of dirt arrayed behind him, on the far side of the grave. He had left the nearer side relatively clear, as if he wanted to keep an unobstructed view of Hideaway, and perhaps of Elizabeth herself. She watched him bend his back, and straighten it, and another shovelful of earth joined the rolling landscape behind him.
Every shovelful brought him closer, she thought.
I might have to shoot him.
She hoped that Loogan would give her a sign when he was ready. Her hands were behind her back, and they were going to stay behind her back, but her legs were free. If she had some warning from Loogan, she could scuttle along the ground or try to stand. She could distract Nathan Hideaway. Give Loogan a chance to aim and fire. She might be of some use. Loogan’s plan might work.
She glanced at Hideaway, saw him watching her. His eyes big and dark and unblinking in the dim light. When he spoke to her the flesh crawled at the nape of her neck, because he seemed to have read her mind.
“Hope,” he said.
She struggled not to react. “What?”
“Hope,” he repeated. “It’s a curious thing. Consider Mr. Loogan here. He wants to kill me. I’ve no illusions about that. Yet I’ve asked him to dig up a body, and there he is, digging. He must be sore by now, and exhausted, and thirsty, but I can’t even offer him a drink. He can take a break if he wants—I can give him that much. Would you like a break, Mr. Loogan?”
Loogan answered without pausing in his work. “No.”
“No, he doesn’t want a break,” said Hideaway. “He’s a single-minded man. He could have made a run for it in the woods. I would have shot at him, certainly, but he might have gotten away. Or he could have attacked me with the shovel. He might have had a chance, though a shovel is a poor weapon against a gun. But there he is, digging. As if digging is going to save his life. He has to realize that the grave he’s digging could end up being his own. So what motive can he have for going on? There’s only one. Hope.”
The dim light made wells of Hideaway’s eyes. Elizabeth regarded him warily.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she told him.
“I think you do. But never mind. I’ll make him the offer again. Take a break, Mr. Loogan. Sean’s not going anywhere.”
The motion of the shovel stopped then, the blade hovered in the air. Loogan’s expression turned grim. “No,” he said. “Let’s get this over with.”
“You see how it is,” Hideaway said to Elizabeth. “His hope is leaving him now. Mr. Loogan and I have been playing a game. He’s been pretending there’s no gun in Sean Wrentmore’s grave, and I’ve been pretending I don’t know about the gun. But now it’s time to stop pretending. As it turns out, there’s no gun in the grave, and no Sean either.”
Hideaway rose from the fallen tree trunk and aimed the black revolver at Loogan.
“You can put aside the shovel now,” Hideaway said. “We’re through digging.”
Loogan hesitated for a few seconds, then brought the shovel up and tossed it amid the mounds of earth on the far side of the grave.
Hideaway lowered the revolver, but it remained ready at his side.
He said, “When Tom wrote out his story for the police, he drew a map too. X marks the spot in the clearing in Marshall Park. I took his notes after I sent him out the window. Burned them when I got home. But I made use of the map. I wanted to make sure Sean wasn’t found, so I moved him.”
Elizabeth had let herself forget the ache in her limbs, the weariness. Now it all flooded back. “Where is he?”
Hideaway made a careless gesture with the revolver. “He’s far from here. Perhaps we should leave it at that. But I can tell you he no longer has his tattoos. In fact, his flesh is no longer attached to his bones. I wrote five crime novels before Sean took over. I had to learn something about disposing of a body.” He waved the matter away with his free hand. “Forget about Sean.”
Elizabeth looked off into the darkness
, then back at Hideaway. Her brow furrowed. “What was the point of bringing us here, if not to find Sean? You must have had a motive. If you just wanted to kill us, you could have done that back at Sean’s condo.”
“I had a motive,” Hideaway allowed. “I believe Mr. Loogan knows. Why don’t you tell her why I brought you here?”
Loogan leaned back against the far wall of the grave.
“The flashdrive,” he said. “That’s what all the fuss is about.”
Hideaway nodded. “The flashdrive. Mr. Loogan made a point of showing it off this afternoon, while he spun his tale about Sandy Vogel. The tale was a distraction. The real reason for his visit was to make it known he had the flashdrive. He said it came from Sean’s condo. Michael Beccanti found it there.”
“That’s true,” said Loogan.
