Captors
Page 24
He looked down the wide and empty stairway. There were small recessed windows at each landing, admitting faint oblongs of light. Sam eased down with his back to the wall. When his chest began to ache he let his breath out. The board steps were loud under his feet.
"Turo?" he whispered.
He waited half a minute and then continued to the landing, revealing himself as he passed the window space. "Turo?"
"Yeah," Turo said at last, from below. "I see you."
"Where are you?"
"I'll come up."
Turo joined him on the second floor. "What are you doing here? What's the gun for?"
"Turo, they've caught on. They're armed and ready for you. Where's Rich?"
"Front of the house, where he's supposed to be. What do you mean? How did they catch on?"
"I'll tell you later. Metts is just above us. Turo, we'll have to use the guns."
Turo hesitated.
Sam said harshly, "Turo, it's kill or be killed! The man's like a cat, and he's a crack shot."
"All right," Turo said. His face was a pale, wet gleam in the darkness.
"Give me your gun. Go ahead of me up the stairs. Stop on the landing facing the door. I'll call Metts out. When you see him in the doorway take three steps and then drop. I'll shoot over you. He won't be expecting it."
"What about the General?"
"He's just sitting and waiting for the action to come to him. Don't worry."
"All right," Turo said again. Sam clasped the boy's upper arm briefly: he was like a block of wood. Turo handed over his shotgun. Sam took it in his right hand.
"Let's go." He had to push to get Turo started. They walked up to the bend in the stairs. "Metts," Sam called, not loudly. He watched the second hand on the luminous dial of his watch and when a quarter of a minute had gone by he called again.
"Metts! It's Sam. I've got one of them."
The door above was cautiously opened and Vernon Metts appeared, silhouetted against the kitchen light.
"Damn it, Sam, I told you to stay put! All right, bring him up." Turo didn't budge. Sam prodded him with the muzzle of one of the guns. Turo started up reluctantly. On the third step he threw himself against the wall with a sob, clutching his head with his hands. Sam dropped his shotgun, shouldered Turo's weapon and started pulling the trigger. The muzzle flashes from the shotgun lit up the stairwell like artillery. Vernon Metts disappeared in an explosion of splinters and plaster.
Turo reared up through the smoke after the reverberation from the fourth shot. He tried to tell Sam something, but Sam was too deafened to hear. He was also too busy to pay attention. He put down the semiautomatic, picked up his own shotgun in a pistol grip, rammed the muzzle against Turo's big chest and fired a fistful of choked shot cleanly through him. The blast hurled Turo through the railing and he disappeared. The recoil from the blast sprained Sam's wrist and the butt of the stock almost unjointed his elbow. He fell back to the landing and lay there stunned. Then he slowly got to his feet. He unbuttoned his shirt with his left hand and carefully slid his other hand into the makeshift sling until it supported the sprained wrist.
He walked empty-handed up the stairs and stepped over the body of Vernon Metts, not giving it more than a glance. There were bright splotches of blood on the walls. The air was still dusty. Very little of the door remained on the hinges. The assault rifle was lying a few feet away from Metts's body. It had been nicked but not severely damaged. Sam stooped for it.
"Metts!" he heard the General cry, his voice muted by the thick walls and doors of the old mansion. "Sam? What the hell's happening out there?"
Sam shook his head, angry at the intrusion of the old man's voice. He was in pain and somewhat weakened by the shock of having rapidly killed two men. Something in his chest was trying to break loose: a shudder, a peal of laughter that might never end.
The General cried out again.
"Coming," Sam muttered, and plodded through the kitchen with the rifle in his hand.
Lone put the last of the suitcases in Rich's Le Mans and stood for a few minutes in the drive with her hands in the pockets of Carol's trench coat, looking up at a misty half moon. The intermittent rain had stopped and there was a tidal shimmer on the broad front lawn. She breathed deeply, taking pleasure in the night and the freshened air.
