Death in a Cold Hard Light

by Francine Mathews

  Paul’s hands balled into fists at his side, and for one blinding moment he wanted to hurl himself at Moore’s complacent neck and choke the very life out of him. But instead he breathed deeply and said, “Let’s do this deal so I can get out of here.”

  “Very well.” The man tipped some powder into the scale and smiled up at Paul. “In view of your long association and excellent credit record, I’ll give you three-quarters of an ounce. For two hundred.”

  “Thanks, man.” Paul handed him the cash, hoping devoutly he could repay his father sometime.

  At that moment, Hannah Moore opened the study door. She held the video camera in one hand. The other pushed Will Starbuck, eyes brilliant in his pallid face, abruptly into the room.

  Chapter Thirty-six

  “Will,” Charles Moore said. “What a pleasant surprise. I thought you had more sense than to adopt your friend’s habits.”

  “He does,” Hannah said, and shoved Will so hard that he tripped over the threshold and fell sprawling on the rug at Charles’s feet. “He’s been taping your little transaction. What were you thinking, boys? That you’d blackmail us? Or just go straight to the police?”

  “We’re paying off a debt.” Paul had gone dead white at the sight of Hannah, but he stooped very carefully to help Will up. “To my friend Margot. Did you tell your husband about her, Hannah? How you smashed her skull in, and left her lying in the mess you made of her kitchen?”

  “Well.” Hannah closed the study door carefully behind her. “If I wasn’t sure you had to die before, I am now.” She pulled a vicious-looking needle from her pocket and held it against Will Starbuck’s jugular. “Don’t move,” she said to him genially, “or you’ll die in a matter of seconds. I don’t want to have to carry a dead weight down to the dock.”

  Charles Moore was staring at his wife wordlessly. With her wet black hair snarled about her face and shoulders, she might have been Medusa. Something violent and unappeased, and utterly ruthless. “Did you kill Margot, Hannah?”

  “Yes.”

  Her one-word answer to every annoying question.

  An expression akin to grief passed over Charles’s face. “Why?” he asked her hoarsely.

  He was mourning the death of Hannah, Paul thought, which had occurred some time ago; not Margot’s graceless passing.

  “So that the police would believe Jay’s death was drug-related,” Hannah said, exasperated. “Isn’t it obvious? Besides—I thought she was hiding something. Some kind of evidence. Jay went to Woods Hole that day, and he saw Margot before he saw me. Whatever proof he had, wasn’t on him when he died. Now please—get your gun out of the drawer, Charles. You’ve kept it there for years, in fear of burglars. We have burglars tonight. Okay?”

  So that was how it would be. Heroin-addicted Paul, hell-bent on destruction, tries to steal drugs from his dealer’s house on the eve of his flight to the mainland. Dealer shoots the crazed addict in self-defense, and to the horror of all kills his newly corrupted friend Starbuck into the bargain.

  For himself, Paul didn’t care very much; but he hated what was going to happen to Will. Could he tackle Charles before he went for the gun? Not with Hannah holding that needle to Will’s neck.

  John Folger crept up the back steps, toward the light spilling out onto the porch. Struggling to drag Will Star-buck and the video camera inside, the black-haired woman had been unable to slam the door. A gust of wind had done the rest. John stepped through the opening into the darkened back hall, careful not to slip on the rain-soaked vinyl flooring. He clutched his service revolver in his right hand, and steadied it with the left. Then he crept quietly toward the sound of voices.

  For an instant, he wished he had called for backup. Someone dependable to signal as he made his way down the hostile length of hall. Someone who knew what she was doing.

  He wished, in fact, for Meredith.

  “I will not let you kill me, and have my mother think I committed a crime. I won’t.” Will’s words came out with a throttled vehemence. “It’s not going to end this way.”

  “I don’t think you have any choice.”

  Charles reached into the secret drawer and withdrew a small pistol. He held it awkwardly, as though the thing were alien, and stared unbelievingly at Hannah. “You really killed Margot. You killed all of them, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, Charles. Would you please stick to the point? These boys just filmed your little transaction.”

