Covering Camille taught me a lot about hurricanes.
The eye of a hurricane can be as much as twenty miles across. The more severe the storm, the smaller the eye.
It could take as long as two hours to pass if we were, say, at the western edge of the eye even with the center of the circumference. Or it could take, depending upon our position, as little as fifteen minutes.
So where the hell was the mobile phone!
Like a commentator viewing destruction from a helicopter, Roger’s voice continued. “… drowned animals everywhere, deer, field rats, wild turkeys, squirrels … oh”—his voice dropped—“a raccoon. And there’s …”
I was turning toward the door to the central hall—that wall was still standing, despite the partial removal of the roof—when the commentary paused, then Roger said in a puzzled tone, “Something’s moving under the eaves. I can’t exactly tell—Oh, my God!”
He jumped back and looked wildly around. “Quick, quick. Lyle, get me a two-by-four!”
I saw the snake.
“No, Roger,” I yelled. “Back away, back away slowly. Stay still the rest of you. Absolutely still.”
We had one piece of good luck. The snake was oozing calmly over the broken masonry. The reptile wasn’t poised to attack. It was seeking safely.
We had one piece of bad luck. This was a huge diamondback rattlesnake, one of the most venomous and dangerous reptiles in America.
The rattler paused, lifted its head.
“Don’t move, Roger! Stay absolutely still. Listen to me, the snake isn’t attacking. It will only bite if it feels threatened. Do not move.”
I didn’t tell him that snakes can jump more than half their body length to attack. Our wisest course was to wait, leave the diamondback alone, stay still.
Above all, we must not frighten the rattler.
The light breeze fluttered the drapes near the window. The snake turned its head. It felt the vibration.
It was big, six feet in length at least, the dark diamonds distinct on the amber back. The rattlers were darkish coils at its end.
Finally the snake lowered its head and began to move, pushing itself forward, gripping; with its scales, pull-push, pull-push.
We all stood like statues.
The rattler oozed down the wall, moved forward, passing within inches of Roger’s shoes.
Every eye watched its progress.
The diamondback moved toward the piano and the wreckage of the china cabinet. It swarmed up onto broken pieces of the furniture, then disappeared, slithering into the wreckage.
I held up a warning hand. We had to move, we had to go, but where? I looked around. The roof to the north appeared to be in place. “We can climb up on the roof. Everyone move quietly and slowly toward the wall.” I gestured behind me. “There may be more snakes. But they’ll likely stop here, once they feel safe from the flood.”
I pulled the piano bench to the wall, placed a chair on it, and clambered up.
I’d not given any thought to the construction of the island house. Now I realized that tile eaves projected from the sides. The roof itself was flat and covered with a gritty tar surface. A chimney had toppled and bricks were strewn in irregular clumps.
Shards of tile, tree limbs, and clumps of tennis netting littered the rooftop. The wind, sharp and gusty, rippled standing water from the deluge.
But this portion of the central roof seemed to be intact.
If it had weak spots, I couldn’t see them.
And I didn’t see any snakes. At the moment. But others would come, some poisonous, some not. But even the nonpoisonous, if frightened, will bite, and some, like the brown water snake, will bite and keep on biting.
I thought about it for a moment, then slowly grinned. We were saved by the eaves. The snakes obviously sought the first secure area, the dry, protected space beneath the eaves. The reason the rattler had swarmed into the music room was because the roof above it had been peeled back and it had lost its retreat.
So, atop the roof, we might not be faced with slithery wanderers seeking sanctuary.
I pointed at the roof and yelled, “No snakes.”
That got me instant cooperation.
Trevor was on his way up to the roof before I finished speaking.
I caught his arm as he climbed over. “Stay right here. Well need you to help. When we bring Burton and Miranda.”
I was a little surprised, but the lawyer meekly did as he was told, though when his eyes kept sliding past us to the music room, he shuddered.
