A Show of Hands

by David Crossman

  She paused thoughtfully. “I’m glad he didn’t dig any further. You know what was in there, in the bottom, don’t you?” She stared at him and nodded with her eyes wide. “I threw it in the ocean.

  “I’m glad he didn’t find it. He wouldn’t have understood. Like I said, Leeman can’t keep a secret. I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about him. He knows so much, you see, but he doesn’t know he knows it.” Her smiled broadened, but it collapsed the instant Crisp succumbed to another convulsion.

  “I’m having that feeling like I’m a million miles away from everything, you know?” she said. “Like I’m watching television or a movie and you’re just acting.”

  “I’m not acting!” Crisp screamed, but all that came out was a gurgle.

  Sarah looked at the needle. “This was all I could find,” she said. “I wish it could be sweet and quick.” She stroked his brow. Her hand was soft and cool. “Don’t worry. Just another minute or two and it will all be over.

  “I couldn’t stay and watch you suffer like this,” she said. “I don’t see how Amanda does it.” She ran her fingers through the hair of her wig.

  Amanda. The word was like an elixir surging through his being. Maybe there was a heaven and hell. Maybe not. But there was something, some other level of existence. He was sure of it. Any minute now, she’d be showing him around.

  It turned out that Sarah knew her medication. She was right. Any minute now. His old body couldn’t take much more of this.

  Sarah got up, walked to the shadows, and began to change her clothes. “Matty told me you were having dreams about Amanda,” she said. “Well, actually she told Mr. Gammidge. You talk in your sleep, I guess. I overheard.

  “So, I thought maybe I could make you think you were going crazy, you know? That’s why you saw Amanda at the funeral. I wish Mostly hadn’t seen, too. He wasn’t supposed to. How could you think you were going crazy if someone else saw her too?

  “Anyway, I could see you were going to mess things up, so I called the newspaper and told them what you were finding out, about the makeup and Neddy’s fingerprints and everything. I couldn’t figure out why those things never got out like they were supposed to. That’s the one thing that didn’t work right. Then I figured you were keeping things quiet. It was ruining all my work. So I had to help things along.

  “But I needed to know what you were up to. So I bought this little tape recorder.” She took it from her bag and held it up, but he wasn’t looking. “I kept it in my bag. Remember when you and Mr. Gammidge were talking and I came back to find my bag? The tape recorder was on the whole time! I heard everything.” She laughed in the shadows. “It’s on now. I’m going to listen to it later, to make sure all the facts are right, just in case. You never know. It takes a lot of rehearsal: don’t say this, don’t do that. You can’t do anything that might make someone suspicious. Even though it’s all over, I have to be very careful.

  “You were suspicious though, weren’t you? I wonder how much you knew. You had a very suspicious nature, you know?”

  It didn’t escape Crisp’s attention that she was already referring to him in the past tense.

  “Oh well,” she said in summation. When she emerged from the shadows, she was again Sarah Quinn. She came and stood at his side, took his hand in hers, and looked at him with eyes of deep compassion. “Look what she’s done to you, Professor!”

  Crisp had broken out in a profuse sweat. His nose had begun to bleed, and the eardrum in his good ear seemed about to explode from the pressure that had built up in his head from holding his breath when a spasm began.

  “What a wicked girl.”

  At that moment the front door slammed.

  “Yoo-hoo! Winston!” came Matty’s familiar voice. “I’m home! I’ll be up to see you in a minute, my dear! Soon as I put these greens in the . . .”

  Both Crisp and Sarah Quinn listened with all their might as Matty’s voice trailed off into the kitchen. Crisp saw that Matty’s unexpected return had a deeply unsettling effect on his murderer. “It’s too soon!” she said sharply. “The medicine isn’t working fast enough.” She began to wring her hands.

  Crisp, unwilling to run the risk of alternative expedients, rode the next swell of pain to its desired conclusion. He feigned death, and held his breath.

  “Professor!” Sarah whispered excitedly. “Professor!” She grabbed his arm and felt for his pulse. At that moment Matty’s footsteps began to thud up the carpeted stairs. Sarah dropped his arm before detecting his faint pulse. “Good,” she said to herself. “Good.” Crisp could hear her rubbing her hands. “Everything’s going to be all right. I just . . . I just stopped by to see how he was doing, and . . . and he was already dead! I was just on my way to phone Doctor Pagitt . . . that’s it!” she said. “That’s it. This will work!”