  “So destroy the film.”

  “Not good enough, Charles.”

  “It’s yourself you’re worried about, isn’t it, Hannah?”

  “They’re going to the police, Charles. They’ll have you arrested for trafficking, and me accused of murder. Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t really care anymore,” he said, in the voice of defeat. “I’m completely past caring. It’s only a matter of months for me, after all. There was a time when I would have done anything for you, Hannah—and did. But that time is gone.”

  Hannah extended her free hand toward her husband. “You’d better give me the gun, Charles. And stop whining, please. You make me sick.”

  Charles looked at the two boys—Paul, trembling slightly with fatigue and the need for his medicine; Will, stark and unnaturally bent in Hannah’s grasp, his neck recoiling from the tip of the needle. Then he shook his head and set the gun on his desk. “No.”

  Hannah required only a second to react. She dragged Will, still subject to the needle, away from the door.

  And at that moment, John Folger burst into the room.

  Howie Seitz didn’t bother to park his ear in the road. He drove straight up the Moores’ drive, tires churning, his heart in his mouth. He had recognized the Chief’s car where it sat on the verge—had seen it the same moment Merry Folger had.

  “Christ,” she had whispered, horrified. “What the hell is he doing here?”

  Seitz didn’t have to ask what she meant. He had heard all about the neurotoxin on the drive from the airport.

  They threw open the car doors and ran heedlessly up the front steps. Merry tried the front door, found it locked, and without hesitation fired a bullet into the lock. The door swung open.

  They paused an instant on the threshold, listening in agonized suspense for telling voices. And caught the faint sounds of combat from the end of the hall.

  Merry outsped Howie Seitz by several yards. She came to a halt in the study doorway, her gun leveled. Across the room, Paul Winslow and Will Starbuck were pummeling a man who must have been Charles Moore. At Merry’s feet lay John Folger, sprawled on his back, his right arm thrust upward against Hannah Moore’s chest. His left hand was locked around her right wrist, in a desperate attempt to deflect the needle she held poised in her fingers.

  How strong she must he, Merry thought distractedly. Strong and silent as Death.

  At that moment, Will Starbuck broke free of Charles Moore and sprang with a yell onto Hannah’s back. She coiled like a snake to face him, and raised her hypodermic.

  “No, Will,” Merry cried, and aimed her gun. As the needle came down in a shining arc, she pulled the trigger and fired.

  • • •

  Hours later—years later, it seemed, when she and Howie had given their statements to Nat Coffin, and the gurney had rolled silently away, and Charles Moore was thrust handcuffed into a blue police cruiser—Merry went in search of her father.

  He was sitting not in the Moores’ well-lit kitchen, where Will Starbuck and Paul Winslow were trading phone calls with their parents and drinking hot chocolate stirred up by a helpful policewoman, but in the darkened and deserted living room. Near his chair was a low table, and on it rested an answering machine.

  Merry hesitated in the doorway. John Folger glanced up at her, then looked back at the patch of carpet he had been studying so earnestly. She sighed and turned away.

  “Meredith—”

  “Yes?” It took all her strength to muster that single word; she was exhausted and shaken by
the violence that breathed in her hands. She had never killed a person before.

  “Halfway down that hallway tonight, I knew that I had made a mistake. I acted out of pride. And the desperation of an old man.”

  “You’re not that old, Dad. And you probably saved those kids’ lives.”

  “Very nearly at the expense of my own. What was in that needle?”

  Merry sagged into a chair not far from his own, and ran her fingers through her hair. Woods Hole was another lifetime ago. “It was a neurotoxin derived from scallops. She killed Bailey with it. And Jay Santorski, of course.”

  “No,” John said decisively. “I did that.”

  He seemed to think no other explanation necessary. Merry leaned toward him, and said softly, “Of course you didn’t, Dad.”

