The Beginning

by Catherine Coulter

  They all sat.

  Come a bit farther, Quinlan said to her silently. Just a bit farther. He saw Corey poised in the shadows, his SIG at the ready.

  Amory St. John groaned. He jerked up, then fell back. He groaned again, opened his eyes.

  Sally shrieked, “There’s blood in his eyes. James, you hit him that hard?”

  In those precious seconds when all of Amabel’s attention was focused on Amory, Corey leaped from her left side, a lovely training move taught at Quantico, her right fist going right into Amabel’s side, her left fist straight into her neck.

  Amabel turned, but not in time. The gun went spinning out of her hand.

  Corey said, “I’m sorry, Sally,” and hit Amabel square in the jaw. She crumpled to the floor.

  Amory St. John groaned again.

  “Corey,” Thomas said, “please say you’ll marry me. Like a reformed smoker, I’m now a reformed sexist. I’ll become a feminist.”

  Sally laughed from sheer relief. Quinlan told Thomas to stay where he was on the floor. He rose and shook hands with Corey and hugged Sally to his side. “Now we’ll wait for the cavalry to arrive.”

  “I smell smoke,” Thomas said, stiffening as he sniffed the air. “Quinlan, there’s smoke coming from under that door.”

  “It’s the kitchen,” Sally said, dashing to it.

  “No, Sally, don’t open it. It’ll just suck the flames in here.”

  Amory St. John moaned again and lurched to his side.

  “More flames,” Corey said. “Someone’s set us on fire. The old folks have set the place on fire!”

  “I’ll carry St. John. Corey, you get Amabel. Sally, can you help Thomas? Let’s get out of here.”

  “Whoever set the fire will be waiting for us,” Sally said. “You know it, James.”

  “I’d rather risk being shot than burn to death,” he said. “Everyone agree? There’s no other way out except through the kitchen, and the door’s already burning. It’s got to be the front door.”

  “Let’s go,” Corey said, as she shoved the SIG in her belt. She heaved Amabel over her shoulder.

  Quinlan, with St. John over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry like Corey’s, kicked the cottage door open. The sun was rising, the dawn sky streaked with pink. The air was crisp and clean, the sound of the ocean soft and rhythmic. It was a beautiful morning.

  There were at least thirty people standing in front of the cottage, all of them armed.

  Reverend Hal Vorhees shouted, “Throw down your gun, Mr. Quinlan, or we’ll shoot the women.”

  At least the old folk hadn’t automatically shot them down when they’d come out of Amabel’s cottage. All the bravado about preferring a gunshot to a fire—was bullshit. Nobody wanted to die. Now they had some time—at least Quinlan prayed they did.

  He nodded to Corey. She threw his SIG right at Reverend Hal Vorhees. It landed close to his feet.

  “Good, now lay that madman down, Amabel next to him. We don’t care what happens to him. He’s evil and a blight. He’s nothing more than a filthy traitor. He made Amabel turn on us. Come on now, the four of you come with us.”

  “We’re going to a church service, Reverend?”

  “Shut up, Mr. Quinlan,” Hunker Dawson said.

  “A helicopter will be arriving in about five minutes, Hal,” Quinlan said after he’d dropped St. John to the ground, landing him in the middle of Amabel’s daffodils.

  “We called the FBI office in Portland from Doc Spiver’s cottage. Sheriff David Mountebank’s deputies will be here soon as well.”

  Actually the deputies should have been here long ago. Where the devil were they?

  “No, we took care of the deputies,” Gus Eisner said. “Come now. We don’t want to waste any more time. You’re lying about that helicopter. Besides, it don’t make no difference. You’ll be gone by the time the feds arrive.”

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Sally said. “Never. Don’t you have any idea at all what you’re dealing with?”

  “Look at us, Sally,” Sherry Vorhees said. “Look at all these nice old people. We wouldn’t even kill mosquitoes, now would we? Who would deal with us? Why, there’s nothing to deal with. I’d invite them all in for some of the World’s Greatest Ice Cream.”

  “It’s gone far beyond that now,” Sally said, stepping forward.

