This became tricky for me as I continue to spin my yarn, “While, in great pain, she talked about the old days. But I couldn’t follow what she was talking about.” I saw the muscles in Williams face begin to relax. “But she thanked me for helping her out of the building. This ordeal almost killed that old woman, you know.”
“And she didn’t talk about this thumb drive?”
I got the feeling that Williams was fishing for a particular answer. I looked at the dismantled cross in his hand, and I prayed that I’d give the proper reply. “I don’t think she knew it was a computer file. She mentioned, in passing, at the medical center, that she had dropped a crucifix here, and, I quote ‘Jesus took my place in the burning building’ or something to that effect. That is all I know about thing.”
“Nothing else?”
I shrugged — giving a lie of omission.
“And whose idea was it to come here? ”
“To look for my wife’s necklace? That was mine.”
Williams withdrew his gun from my face and examined the drive.
“Now since you have what everybody was searching for, that means I can go on my merry way, right?”
That wasn’t going to happen. The gun moved to my face again. “And who knows about the discovery of the drive?”
“Just you and me. I had found the thing seconds before I came into this room.”
He put the drive into his pocket and grabbed me by the shoulder. “Get up.”
When I shepherded to my feet, I was no longer just staring at the ceiling or a gun. I saw Williams dressed in, what my high school students would say, full camo. Williams’ outfit with its dark gray and forest green splotches made him look like a walking Rorschach test.
“You pose a problem, MacKenzie, a very knotty problem indeed. Normally, a simple bullet to the head would do the trick.”
“What?” Oh, I didn’t feel well when Williams said that. “Why? You have what you want.”
“I don’t believe you are as innocent as you claim to be. You want this file for yourself or for the people whom employed you. . . . And I don’t like loose ends.” Williams pushed me to the window. “Though, a bullet would be more expedient, I would prefer that your death looked more like an accident.”
I peered through the upper window frame — most of its panes laid shattered on the floor. I saw that we were at least twenty-feet, if not higher, above the ground. Straight below was assortment of rocks and boulders that formed the basis of the Whyte Post’s rock garden. To the left, about thirty yards out, was the river. Looking straight ahead, one can see the earth gently rise from the river bank and follow it to the left which ended in a forested hillock forty yards, or so away. I looked back at Williams. The cold reality washed over me like an eight foot breaker at Jones Beach. There was no escape; there was no sign of rescue, and now I was short of breath.
“Now, I will give you a choice. You can jump out the window, and take your chances that you may land safely with that out of shape sixty-year-old body of yours. Or you can have me break your neck up here, and I throw your dead body out of the window.”
“Either way,” I said between breaths, “eventually the police will know that — ”
“That you were murdered, true, but all we need is time, time enough to send the information that is on this drive to our client and to leave the country. While the authorities are puzzling on whether you died accidentally or not, we will be long gone.”
Again, I looked down out the window. I noticed that just about four feet below the window was a narrow ledge. No, it was really more of an eave which protruded no more than a foot out from the side of the building. Were I enough of a cat to use this a means of escape? I pondered the possibility.
“Get up on the window sill, or I’ll — ”
“Or you’ll what?” said an unexpected voice from the other side of the room.
Williams and I turned to see the interloper in the doorway.
The cavalry had arrived. With his campaign hat pushed back on his head, and with his gun drawn, stood Kyle standing as large as a roadside billboarding warning about forest fires.
“Sheriff, happy to see you again,” said Williams. “Would you be so kind and drop your weapon, or I will give your brother a head injury of which he’ll never recover.”
I must say, that didn’t expect that response from Williams. Nor did I think did Kyle. But to his credit, my brother remained as determined as Smokey the Bear himself warning about campfire safety.
“Oh no, you put your gun down. Even if you did manage to put a slug in my brother’s noggin, you would be splattered all over the room before you knew what hit you. I’m a very, very good shot.”
