Retribution

by Jasmine White

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The silence that filled the room in the wake of Wesley’s departure wasn’t peaceful as silence sometimes is. It was empty, bare, lonely. Katherine simply stood in the living room, numb, trying to collect her senses. Mechanically she processed the scene of her life that’d just played. What she’d begun fearing several months ago had been proved correct all along—Johnny was involved somehow in the nasty business concerning Drake. Johnny could get sent back to the pen. The angst she’d felt, the gnawing feeling that Johnny might someday return to his former ways had been proven correct. Yet now that it happened she was surprised how calm she was.

  He should leave; she wanted him to go. More than anything she didn’t want him to be locked up again. It would kill him. She wouldn’t go with him though. She no longer felt for him in that way—if she ever had. And now she questioned if her feelings had ever been more than a combination of physical attraction and pity.

  What to do now? When compared to Johnny’s situation, everything else seemed to shrink in importance. Nothing else came close to the enormity of what could happen to him if he were locked up again. A human life was at stake. Her preoccupation with her career, of obtaining another job now seemed so incredibly shallow she was ashamed at the very thought of it.

  She took a deep breath and forcibly relaxed her tense shoulders. There was nothing she could do right now to help him. Johnny was at work for the next six or so hours—she had to keep busy until then, or else her mind would go crazy with anxiety. Like a robot she turned to look at her office door. It did need to be cleaned in there. That’s what she could do—clean out her office, get Drake’s desk spruced up and ready for use.

  Grabbing an armful of random cleaning supplies, she put on Frank Sinatra’s Five Minutes More, jacked up the volume, and set about attacking the room. Gently swaying to the blaring music, she ran her rag along the table, being careful to follow the direction of the wood grain as she caught up the layer of accumulated dust. Task finished, record repeating, she stepped back to admire her handiwork. Light lazily drifted in from the small window in her office and hit the desk, making it gleam, illuminating the carving on its side.

  She looked closer at the etching. She’d noticed it briefly before, but had never taken a close look at it. Kneeling down beside the drafting table, she gently traced her fingers along the deep, carved lines of a map. South America . . . Rio, where Johnny had run into trouble. Her fingers drifted to the part of Brazil with the star carved in, where Doug Torres was from. Did Pamela know what her father was involved in? No, Katherine decided the same moment she thought it—Pamela would be incapable of keeping a secret.

  Her gliding finger had paused with her thought. Then her finger wasn’t still anymore; it was sinking into the wood. The star was moving with it, being indented into the table. She looked at her finger with a kind of horrid questioning look, hoping it was going to stop sometime soon. It did. A little click came, followed by the emergence of a small knob close to the star. A secret compartment? She pulled her one finger out and put three fingers on the knob. Her heart began to beat faster as she pulled on the knob; it gave way, drawing with it from the table a thin, shallow drawer. And inside the drawer rested a folded, brown manila envelope. She felt an odd tightening spread across her body starting at the hairs of her neck and working down in a sickening wave. What had she uncovered?

  Her fingers deftly unfolded the envelope and flicked up the two small metal notches which held it shut. She turned it upside down and gave it a small shake so that a few letters drifted to the ground and fluttered at her feet. Some had their own standard white envelopes, some were loose, all were handwritten. She picked up one of the white envelopes and flipped it over to study the postmark: Rio 1948. Who the heck would be sending Drake letters from Brazil? And why were they hidden in his drafting table?

  But this she thought she already knew and looked for a return address; the name Doug Torres was written in an arrogant scrawl. Then she picked up the scattered writings and scanned the dates at the top of each, searching for the most recent. It was postmarked 1949, right before the New Year, over six months ago.

  Professor Drake, I am warning you again, since you did not seem to receive or heed my last letters. And since we are no longer living in the Stone Age, I’m guessing it was the latter. Despite my charm, I am not a man who will stand for being crossed. We had an arrangement. You did not keep your end of the deal but took matters into your own incapable hands and absconded with the painting. The painting, you will remember, is mine, and still is mine. Don’t deceive yourself by thinking my influence is limited to South America. I think you remember was happened to your superior, Sam—

  “I knew you were holding out on us.” The triumphant, familiar voice behind Katherine jolted her into the present. She felt her blood turn to ice as she slowly dropped the letter and turned to face Jerry.

  The boniness of his hands wasn’t quite disguised by the black gloves that covered them, yet they had enough strength to hold a compact Ruger leveled at her head. “You just needed a bit of persuasion to hand them over. That’s right.” He smiled, clearly enjoying watching the caged animal look creep over her face. “If you value your life, you’ll hand those over now.”

  It was as if she were robotic, the way she reached down and grasped the letters, then straightened again, then wordlessly took the few steps covering the distance between them and handed the papers to Jerry. Her gaze never left the gun. He took the letters and flipped through them, a smirk of satisfaction lighting his face.

