And he lowered the body another few feet.
“Kelley!” R.J. said, taking another few steps toward him.
“Brooks!” he said, mocking R.J.’s tone. “She started this and the only way I can finish it is like this. You must know that as well as I do. She has to die, Brooks. The sun will never shine again if he lives. Birds will sing no more and the laughter of little children will be gone from the land, unless I drive a stake through her heart.” He shrugged. “Or cook her like a french fry. Whatever.” And he lowered her another few feet.
“There’s another way, Kelley,” R.J. said, trying to inch closer. “The stuff you had Pauly pass me. I can put her away with that stuff.”
“I don’t think so,” Kelley said in a reasonable tone of voice. “I think she might get a nice hefty fine out of it, which the studio would pay, and then business as usual. Not that I mean to discourage you. Follow through on it, by all means. But even if she serves time, we both know what that would be. Six months at a country club, suspended sentence. And then community service, which will mean she shows her movies at half price to inner-city school kids.”
“You may be right,” R.J. said. “But I can’t let you do this.”
“You can’t stop me,” Kelley said. “All I have to do is let go.” And he let a few feet of rope run through his hands. “I’m sorry. You were supposed to be unconscious. That way nobody could blame you. Why don’t you go lie down and pretend to wake up with everybody else.”
“Sorry.”
“But I have to do this,” Kelley went on. “I’ve waited too long. I did hard time, Brooks. Hard time. Because she framed me for being inconvenient. And she didn’t even gloat. Just tucked me away to rot and forgot about me. Do you understand? It wasn’t hate that made her do it, or even distaste. It was business convenience.”
“That’s tough,” R.J. said. “And if you’d just popped her the first time you probably would have gotten away with it. But you tagged a couple of innocent people along the way.”
“They weren’t innocent, Brooks, don’t kid yourself. Nobody innocent works for Janine. She roots out innocence like a truffle pig and gulps it down.”
“They may all have been devil worshipers, Kelley. But you shouldn’t have killed them.”
Kelley sighed. “I know. I really am sorry. The first one was an accident, that lawyer? I was trying to get Janine and I just missed. Bad planning. If I’d had any idea my daughter was there, I never would have—” He sighed again. “Well, there it is. I really don’t have any natural talent for this. I’ve had to learn as I go, and that lawyer—But then it occurred to me, why not? Kill her a little at a time, like she did me. Knock off the people around her, make her squirm. Make her tremble, wondering when the ax would fall again, never knowing who would be next or if she would be next. Everyone around her would see that it was bad to be near her, and they’d begin to look at her for what she was—a dangerous disease.” And he lowered her another few feet.
For the first time R.J. saw the glint of madness in Kelley. He had known it had to be there. Nobody knocks off a bunch of people just to worry their real target unless they’re a little unhinged. But until now Kelley had hidden behind a mask of gentle good humor.
Now it was out in the open. This was a psychotic killer. He might be the world’s nicest psychotic killer, and he might be harmless once Janine Wright was dead—but he might not be, too. And whatever the case, he had already killed a slew of people and he was dangerous as hell now.
“A disease,” Kelley went on. “A vile, vicious psychopath who would suck your blood if only she could make it hurt a little more.” He lowered the body some more.
“This won’t cure it,” R.J. said. “This will make her a martyr.”
Kelley shook his head. “I don’t think so. A martyr has to leave a legacy of some kind. And what does she leave behind? Just a bad odor—only partly from the singeing she’s about to get. It won’t be kind on her hair, I’m afraid.”
As he spoke he dropped her almost to the lip of the volcano and sure enough, in the glow from the volcano’s molten insides, R.J. could see Janine Wright’s hair starting to shrivel from the heat.
“I’m sorry,” Kelley was saying. “I’m not really demonic. In fact, I used to be a pretty good guy. I think that’s why she was able to do this to me. But the fact is, Brooks, you really can’t stop me. I know it must make you feel bad and I’m sorry, but it’s true, you can’t stop me. If you jump me I just drop her and it’s over. If you shoot me, it’s the same thing. It’s as good as done. You can’t stop me. I have waited for this for twenty years and now—” He shivered. The rope shook and Janine Wright slid another few inches. One side of her hair burst into flames. “You really can’t stop me. Nothing can stop me.”
“Daddy?”