The banter between Williams and Kyle was leaving me somehow more ill at ease. I knew Kyle. He was well intentioned, but no match against Williams, after losing the element of surprise. I saw Kyle panting, no doubt from climbing the stairs, and his skin turning bright red. If there were to be a gunfight, it’s sad to say, I’d bet on Williams.
“What’s it gonna be, Sheriff ?”
Another voice? The cold, menacing words came from outside the room in the hallway, but its source was unseen.
Kyle’s eyes opened wide. His back straightened which made his whole body rise up and expand heavenward reminiscent of a cheese souffle baking in an oven. He then sort of twitched twice, dropped his gun, and stepped into the room.
It was only then that I understood Kyle’s motivation for relinquishing his weapon. Behind him was, none other than, my old head busting buddy, Dolan. He was also dressed in camouflage, and, of course, he had a gun, one of those mean looking automatic pistol type of things. It was the sort of thing that one would associate with commando units or with villains in a spy flick, and it was aimed at my brother.
“Here we are again, gentlemen,” Dolan said ending with an evil grin. “I’m sorry that your stay at the inn will be short lived.” Then he squarely glared at me. “You are very hard to kill.”
My smart mouth answered, “I do yoga — relaxation, breathing techniques.”
“Look what my friend found,” said Williams, tossing the drive to the new arrival.
Dolan caught the device with his free hand and examined it, and, for the moment, lost interest Kyle and me. “So, I heard.”
Heard what? Where was Dolan that he heard what was said between Williams and me? Was Williams wired?
“Is this what we’re looking for?” said Dolan as he held the drive close to his eyes.
“What else could it be?” said Williams.
Dolan let go of his gun and had it dangled by its strap at his hip. He reached into the pocket of the small backpack that he had. He pulled out some sort of a mini computer. With a push of a button or two, machine went on; the drive was slipped in, and Dolan smiled.
Looking up from the screen, Dolan asked me,“Where did you find this?”
“Out in the hall, between the rug and the floor moulding,” I said while I silently prayed that I wouldn’t be caught in a lie — not that it mattered. I calculated that Kyle’s and my chances of getting out of our present situation alive was zero to minus ten.
“So, you have said. You also said that Prosper probably dropped it when the two of you were leaving the building.”
He could hear us?
“That’s what I think. I saw that thing in her hand right before we left the room.”
“Why would she have it at all? Where do you think she got it from?”
“Her pocketbook?” Kyle blurted.
Dolan gave poor Kyle a knee to where gentlemen should never get kneed. My brother tumbled to the floor like a sack of potatoes falling off a truck.
“Listen tubby, don’t talk unless spoken to.” Dolan stepped closer to me and asked again, “Where do you think she got this from?” with a coldness in his voice that could chill a hot August day.
“She might have inadvertently picked it up when we were all in Foley’s room, when he, ah . . . passed away.”
/> “But why would she take it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she thought it was her lipstick or pack of complimentary matches or something. She’s over eighty years old. Who knows why old people do things?”
Dolan eyed me as if I was some kind of half-wit, but he was listening and wasn’t hurting anyone, and he didn’t tell me to stop. So, since my mouth has the proclivity at times to speak without much thought behind it, it rambled on.
“When I was in college, I worked part-time at a senior citizen center, and I found that those old codgers took everything that was offered to them. Some of the ladies used to take rolls of toilet tissue from the bathroom stalls and stuff them into their super-sized pocketbooks. Their male counterparts were just as bad — taking the equivalent of several pounds of sugar in the form of those tiny packets each week from the center. And I can’t tell you the number of bars of soap, napkins, pencils, salt and pepper packets that went missing. I remember once, we had a box of red plastic coffee stirrers — ”
“ — What difference does it make why she had it,” interrupted Williams, training his weapon on Kyle and myself, “We have it, now . . . And we ought to tidy up.” His voice became cold — menacing. Silhouetted by the sunlight beaming through the window behind him, he had acquired a presence of the ‘Angel of Death.’
