Murder, She Wrote--Murder in Red

by Jessica Fletcher

  George, where are you?

  The Almost Twin on the right swung toward me, and for a moment I thought I must have said that out loud. But I hadn’t. And the Almost Twin hadn’t actually been looking at me so much as something we’d left behind in our wake heading to the elevator.

  And that’s when all the lights went off.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The emergency lights snapping on cast long shadows, while barely breaking the darkness that was thickest right where we were standing in the hallway. The Almost Twins tightened their grasps upon me, but then let them slacken enough to whip out their pistols.

  I heard a crash and the emergency light behind us went dark. A figure whirled past me, and I thought for a moment it must be one of the Almost Twins. But that made no sense, since they were still on either side of me.

  Until they weren’t.

  I heard grunts, groans, felt dark shapes whipsawing about me. One frame slammed, or was thrown, into me, rattling me to the very core. I staggered but kept my feet, my right shoulder feeling like someone had ripped it from the socket. It went numb, my fingers tingling, as the blur of struggling shapes continued to unfold before me.

  Thuds now. Then the hall was alive with a burst of one muzzle flash and then another, the shots absurdly loud in the confined space, pushing air through my ears and the smell of cordite and burned sulfur into my nose.

  A shape emerged from the whirling maelstrom, a hand stretching out toward me like a tentacle.

  “This way, Jessica!” George Sutherland said into my ear, tugging me toward the stairwell on our right and crashing through the door.

  * * *

  • • •

  “I knew it!” I yelled out, fighting to keep George’s pace down the stairs.

  “Whatever ‘it’ is, dear lady, I’m sure you did.”

  We spun onto the next flight.

  “Every time I called you the other day,” I resumed, holding on to the railing as we dipped and darted down the stairs, “your phone went straight to voice mail. But it rang, at least vibrated, when I dialed it inside your treatment room. Because you set us up. You vanished because you wanted to.”

  “And had to, thanks to you.”

  “Me?”

  We turned onto the final stairwell that would take us to the first floor.

  George spoke between sucking in big breaths. “I knew you’d figure out my little ruse, if left to your paces. I should’ve known better than to keep you in the dark, should have told you the truth from the start.”

  “Which is?”

  We burst outside into the torrid heat of the night through an emergency exit door at the bottom of the stairs.

  “I’m not sick, Jessica.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I felt George tugging me on, away from the clinic, following the general contours of the rock-made causeway that was the one road on and off the bluffs.

  “Unlike a countryman of mine who came to the Clifton Clinic for treatment and never made it home.”

  “Treatment, as in a clinical trial?”

  “Supposed clinical trial,” he elaborated.

  “Just like you’re suffering from a supposed disease.”

  “Perfect cover, once we learned Clifton was conducting another of his clinical trials for a drug meant to treat it.”

  “Manufactured by LGX Pharmaceuticals.”

  “I didn’t get that far in my investigation.”

  “Good thing I did, then . . . So, that bit with the phone . . . You wanted me to know you weren’t really missing at all.”

  “But I didn’t expect you to come here and bait the killers I was trying to catch.”

  I somehow managed a smile. “Then I guess you don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

  And that’s when gunshots began to pop behind us, muzzle flashes that looked like fireflies lighting up the night.

  * * *

  • • •

  George tugged me harder, steering us for the bluffs. “Our only chance for escape, dear lady.”

  “The rocks?”

  “I’ve never known you to be scared of anything.”

  “Because you’ve never known me to be scaling a rock face of these bluffs.” I looked at him through the darkness, as our feet toyed with the sharply angled edge. “Who are you, George Sutherland?”

  “Somebody else entirely before I joined Scotland Yard, dear Jessica. Same name, different rank. With the British Special Air Service.”

  “The SAS? Now I’m really impressed.”

  George shifted to help lower me onto the bluffs, as more gunshots coughed up chips of stone around us. “I should have told you.”

  “I’d never have let you go through with it if you had.”

  “You’re making my case for me. And, by all accounts, from what I overhead you saying in Clifton’s office, you’ve busted the case wide open.”

  “We always did make a great team, George,” I said, and continued with him to the edge of the plateau atop the bluffs.

  Those famed bluffs looked forbidding from a distance. From this close, when I contemplated trying to traverse them, they were downright terrifying. Rock climbing was something I’d never sampled for one of my books, but I imagined this was as close as it got to that. The sharply ridged face appeared to be formed by craggy rock formations. But there seemed to be an equal amount of crushed stone that felt like gravel beneath my feet, as I began my descent, every muscle in my body seeming to tighten in protest.

  George had lowered himself even with me. We’d never discussed his background in the British military’s elite SAS unit, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. My husband, Frank, had been in the air force, so in a lighter moment I might have considered myself attracted to men in uniform.

  We continued an uneasy, zigzagging descent, until George laid a hand on my back to press me tighter against the face of the bluffs. I could hear muffled voices maybe thirty feet above cutting through the wind and the mist the humid conditions were whipping in off the sea. Waves of it rolled past us, making me feel like I was high enough in the sky to be hiding in a cloud.