Roger and Lyle helped me. We moved both Burton and Miranda up to the roof, and Trevor lifted them over. Roger and Lyle climbed down, intending to retrieve a mattress.
The standing water was draining—thank God for excellent architecture—and I was able to find a relatively dry spot in the middle of the roof for our injured charges. I asked Rosalia and Betty to guard them. I told Trevor to patrol the perimeter of the building. “Watch for snakes,” I ordered.
I went back to the edge of the roof where Valerie stood. “Go back down and see if you can find any thermoses. And didn’t Rosalia and Betty bring up some big bottles of bottled water to the music room?”
Valerie pushed back a lank lock of hair. “God, you don’t mind asking, do you? You know something, you would have made a wonderful nun.”
But after a wary look below, she eased back onto the chair and dropped to the music-room floor. She was back atop the chair in a flash, passing up a pair of thermoses. “The rest are smashed. The food’s gone. But there are three big bottles of water. I’ll have Enrique get them.”
She called to Enrique, and he nodded.
I reached down, grabbed her hand, and helped her scramble onto the roof.
Enrique retrieved the bottles and handed them up.
Valerie and I hauled them over.
Valerie rolled them, one at a time, to our little storehouse of goods near the chimney. “Next time I’m resting I’ll try out for a stevedore job. God, it feels good to use muscles.” She followed me back to the roof edge.
I swung my leg over the broken wall.
Valerie reached out, caught my arm. “Don’t go back down. You’ve done your part.” Her fingers tightened spasmodically. “Oh, Lord, look!” She pointed, and it seemed odd that the polish on her fingernail was still a brilliant crimson, as perfect as if fresh from the beauty salon. “There’s a cottonmouth that got by Roger. Roger, Roger, careful, behind you!”
Roger froze.
Lyle wheeled around, but Roger was between him and the coiled muddy-brown snake. White mouth open wide, tail shimmying, the alarmed cottonmouth was poised to strike.
I almost pulled out the gun, but a shot that took out the snake would also have struck Roger. I had only one possible chance. I reached down, grabbed a broken half of brick, and threw it fast and hard.
The brick smacked into the snake in mid-lunge.
And Lyle plunged past Roger and brought down a plank, crushing the cottonmouth’s head.
Valerie turned an astonished face toward me. “How the hell did you do that?”
“Softball. A long time ago. I played catcher.” I was rather proud of my percentage of outs at second. And I could already feel a twinge in my elbow.
“When you weren’t riding a broomstick,” she muttered.
I climbed back down into the music room, watching where I stepped.
Lyle called out, “Get anything you want to take up there. When you’re finished, we’ll all go up.”
I stayed away from the broken-up china cabinet. That territory belonged to a particular diamondback. But I looked diligently elsewhere. The mobile phone was gone.
Lyle helped me hunt.
“I put it on the table by the fireplace.” He used the two-by-four to flip over cushions.
Roger and Lyle tossed some cushions up to the roof. I found another unbroken thermos. Enrique pulled some two-by-fours free from what was left of the windows. We even managed to drag out the middle mattress
and shove it up onto the roof to provide a dry, soft resting place for Burton and Miranda.
That was our last task.
Finally on the roof to stay, I took a deep breath and looked around.
The sun seemed far, far away.
That was haze.
I looked to the west. I no longer saw that ominous wall of blackness. But I knew it wasn’t time to break out the champagne. It merely meant the eye was moving. Closer at hand, the sky was hazy with a greenish cast and as far as the eye could see there was nothing but muddy, foam-flecked, roiling water.
I looked to the east. It was awesome to realize that I could see all the way to the ocean. It was as if a giant hand had reached down and snatched up the pine trees. The floodwaters swirled over the dunes and the forest and only an occasional wind-peeled branch stuck up from the angry brownish-gray water.
Nothing remained of the storage building with the generator and the room-size freezer where Chase’s body had been taken. The tennis courts, of course, were long gone.