“Yes, we should. But something bothers me, my friend.” Dolan glared at Williams. “If I accept that the old woman had the drive, then why didn’t you get it from her?”
Williams was silent for several seconds before he spoke.“When I came upstairs, the old woman — ”
Smash–whizz–thud.
Sounds erupted in the room. They were quickly followed by another whizz–thud. Amid the invading noises, the window pane shattered; plaster sprayed into the air. Two holes appeared in the wall near the door. Williams’ face went blank. He moved his hand away from his chest. Red oozed out from his jacket. He sank to the floor.
My reflexes had me hitting the floor before I actually comprehended that we were being shot at.
And as for Dolan, he dropped to his knees watching his partner in crime slowly disappear behind the bed. He wasted no time to make a hasty retreat. Stumbling going over Kyle’s mountainous body, Dolan sprinted out of the room, his hard footsteps drifted off into the distance and into silence.
“Kyle, are you okay?“
A beleaguered sounding,“Ayuh,” came sweetly to my ears. “Who in the world is shooting at us now?”
“I haven’t a clue.” I propped myself up on my hands and knees and looked around. I crawled to Kyle, trying to avoid the broken glass on the floor without much success. Several glass splinters found their way into my left palm and in both knees. When I got to my brother’s side, he greeted me with a dopey grin and asked, “Do you think they’re gone?”
“Who’s gone?” I said as I pulled an offending sliver from my hand.
“How hard were you hit the other day? The guys running around with guns. . . . The man who was just here threatening to kill us. . . . The person outside shooting at us.”
“I don’t know.” I sat low on the floor and examined my pants at the knees and brushed away any threatening debris. “Dolan is probably gone. Who would stick around if you’re being shot at? As for the others, they would be up here by now, don’t you think? It may be best to wait a bit before we start poking our heads about the place again.”
“Weren’t they shooting at us?” said Kyle, his voice trembling. “And if we’re the targets, why are we sticking around?”
He made a good point, but deep down, I didn’t believe he was correct in his conclusion. “Whoever shot into this room got Williams and missed us. Dolan runs away in a hurry and the shooting stops.”
“So, what are you trying to say?”
“I think our unknown shooter is not after us; I think he is after our two friends.”
I gave Kyle a pat on his arm for reassurance as he laid flat on the floor. From what I could tell, he appeared to be okay. The only thing that hurt him was his pride, and, yeah, maybe, his family jewels.
“This weekend turned out so different from how I imagined it. How in the world did I ever manage to get into such a mess, Kyle?” I mused out loud, not really expecting an answer. “I’m a retired teacher, not a secret agent. I came along on Morgana’s business trip so that we could turn her downtime into some romantic time — yeah, some weekend.”
Kyle really wasn’t paying attention. His mind was elsewhere; his eyes were focusing on something behind me. His dumb grin had long melted into a blank stare. What he just went through, I figured, he was entitled to dwell on anything he wanted. But for me, I needed to vent, and I didn’t care if he listened to me or not.
“I’m sorry that I got you into this,” I continued. “But I’m sure glad you came with me. You really did watch my back. Thanks.”
“I wish I did a better job,” Kyle’s whispered-answer drifted off as if he had run out of air.
A shadow descended over us and the sound crunching of glass electrified my senses. Kyle stretched out for his pistol that was just a few feet away.
“There’s no need for your sidearm, Sheriff.”
The hairs on the back of my neck snapped to attention. I held my breath and slowly looked over my shoulder. No more than three feet away, with his gun in hand, and bloody as fresh road kill, stood Williams.
#
CHAPTER 23
The newly resurrected Williams sent Kyle and me straight into the arms of fear and confusion. I felt like someone suddenly put a bag over my head and pushed me out of a plane. As for Kyle, who knows what he felt at that moment, all I can say is that he stared with his mouth opened as a wide as the Holland Tunnel.