  Reverend Hal Vorhees immediately raised his gun higher. “Listen to me,” Sally went on. “Everyone knows that James and the other agents are here. They’ll mow you down. Another thing, they’ll dig up every grave in the cemetery and they’ll find out those are all the missing people reported over the past three years. It’s all over. Please, be reasonable about this. Give it up.”

  “Shut up, Sally,” said Hunker Dawson. “All of you, enough of this. Let’s go.”

  “Yes, sure thing, Hunker,” Quinlan said. They had more time. How much more, he had no idea. But even one more minute meant hope.

  They walked like condemned prisoners in front of the mob. He was aware of the unreality of the whole situation even as he felt fear seeping deep into him.

  Quinlan said over his shoulder, “What will you preach on this Sunday, Hal? The rewards of evil? The spiritual high of mass murder? No, I’ve got it. It’ll be the wages of trying to bring justice to people who were brutally murdered for the amount of cash they carried.”

  Quinlan staggered from the blow on his shoulder.

  “That’s enough,” Gus Eisner said. “Shut up. You’re upsetting the ladies.”

  “I’m not upset,” Corey said. “I’d like to pull out all your teeth and listen to you scream.”

  “I don’t have any teeth,” Hunker said. “That ain’t a good punishment for this group.”

  What to say to that? Quinlan thought and winked at Corey. She looked furious. Thomas was walking on his own, but Corey was helping him. His arm wasn’t bleeding so much now, but the blood loss was taking its toll, that and shock.

  Sally was trudging along beside him, looking pale and very thoughtful. He said out of the side of his mouth, real low, so maybe all those old people wouldn’t hear him, “Hold up, Sally. We’ll figure out something. Hey, I can take at least a dozen of the old guys, no problem. Could you pound the old ladies?”

  That made her smile. “Yeah, I could pound them into the dust. But I want to go back and get Amory St. John. They left him and Amabel there, James, both of them. They’ll get away. My aunt, well, I don’t know, but she’s not quite the aunt I’d hoped she was.”

  An understatement, Quinlan thought. Another blow for her, another person she’d believed she could trust had betrayed her. Thank God her mother had come through for her. He thought he just might come to like Noelle St. John a lot in the future. If he had a future.

  Quinlan said, “Maybe the calvary will arrive before St. John and your aunt get their wits back together and can get away. But even if they do escape, we’ll get them sooner or later.”

  To Quinlan’s surprise, they were herded up the wide, beautifully painted white steps and into Thelma’s Bed and Breakfast. He had thought they’d be taken to the Vorhees house.

  “Would you look at that,” Quinlan said as he got a poke with a rifle, shoving him into the large drawing room. There was Thelma Nettro, sitting on that chair of hers that looked for all the world like a throne. She was smiling at them. She was wearing a full mouth of false teeth and her pumpkin peach lipstick.

  She said, “I wanted to join in the fun, but I don’t get around as well as I used to.”

  There was Purn Davies sitting on one of the sofas, looking white and shriveled. Good, Corey had whacked him hard.

  “Why are we here?” Quinlan asked, turning to Reverend Hal Vorhees.

  “You’re here because I wanted you here. Because I ordered my people to bring you to me. Because, Mr. Quinlan, I’m going to tell you all what we’re going to do with you.”

  They all stared at Martha as she moved from behind Thelma Nettro’s chair. There was nothing soft an
d bosomy about her now. There were no pearls around her neck. Her voice was loud and clear, a commander’s voice, not her gentle cook’s voice announcing an incredible meal. What was going on here?

  “Martha?” Sally said, bewildered. “Oh, no, not you too, Martha?”

  “Don’t look so surprised.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sally said. “You’re a wonderful cook, Martha. You go out with poor Ed. You take grief from Thelma. You’re nice, damn you. What’s going on?”

  Quinlan said slowly, “I knew there had to be a ringleader, one person with a vision, one person who could get all the others to fall in line. Aren’t I right, Martha?”

  “Exactly right, Mr. Quinlan.”

  “Why didn’t you let them elect you mayor?” Sally said. “Why murder innocent people?”

