Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

  I took my leave and joined Sherlock at the magazine rack. "And how long were you listening?"

  He slid the folded newspaper back into its spot. "Couldn't hear a word, but it's time we got moving." He nodded out the glass door.

  Jacob stood there, paying off a cab.

  More family affairs to settle. For this one, I felt ready. "Let's do it."

  We stepped out into the July sunshine, fading beneath gathering clouds, and waited on the landing. Jacob turned from his cab. He smiled when he spotted us and started up the short flight of stairs.

  "Charles." He held out his hand, glancing down with his dark, almost pupil-less eyes at the same time.

  My skin crawled. "Don't bother. I've taken it off."

  Jacob froze. His eyes widened the barest touch. "Beg pardon?"

  "The ring," Sherlock said. "We tumbled to you, Jacob. How did you get rid of your Suburban?"

  "I suppose you junked it." I eased nearer; a fight on the steps of the previously mentioned bed and breakfast would be almost as satisfying as one in the lobby, and a lot less expensive. "It certainly was in no condition for a decent trade-in."

  "Bastard." His voice and face were suddenly vicious. But the step he took was in reverse.

  He didn't intend to fight now any more than he had beneath the sword-maiden's fountain. A sense of power washed through me; this would be an easy victory.

  But Sherlock turned away. "It doesn't matter if he runs. We can get a copy of the bill of sale from the previous owner and a tour of the junkyards should locate the wreck if the police want it. Come on, let's get out of here. The ladies await and they are much cleaner company."

  I didn't move. "What did Aunt Edith have against you, Jacob?"

  Sherlock's gaze flickered to me for one irritated moment, then he glared at Jacob from the corner of his eye. The effect, I knew from experience, was nerve-wracking.

  Jacob blinked. "She never liked me. No one did."

  "She wasn't that sort of person. When she didn't like someone, she had a bloody good reason for it."

  He backed away again. "It wasn't my fault." His voice rose with each syllable. "I was just a kid. Besides, I didn't know what he was planning. How should I have known?"

  I followed, step for step, Sherlock beside me. "Who?"

  "That professor. I don't remember his name. It was something odd."

  Sherlock and I looked at each other; my skepticism was as obvious, I'm certain, as his. "Rainwater," I said helpfully.

  "Yes, that's it: Rainwater." Jacob paused for breath, possibly to think. There was an edge beneath his pretended anger that I was fairly certain was genuine worry. "He left the reception early—"

  "What reception?"

  "For Uncle Hubert's award ceremony." For a flash real exasperation punched through his poor acting. "You didn't want to go, remember? But I was there. Who knows, if you had gone instead of me, it might have been you."

  Not ruddy likely. I eased closer again. "What did you do, Jacob?"

  He backed further. Another step and he'd be into traffic; pity it was such a quiet street.

  "Rainwater gave me a phone number and a quarter, and told me to call him when Uncle Hubert left." He paused, again for either breath or thought. "And that's all I did. I swear."

  I traded glances with Sherlock again; his lower lip jutted out. "How much?" I asked.

  "What?"

  "How much did he pay you?"

  "He didn't—"

  I snaked out an arm and grabbed the front of his shirt. "How much?"

  He flushed but didn't even try to pull away. "A hundred dollars."

  "A lot of money just for making a phone call," Sherlock said.

  "Right." I shook him. My fury, I was certain, was perfectly believable. "And that's how Uncle Hubert's murderer knew when and where to go after him. He was a good man and he didn't deserve that."

  "I didn't know!" Now he really was frightened, or at least I found his portrayal to be suddenly credible.

  "And that's where you got the idea, isn't it?" Sherlock said, "to go after Robbie here with a vehicle."

  "I never—"

  I let him go. He staggered back and grabbed a parking meter.

  "No matter where you go," I said, "no matter how fast or how far you run, you will never escape me. Go on for now, Jacob. Just remember: I'm coming for you."

  He straightened his suit. "That's what she said."