  But I wasn’t. I was pressed against the steep side of a bluff, precariously balanced on a narrow ledge that was shedding layers of gravel-like stone along the natural downward slope.

  The muffled voices drifted off, and George gave me a tug. I thought it was a signal it was safe to move again, but it was also a means of directing me to follow in his steps. I imagined that, with his newly revealed military background, he was no stranger to such terrain, and thought training on something like the cliffs of Dover would’ve made perfect preparation for what we were facing tonight.

  For the first time since we began our descent, I registered the crashing of the sea against the rocks beneath us, a reminder of the fate awaiting us should we fall. I felt a flutter in my stomach and was glad the night kept me from seeing what was beneath me or judging the meager amount of progress we’d made so far.

  George made sure I could follow the placement of his hands, and I stayed as close to him as I dared, fearful a slip might leave me reaching out instinctively and risk toppling both of us to our deaths. Flashlight beams swept over us from above now, a pair of bright beams slicing through the mist. Each time they crossed, I followed George’s lead and pressed as close to the face of the bluffs as I could.

  I remembered once learning, while doing research for a book, that eyes glowed as big as baseballs when struck by a flashlight in the darkness, and resolved not to look up no matter what. Once the beams moved on, George started leading the way on again, only to freeze when fresh gunshots spit flecks of rock into the air, stinging my skin. I could feel warm blotches where those flecks left their pinprick marks.

  I felt George stiffen as he tried to determine our next move. I thought how much he must
’ve craved his pistol, which he was prohibited from carrying overseas and had only begun carrying back in England over the course of the last few years. Even that had been a source of frustration for him at times, and now, having learned the depth of his military background, I could understand why.

  “We need to try going straight down,” he whispered to me, “at least until we’re below that ledge.”

  “What ledge?”

  “Take my hand.”

  “What?”

  “So I can help lower you.”

  I felt every muscle in my body seize up at once in protest. “I don’t think I can do it, George.”

  He nodded. I was close enough to see the grim bent of his expression, as he gazed upward to contemplate our chances of climbing back up instead.

  “No,” I said, realizing the utter foolishness and desperation of such a move, “I can do this.”

  I stole a quick glance downward, the mist parting enough to reveal the ledge to which George had been referring. It looked as straight as a scaffolding platform strung to a building and about as big to boot. Get beneath that and our descent would be far better shielded. But I couldn’t spot any rocky extensions for our feet, much less decent holds for our hands.

  Instead of side by side, to reach the ledge we’d have to descend more in single file. I felt George squeeze my arm reassuringly and start to ease himself downward. I studied the way his hands never seemed to lose touch with the rocky face; he dragged them against it instead of lifting his hands off and putting them back in a different place. And I mimicked his actions as best I could, the moisture from the mist seeming to make my hands cling better to the rocks, which glowed wet from a combination of the wave spray and that mist.

  I’d probably covered about six feet through the biting mist and the swirling flashlight beams that struggled to find us the farther we drew from ground level. I’d found a strange rhythm to my movements that helped release the tension in my legs, arms, and torso. Then I reached out and down to the right for a craggy extension that must not have been there, because the next thing I knew, I was sliding, flesh and clothes alike stung by the friction.

  Still gathering speed, I slid past George and he flung a hand out and latched on to my wrist just in time. I reminded myself to breathe, could feel my heart hammering against my rib cage. I wanted to scream, the grip of terror so palpable it actually felt like someone was tightening a belt around my entire being. The sea air stung my eyes, some stray, breeze-blown hair catching beneath the lids. Nothing I could do other than try to blink my eyes clear, as the thickening mist washed over us.

  I realized my feet were still flailing about and managed to kick one into the soft, stony gravel for a hold and then repeated the process with the other. This wasn’t what I pictured rock climbing to be like at all, the bluffs softening more the closer we drew to the sea. Though my feet were now secure, George’s grasp on my arm remained the only thing keeping me from falling.

  A flashlight beam froze on us and then moved on. I would have breathed a sigh of relief if my breath hadn’t deserted me once more. And before I could find it, a fresh hail of bullets rained down on us. Hard to tell whether the Almost Twins had a fix on our position or if they were firing randomly, as desperate in a different sense as we were.

  I realized the sweep of the flashlight beams and the echoing clatter of gunfire were coming at the same time now. I thought that Archibald and Clifton must’ve joined the battle, could only hope the receptionist manning the lobby’s main desk might have already called 911, unlikely given who it was that signed her checks.

  My free hand groped across the face of the bluffs, seeking a spot I could latch on to as I’d found for my feet. I managed to claw inside a soft patch and dig my hand home, but a bullet impacting just inches above it left me jerking the hand back into the air.

  I looked up at George and saw the strain of exertion on his gritty expression. My arm, though, was slowly sliding from his grasp, caught in the crisscrossing sweep of two flashlight beams before a fresh volley of pistol fire separated me from George.