  “I’ll let that go, Sally,” Martha said. “Oh, poor Mr. Shredder. You, Corey, set him down in that chair. Too bad Doc Spiver fell sick of cowardice and remorse. He drew the straw and had to kill that woman who’d overheard a meeting we were having. We caught her on the phone, dialing nine-one-one. Poor bitch. She was different. We didn’t know what to do with her. She wasn’t like those tourists who came into town for the World’s Greatest Ice Cream. No, we wouldn’t ever have picked her. She was too young; she had children. But then, we didn’t know what to do with her either. We couldn’t very well let her go.

  “When she got loose that first night and screamed her head off—you heard her, Sally, Amabel told us the next day—we put a guard on her. But then two nights later she got loose again, and that time Amabel was forced to call Hal Vorhees over, because of you, Sally. There was no choice. Since it was Doc’s fault that she got loose, since he’d been her guard, we all decided that she had to die. There was simply no other choice. We were sorry about it, but it had to be done, and Doc Spiver had to kill her. But he couldn’t stomach it. He was going to call Sheriff Mountebank.” She shrugged.

  “Fair is fair. We’ve always been scrupulously fair. Helen Keaton drew the straw. She put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. If it hadn’t been for that sheriff and that medical examiner in Portland, it would have been declared suicide. Yes, that was a pity. Amazingly unfair.”

  It was remarkable, Quinlan was thinking, that every criminal he’d ever known had loved to talk, to brag about how great he was, how he was smarter than everyone else. Even a little old lady.

  “Yeah,” he said, “a real pity.”

  Martha was fiddling with her glasses, since she wasn’t wearing her pearls, but her voice was calm and assured. “You don’t appreciate what we’ve done, Mr. Quinlan. We turned a squalid little ghost town into a picture postcard village. Everything is pristine. Everything is beautifully planned. We leave nothing to chance. We discuss everything. We even have a gardening service for those who don’t enjoy tending flowers. We have a painting service that comes in every week. Of course, we also have a chairperson for each service. We are an intelligent, loyal, industrious group of older citizens. Each of us has a responsibility, each has an assignment.”

  “Who selects the victims?” Corey asked. She was standing beside Thomas, her hand on his shoulder. He was still conscious, but his face was white as death. She’d wrapped a hand-crocheted afghan around him. It looked as if a grandmother had spent hours putting those soft pastel squares together.

  Quinlan stared at that afghan. Then he stared at Martha. He’d be willing to wager she had knitted the afghan. No accounting for grandmothers. Martha was a vicious, cold-blooded killer.

  Martha laughed softly. “Who? Why, all of us, Ms. Harper. Our four gentlemen who play gin rummy around their barrel? They look over everyone who drives in for refreshment at the World’s Greatest Ice Cream Shop.

  “Zeke down at the cafe eyes every tourist from his window in the kitchen. When he’s too busy, then Nelda pays attention when folk take out their wallets to pay.

  “Sherry and Della run the souvenir shop in that little cottage close to the ocean cliffs. They check out tourists there. As you can imagine, we must make decisions very quickly.” She sighed. “Sometimes we’ve erred. A pity. One couple looked so very affluent, drove a Mercedes even, but we only found three hundred dollars, nothing else of any use. All we could do was send Gus to Portland with the car to sell it. It turned out it was leased. That was close. As I recall, Ralph refused to lay them out, didn’t you, Ralph? You said they didn’t deserve it. And we all agreed. They weren’t honest with us. They lied.”

  “Exactly right,” Ralph Keaton said. “I wrapped them each in a cheap sheet, the dirty liars. Helen wanted the name Shylock on their grave marker, but we knew we couldn’t be that obvious so we changed it to Smith, so nondescript it was like they’d never even existed.”

  “This is amazing,” Sally said, looking at each one of those old faces. “Truly amazing. You’re all mad. I wonder what they’ll do with all of you. Put you all on trial as mass murderers? Or chuck you into an insane asylum?”

  “I hear a helicopter,” Reverend Hal Vorhees said. “We’ve got to hurry, Martha.”

  “You’re going to shoot us?” Corey asked, stepping away from Thomas. “You honest to God think you can get away with killing all of us?”

  “Of course we can,” Purn Davies said, rising from the sofa, looking a bit less pale. He picked up a shotgun from beside him and walked forward. “We’ve got nothing to lose. Nothing at all. Isn’t that right, Martha?”

  “Perfectly right, Purn.”

  “You’re all senile and stupid!” Sally screamed.