  Sherlock and I stepped forward in unison, as if we were on the parade ground. Jacob flinched. We passed on either side of him, and I couldn't resist brushing his shoulder with mine.

  "What are your plans for him, Robber?" Sherlock said as we entered the garage.

  "I don't know. I have to think of something appropriately evil." My anger hadn't diminished. I doubted it would any time soon.

  "Just remember what he said there at the end."

  I stopped at the passenger door, waiting for him to flick the locks. "What do you mean?"

  He leaned onto the top of the car facing me, unaccountably serious. "Maybe that's how Edith got started blackmailing, by being furious with Jacob. Are you going in the same direction?"

  I stared, feeling the blood drain from my face. It had happened so subtly, I hadn't even seen the trap opening in my path. "No, I'm not going in that direction."

  "Then get in. You've got one more conversation ahead of you."

  I was still counting on my fingers — I'd spoken with Langstrom, Father, William, and Jacob; who was left? Rainwater? Uncle Preston? the man in the moon? — when Sherlock pulled the Camaro over into the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, tucked it into an out-of-the-way spot, and killed the engine.

  "All right, I give up," I said. "Who's left?"

  He powered down both windows, pushed his seat all the way back, twisted behind the wheel, and gave me the binocular version of that cobra stare at full power. "Me."

  It worked. I froze, hypnotized. "I don't understand."

  One big scarred hand reached into his front fatigue pocket and pulled out a U.S. Army presentation case. He opened it and looked inside, his face solemn. Then he handed it to me, still open.

  "Why don't you ever wear that?"

  I could argue, I knew. I also knew I'd lose. Reluctantly I took the case. Without a glance I flipped it shut and slid it into my own front pocket. Someday I'd figure out a way of telling this man to butt out and have it stick.

  "Because I don't deserve it," I said simply.

  "And how do you figure that?" The scar on his right temple was puckered and confusion darkened his brown eyes.

  Finally he'd gotten around to asking his difficult questions.

  I turned back to the dashboard. The clouds that had threatened outside the bed and breakfast lowered overhead in a businesslike manner; a summer-evening thunderstorm was coming to call. It was a good symbol for my rising tantrum.

  "Look," I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, "I understand things like maintaining morale, and keeping a unit together, and supporting the weakest link, and all that. I understand why you and von Bisnon threw this my way. But I will not willingly—"

  "Shut up and just explain what in the hell you are talking about."

  I leaned my head against the rest, closed my eyes, and counted to ten. Thunder rumbled in the distance. "I am talking about that spotter."

  "What about him?"

  I risked a glance. There wasn't a trace of humor or sarcasm in Sherlock's face or voice. His jaw was square. The weal across his temple had deepened and flared a violent red against his windblown tan. The bags beneath his eyes could carry my entire wardrobe.

  "Robbie, I'm sorry this happened to you. I feel responsible, not least because I pretty much trapped you into joining my unit. But that spotter was the enemy. He was good, too damned good for us to let him live. That's why I gave you the job. Don't get me wrong, MacElsa's good, too, but when I need to be certain the job's done right, well, you're better in that regard. I know it's hard to look a man in the eye acr
oss a battlefield and kill him in cold blood, but that's what had to happen."

  Somewhere during that little speech his meaning hit home. "Are you saying I got that spotter?"

  His stare narrowed for one clinical moment. Then he looked away and ran a hand through his hair. "Gonna need headlights driving back," he said, apropos of absolutely nothing. "What's the last thing you remember?"

  I stared at him. Hope sang through me, high and clear, like a violin note thrumming on and on and on. "Being injured. I remember the pain. Then I remember not being able to lift the rifle, Kenny radioing for a medic, fainting—" I fell silent and waited.

  I knew Sherlock would never let me down.

  "I gave you the job to do." He stared across the hood of the car toward the lowering sky. His eyes were unfocused; in a rare empathic flash, I realized he, too, sometimes relived that scene, if not in an actual flashback then at least in his conscious thoughts. "You lined up for the shot but before you took it, the spotter saw us and called down machine-gun fire on our position. You jumped back. The kid beside me was hit in the face and started screaming." He paused and in the silence I heard that echo. Or was it thunder?