“He said he didn’t know what was on it.”
“That’s true too. It’s protected by a password. But there’s probably a way to circumvent that. Someone with the right expertise could crack the code and get at the files.”
Wind stirred the branches at the edge of the clearing. Hideaway drew a deep breath of night air. “I can hazard a guess about what’s on the drive,” he said. “The two novels Sean wrote for me, and the Kendel books he wrote for Cass Hifflyn. Probably more than one version of each. Sean had some odd habits. He used to keep working on the books, even after they were published. For him, they were never finished. He sent me a revised manuscript of The February Killers once. Told me it was much better than what they were selling in the bookstores. He was right. And the manuscript he sent me—it had his name on the title page. He always did that. It was one of his little jokes.
“So you can see why I need that flashdrive. It could cause me no end of trouble if the wrong people were to find it.”
Loogan crossed his arms. “You’re out of luck,” he said. “I don’t have it.”
“I know,” said Hideaway. “I searched your pockets back at Sean’s. But there was no time to ask you about it there. We couldn’t linger. So I’m asking you now.”
“It’s in a safe place. With a friend. If something happens to me, it goes to the police.”
Hideaway shook his head. “You’re not a smooth liar, Mr. Loogan. Just now you looked up and to the right. That’s where we look when we’re inventing. No, I don’t think you’ve made any such arrangement. I think you’ve got the flashdrive hidden away somewhere. You’re going to tell me where it is.”
Hideaway drew another deep breath. “Some people would suppose I have no leverage, since I plan to kill you whether you tell me or not. But it’s a wonder what a man will do sometimes if you threaten something he cares about. Tell a man you’re going to shoot his wife, and he’ll take responsibility for crimes he had nothing to do with. He’ll write out a confession by hand and sign it, just to buy his wife a little time. Minutes.”
He regarded Loogan thoughtfully. “You don’t have a wife, so I have to work with the materials at hand. Detective Waishkey. You can protest that she means nothing to you, but I know better. I heard your story about Peltier’s son—enough of it to know your reason for telling it. It wasn’t to stall until help came; you weren’t expecting any help. You expected to die and you told that story because you wanted Detective Waishkey to hear it. Because you wanted her to understand you. Because you care about her opinion of you.”
Hideaway raised the revolver gradually and leveled it at Elizabeth.
“But even if she meant nothing to you,” he said, “even if she were a stranger, you’d still feel responsible for her now. You’re that kind of man. That’s why you’re going to tell me where to find the flashdrive. If you don’t, I’ll shoot her.”
Elizabeth locked her eyes on Loogan. “Don’t tell him anything, David.”
“Maybe you’re thinking that’s not much of a threat,” Hideaway said, “because I’ll shoot her anyway, whatever you tell me. She’ll die no matter what. But there are easy ways to die, and hard ways. I’ll make it hard for her, if you don’t do as I ask. She’ll suffer.”
“David—”
“Maybe you think there’s a limit to how much she can suffer, but the fact is I can hurt her even after she’s dead. She has a daughter. When I’m finished here, I’ll be free to go wherever I like. If you don’t tell me about the flashdrive, or if you lie to me, her daughter dies too.”
At the mention of her daughter, Elizabeth strained against the cuffs that bound her wrists, and for a moment she was sure her anger would break through them. But the steel withstood her. It dug into her flesh. She made an effort to relax.
“Don’t listen to him, David,” she said. The calm in her voice surprised her. “When he leaves here he’ll run, if he has any sense. He’s a suspect already, in Tom Kristoll’s murder. Not to mention Tully and Beccanti. After tonight the department won’t let him out of its sight. They take it seriously when a detective goes missing. He won’t have a chance to kill anyone else.”
Hideaway glanced at her along the barrel of the revolver. “I wouldn’t be too sure,” he said. “I think there could be a break in the case tonight. Tom’s murder could be resolved, and the others too.” He turned his gaze back to Loogan. “But even if Detective Waishkey is right—If I’m a wanted man from now on, a desperate man, then there’s no telling what I might do. No one’s daughter is safe.”
He paused and the air of the woods seemed to thicken. He put his thumb on the hammer of the revolver. “I’ll ask you once, Mr. Loogan, and I’ll give you one chance to answer. Take your time, and think about the consequences if you lie.”