  “He called me that night. From a public phone in town. He said that Bailey had blown the operation and they would all be hunted down. He wanted help—someplace to go to ground. I told him not to be ridiculous, that we’d call a meeting in the morning. To get some sleep. He said he couldn’t go back to his house. So I told him to sleep at a friend’s.”

  Owen Hurley’s pull-out couch, Merry thought with welling sadness. Jay was going to ground when Hannah caught up with him. She made it look like he died of an overdose, hut she killed him to protect her own work. Did Bailey help her? Did Bailey know what he was doing? Oh, God. Better that we never know.

  “I didn’t want to taint the operation by making contact with Bailey’s agent,” John continued. “You know how it is—absolute secrecy, compartmentalization. Only one person is supposed to see the guy’s face. Bailey couldn’t keep a secret, of course. He couldn’t resist taking me to Ezra’s for lunch one day and pointing out that our waiter was also his agent. But inserting myself in his operation on the spur of the moment—that was another level of magnitude entirely. I never thought—”

  “You never thought your advice would get a boy killed,” Merry finished bleakly. “We never do think the unthinkable, somehow. We just have to live with its consequences.”

  Her father did not reply. His words seemed spent. But he reached for her hand, and gripped it fiercely. “I can’t bring the three of them back. But I can accept the responsibility for their loss. I’ll resign tomorrow.”

  “Are you sure, Dad?” She turned his palm upward and laced her fingers through his. “You’ve emerged a victor, tonight. A killer and a drug dealer in one fell swoop. Carmichael will never forgive you.”

  “I’ll never forgive myself,” he said starkly. “At least I can go with dignity.”

  Merry rose from her chair and smiled faintly down at his gray head. “I’ll be there to watch you go, Chief. And I’ll be as proud of you tomorrow as I’ve ever been in my life.”

  “One more thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I want you to apply for the job, Meredith.”

  “Your job? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “You’re the best candidate I know. And I’ve been all over the state, believe me. There’s no one to touch you.”

  “Then I pity the state.”

  “There will be a job search, of course,” her father continued woodenly. “And the selectmen will have final approval over any candidates. It could take months to find a replacement. Not everybody wants to work out in the middle of the Atlantic, and pay through the nose for the privilege.”

  “Don’t talk about it now.”

  “Promise me, Meredith.”

  “I can’t, Dad. I can’t think about anything.”

  Except Hannah Moore, lying dead on her own carpet. And the gun still warm in Merry’s hands.

  Howie Seitz drove her the short distance from Pocomo to Mason Farms through the rain-filled midnight. Neither of them spoke; it was a relief to be silent.

  Peter met her at the door. One look at Merry’s face was enough, and he reached for her.

  If a choice must be made, Merry thought fleetingly as she turned her wet face into his shoulder, then perhaps in that moment she had made it.

  “Forgive me,” he said, in that hour just before dawn, when the first cawing of blackbirds blends harshly with the pulse of distant surf. “Forgive me for being cruel.”

  “I’m trying to forgive you for waking me up,” Merry retorted. “Do you have any idea how tired I am?”

  “Yeah. It shows.”

  “But speaking of cruelty,” she added, “I never thought you could be such a—a bastard.”

  “Then you must think I’m not human.”

  “Maybe I did. Maybe I still do.”

  When her voice held so much sadness, there was no clear way to continue.

  “I think I wanted you to choose,” he attempted.

  “Between you and my father?”

  “Or your work. Whatever it is that your father represents.”

  “Why is that so necessary?”

  “It isn’t. It just seemed that way last week.”

  “It never was before.”

  Peter shrugged helplessly and smoothed her blond hair. “I don’t know. For stupid reasons, probably. Because I’m a guy.”

  Merry snorted. “And guys want their women to adore only them, is that it?”

  “Under the eyes of their critical mothers? Yes. They do. I’m not saying it’s particularly fair or enlightened, but for a few short days last week I really wanted you to be the picture-perfect model of a Mason fiancée.”