  "Sometimes," I admitted, "I still hear him."

  "Me, too." He ran a hand back through his hair. "Anyone would. You lined up a second time, but the enemy gunners were still firing and one of them got you in the back."

  "That I remember."

  "You lay over the sandbags, not moving. There was blood all over the place and I thought you were dead." He rubbed his eyes; when he looked back up, they were bloodshot. "Then you pushed yourself up straight. You moved real slow, like it hurt. But your face was set. You picked up that Mauser and took aim a third time. I raised my binoculars and located the spotter, just as he tried to duck down behind one of those emplacements. I think he knew his number was up. He didn't make it. You drilled him, and the shot threw him back against one of those artillery pieces, and he hung there for a minute and then slid down into a heap. And you stared through that scope as if you couldn't believe what you'd just done. When you looked around at me—" He stopped and rubbed his eyes again.

  I couldn't remember a bit of it. I wondered what he was glossing over, what was so terrible that he couldn't bring himself to tell me. I was afraid to ask.

  "When you looked at me, I knew something was wrong, and I'm not talking about your back. I've watched you fighting this, Robbie, the same way you fight everything else that gets in your way. It's part of what makes you such a valuable member of the team."

  Finally he faced me again. The depth of sadness in his expression shocked me. For the first time in our acquaintance, I believed he had a twenty-year-old son.

  And I knew that finally he'd come to the point.

  Finally.

  "Don't you think it's time to start picking your battles a little better? I mean, do you have to fight everything?"

  He was asking me to surrender. I didn't want to. I never would. But as I swiveled back to face the dashboard, the presentation case in my pocket pressed against my chest. I pulled it out, flipped it open, and looked at the decoration I had earned. Even in the dimming light, the bronze five-pointed star glittered like gold. Despite the seriousness of his message, I felt rather giddy.

  Of course, I'd face a dozen machine gunners — with spotters — before I'd tell him that. No matter how wonderful he seemed just then.

  "I got that spotter?"

  "Yep." His voice was deadpan.

  That made me suspicious. "Are you lying?"

  He opened his eyes wide. "Would I lie to you?"

  I looked at him.

  "Okay, would I lie to you like this? At a moment like this?"

  He had a point. I refused to admit it. The medal's glitter and its red-and-white ribbon, a narrow strip of blue down the center, was the most beautiful thing, short of Caren, I'd ever seen. Most of all I valued its message, with my name engraved on its reverse. "I'd just about talked myself into some sort of treatment even without your interference."

  "Seriously?"

  My cell phone chose then to ring. "Seriously," I said, and flipped it open. "Ellandun here."

  The signal wasn't clear. But even through the static, I could hear the caller's breathing. For a long moment, I heard no reply, and was about to repeat my greeting when he finally spoke.

  "I thought you were her son, you know."

  The voice was raspy and ragged, as if its owner didn't use it often enough or it had been destroyed with nicotine. In that first second of my public nightmare, I closed my eyes, listened to Glendower's heavy breathing and my own pulse pounding in my ears. I gripped the car seat with my spare hand.

  "Well," I said, forcing my voice to remain light, "that explains the care you used searching my condo."

  "Your decorator is rather overrated." His tone was equally dry and his accent even more confused than my own. In that insane second, I wondered how many languages he spoke. "If I'd known whose son you were, I would not have been so careful."

  My cultivated calm frayed at the edges. "I'm as close to a son as she had." The car seat I gripped didn't have enough texture and the demons in my brain were closing in. I needed something rougher. But everywhere I looked was smooth plastic, smooth cloth, smooth fiberglass. Nothing, there was nothing.

  The voice in my ear kept speaking, a nightmare voice with a nightmare message. "And you look just like her, which fooled me for a long time. If it weren't for the little heart-to-heart chat you had with your dear father an hour ago, I'd never have known."