  I slid down the face, kicking and flailing for something to grab, dislodging a thick spill of what felt like a mix of coal and shale, which showered me when I came to a crashing halt upon the ledge George had pointed out earlier. Safe for the moment, but the moment didn’t last long, since I was now exposed to both the light and the bullets. Fresh fire spit rock and stone in all directions, chips of it feeling like ground glass shredding skin wherever it struck. I’d turned my ankle upon impact, but seemed otherwise intact.

  I couldn’t see George above me and then spotted him off to my right, lowering himself beneath the ledge and gesturing for me to follow. The next flurry of bullets did the trick where that gesture had come up short. Careful to put as little weight on my ankle as possible, I slid to the side of the ledge and followed George’s gaze to the holds he’d uncovered.

  I think I’d slipped into a kind of shock, the whole scene feeling surreal, more dream than reality. I finally worked my way off the ledge, save for a single leg, my injured one, which buckled when I tried to move it. Again George saved me from a fall and then pressed my frame close to his and tight against the rock face to avoid the next spray of gunfire.

  He’d somehow managed to wrap an arm around my waist to guide and steer me, an impossible task because we were sidestepping to get below the ledge, where we’d be covered from the fire of the Almost Twins.

  Beneath the ledge, the grade steepened into a straight drop to the rocky waters below—no margin for error, since a single slip would mean a plunge to our deaths. We weren’t going anywhere. I could see the resignation on George’s face and imagined mine had taken on an even more desperate and terrified bent. We’d managed to find foot- and handholds beneath the ledge, but our feet and hands kept slipping out when the soft rock we’d dug into continued to loosen and spill past us. We couldn’t do this forever, and dawn was still too far off to bring any hope either. Sooner or later, I’d lose my grasp, and George would follow me in a plunge when he tried to save me. I had never thought I’d find something to fear more than being shot at.

  I heard a distant wail, thinking, If only the siren sound was closer. But then it was, closer and louder. I glimpsed the glow of flashing lights off in the distance, the sirens indicating the imminent arrival of the Cabot Cove Sheriff’s Department on the scene.

  Those sirens were still screaming when I heard the fresh clack of gunfire coming from above, no longer aimed at George and me. That fire was returned in kind by a shattering barrage, which gave way to nothing at all, until it was broken by the voice of Mort Metzger.

  “Jessica! Jessica!”

  “Down here, Mort!” I yelled back up at him. “We’re down here!”

  “Hold on, you hear me? Fire department on its way!”

  And, true to his word, a fresh howl of sirens split the night air, our rescue just moments away.

  * * *

  • • •

  A pair of Cabot Cove firefighters rappelled down the face of the bluffs with ropes fastened through carabiners. They’d each towed spare gear along for the ride, which they proceeded to wrap around both George and me before guiding us upward under the pull of more firefighters and Mort’s deputies from above.

  For some inexplicable reason, I think I was more scared through that process than at any other point of the ordeal, certain the rope was going to give way at the last and send me falling to my death. But it didn’t, and I crested the surface to find a breathless Mort Metzger, still with gloves donned, glaring at me.

  “Don’t make me say it, Jessica, don’t make me say it,” he snapped, waving a reproaching finger in my direction.

  “That’s ‘Mrs. Fletcher’ to you, Mort.”

  I looked around to see both Charles Clifton and Jeffrey Archibald under arrest and under the careful eye of Mort’s deputies. Paramedics, meanwh
ile, were tending to the Almost Twins.

  “Those were trained operators,” I told Mort. “Your men should be proud.”

  “Those trained operators ran out of bullets. That sort of helped.” Mort’s glare returned. “Remember I warned you I was going to place you under arrest for recklessly endangering yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  He made a show of snapping the handcuffs from his belt. “Stick out your hands.”

  “I’m too tired.”

  “Well, I’m not going to give you the results of that DNA test you asked me to rush, until you’re suitably restrained.”

  I managed a smile. “Sounds like we’ve got another murderer to arrest.”

  “I believe we do, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “You again?” Fred Cooper said, only halfway through the door as he flashed me a closer look, noting the pinprick-like wounds caused by the spray of chipped stone into my face the night before. “Looks like you got into a tussle with a rosebush, Mrs. Fletcher.”

  “Just a bad case of the chicken pox, Mr. Cooper, and I brought some more friends with me this time.”

  He closed the door to reveal Mort and two deputies standing against the wall, then jerked his gaze back to me. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Not until the last page is written, just like a book, Mr. Cooper. Or should I say Mr. Van Dorn?”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Tripp Van Dorn,” I continued, my eyes never leaving his.

  I’d remained seated to avoid putting weight on my injured ankle. Paramedics had immobilized it outside the Clifton Clinic before spiriting me off in the rescue squad car to Cabot Cove Hospital for a precautionary X-ray. Seth Hazlitt met me there and confirmed there was no break. Then he secured me a pair of crutches and a walking boot.