  Crisp listened as she stationed herself by the door. She put her hand on the knob and, just as Matty grasped the other side, pulled the door open.

  “Oh! Matty!” said Sarah. She sounded genuinely surprised and out of breath. Remarkable. “He’s gone!”

  “Gone?” said Matty. “Gone where? What are you doin’ here?”

  “I just came by, and he was dead . . . ,” Sarah said nervously. Not enough rehearsal. “I mean . . . to see how he was—”

  “Dead!” cried Matty. She rushed under Sarah’s arm, which had been holding the door open. “Winston!” She ran an anxious hand over his brow. “Oh, my Lord. Look at him! What happened?”

  “I checked his pulse,” said Sarah from the doorway. Only tremendous mental effort was keeping her from bolting. “He’s probably been dead half an hour. I’m so sorry.”

  Meantime, despite Crisp’s best efforts, Matty had discovered a weak pulse in his neck. “Oh, you foolish girl,” she scolded. “He’s still alive! Go call Dr. Pagitt!” She pulled the covers up around his shoulders.

  Sarah rushed to the bedside. “Oh, no. He can’t be! I felt . . . there was no pulse!” She picked up Crisp’s hand and felt for his pulse. There it was. Almost imperceptible. “How can he be?” she said, almost to herself.

  “Go!” Matty commanded. “Call now. Tell him to hurry!” She hadn’t taken her eyes off Crisp. “There, there now, Winston. You just hold on. Help’s on the way.”

  Too much was going wrong. Sarah staggered to the doorway and down the stairs like a drunkard in a dream. Before she knew what she was doing, she had dialed Dr. Pagitt’s number. She lifted the phone to her ear.

  “Hello,” said a voice on the other end of the line. It was Jennine, the doctor’s wife. “Hello?”

  The voice brought Sarah back to her senses. She was leaning on the doorpost, staring into the pantry. Her eyes focused on an assortment of kitchen knives arranged neatly in descending order on the wall.

  “Hello. Dr. Pagitt’s residence.” No response. “Is anyone there? Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

  Sarah hung up the phone. “No,” she said as she walked through the kitchen and into the pantry. “I don’t need any help.”

  As soon as Sarah had left his room, Crisp opened his eyes and started blinking frantically in Morse code.

  “Winston!” said Matty. “You’re back! You’re goin’ to be okay. Doc Pagitt’s on his way. Do you have somethin’ in your eye? Just a minute, I’ll get the facecloth from the basin.” She put the statement into action. “Here now, let’s have a look and see what’s there.”

  She bent as close as she could, narrowed her eyes to a squint, and examined him closely. “I don’t see anything in that one,” she said. “You have to stop blinkin’ for a minute if I’m goin’ to find what’s botherin’ you.” She began her scrutiny of the other eye. “That silly girl, I swear. I’ll have to get Dr. Pagitt to do somethin’ about her. She thought you were . . .” She chuckled. “You know what? You just blinked an ‘s.’ ” She stood up. “Blink, blink, blink. Fast like that,” she said, blinking three times fast. “That’s an ‘s’ in Morse code.” She stared at him with a silly smil
e on her face. This was his last chance. “That’s an ‘o’! You just did an ‘o’! Three times slow!” She blinked three times slow. “You know!” she exclaimed suddenly, “if you knew Morse code, we could communicate! That’s an ‘s.’ You just did another ‘s’. S-o-s. You just signaled SOS! That’s amazin’! I’ll have to teach you, so you’ll know what you’re doin’. That’s an ‘n’ . . . no, an ‘m.’ That’s an ‘a’ . . . Winston, you’re blinkin’ Morse code. Did you know that?”

  Suddenly it occurred to her. “Winston. You do know Morse code, don’t you? ’Course you do! Are you spellin’ somethin’ on purpose? What was it? S-o-s. Did you mean SOS?” Crisp nodded with all his might, and his head moved slightly in the affirmative. “You did? What was the rest . . . ‘m,’ ‘a,’ what else? ‘T,’ ‘t’ . . . you already did that. Oh, two ‘t’s?” Crisp nodded again. This was going to take forever. “ ‘Y.’ M-a-t-t-y. That’s Matty, Winston. You spelled my name! This is wonderful!”