Everything done, the smallest detail attended to on schedule. It was now eleven-thirty; by midnight at the very latest they'd be on the road. She liked driving at night. She couldn't be very enthusiastic about the boat trip coming up at dawn; it bored her to think of being cooped up for three weeks with the Hendersholts on the fifty-foot motor sailer Rich had bought. But Babs could cook up a storm and Jim was an even better poker player than Rich, so the time would pass. And there were more rewarding times just ahead. Turo had assured her that Caracas was a lively place; when Caracas palled there was always Rio.
Despite her sense of well-being she was bothered by an irritant, a nagging sense of something undone. Lone frowned. What had she forgotten? Felice was fast asleep in her bedroom; she would sleep until the drug wore off or until a stimulant was given to her. Little chance of that happening.
No, she hadn't made any mistakes. She'd played her part, played it reliably and damned well, not counting the run-in with Dev Kaufman. And it was over. Good-bye, Carol. Soon you'll be one big happy family again. If Sam holds together, that is. She wouldn't take bets that Sam was going to hold together very long without their help.
Lone made a leisurely last tour around the outside of the house. Through trees the General's mansion was visible against a bank of gray cloud. Only one light showing. They'd been over there for fifteen minutes, she thought. She could expect them soon.
She remembered then the one thing she'd overlooked. Old Bird. Cap'n Midnight sitting over there in the hawk house. Lone smiled, but it was a regretful smile. If he wasn't freed in time, if no one remembered that the General kept birds, then her tiercel might starve to death. A terrible shame, considering all the time she'd lavished on his domestication. The General had been proud of her ability to handle the hunter bird. She had a genuine liking for her tierce. It would certainly help pass the time if she took him along on the jaunt to South America.
Why not? Lone thought, elated. The falcon certainly wouldn't be in the way on a boat that size. She could teach him to hunt from the deck. It wasn't asking too much of the others: she'd done more than anyone else so far. She'd certainly earned the privilege of having Old Bird with her.
In ten minutes' time she could fetch him and be back ready to roll when the boys arrived.
Lone smiled to herself and took a small flashlight from a pocket of the coat, cinched the belt a little tighter and set off briskly through the noiseless misty night for the General's.
Sam approached the carved door at the end of the red hall. He turned the knob gently and opened the door about an inch, peered out into the foyer, which looked like the abandoned lobby of a once-ornate movie theater. Thirty feet away behind another door the General was waiting, watchful, silent now.
Sam's face was drenched. He wiped it awkwardly on his sleeve and thumbed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His right arm hurt; shooting pains. Two down, he thought. He said in a choked voice, "General."
He heard nothing. He coughed and tried again, remembering to sound weak and gunshot. "General, please—it's Sam." He paused, thinking, listening, then rushed on, "Help me—hurt—I'm hurt. They're all dead. Oh, Christ, do something for me!"
Come on, he thought, his anger so intense that he was afraid of betraying himself by making a foolish move. And there was a remorseless itch of laughter in his chest. He couldn't understand why.
He saw the General emerge, limpingly, from the sitting room with his prize shotgun leveled.
He was unable to rejoice at having tricked the old man; suddenly he was petrified. He forgot that he had a gun of his own. Instead of anger he felt a buzzing of anticipation in his loins at the prospect of long-deserved punish
ment. He wanted to fling open the door, exposing himself fully. In confusion he stepped back from the crack of the door.
"Sam?" the General said, his eyes on the door, not seeing too well. His lined face was suspicious. He had come a little too far from the safety of the room. He seemed to change his mind suddenly and, as Sam leaned toward his slit view, the General made an awkward move as if to get back.
Sam threw open the door and stepped out. At the same time Rich Marsiand rose from the shadow of the front stairs and blasted away excitedly, knocking a leg off the General, separating him from his shotgun.
Rich ran up the remaining steps and looked down the barrel of his gun at the General, who had recovered very quickly and was dragging himself along the patchy carpet to his own weapon. The General blinked in surprise at Sam and shot a look at Rich. His face knotted with anger.