“The two of you seem to be none the worse for wear,” Williams said as if he were a personal trainer appraising our first attempt on new gym equipment. “But I strongly suggest that we stay put for the all clear before we leave.”
“Leave?” said Kyle, confused, lying flat on the floor and looking as scared as I was feeling. “What will happen then?”
Williams strolled closer to us with his gun leading the way. “I’m sure that the two of you will be taken — ”
“Out to the back of the inn, so you and your friends can put a bullet in each of our heads?” said Kyle, his voice quivered in defiance.
Williams grinned, then slipped away his gun. “How are you feeling, Sheriff? You hit the floor pretty hard?”
“The floor wasn’t the hard part.”
The quip wasn’t lost on Williams. “Yes, sorry about that.”
Did I miss something? Other than Williams being laced in gore, he acted as if he weren’t hurt at all. I wondered whether I was the one who was fatally shot, and I was hallucinating during the final minutes of my life.
“When you said that the Sheriff and I will be taken back,” I asked calmly, “what did you mean?”
Williams loomed over us. “I assume that you’d be taken back to the medical center, but we’ll have to wait for confirmation about that, to be sure.” Williams extended his hand to Kyle. “Need help getting to your feet, Sheriff?”
Kyle hung back. “You’re covered in blood.”
“Oh, yeah, sorry about that. I forgot. This stuff may stain your uniform.” Williams looked at his bloodied hand, smelled it, then, with the tip of his tongue, touched a red glob that stuck to the knuckle of his index finger. “It's sweet. What is this stuff is made of?”
“You’re not wounded?” said Kyle with confusion written all over his face.
“No,” Williams shook his head with some uncertainty.
The puzzling events of our ordeal suddenly clicked together, forming a most singular mental picture — I understood.
“All of this was a sham!” I exploded with the giddiness of a death-row inmate just granted a pardon. I gently fell backward onto the floor, landing next Kyle, and laughed, uncontrollably. Each bout of laughter became more energetic than the previous one. I continued to roar uncont
rollably, my conclusion tickled my mind so. And in between each round of laughter, I repeated, “It was all a fake. It was all a fake. . . .”
And it wasn’t long before Williams caught some of my giddiness and then even he started to chuckle.
However, Kyle apparently didn’t get the joke. He reached over to me, shook my shoulder and asked, “Then we’re not going to be killed?”
I emphatically shook my head; I couldn’t speak.
After several more guffaws on my part, Kyle asked, “What about him forcing you out of the window?”
Well, that threw a bucket of cold water on my euphoria. I caught my breath and looked up at Williams, “Kyle has a point.”
“I was stalling. I had to get Dolan here,” said Williams. “And when he arrived, well, that was when the real work began. I had to give the thumb drive to him and . . . well, enough said, just leave at that, shall we.”
Ultimately, my assignment from Mrs. Prosper was to hand off the drive to the person who wanted it. And if Williams’s task was the same as mine, we were on the same side. And if we were on the same side, I perceived another problem that Williams had to deal with.
“You had the extra burden of proving that you were on the level with Dolan,” I said. “I’m sure he had severe doubts about your loyalty, arising from the last time we were all here together.”
“I knew he did,” said Williams. “But I think my well-acted death scene solved that problem.”
“It fooled me,” said Kyle.
“Your death fooled us both. How did you manage it?”
“My death was improvised the moment that the two of you arrived. With the aid of one of Mrs. Prosper’s blood vials that I found in the room and some coordination through the wonders of electronic communication . . . and remembering my acting exercises from my college days. Bingo, I’m killed.”
“Why didn’t you tell us that this entire thing was an act?” asked Kyle.
“Because he couldn’t,” I said. “Williams was wearing two wires. One communication setup was for the good guys and the other one was for Dolan, our escaping bad guy. And when Williams spoke, everyone could listen in, but only Dolan didn’t know about the second wire.”
FATED TO THE PURPOSE (Richard and Morgana MacKenzie Mysteries Book 2) Page 28