He drew the hammer back. “Where’s the flashdrive?”
In the long seconds that followed, Elizabeth took in details: the night wind, the small movement of the flashlight tied to a branch, a tiny alteration in the quality of the light, the shadows cast by the mounds of dirt.
Strands of her own raven hair that hung in her eyes, trembling, reminding her of her daughter’s hair.
The smell of fallen rain on the fresh-turned earth.
Nathan Hideaway’s posture, the cant of his hips, one leg straight, the other bent. The ridges of the knuckles on his gun hand. The barrel of the revolver aimed at her, foreshortened. The steel ring of the muzzle.
David Loogan’s face; the shadows under his eyes. The fractional turn of his head, as if to look for the cast-off shovel behind him. Something draining out of him as he realized the shovel would do him no good. His right hand coming up gradually, fingers parted. She thought it would reach up to touch his chin, to rub his neck. It hovered. His eyes wide, staring at his own palm.
She thought she saw the hand shiver. In the dim light, she couldn’t be sure.
Tightness around Loogan’s mouth. She was sure of that. His lips parted and she began to say his name. She meant to tell him to stop.
A catch in his breathing at the moment of decision. She knew, as he answered Hideaway’s question, that he was telling the truth.
“At my house, in the living room,” Loogan said, “there’s a framed photograph above the fireplace. A photograph of paper leaves and bits of colored glass. The drive is taped to the back.”
Steady voice, but the rest of him breaking. He crossed his arms now and his body twisted, as if to retreat from Nathan Hideaway. His head bowed.
The ring of the muzzle vanished as Hideaway turned the revolver on Loogan.
“That’s good,” Hideaway said gently. “I believe you.”
Elizabeth tried to rise, inching her back along the trunk of the birch. Hideaway turned the gun on her for a moment, warningly, and she slid down again.
The barrel of the revolver in profile now, aimed down at Loogan’s heart. She watched Loogan twist, and then his knees must have given out. He vanished into the grave.
The revolver stayed where it was. Hideaway frowned.
“Come now, Mr. Loogan. This won’t do.”
Hideaway took a tentative step, the sole of his shoe gliding over blades of grass.
“On your feet,” he said to Loogan. “Better to face it than to hide.”
The edge of the grave was obstructing his line of fire, Elizabeth thought. She watched him move forward cautiously, warily, leading with the gun.
“I can see you, Mr. Loogan.”
Hideaway advanced more confidently now. He was still a foot and a half from the grave’s edge when the ground gave way beneath him.
Chapter 40
THE GUN WENT OFF AS HIDEAWAY FELL.
The orange spark of the muzzle flash and the hollow sharp sound, loud as a cannon in the clearing. Elizabeth got her feet under her, braced herself up along the bark of the birch. Four fast steps brought her to the open pit of the grave. She glimpsed Nathan Hideaway scrabbling in the dirt of the far wall, the revolver still in his hand. He was on his knees—with Loogan, sitting, half pinned beneath him.
That bare glimpse and then without breaking stride she leaped in, her feet landing squarely on Hideaway’s shoulders. Her cuffed hands ruined any hope of keeping her balance and she fell back hard against the ragged earth. She heard a pop, too soft for gunfire: her left shoulder slipping out of joint. Grinding pain.
Black dark in the clearing for a moment and then her vision returned and there beneath her feet Nathan Hideaway clawing at the dirt, trying to push himself up with his arms, trying to make some use of the revolver. He began to twist around to see her and she drew back her right foot and kicked him in the face, and he flinched away from the blow and tried to brace himself on hands and knees. And she lifted her foot again and kicked the back of his frost-white head and his face hit the dirt of the grave wall.
The black revolver sank into the dirt and fired a muffled shot at nothing. Hideaway’s broad back began to rise and Elizabeth kicked him again in the back of the head, and Loogan, struggling beneath him, got a leg free and kicked him in the ribs. Elizabeth planted both feet at the back of Hideaway’s thick neck and pushed and the soles of her shoes slipped up to his skull and she braced herself against the earth behind her. She pushed his face into the dirt, and his body shook and shuddered. And still she pushed, and his face sank into the black. And overhead the flashlight swayed on the branch and the moon shone, and Nathan Hideaway went down into the black.
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