"Sam, goddarnmit, he's got a bead on me!"
Rich was confused by Sam's presence and glanced side-long at him. Sam put the rifle on him. For a couple of seconds Rich didn't get it, and then he flinched.
"Not me!" he bleated, aghast. Sam fired coolly from only five feet away, fired half the magazine, driving Rich flatfooted back to the steps with the uplifted shotgun going off in his hands. The charge ripped the bottom tier of crystals from the chandelier and set the whole thing swinging. Rich went rolling down the steps. Sam went to look, stepping over the General's artificial leg, which Rich had shot off. He spotted the small canister of gas where Rich had placed it for safekeeping. Then he walked slowly back to the General.
The General, who was still lying on his hip, had picked up his valuable fowling piece. Sam tore it away from him and hurled it. The General looked at him in outrage. He started to speak, to berate Sam, but the expression on Sam's face checked him. The General groped for an answer to his puzzling manner and decided that his son-in-law was suffering from a touch of combat nerves. He smiled grudgingly.
"Fine shooting, Samuel. You did fine. Just fine."
"Sure I did," Sam said, laughing at some absurdity. "Well, damn you, help me up!"
Sam clucked at him, and grinned. "I did it," he said. "I'm the hero. But you know something, General? They got to you before I killed them. Too bad."
The General reached up with a shaking hand and brushed fragments of glass from his shirt. He didn't take his eyes from Sam's face. He looked suspicious again, and worried as well.
"What?" he said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sunday, July 14—Monday, July 15
Nothing in particular awakened Carol; she hadn't dreamed. But suddenly she was sitting upright in the Mercedes with her heart thudding, staring through the rain-pebbled side window at the midnight landscape. Convinced she'd seen something or someone out there in the seconds between sleep and full awareness.
She was alone in the car. Her throat was raw and she smelled of smoke. She remembered the burning house and poor dead Babs and—
Sam. Thank God for Sam. He had found her there, and taken her quickly away.
She looked up at a lighted window just below the flèche of the house. It was the General's house. She felt a slight shock. Of course, they'd had to come here right away. Because the General was going to be killed.
Carol reached for the door handle, then held up her hand, shocked again. No manacles, no chain. She rubbed her chafed wrists, groped beneath Sam's olive trench coat. The cyclist's belt was gone too. Sam must have taken the things off. But he would have needed a key for the handcuffs; where did he get a key?
She rolled back the sleeves of the coat, touched her cold, dirt-streaked face. She glanced again at the house; the absence of lights frightened her. But she couldn't accept that they might have arrived too late to help the General.
Carol opened the door and stepped out of the car. The night air made her tremble and she turned up the full collar of the coat, feeling frail and slightly ludicrous in it. She went slowly up the front steps and reached for the bell pull. Timidity, or perhaps some intuition of disaster, kept her from ringing. She knew the door was never locked. She had to press against it with most of her weight before it opened on great hinges. There was no light in the vacant chandelier above the center hall, but there was a trace, a sheen on the stairs. Before she could call she heard voices in conversation and identified the General's distinctive rasp. She shuddered and ran joyfully for the stairs.
"And that night in Lubbock when you tried to kill me. You went halfway across the country to take a pot-shot at me. I recognized you that night, General. Do you deny you were there?"
"Damn right I do. I've never set foot in Lubbock." The strain of not changing his position, of not moving even a fraction, was causing the old man excruciating pain, but he kept any sign of it from his face and voice. To move was to die, as abruptly as Rich had died with a sockful of lead in him, and the General knew it. He had decided that his hope lay in keeping Sam occupied, talking the whole night long if it had to be, until something occurred to change the balance, until some freak of luck gave him a one-legged chance to survive.