  If only there were an abbreviated way to spell shut up and listen, Crisp thought. All at once his shoulders contracted violently. His back arched and his heart started pounding uncontrollably. Once the spasm had subsided, he opened his eyes.

  Matty was nearly beside herself, mopping his brow and his bloody nose and his tear-filled eyes all at once. “What’s happenin’?” she said. “Sarah! Have you got Dr. Pagitt on the phone?” she called over her shoulder. There was no answer. “Where’d that girl go?”

  Crisp shook his head frantically in an effort to get Matty to stop wiping his eyes. He blinked s-t-o-p three or four times before she got the message, stopped what she was doing, and stared at him.

  D-o-n-t t-a-l-k, he signaled. Of course, she said each of the letters out loud.

  “You don’t want me to talk?” said Matty. “But what’s happened to you? D-i-t-t-o? What does that mean? Ditto what? Ditto don’t talk?”

  Y-e-s.

  “All right,” said Matty, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Go on.”

  S-a-r-a-h t-r-y-i-n-g t-o k-i-l-l m-e.

  Matty pronounced each of the words under her breath. Once the sentence was assembled, she sat back, folded her hands, and smiled condescendingly. “Oh, Winston. You haven’t lost your sense of humor,” she said. “That’s a good sign. Still . . .”

  Fortunately she was looking at him and stopped speaking when he started signing. S-h-u-t u-p.

  “Shut up?” Matty repeated. He’d never told her to shut up. No one had ever told her to shut up. But it finally dawned on her, from his expression, that he was deadly serious. “What makes you think such a thing? Why, she’s callin’ Doc Pagitt this very minute.”

  Q-u-i-e-t, Crisp blinked frantically. S-h-e k-i-l-l-e-d M-u-r-p-h-y. M-o-s-t-l-y. C-a-m-e f-o-r m-e.

  Matty’s eyes were widening. “You can’t mean it!” Crisp rolled his eyes. “I’ll shut up.”

  G-e-t o-u-t. T-a-k-e b-a-g.

  Matty was on her feet. “What bag? What about you?”

  B-a-g.

  Matty’s eyes lighted on the shopping bag. “That one?”

  Crisp nodded. It was then he saw Sarah’s shadow on the half-open door, preceded by the silhouette of a knife in her hand. B-e-h-i-n-d y-o-u.

  Matty’s talents were a little rusty. It took half a second for the translation to settle in, but when it did, she reacted instinctively, spinning around just in time to see Sarah raising the knife over her head.

  She screamed and with both hands shoved her attacker against the wall. The force of the impact sent the knife flying from Sarah’s hand to a loud landing somewhere on the other side of Crisp’s bed.

  Sarah, meanwhile, stunned when her head hit the wall, tried desperately to gather her wits while fending off the blows Matty was leveling at her head with the shopping bag. She kicked blindly, landing a painful blow to Matty’s delicate left knee. Matty cried out in pain and collapsed as Sarah flung herself across the bed, knocking the wind out of Crisp. She snatched the knife from the floor at the same instant that Matty grabbed her by the heels and pulled her back across the bed.

  “Stop it!” Sarah shouted. “I’ll kill him!” She raised the knife over Crisp’s chest as she slid across him. Matty dropped her legs and Sarah struggled to her feet, holding the knife over Crisp’s throat. “Go sit down! Over there!” She pointed to the chair in the corner. The one Amanda often occupied.

  Sarah massaged her forehead. She was confused. “I can’t do this,” she said to herself. She laid the knife on Crisp’s chest, picked up the shopping bag, and withdrew the red wig. Crisp knew what this meant. The executioner was being called in.

  Still visibly shaken and not thinking clearly, she stumbled as she put the wig on. Matty started to get up. “Sit!” Sarah screamed. “Sit down. Don’t move.” Her voice trailed off as her head dropped. She took the clothes from the bag and stared at them as if unsure what to do next. Finally, she tossed them on the bed and began to undress.

  “Amanda will do it,” she said.

  “What on earth are you doin’, child!” Matty cried.

  “Sit!” Sarah snapped, picking up the knife and shaking it in Crisp’s direction. Matty sat. Winston was blinking, but Matty was too far away to see what he was saying.

  When Sarah’s uniform hit the floor, she kicked it away and pulled the body stocking over her head, charging the wig with static electricity. She dropped the skirt on the floor, stepped into it, and pulled it up to her waist.