This central portion of the house, which had been built on the island’s highest ridge, was the only manmade structure still standing. Floodwaters lapped above the first-floor windows. The current looked swift. The water would pull and tug at this remnant, eroding the ground beneath it, pushing on weakened walls.
When the eye passed, when the storm began again in all its ferocity, how long could this battered structure last? As for us—I looked around the roof at the band of survivors—we now had no place to hide, no protection from two-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, from cold, stiletto-sharp rain that could drive all living warmth from our bodies.
But we had survived to this point. The air was balmy. I could feel my cold, wet clothes beginning to dry.
Roger, Enrique, and Lyle patrolled the roof edge. Trevor knelt by the broken chimney. He was stacking fragments of bricks into a mound. Should it come down to a struggle for the last space, we had two-by-fours and bricks; the snakes had fangs and agility.
Valerie sat with her back against the foot or so of chimney still in place, her face lifted to the sun, her eyes closed. Her shining golden hair, beginning to dry, sprung in wiry curls around her face. She might have been sixteen.
I realized suddenly how tired I was, how very tired. The explosion—God, that seemed a lifetime ago. I looked at my watch. It was like trying to decipher foreign script. I could see the numerals, of course, but they didn’t make sense. Not against the enormity of what we had endured.
Could it possibly be just eleven-forty-one?
The Miranda B. had exploded at half-past three, eight hours ago.
Chase had died at just after seven A.M.
We had found Burton at shortly after ten.
I wanted desperately to drop down on the roof, rest against one of the cushions.
But I turned and forced my leaden legs to cross to the center of the roof and our invalids.
Perhaps our other piece of luck—at least for Burton and Miranda—was the fact that only half of the music-room roof had been peeled back by the winds, so the mattresses and their human occupants had remained at least partially sheltered. They had been damp when we lifted them to the roof but not drenched—and not suffering from hypothermia.
When the storm resumed … But I wasn’t going to think about that now.
I dropped down on one knee, next to Rosalia. “Any change?”
“Mrs. Prescott makes a little sound every now and then and sometimes she moves a little. But Mr. Andrews, no, no, he does nothing. But I think he is still breathing.” Her hand touched Burton’s shoulder protectively. “There is no shelter here. Nothing to protect them.” Her eyes stared somberly out at the ocean. Rosalia had grown up in Cuba. She knew about hurricanes, and she understood that our storm wasn’t over.
I slowly rose. My arthritic knee ached.
We looked at each other, and we both understood.
She touched her rosary. “I will pray,” she said.
I stayed for a moment more. Miranda lay on her back, a still, beautiful sleeping princess untouched by her devastated surroundings. I wished I’d talked more to her this morning before she—or someone else—had poured out the contents of that plastic vial. Was Miranda simply one more victim? Or was she a murderess escaping the consequences of her actions? Her breathing seemed a little less labored, but that might not mean much. Had she suffered liver damage? Brain damage? What were the consequences of this long delay in treatment?
As for Burton—I felt queasy when I looked at his wound. It was crusting. Hard, black dried blood protruded from the swollen mass behind his ear. Blood had seeped down to glaze the collar of his blazer, making it dark and shiny and rigid. His skin had an ugly bluish tinge. The only improvement was that at some point when he was being moved, his teeth had come free from that poor wounded tongue. His mouth was still open, blood stained its corners, but his tongue was mercifully retracted.
I bent close to that open mouth, ignored the sweet-sickish smell of blood, and finally, finally felt the tiniest flutter of breath.
I drew back, touched his skin. Clammy.
I reached out, patted Rosalia’s thin shoulder. “Thank you for taking care of him. Will you stay with him?”
“Yes, Mrs. Collins. Betty and I will. As long as we can.” She glanced to the east.
I looked past Rosalia at Betty. She wasn’t close enough to harm Burton. I’d like to think she wouldn’t. But I still didn’t have any answers. Any answers at all.
As I stood, the fatigue washed over me. It would be so easy to drop down beside Valerie and close my eyes, let the warmth of the sunlight touch me with fingers of life and let my mind drift, taking memories and thoughts as they came.