  “That’s a smart girl. I always knew you weren’t as innocent as you put out to be.”

  Katherine licked dry lips, her mind mechanically calculating what to do. If she could only keep him talking to buy more time. Jerry loved to hear himself talk. At least if he was talking he wouldn’t be shooting. Hopefully.

  “What do you mean?” Her voice registered half a notch above a squeak.

  “The obvious, of course. I was proven right in my suspicions. You knew all along where the letters were hidden, so you hightailed it over to the auction to retrieve them. Of course Johnny was too soft to make you talk. And you almost had me convinced that day at the beach. Almost.”

  “I-I didn’t know they were there,” Katherine stammered, trying to explain, to calm him down. “I only just found them.”

  “Of course you didn’t.” Jerry’s tone was so patronizing it sounded like he’d been taking lessons from Torres. “Just like the professor didn’t know where the painting went.” His gaze shifted around the room as if he were searching for something. “Let’s move this party to the living room.”

  He gave a sharp motion with his gun indicating for her to walk ahead of him. She slowly moved forward, but this time her eyes scanned the room as she sought desperately for something to defend herself with. All the knives were in the kitchen. Johnny had always wanted her to keep a gun—she never would accept one.

  “That’s far enough.” She’d reached the fireplace when he spoke again, and an eerie feeling of déjá vu swept over her. “So that’s your plan. You’re going to kill me the same way you killed Professor Drake. It was you who killed him, wasn’t it? In front of the fireplace. Will I also be holding a gun in my hand?” She turned defiantly to face him as she asked the questions.

  “Don’t leave out Johnny. That’s right, your beloved boyfriend was an accomplice in Drake’s death. No, he didn’t pull the trigger, but the police don’t know that. I killed him, but it’d be Johnny’s word against mine if it ever came to court. Plus the fact that he was at the apartment at the time of death. Well, he’s pretty much putty in our hands. Not that I really needed any more leverage after saving his life in South America.”

  As Katherine stared agape at him, hate began coursing through her veins, replacing her fear, as she looked at the man who had ruined Johnny. This person—this monster kept dragging him down every time he tried to come up for air.

  Jerry continue
d to relish in his moment. “I thought it would be an extra special touch to have you die in the same way your beloved professor did. Of course there will be a suicide note explaining how you’d killed Professor Drake and became so overcome with guilt you took your own life. Kind of poetic, don’t you think?”

  Katherine looked down at the poker in front of the fireplace—what Drake had been reaching for. Now she realized it was in self-defense. Would she really die in the same way as her mentor? Shot, reaching desperately for the only weapon in sight?

  “You should’ve remembered I don’t like poetry.”

  Katherine muffled an exclamation at the sound of Johnny’s voice. He entered the room slowly, a gun of his own pointed at Jerry’s head. And his eyes held such a look of pure hatred as they rested on Jerry’s back that she remained quiet.

  Jerry was frozen for a brief instant before he finally turned to face Morgan. “Johnny! You’re just in time for our little party.” His arm’s shadow sketched a brief arc on the ground as he turned his gun from Katherine onto Johnny.

  “I see,” Johnny replied, his jaw muscle tight.

  Kate felt like a spectator watching a duel scene played before her.

  “You know you don’t want to do this, Johnny.” Jerry spoke as though explaining a concept to a child. “She knows too much. No loose ends, remember? That’s what messed things up for us in Rio. We had a loose end—Drake.”

  “Whom you had to kill, insisting he was the only one who would die because of this.” Johnny didn’t lower his gun.

  “She’s the last loose end, Johnny. I finally got the letters. If she’s out of the way we don’t have to worry about someone finding out about the painting . . . about the blackmail letters Drake was keeping . . . about Drake. I don’t like that look in your eyes, Johnny. Don’t forget about South America. Don’t forget what happened that night of the storm.”

  Johnny was silent, his jaw muscles working.

  Taking Johnny’s silence as acquiescence, Jerry rotated his gun away from Johnny and back onto Katherine. Surely Johnny would not just let her die.

  She was frozen in place. The last loose end repeated horribly though her mind as she squeezed her eyes shut. The gunshot sounded far away, like it’d been fired from a great distance, and she fell limp to the ground.

  This time instead of a lifeguard, she was drowning. The blackness was closing in over her head and she couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to stop it. It felt better to just let it take her away.

  “Katherine!” Her shoulder was being shaken vehemently. “Wake up! We have to get out of here.”

  She forced her eyes open and looked numbly up at Johnny. Then she tested her limbs. They all seemed to work okay; she sat up. Finally it sank in that she hadn’t been shot, but rather, had just fainted. But somebody had been shot—Jerry. His body lay in front of the hearthside, strikingly similar to the way Drake’s body had lain.