  “Now I know what to do,” she said. She took the syringe from the bag and filled it from a small brown bottle. “You have more lives than a cat,” she said as she threw Crisp’s covers aside. “I’ve got just enough left for the two of you.” Again she pressed the plunger and released some of the fluid. “I don’t know what they’re going to make of this.”

  Crisp’s insides were already filled with acid and fire. He couldn’t take another dose. Summoning all his strength and concentration, he made one last heroic attempt to push her away. Nothing happened. His eyebrows arched mightily, but otherwise he lay still as a stump. No one would ever know how valiantly he’d fought.

  Sarah stuck the needle into his vein. At the same instant, the front door crashed open and a confusion of footsteps tumbled up the stairs. “Matty? Professor!”

  It was Doc Pagitt. Matty lunged at Sarah, grabbing her around the legs and toppling her over the chair. They both landed in a heap on the floor. The needle dangled from Crisp’s arm, still full.

  Pagitt burst into the room followed by Leeman Russell and Luther Kingsbury. “Matty?” said Pagitt as he bent to help her up. “What’s going on?”

  Matty sat breathless on the edge of the bed, pointing at Sarah.

  “Who have we here?” said Kingsbury, helping Sarah up. “What happened?” he said with a smile. “You ladies fall down?”

  Leeman was studying Sarah closely. “That’s Sarah Quinn,” he said, reaching out and lifting the hair off her face. “It sure is.”

  “Sarah Quinn?” said Kingsbury, bending to peek under the auburn cascade. “Why, what are you doing with that wig on, Sarah?” he said, still mildly amused.

  Pagitt, meanwhile, saw the needle sticking in Crisp’s arm and suddenly became aware of something sinister. “What’s this?” he said, removing the needle and holding it up to the light. Matty, still unable to speak, pointed at Sarah. “What is this, Sarah? What were you doing?”

  Sarah merely hung her head and said nothing.

  Finally Matty burst forth in a torrent. “She tried to kill him!” she screamed on the exhale. “She killed everyone!”

  Luther Kingsbury’s expression of amused befuddlement fell from his face like a Mardi Gras mask. “What’s she talking about, Doc? What’re you talking about, Matty?”

  “Jeez!” Leeman exclaimed.

  Pagitt began testing Crisp’s vital signs.

  Matty exhaled again. “She killed that girl up at the quarry! And Mostly Sanborn! And she was tryin’ to kill Winston!”

  “Now, now,” said Luther, slow
to accept the notion that such a thing could happen under his jurisdiction. “You don’t mean Sarah actually killed anybody—”

  “Hell I don’t!” Matty screamed. Matty never screamed. And she never swore. This was very serious. “Winston told me so. And I heard what she said just a minute ago, just before you got here. She was goin’ to shoot both of us with that stuff!”

  Pagitt picked up the bottle from the floor and read the label. He looked at Sarah. “Sarah, how could you do such a thing?” He examined Crisp.

  Kingsbury had been holding Sarah loosely by the arm ever since he helped her to her feet. Suddenly she screamed at the top of her lungs and pushed him. He fell back against Leeman, who, in turn, fell over the chair. Both landed in a pile as Sarah ran down the stairs and out the door, still screaming.

  Kingsbury struggled to his feet and stumbled off in pursuit. Leeman tried to decide whether to stay where the action had been, or go where the action might be. That was the question. He looked from Crisp to Pagitt to Matty and opted to follow Kingsbury.

  “It’s a good thing she didn’t have a chance to give him any of this,” said Pagitt as the last of Leeman’s footsteps thundered down the hall and across the porch. He could be heard in the distance calling for Kingsbury.

  “She did,” said Matty. She’d regained her breath and was looking at Crisp, reading his eyes.

  “I don’t think so,” said Pagitt. “The syringe is still full.”

  “That was the second shot,” said Matty on Crisp’s behalf.

  “What do you mean?” said Pagitt. “You saw her give him a shot?”

  “No,” said Matty. “He told me. Sign language.”

  Pagitt looked at Matty to Crisp and back to Matty. “He can’t move, Matty.”

  “He can blink,” said Matty. She looked at Pagitt. “Morse code.”

  Pagitt looked at Crisp. “Is that true?”

  Crisp nodded.

  “Then, you can communicate?”

  Crisp nodded. Nodding wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  “Is Matty right? Did Sarah . . . was it really her behind the murders?”