But anger flickered beneath exhaustion.
I suppose I’ve always been angry. That’s what drives most writers, the hot, steady, consuming flame of anger against injustice and dishonesty and exploitation; against sham and artifice and greed; against arrogance and brutality and deceitfulness; against betrayal and indifference and cruelty.
I would not give up.
At the least, the very least, I wanted to confront the person who had willfully and wantonly taken Chase’s life, gravely injured Burton, and brought young, frail Miranda to despair.
I glanced again at her pale, unresponsive face. It could be the face of a murderess. I knew that.
Then, unwillingly, I looked to the east.
The sky was darkening, thickening. I couldn’t yet see the ribbed wall of the storm, but it was coming.
The only sounds were the scrape of the men’s shoes as they patrolled the sides of the building, the gurgle and shush of water eddying around us, the bewildered cry of a disoriented gull.
It was time—I hoped I had the time—to go back, to remember, to think.
It began with a dog bounding across the room to snatch a poisoned candy.
That summer weekend, every person on this roof, other than myself, had had access to Chase’s study in his New York brownstone.
Lyle Stedman abruptly stopped his patrol and stared out to sea, his hawk-strong face somber. He was a man whose appearance immediately captured attention: the sleek copper hair, bold nose, firm mouth, and blunt chin. No one would look at Lyle and expect to prevail—whatever the struggle—without a hard, long, and vicious fight. He was a man sublimely convinced of his own worth, supremely certain of his success. An ambitious man, a man who intended one day to head Prescott Communications. As I watched, Lyle’s face tightened in an angry frown. He reached down, scooped up a brick, and heaved it as far as he could.
It sank into the swirling water.
Lyle’s hands balled into fists. He faced a force he couldn’t defeat, and his thwarted fury was palpable. It would take very little to ignite him.
Roger Prescott watched the fragment of brick disappear, too, his usually genial face empty of everything but weariness—and resignation. Roger took a step toward Lyle, then stopped, as if in recognition that he was powerless to help. Go
od-humored, kindly, hopeful Roger, a man passionate in his beliefs. Were ideals more important to him than people? He saw the power for good that his father’s empire could provide. Had he succumbed to the old siren song of the ends justifying the means?
Roger turned suddenly, looked straight at me. He had sensed my eyes upon him. He looked like a teddy bear that had been left out in the rain, his blond hair scraggly, his clothes wrinkled. He forced a smile. “Like Robinson Crusoe, aren’t we?” He didn’t wait for an answer but began his walk along the edge of the roof again. Perhaps he knew there wasn’t a good answer.
The sounds were the same: the scuff of the men’s shoes, the swish and gurgle of water, the occasional frantic call of a gull. But no one spoke.
Trevor still crouched near the shattered chimney, working on his mound of broken bricks. His eyes followed his hands as they reached out and retrieved the pieces of chimney. His entire being was focused on the task, the better to exclude the terrifying reality of his surroundings. It was hard to recall the polished, confident, handsome man I’d met on my arrival with this frightened, diminished creature.
I walked across the roof.
“How’s it going, Trevor?” I heard the rattle and scrape as he reached for another brick.
He didn’t look up; his eyes never left the brick in his hand. “Fine, fine.”
If ever someone was vulnerable to assault, it was this man. If he knew anything at all, this was the time to find out. How much had he been in Chase’s confidence? He’d known about the insurance policy, the policy that would make all the difference for Lyle Stedman and for Roger. Chase had tried to keep that from me.
Had Chase kept anything else from me?
But I must feel my way carefully. “Trevor, you owe your loyalty to the living. Not to the dead.”
Reluctantly his eyes slid from the brick in his hand to my face. His look twisted my heart; it was a look of despair mixed with fear and horror.
“Trevor, tell me, did Chase have any idea at all who wanted to kill him? Did he tell you anything that would help us?”
I wasn’t prepared for his response.
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