"Oh, you deny that," Sam said, shaking his head at the General's obstinacy. He had been pacing some, always keeping the muzzle of the rifle tight on the General's midsection. "I realize now you weren't trying to kill me; you just wanted to shove me over the brink. I'd been under tremendous pressure since my magazine folded, working too hard and abusing my nerves. And I was worried about my marriage. You'd done a thorough job of driving a wedge between Felice and me." Sam paused and wiped his glistening forehead on his sleeve, blinked sweat from his eyes.
"I never realized, Sam," the General said, annoyed but trying to be judicious, "that I've been such a trial to you."
Sam sneered. "You've been trying to—castrate me from the day I married Felice and took your little girl away from you. But I've been too strong for you, General. I admit that after Lubbock I was just hanging by my fingertips. I knew there wasn't a damned thing I could do to stop you once you made up your mind you really wanted to kill me. If I hadn't met Rich and Lone at Big Sur last winter I think I might have just waded out into the ocean and let the waves take me under. But they showed me it didn't have to be that way. They helped me, turned me on to psychedelics. With the help of Rich's therapy I discovered I had the courage to take you on your own terms, and win. I found good friends in Rich and Lone. And the others. We shared a common concern."
"You don't treat your good friends so nice, Sam," the General said softly. "I don't think they planned on getting killed, now did they?"
"I made most of the plans," Sam said slowly. "I knew when it reached a certain point that it would be—awkward having anyone alive."
The General had grown weary of Sam, of waiting to be slaughtered, weary of his own fear. He did not like being afraid under these circumstances.
"All this because you hate me, Sam?"
"I'm just protecting my interests, General."
The General said shrewdly, "Stand to pick up a comfortable piece of change when I'm gone too."
"Four million, six hundred and fifty-eight thousand dollars," Sam replied. "That's comfortable. Yes, I know almost exactly how much you're worth. I've monitored every telephone call you made for two years."
"What about the girl? Lone, is that her name? Are you planning to kill her too, Sam? How in the name of God do you expect to get away with this?"
"I'm the hero," Sam said with a shrug. His glasses had fogged again; he took them off and put them in his pocket. The General frowned, having found something new to worry about. Sam was crazy, of course. But he was unshakably convinced that he could pull it off. And, once the bodies were hauled away, who would be around to doubt his story? Carol, in her innocence, would be overwhelmingly convincing. There had been a plot, and she was proof of it— The General groaned.
"Shut up," Sam warned him.
"You can't go back to Felice tonight, Sam. You'll never be able to fool her. You won't survive long with blood on your hands. Believe me, she'll know."
"A real tragedy," the General snarled. "Who are you trying to fool? You never did have much lead in your pencil, Sam."
The General knew he'd bought it then; still he felt vaguely proud of himself. He blinked at Sam, lips still frozen in the snarl. Out of the corner of his eye he saw something stir in the gloom by the stairs. For an instant he thought it must be Rich, who had seemed securely dead. But nothing would have surprised him tonight. He moved his head slightly, trying to focus; his curiosity turned to dismay when he recognized Carol.
She had heard Sam's confession, his lunatic pride in the violence he had committed, and it had not even shocked her further to unexpectedly come across the tumbled corpse of Rich Marsiand on the landing between the second and third floors. She had stepped over it more or less calmly and proceeded up the stairs, not knowing what she intended to do or could do, knowing only that she must go on.
The General saw her first and looked so shocked that she had to try to smile at him. But her main concern was Sam.
"Sam," she said, "I'm sorry for you, please understand how terribly sorry I am! You can't go on with this. Put the gun down now."
He whirled, startled, the muzzle of the assault rifle dipping. Carol paused a few feet from him, her face chalk. There was a thunderous light in his eyes.
"Hello, Lone," he said.
It was ridiculous and unexpected but she said firmly, "No, I'm not Lone; I'm Carol."
"You don't fool me," Sam said, scowling.
Carol swayed, close to tears. "Sam, I absolutely can't stand another second of this. Put that gun down somewhere, please."
He jerked his head a fraction toward the General. "I haven't killed the old bastard yet."