The voice came from the darkness of the catwalk off to R.J.’s left and took him completely by surprise. It was Mary Kelley, no question about it, but—the voice was different. Softer, younger. It sounded like a little girl who woke up in the night dreaming of monsters under the bed.
“Daddy, is that you?”
R.J. and Kelley both froze at the sound. Kelley recovered first. He straightened and took a half step toward the voice. The rope in his hands came with him, tugging Janine Wright a foot or so higher, away from the volcano.
“Who is that?” he said. “Don’t try anything—”
“Daddy, it’s me,” Mary said and stepped into the dim light from the volcano.
Kelley looked like he had been pole-axed. “…Mary?” he whispered. “Baby…?”
She stepped a little closer and he didn’t move except to sway slightly. “Daddy…”
He stepped toward her like he was being pulled on a string. As he moved the rope moved with him and Janine Wright’s body floated slowly back up toward the catwalk.
R.J. edged forward, trying to get close enough to get a hand on the rope without any sudden movements that would alarm Kelley. But Kelley was totally focused on his daughter.
“Mary,” Kelley said. “My Mary—”
R.J. was only a few feet from the rope when Kelley opened his arms to embrace his daughter. “Oh, God,” he said. “My little girl.” And he lunged to her with his arms wide.
And dropped the rope.
R.J. dove for it.
CHAPTER 43
The cops were milling around watching the paramedics. There really wasn’t much for them to do, now that they had the killer. It was just a matter of waiting for everybody to wake up.
They had already taken Janine Wright away in an ambulance. Her hair was burned off and one side of her face was always going to be red and a little too smooth from the burns. R.J. had snagged the rope just as Janine Wright’s head dipped into the cone of the volcano. She’d be all right. But she was going to look a little weird from now on, with her partly melted face.
Maybe that was justice. Kelley thought so.
They had taken William Kelley away, too. He had come quietly down from the catwalk and stood with his arm around his daughter until they cuffed him and shoved him into a car. Then she got in beside him. The cops weren’t happy about that, but she just wouldn’t get out. They tried to persuade her to ride in the ambulance with her mother, but she just looked at them, one hand resting on her father, and finally they gave it up and let her ride along.
And now it was just a matter of waiting for them all to wake up inside the big hangar.
As soon as the cops had let him go, R.J. had checked on Portillo and then Bertelli. Uncle Hank was lying on his face halfway across the floor toward the spot where Kelley had set up his tanks. His gun was drawn. His pulse was strong and steady. R.J. flipped him over into a more comfortable position and left him to wake up.
Angelo was slumped over beside the food table. A small plate of what looked like cannoli was beside him. R.J. checked his pulse and left him.
He went over to where Casey lay stretched out on the floor. He took off his jacket and folded it under her h
ead. He had grabbed a bottle of sparkling water and a carton of orange juice from the food table to have ready for her when she woke up. And some aspirin, just in case she needed that.
And most of all he’d gotten himself ready, too.
Something had come together for him up there on the catwalk. Watching a family drama play out, love yanking people around in some wild directions. And as he had come back down to the floor it had occurred to him that, in a funny way, that’s what this whole thing had been about. Love gone crazy.
He’d been thinking all along that he couldn’t concentrate on the killer because of Casey, or on Casey because of the killer, and it hit him that maybe it was all the same problem. That maybe sometimes life set you up with a problem and you had to work it out one piece at a time before you could move on.
And maybe he was only thinking that way because he was in California. A state where the official motto, printed on the license plates, was “All Things Are One.”
Sure, he might have gone mushy between the ears over the last few weeks. But he was sure about the answer he’d come up with, as sure as he’d ever been in his life.
And as he stood over Casey and watched her sleep off the knock-out gas, watched her beautiful face that seemed so alive even when it was so still, he knew he was right. There were problems to work out, things to talk about, but that was no big deal. There were always going to be things to talk about between the two of them. That was one of the things that made it so good.
Now there was a new thing, and when she woke up they would talk about it. Because he’d thought about it and it had stuck with him, and he knew exactly what he would say to her when those beautiful blue eyes fluttered open and focused on his.
R.J. sat down to wait, running through it in his head, trying to get used to the sound of it. The words were strange, hard to say, but he would try like hell to say them:
“Will you marry me, Casey?”
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