  “Discuss wedding gowns and flower arrangements, and whether we should honeymoon in Maui or slosh all over Venice. That sort of thing.”

  “Exactly! I wanted you to glow a little, and badger George for stories about my childhood, and page through my prep school scrapbooks. Completely egotistical, I admit—but was it so much to ask?”

  “You wanted me to be Alison.”

  “No,” Peter said, confounded, “that is something I will never want, my love.”

  Merry considered this a moment in silence. “I was hardly picture-perfect. But you know, Pete, I never will be.”

  “Me neither. Apparently.”

  They each attempted and discarded a variety of words.

  “You shouldn’t have to choose,” Peter said finally. “You should be able to manage a complex life. You have the skill and the passion to do it, God knows.”

  “But you’ll keep feeling this way—shortchanged, somehow—for as long as I try,” Merry countered. “I don’t know what the answer is. I can’t convince you of something you don’t feel in your gut. Sometimes I think you just don’t trust me to love you enough.”

  This was so true, it took his breath away.

  “But then, I do the same thing,” she continued. “I keep waiting for you to walk away. I thought you’d done that, Monday.”

  “With Hannah Moore.”

  “Hannah Moore. Oh, God, Peter—all that intelligence and beauty, that fierce will to be A tore away her soul without a second thought.”

  “And sent it to the lowest rung of hell, I hope. You will not feel guilty about this, Merry. You will not?”

  “I don’t feel guilty.” She propped herself up against the bed frame and smoothed the quilt over her knees. “I feel dangerous—and awed. After last night, very little separates me from the Hannahs of this world. We both know now what it is to take a human life.”

  A few hours later, she was established in front of his fireplace in a terry-cloth robe and slippers. Itzhak Perlman played a Bach partita somewhere in the house, and the singing reach of the violin brought tears to Merry’s eyes. She drank Peter’s excellent coffee, and tried not to consider the day.

  “When will John do it?” Peter called from the kitchen. A marvelous scent of warm muffins wafted through the doorway.

  “Probably at nine A.M. He’ll call a press conference—triumphantly present the gist of last night—and then, with understated drama, he’ll resign.”

  “You’d better get in the shower, then.”

  “Yes.” She set down her coffee mug. “I cannot fail him now. I wo
nder if Ralph will be there.”

  Peter muttered something unintelligible, probably an assent, from the other room.

  Merry stared out over the wintry moors, which were blanketed with fog in the aftermath of the storm. Peter’s sheep were milling there aimlessly, like soggy bundles of sweaters on stumpy legs. She watched them and allowed her mind to drift; she remembered any number of things. How improbably young her grandfather had looked when he turned over the force to John; the way her grandmother, Sylvie, had wept with mingled pride and sadness when Anne Folger pinned the chief’s badge on John’s starched uniform shirt. She saw herself three years later, a lanky thirteen-year-old standing next to Ralph on a blustery October day, while her father ordered a team of dredgers to comb Madaket Harbor for his wife’s body. She remembered target practice out at Tom Nevers in the failing light of late summer evenings, her first service automatic, her father presenting her police academy diploma, a perfect surprise in a perfect day.

  And how for years, she had never felt completely certain that John Folger approved her choice of profession. He had finally laid that question to rest.

  Or perhaps, at last, she had.

  She got up and followed the scent of the muffins. “Let’s run away, Peter. Skip the press conference. Take off into the blue like the irresponsible beings we are.”

  “Want to go back to Greenwich?”

  “Don’t tease.” Merry ran her fingers through his damp hair and scowled at him. “Bring up New York, and I’ll be on my knees.”

  “Running away won’t help,” Peter said quietly.

  “Oh, would you shut up! Sometimes running away is utterly delightful. I think I’m due for a bit of running.”

  “I think you should stay and apply for the job.”

  Merry picked a burst cranberry from the top of a muffin. “Don’t be ridiculous, Peter. I can’t follow my dad in the force. The selectmen would never allow it.”

  “They appointed John when Ralph Waldo retired.”