  Those two chairs, the ones facing the windows, in full view of any lip-reader sitting outside in a car, watching through binoculars. My pulse accelerated. Mist dissolved the borders of my consciousness.

  Then something gripped my forearm, hard. I started. It was Sherlock's hand, big and scarred and delicate, and he held onto me as if he could stop me from fading into the fog of my damaged brain. I let go the car seat and held his wrist in return, and didn't even begrudge him the moment.

  "What do you want, Glendower?"

  "You know what I want. No police, and none of your military friends, or the bastard dies as he should have died years ago. Bring the jewelry to the art gallery in two hours and come alone."

  Even with Sherlock's death grip on my arm the mists crept closer. My hand trembled until the cell phone vibrated against my ear.

  "You really should have walked him to his room, you know." Glendower rang off.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  current time

  "Stick with me, Robber."

  "I'm still here." I didn't add, only barely. I didn't need to.

  A phone call to Uncle Preston had interrupted their quiet family dinner, caused a panic amongst everyone present that was audible on my end of the line, and confirmed that Father really was missing from the bed and breakfast. Finally I believed Glendower's threat: only by trading off the jewelry — the jewelry Aunt Edith had died to protect — would I protect Father's life.

  Cold-bloodedly, I wondered if it would bother me so much if I hadn't had that heart-to-heart with Father just an hour ago.

  "Yeah, you seem okay. So call Prissy Carr." Sherlock cut the lights and glided into a parking spot several blocks from the gallery. "Have her meet us here. I'm not maligning your abilities, but right now it would be an advantage to have the codes to the security system."

  I punched the buttons and listened to the phone's electronic beeps through the growing mutter of thunder. It cut immediately to her voice mailbox; when it stopped speaking, I started. "Prissy, it's Charles. Call me as soon as you get this message." I hung up. "No answer was her loud reply."

  "Damn." He paused, staring into the rearview mirror, then opened the car door and stepped out, waving down an approaching taxi. Through the backwash of the headlights I watched him lean onto the rear passenger's-side door. The window lowered, Sherlock spoke a few words, then the window rolled up and he backed away. William stepped from the cab and joined him. Together the
y returned to the Camaro and got in.

  "William," I said.

  "What's going on?" His face was white, his jaw set and eyes narrow.

  "The man who murdered Aunt Edith and injured Trés has kidnapped Father."

  He sagged. "Oh, dear God in Heaven. Why?"

  "Because I have something he wants."

  "Does he want it badly enough to kill for it?"

  "He already has." Sherlock turned to me. "Call the house. Have Bonnie and Theresa meet us here, and tell the nutcase to bring her kit."

  I punched in the number rather than scroll for it. "You are not going to blow up the gallery, are you?"

  "Prissy should have answered the phone."

  I looked at him.

  "Okay, not all of it, at least. Tell Caren she's invited. Make sure they bring the jewelry and that they do not leave Lindsay alone for a moment. Then ask Patricia to drive to the police station and bring them to the showdown. But ask her to drive slowly."

  I understood his meaning but didn't say it aloud, either. Sherlock wanted this finished before the police arrived; he wanted their only job to be the tidying up afterward. That was comforting. It meant he really did have a plan, at least of sorts, and the tunnel-vision mists dissipated. The cold clear reality of combat pumped through my soul. Whatever happened, with this half-demented man beside me, I could deal with it.

  I hoped.

  I made the call, and at the end of it Bonnie apologized for giving Glendower my cell phone number and springing that little surprise on me. "But I didn't see what else I could do. I mean, I didn't think he'd give me his number and let you call him back."

  "It's all right. I'm over it, I think."

  "Right. We'll be there in a bit."

  I disconnected and returned the cell phone to my belt. "What's next, boss?"

  With William in the rear seat Sherlock didn't push his all the way back, but he did swivel to face me. "What about the security system, Robber? What can you tell me?"

  I thought briefly. "If Glendower's inside, then obviously he's turned off the burglar alarm because it would ring at the police station. Equally obviously, Prissy ignored my warning to put guards with dogs inside."