  In that instant, when most attention was focused on Sally, Quinlan grabbed Purn Davies’s sawed-off shotgun and leaped at Martha. He took her down and rolled over her. He had his arm around her throat and the gun digging into the small of her back. His right hand was tangled in the chain that secured her glasses.

  There was stunned silence. Thelma Nettro slowly turned around in her chair. “Let her go, Mr. Quinlan. If you don’t, we’ll kill her along with the rest of you. You agree, don’t you, Martha?”

  There was no choice, none at all. Quinlan knew that. He knew he had to act quickly, with no hesitation. He had to make them believe. He had to scare them down to their old bones. It had to be shocking. It had to punch these old people back to reality, out of the insane world they’d created and inhabited. He had to show them they had no more control.

  Quinlan raised the shotgun and shot Purn Davies in the chest. The blast knocked the old man off the floor, against an ancient piano. Blood spewed everywhere. The old man didn’t make a sound, just slid onto the floor. There were a dozen screams, curses, and horrified yells.

  Quinlan shouted over the din, “I can get at least three more of you before you get me. Want to bet it’s not going to be you? Come on, you old geezers, come and try it.”

  The shotgun was double-barreled. One of them would realize quickly enough that he had only one shot left.

  “Corey, grab my gun, quick.”

  She had it in an instant. Reverend Hal Vorhees raised his pistol. Quinlan shot him cleanly through his right arm. Corey threw Quinlan his SIG.

  “Who else?” Quinlan said. “This gun is a semiautomatic. It can take you all down. Anybody else? It will make a bigger, bloodier mess than that wimpy little shotgun did on old Purn. It’ll spew your ancient guts all over this room. I’ll bet none of you has ever dispatched your victim with a semiautomatic. It ain’t a pretty sight. Look at Purn. Yeah, look at him. It could be you.”

  Silence. Dead silence. He heard someone vomiting. That was amazing. One of them could actually throw up seeing Purn Davies after they’d killed sixty people?

  Thelma Nettro said, “You all right, Martha?”

  “Oh, yes,” Martha said. She flexed her hands. She smiled. She kicked back against Quinlan’s groin. He felt searing pain, felt his head swim with dizziness, felt the inevitable nausea. He hit her on the temple with his SIG.

  He didn’t know if she was dead. He didn’t particularly care. He said between gritted t
eeth as the nausea began to get to him, “Sally, get me Gus’s gun. Be sure to stay clear of any hands that could grab you. The rest of you, drop all your weapons. Ease down to the floor. We’re going to stay here nice and quiet until my guys arrive.”

  Thelma Nettro said, “Did you kill her, Mr. Quinlan?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, the pain still roiling through his groin.

  “Martha’s like a daughter to me. Don’t you remember? I told you that once.” She raised a pistol from her lap and shot him.

  In the next instant, the front door burst open. Sally, who was running to Quinlan, heard a man shout, “Nobody move! FBI!”

  THIRTY-THREE

  “Agent Quinlan, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” he said very clearly. “I can hear you, but I don’t want to. Go away. I hurt and I want to hurt alone. My Boy Scout leader told me a long time ago that men didn’t whine or moan, except in private.”

  “You’re a trooper, Agent Quinlan. Now, I’ll make that hurt go away. How bad is it?”

  “On a scale from one to ten, it’s a thirteen. Go away. Let me groan in peace.”

  The nurse smiled over at Sally. “Is he always like this?”

  “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve ever been around him when he’s been shot.”

  “Hopefully that won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t,” Sally said. “If he ever lets it happen again, I’ll kill him.”

  The nurse injected morphine into his IV drip. “There,” she said, lightly rubbing his arm above the elbow, “you won’t hurt very soon now. As soon as you have your wits together, you can give yourself pain medication whenever you need it. Ah, here’s Dr. Wiggs.”

  The surgeon was tall, skinny as a post, with the most beautiful black eyes Quinlan had ever seen. “I’m in Portland?”

  “Yes, at OHSU, Oregon Health and Sciences University Hospital. I’m Dr. Wiggs. I took that bullet out of your chest. You’re doing fine, Agent Quinlan. I hear you’re a very brave man. It’s a pleasure to save a brave man.”